All civilizations to this point have grown up around one or another sacred vision of the cosmos, which has provided a spiritual environment and a vital impulse for the arts, philosophy, law, public institutions, cultural revolutions, and so on. Whether there will ever be such a thing as a genuinely secular civilization – not a mere secular society, but a true civilization, entirely founded upon secular principles–is yet to be seen.
What is certain is that, to this point, most of the unquestionably sublime achievements of the human intellect and imagination have arisen in worlds shaped by some vision of transcendent truth. (page 6).
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David Bentley Hart, ‘God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss”. Yale University Press, 2013.