Progress versus reality

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"For if the world is originally well ordered, then God is needed to explain that order. And if it is incurably disordered, then God is needed to save us from that disorder. Only if life is originally bad but fixable through human effort is it the case that God is neither a necessary hypothesis nor a fundamental need. That is why this specific humanistic posture seems to be the product, not so much of some new discovery about the world, as of a need, a demand, an imperative. The humanistic credo that life has no fundamental problems that we cannot cure has the character less of a calm, settled belief than a mixture of hope and insistence." -- Arthur Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines, p. 103

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