[sethc2]

This seems counterintuitive to me if we assume a causal relationship. I’d imagine lessening religious faith would lessen ideological intensity. Then again when it was assumed most people were “religious”, it meant there was some higher thing than ourselves that we shared we could unify on. God however you take him, is at least a symbol of something above us, bigger than individuals, of an immaterial nature.

With the annihilation of God in the public discourse, we have to find something else bigger than ourselves that we can unify around on, and the ideological intensity maybe stems from arguing what that higher thing is. Is it science, love, security, pleasure, freedom? Different people will take on an ideology of some sort, and the intensity will because one groups higher thing they think is higher than another’s. God was the trump card for highest before, but now, I’m not sure what is for most people.