Chapter Ten
A World Without God 1600 - the Present Orthodox Christianity fostered humanity's shift towards a world view that pays little heed to the idea of divinity. By teaching that the earthly realm is devoid of sanctity, Christians built the ideological foundation for modern society. Modern thinkers perpetuated the concepts of orthodox Christianity, providing scientific validation for the belief in hierarchy, domination and struggle. With the approach of the twenty-first century, however, there is a growing awareness not only of the drawbacks of such concepts, but also of their limited scientific accuracy. Soon after people accepted the belief that God no longer wielded supernatural power in the physical world, it became common, particularly among the educated, to believe that the devil also exercised no such power. Once the idea of divine magic had been rejected, it was easy to accept that no magic, divine or evil, operates in the physical realm. Physical reality was instead perceived to be the mechanistic operation of inanimate components functioning entirely upon rational and definable laws, similar to that of a huge clock. As Shakespeare's character Lafew says of the age: They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons, to make modern and