The meaning of history is entangled in the inherited orthodoxies of childhood, along with pathways which better and creative thinkers search out. The conventional and dull thinker will dwell in the security of old dogmas. Most believers do not wander far from home, but often are in the territory of heterodoxy unawares — deviation from accepted or orthodox standards or beliefs. All apologia deviates.
Secularisation is strongly associated with the exit from established belief to a void of disinterest. However, that is a far too simplification, and merely expresses the prejudice of the conventional and dull thinker as reproduced for the unquestioning behaviourist (‘mind is just a behaviour’) for that choice of pathway.
For the thoughtful believers of any system, the choice is typically to move within the same system to a neo-orthodoxy or to find an alternative. Again, there are secondary pathways within a sphere of heterodoxy, built upon the new orthodoxy or the alternative orthodoxy of another system.
The meaning of history is derived from mapping these pathways, which can be judged as progressive, a move in time for the better, or regressive, a move to a situation judged poorly from one or another stance on the map. Beliefs and doubts in history are important. Humans do not merely behave between input and output, unless a person does actually have their mind switched off.
Neville Buch