"if our faith has remained at the stage of the immature images, then the story that materialism equals maturity can seem plausible."

The claim ("story") that "Religion is afraid to face the fact that we are alone in the universe, and without cosmic support", to grow up and and "look reality in the face", "will probably make little sense to someone who is deeply engaged in a life of prayer or meditation, or other serious discipline, because this involves in its own way growing beyond and letting go of more childish images of God.  But if our faith has remained at the stage of the immature images, then the story that materialism equals maturity can seem plausible."

     Charles Taylor, A secular age (Cambridge, MA:  The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 364, italics mine.  "the appeal of scientific materialism is not so much the cogency of its detailed findings as that of the underlying epistemological stance, and that for ethical reasons.  [On unrelated but actually more deteminative grounds, including even, in some cases, a kind of 'inner insecurity',] It is seen [unnecessarily or non-inevitably] as the stance of maturity, of courage, of manliness, over against childish fears and sentimentality." "my general position here" is "that conversions from religion under the influence of 'science' turn not on the alleged scientific proofs of materialism or the impossibility of God (which turn out on examination not to go through anyway), but rather on other factors", for example 1) "attachment to inessential doctrines which can be refuted" or 2) other forms of religious immaturity (365).  "the story that a convert to unbelief may tell, about being convinced to abandon religion by science, is in a sense really true.  This person does see himself as abandoning one world view ('religion') because another incompatible one ('science') seemed more believable.  But what made it in fact more believable was not 'scientific' proofs [(of, for example, 'the impossibility of God' (above))]; it is rather that one whole package:  science, plus a picture of our epistemic-moral predicament in which science represents a mature facing of hard reality, beats out another package:  religion, plus a rival picture of our epistemic-moral predicament in which religion, say, represents a true humility, and many of the claims of science unwarranted arrogance.  But the decisive consideration here was the reading of the moral predicament proposed by 'science', which struck home as true to the convert's experience (of a faith which was still childish—and whose faith is not, to one or another degree?), rather than the actual findings of science" (366, all underscoring mine).