This picture is routinely challenged by those who contend that secular reasons and secular discourse in general don\u2019t tell the whole story; they leave out too much of what we know to be important to human life.<\/p>\n
No they don\u2019t, is the reply; everything said to be left out can be accounted for by the vocabularies of science, empiricism and naturalism; secular reasons can do the whole job. And so the debate goes, as polemicists on both sides hurl accusations in an exchange that has become as predictable as it is over-heated.<\/p>\n
But the debate takes another turn if one argues, as the professor of law Steven Smith does in his new book, \u201cThe Disenchantment of Secular Discourse,\u201d\u009d that there are no secular reasons, at least not reasons of the kind that could justify a decision to take one course of action rather than another.<\/p>\n
It is not, Smith tells us, that secular reason can\u2019t do the job (of identifying ultimate meanings and values) we need religion to do; it\u2019s worse; secular reason can\u2019t do its own self-assigned job \u201d\u201d of describing the world in ways that allow us to move forward in our projects \u201d\u201d without importing, but not acknowledging, the very perspectives it pushes away in disdain.<\/p>\n