Charles Taylor A Secular Age Summary

People understand that science displays the world and God does not have to. To have goals and be a nice person, people do not have to have God. People must learn to live without boundaries and help each other improve the world and make it safer. People cannot be themselves and are split apart because of religion.
Charles Taylor, in his “subtraction story,” says people now have secular minds because of “science and objective reason.” A secular way of life gives a person everything they need without having to deal with the morals of religion. In Taylor’s “A Secular Age” he disagrees by saying secular ways of life are no different than the religious beliefs; the secular people have just come up with different ways of thinking about how life should be lived and the views they should have. He says people with a secular view “are subject to their own array of serious problems and objections.”
Many

people do believe in God. Mark Lilla says that when it comes to people wanting to know about God it “comes naturally—it’s indifference to them that must be learned.” Humans with a secular view believe humans are no more than “a complex of chemicals” that do not have feelings and things like love and after life do not really exist and the correct behavior is based on “what we in our minds choose to feel.” They see all of creation and science just as one big game “to figure out how the giant clock works.” None of the world’s feelings and problems can be found through understanding. The way people act and why they do certain things is gone against by this statement. People want others to believe they should be loyal to one another even though they are “Products of an impersonal universe.” It was multiple years before people began to think this way says Taylor.
People who are religious are not afraid to display their faith openly. Although, the non-religious groups “don’t see or grant the leaps of faith they are taking.” Michel Foucalt calls this “unthoughts” which are things that are known by everyone but made out to be important “beliefs.” People believe these things because they “contain no justification” but are said to be necessary and true to their beliefs. Taylor shows Alan Ehrenhalt’s quote about 1950s Chicago that says:
Most of us in America believe a few simple propositions that seem so clear and self-evident they scarcely need to be said. Choice is a good thing in life. Authority is inherently suspect; nobody should have the right to tell others what to think or how to behave. Sin isn't personal.... Human beings are creatures of the society they live in.... They are powerful ideas. They all have the ring of truth.
Taylor displays that if people look deeper into these ideas it turns out the world should not use them.

People cannot have freedom of choice, lack of leadership, and no independent responsibility if cultures are to survive.
A person must not want to learn about secularity to be able to teach “secular people.” Followers of God think all a secular person believes is nothing. Taylor and different people think “Secularism is its own web of beliefs that should be open to examination.” Next up is the study of secularism.
Although, there is one thing to remember. The author believes a Christians mind is different than a secular’s. Christians are influenced by a secularistic point of view even thought their minds are different. However, secular ideas are similar to Christian ideas in many ways which makes them “partly right.” These secular ideologies are “pervasive, and felt to be so self-evident, that they are not visible as beliefs to those who hold them” which is why Christians fall victims to them. That is why they need to be shown so Christians do not fall victim to

them.