Terry, I disagree with you. Whim, hunches, guts - are good measurements of what to trust. Perhaps not by themselves. Secular people employ them, too.
A "whim" has no rational reason. Humans are reasoning creatures at our best. If we simply "feel" and act-- how do we differ from beasts? Obe wan Kenobe is a mystic and the mysterious "force" guides him. This isn't knowledge, science or an authentic foundation on which to act. The chaos of anarchy is men acting on whim without rule of law.
Religion and secularity are neither good nor bad. It is with reason, rule of law and the agreement of thinking men are bound by common weal.
Personally, I find your antireligion fervor lets you go over a line that is usally well reasoned. Secularism is responsible for bad things and so is religion.
The evil of both the secular and the religious destroyers comes from their un-named "authority" to do as they wish. Their "righteous whim" or zeal for god on the one hand and "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" by secular tyrants are simply a disguise. They want to hold you in their power and make you do what they want. Obedience and money is the price you pay. Oh--but, don't bother asking questions.
I would prefer to call it the human condition. Stalin, Mao were not citadels of reason b/c they purged religion. This secular/religious battle is spurious. An accurate reading would be that religion has brought great pain to humankind, revolting hypocrisy but also soaring images,s comfort, knowledge. not to mention fine art. Religion nurtured civilization. If it were not for isolated communities monks off Ireland keeping classical learning alive, it may have been lost with the barbarian invasions.
Stalin and Mao wanted the unthinking obedience for themselves which religion had bound people by until their arrival. What they purged was RIVALS.
Mussolini kept the trains running on time. Should the Italians have been grateful that he "nurtured civilization"? Hitler freed the indigenous Germans from the tyranny of Jewish businessmen and the burden of the Versailles Treaty.
All monsters of tyranny are only working "for" their subjects in some mysterious and noble grandiosity.
The Communists offered the Russians, under the Czar, something for everybody equally. So the people were led to believe. So, the Czar and his family were brutally murdered and tossed down a well! They put it to a vote. The Majority lost and the Minority won. How? They changed the names of the parties! It always ends the same with some sort of Priesthood or Dictator or Governing nuisance controlling your life for some greater cause!
For thousands of years "enlightened" religious cells preserved books by copying and decorating them while the church they served taxed the people to death, kept them ignorant and illiterate and sold them tickets to heaven.
The man or woman who cannot build a good life by THINKING their OWN thoughts for their own good is helpless before the smooth promises of mystics, clerics, Tyrants and magicians who dazzle them with empty bromides.
It sounds good. It gives you hope. You don't have to die. Hey--let's go for it!
You end up with a Pope, Pancho Villa, Juan Peron, Fidel Castro or Sadaam Hussein. When your tyrant dies you weep in the streets.....or else!