Secular Sacredness
Three Naturalistic Accounts
1. Introduction: The Sacred Without Supernaturalism
Secular people like to imagine that they have outgrown the sacred. They have not. Everyone operates with a value hierarchy, and whatever sits at the top—whatever adjudicates all conflicts—is sacred in function, whether or not we give it a religious name. The sacred is simply the non‑negotiable: the value we refuse to trade away even when every other commitment strains against it.
Once you see sacredness as the apex of a hierarchy rather than a metaphysical property, it becomes clear that modern society has not abandoned the sacred; it has merely changed its content. Autonomy, equality, national identity, safety, progress—each is treated as sacred by someone. The real question is not whether we have sacred values, but how they work.
Three secular accounts illuminate this terrain from different angles: Robin Hanson’s sacredness as coalition strategy, David Chapman’s sacredness as experiential mode, and Axio’s sacredness as structural necessity. Together they reveal the modern sacred without appealing to metaphysics.
2. Hanson: Sacredness as Coalition Glue
Hanson’s account is sociological. Groups elevate certain values to sacred status because sacralization binds coalitions. When something becomes sacred, it stops being negotiable. Its purpose is not clarity but unity: to signal loyalty, suppress internal conflict, and generate shared identity.
The mechanism involves far‑mode abstraction. Sacred values are kept deliberately vague and idealized so that everyone can affirm them without confronting divisive details. In practice, this means that sacred domains become epistemically dangerous: questioning them is treated as betrayal rather than inquiry. To Hanson, sacredness is a coordination technology—powerful, stabilizing, and often intellectually corrosive.
3. Chapman: Sacredness as Interaction and Perception
Chapman approaches sacredness from lived experience rather than group strategy. He rejects the idea that sacredness must be either objective or subjective. Instead, he treats it as interactive: a patterned relationship between people, objects, histories, and practices.
Sacredness becomes available through modes of engagement—wonder, ritual, attentiveness, repetition—not through metaphysics. A mountain, a tree, a storm, or a story can become sacred because of how we encounter it, not because it houses a supernatural essence. Sacredness is nebulous yet real, non‑subjective yet not fixed by any external authority. It is an experiential mode available even to thoroughgoing naturalists.
4. Axio: Sacredness as the Apex of a Value Hierarchy
Axio’s perspective does not ask what sacredness does socially or how it feels subjectively. It asks what sacredness is inside a system of values. The answer is structural: sacredness is whatever occupies the top position in the hierarchy, the principle that arbitrates all conflicts.
Every person and every culture has such an apex value, whether explicit or hidden. Without one, value systems cannot resolve dilemmas coherently. With one, the system gains identity and stability. Axio’s account is secular in structure, but unlike the others it does gesture toward an explicit candidate for the apex—Sacred Coherence—while still maintaining that, in general, whatever occupies that top position in practice functions as the sacred.
5. Three Angles on the Secular Sacred
Hanson exposes how sacredness operates between people: as a mechanism for cohesion and loyalty. Chapman shows how sacredness operates within experience: as a mode of perception and engagement that requires no metaphysical scaffolding. Axio shows how sacredness operates above values: as the structural principle that governs the rest.
Together, these accounts reveal sacredness at three levels:
Social: the glue of coalitions.
Phenomenological: the texture of certain interactions.
Architectonic: the apex of a value system.
6. Why the Secular Sacred Matters
Pretending you have no sacred values does not liberate you; it blinds you. It leaves your value hierarchy vulnerable to capture by political movements, ideological tribes, or the emotional momentum of the moment. Hanson shows how sacralization can be exploited. Chapman shows why rejecting sacredness entirely flattens experience and tempts people into pseudo‑religions. Axio shows that sacredness is already structuring your choices whether you acknowledge it or not.
Understanding the secular sacred is therefore a matter of intellectual hygiene. It clarifies why certain values dominate your reasoning, how they shape your alliances, and whether they deserve their privileged position.
7. Conclusion: Sacredness After Disenchantment
Disenchantment did not eliminate the sacred; it merely changed its wardrobe. Sacredness persists in the values we elevate, the experiences we treat as profound, and the principles we refuse to sacrifice.
Hanson maps the politics of sacredness. Chapman restores its experiential depth. Axio identifies its structural function. Taken together, they offer a clear, secular understanding of the sacred—one capable of guiding life in a world where transcendence has withdrawn but the human need for ultimacy endures.