It is, Taylor suggests, “an outlook which holds that religion must decline either (a) because it is false, and science shows this to be so; or (b) because it is increasingly irrelevant now that we can cure ringworm by drenches [the ‘artificial-fertilizers-make-atheists’ argument]; or (c) because religion is based on authority, and modern societies give an increasingly important place to individual autonomy; or some combination of the above” (pp. 428-29).
