The achievements of good men and women, laboring together with love and self-respect, are self-validating and self-rewarding.

The Triumph of Divine Providence (La divina provvidenza), Fresco Palazzo Barberini, Rome. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In a world that has lost, or is losing fast, any convincing concept of divine providence at work, of a personal God ordering the affairs of humanity, it is not necessary to assume that the only alternative to a human-cherishing universe is a hostile or satanic universe. There is the much more likely alternative of a neutral universe where people live, hammering out salvation without hope of heaven or dread of hell. People can find that life has value, not because a divine being so ordains, but because the achievements of good men and women, laboring together with love and self-respect, are self-validating and self-rewarding.

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