Freedman: the problem of community for secularism

Freedman argues that there is a fundamental problem in secularism that will always block efforts to form the same kind of "thick" communities that religious belief provides.  Community amongst persons is forged only when there is something more important than one's own interests to which all share a higher allegiance.  And, Freedman says, "humanism suffers...from the valorisation of the individual."  When I am the final authority for determining  right and wrong, and when nothing is more important than my right to live as I see fit, tight supportive community is eroded, perhaps even impossible.

quoted in Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering, Tim Keller, p66.