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Niebuhr argues that "bourgeois secularism" expresses itself in "two varieties," or "forms," "In one of its forms bourgeois secularism is itself a covert religion \[which believes that it has ultimate answers to life's ultimate problems\]. In the other (and more sophisticated) form it represents a sceptical awareness of the relativity of all perspectives and the finiteness of all human knowledge." If secularism in its first more naive form is itself a "covert" \-\- and, as I should add, self-contradictory \-\- religion, in its second more sophisticated form "it stands on the abyss of moral nihilism and threatens the whole of life with a sense of meaninglessness" _(The Children of Light and_ _the_ _Children of Darkness_:_ _131, 133)_. _