I nodded. “The massive destruction and loss of life caused by this movement produced a backlash against fundamentalist religious belief in general, which, because of its dogmatism, came to be seen as dangerous to the healthy functioning of a multicultural society. ‘Christian’ became a byword for ‘dogmatic bigot,’ and people didn’t want to be dogmatic bigots. You may recall that the Tolerance Act of 2036 was passed during the height of this period, reflecting people’s increasing unease with fundamentalist religion.”

I glanced at Abby again. She sat attentively, without expression. Given her obvious intellectual ability, I hated to lump her in with religious fundamentalists. She couldn’t help how she had been raised or the isolation she had endured.

“All right,” I continued. “That brings us to our fourth cause, which we started to touch on last time.”

Melinda spoke. “The fourth cause was how our understanding of truth and knowledge evolved.”

“Correct. Until the fourteenth century, Western culture had a Platonic view of truth. Knowledge comes through philosophy and divine revelation. Truth doesn’t have to be investigated; it can simply be deduced. Thomas Aquinas reintroduced the Aristotelian view: knowledge comes through empirical observation of nature. This birthed the scientific method—promoted, ironically, by religionists like Isaac Newton, who believed in a rational Creator who designed a rational, understandable world. Truth became a set of absolute realities that could be uncovered by human investigation.

“In the middle of the twentieth century, this mindset began to crumble. Philosophers rejected the notion of absolute truth altogether. What people considered to be truth was, in fact, socially constructed. No one could interpret reality in a vacuum; everyone constructed what they viewed as reality based on their acceptance or rejection of cultural norms. Claims to truth were, in fact, mere power plays designed to perpetuate the control of those in authority.

“By the turn of this century, the notion of absolute truth was crumbling in the popular culture as well. Polls of Americans in the first decade of the century revealed that most no longer believed in absolute truth or absolute morality.

“This philosophical earthquake proved devastating to the Christian religion. Without a prior cultural presupposition of absolute truth to rely upon, Christians’ claims to truth fell on deaf ears. In the absence of absolutes, all that mattered was personal experience. ‘Whatever works for you’ became the prevailing attitude, whether that be Christianity, New Ageism, or no religion at all. The culture, of course, drifted to no religion at all. If claims to truth are all socially constructed, why bother with a religion that’s going to impose demands on you and tell you how to think, as opposed to your making your own free choices in life?”