Secular realism

David Brooks has Obama down as subscribing to Christian realism - that is, roughly: knowing there is evil in the world, including the potentiality for it within oneself, but not treating the knowledge as a reason for cynicism or complacency; rather making it the basis of an enduring fight against injustice. Far be it from me to challenge the Christian pedigree. I would only say that an entirely secular version of the same outlook is possible - in fact, necessary. We have the potentialities we have, both good and bad, because of the human nature that, through evolution, we possess. Amongst the good is a capacity for moral choice and the aspiration to combat and remedy wrongdoing; but of wrongdoing itself there is no end. A knowledge of this combination can be religiously grounded but it doesn't have to be.