I see the standpoint of immanence as intrinsically secular

Why not be more ambitious... Organize, get things out there in the public sphere, publish outside of academic journals like Zizek or Dawkins or others. Begin to build a very vocal collective movement. Lobby heavily for legislation that outlaws homeschooling and forms of public organization that allow for isolation of religious communities from the rest of the symbolic space. The aim shouldn't be to convert or change those who are already deeply attached to fundamentalist, extremist, religious movements, but to rally those on the fence, the children of fundamentalist believers, and to create a sort of symbolic or common sense that increasingly marginalizes these groups such that eventually their positions come to seem absurd in the public eye in a way that they aren't even entertained (in much the same way that no one debates whether the world is round today). By this I don't mean academic voices, but voices that are out there very visibly in the public eye. Whatever else one might think about their work, this is beginning to change a little bit with folk like Dawkin's, etc. So much of any change, I think, is simply getting it on the table of public discourse.
You're right, of course, the reason can always be reified into authority through cults devoted to certain thinkers or scientific claims. However, these claims can always be revisited, scrutinized, discarded, and subjected to critique. With revealed religion I can either accept or not. There's not much in between due to the manner in which it's based on narrative.
Discard, by immanence I simply mean an ontology that admits no appeals to anything transcendent to the world or material field. Thus, yes, I see the standpoint of immanence as intrinsically secular. Posted by: Sinthome March 24, 2007 at 02:45 PM