How do we explain women gathering to support and cheer for another woman who strangled her own three little children to death, who held them down, who ignored their screams and sobs, who applied and remorselessly tightened elastic bands around their necks, who hunted down her own infant when the poor child tried to hide, who inflicted extended minutes of agony on each of her own children, who was not moved from her demonic task by the struggles, tears or terror of those she should have loved and protected? How can we explain anyone, whether Clancy’s defense lawyer or her other defenders, thinking that the details of the murder are immaterial and that a state of mind excuses them?
Societies cannot ‘muddle along’ without a belief system. If they abandon one God, another takes his place. If they reject a religious faith, a secular belief system that may well be more fanatical becomes dominant instead. Either an alien religion that is more aggressive wins, or an extreme political ideology offers meaning in exchange for belief in it, instead. We are seeing both these effects in modern western society.