"If there is one thing clear in all the deviant streams running through youthful American culture — drugs, rock, protest, communes, superstition — it is that the younger generation quite explicitly wants something to believe in and norms which follow from that belief according to which they can live.
"I fear that in the past paragraphs the clerical dimensions of my personality has got the best of me, and I have, on the basis of data which can only be described as systematic impressions at best, proceeded to preach a sermon.
"But then, if I am true to my convictions as expressed in this book, I must believe that the social scientist cannot keep his passion or his commitment out of his work. On occasions, I suspect, it is extremely fruitful even for analytic purposes to let that passion show through. In any case, in the previous paragraphs and, I dare say, in many other paragraphs in the book I have not been at pains to hide my passion or my convictions.
"To recapitulate, the volume began with that rather bold assertion that fundamental religious needs had not changed since the Ice Man. Modern man, like his archaic predecessor, needs faith, community, myth, ethics which reflect the nature of reality, an opportunity to experience the sacred, and particularly to understand sexuality as sacred, and religious leadership which will facilitate his interpretation of the meaning of life. That conventional wisdom which sees man as evolving away from the need for faith and for the sacred (arguing that 'man has come of age') is not based on empirical evidence but on priori assumptions about the nature of the human evolutionary process, assumptions which simply do not fit concrete historical evidence. The model of the conventional wisdom does not enable us to understand either the persistence of religion among the overwhelming majority of people in the Western world, or the resurgence of bizarre forms of religious behavior among young people, or the religious and mythological coloration allegedly 'scientific' value systems quickly acquire. I have not argued that every man must have faith but have suggested, rather, that most men do need faith at least at some times in their lives, and then there is no evidence to show that the need is any less now than it was in the past, or that our archaic predecessors were any more devout than we are today."