It’s still ok to be a religious believer after reading this far. If I haven’t convinced you, that’s ok, because it’s not my goal to prove that God doesn’t exist. What you already believe is far more important than any evidence I can offer. In some respects I wish I was a true religious believer. It would make life so much easier: knowing there was a master plan, softening the fear of death, and having so many resources to rely on—sacred texts, community, and shared rituals.
Seeing Behind the Curtain
But I’ve seen behind the curtain, like discovering that a supposedly all‑powerful wizard is really just a man pulling levers. I’ve seen the hand of man in religions, the role of culture, upbringing, and presuppositions. I can never go back to the security that religions offer, even if I wanted to. Much like Milton suggests, it feels like paradise lost.
The Wizard of Oz and Finding the Power Was Yours All Along
In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy learns that the wizard’s power was mostly smoke and machinery, but she also learns that she had the power to go home all along. That’s essentially how the secular path to spirituality sees religion: once you notice the human “machinery” behind it, you can’t un‑see it. But you may also realize that many of the things you valued—meaning, courage, connection—were never only in the wizard; they were in you and in other humans all along.
Jealous of Certainty, Committed to Freedom
Having lost that “paradise,” I still sometimes envy people who feel fully at home in it. If you have ultimate confidence in your beliefs, I’m a little jealous of your certainty and peace of mind. But once you’ve seen behind the curtain, as Sartre says, man is condemned to be free: we cannot escape the responsibility to choose our stance toward reality, even if that choice leads us away from the comfort of ready‑made answers.
As I said earlier, ultimate truth isn’t what measures a spiritual life; what matters are the fruits. The real test is whether your spiritual efforts help you live more honestly, deepen your connection with others, and face reality with greater courage—not whether you can be certain about how the universe is built behind the scenes.
Next: Building a Practical Secular Spirituality
In the next section, we begin to build a practical, secular spirituality in everyday life. There we will look at specific tools, habits, and “pathways” that can help you explore meaning, connection, and ethics in a way that fits your current beliefs, and that may be especially helpful if you are a religious believer who still carries serious doubts but is not yet ready to leave your tradition.