I was just haggling with my wise editor at the Forward over my use in an op-ed piece — about the Biblical commandment of counting the Omer — of the term Dark Age to describe our own times of secular ascendancy. This is one thing that good editors are for — catching writers in the act of being needlessly hyperbolic or pugilistic — so I conceded the point and we went with “secular ascendancy.” But I will share with you that I still think Dark Ages aptly characterizes what we’re now living through. The British medical writer James Le Fanu has another term that’s equally or more apt. He thinks we’re living in the Age of Counter-Enlightenment.

The point is to challenge the assumption that Dark always = religious and Enlightened always = secular. On the contrary, to turn away from half of reality, the spiritual side of it, is the opposite of being enlightened and it darkens the mind!

Your thoughts?