As Susan Jacoby and others suggest, the main response of the secular person to evil and suffering is not to find some meaning in it, nor to prepare to triumph over it in some future life, but to make the world better, to slowly but surely eliminate suffering right here. But the reason for all the emphasis on the here and now of this world is that secularism has no other happiness to offer. If you can’t find it here, there really is no hope for you.
