Only someone who is religious can speak seriously of the sacred…. We may say that all human beings are inestimably precious, that they are ends in themselves, that they are owed unconditional respect, that they possess inalienable rights, and, of course, that they possess inalienable dignity. In my judgment these are ways of trying to say what we feel a need to say when we are estranged from the conceptual resources [i.e. God] we need to say it…. Not one of [these statements about human beings] has the power of the religious way of speaking…that we are sacred because God loves us, his
...more
