ABSTRACT
Since the widespread naturalism, or religious skepticism, of modern times has developed in societies where the dominant religion has been Christianity, and to a lesser extent Judaism, the form naturalism has taken has been a self-consciously atheistic one. He therefore continues his account of the nature of this ambiguity by contrasting theistic and atheistic worldviews. The various forms of the two great Eastern traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism, while containing many elements that resemble the piety and worship of the Western faiths, do not judge the human predicament or its causes in the same way. The enlightenment religions are far more like the Western secular philosophy that was fathered by Socrates than they are like the three great Semitic faiths; and the chronic tensions between the demands of philosophy and those of faith are not as characteristic of their histories.
