Math . . . music .. . starry nights . . . These are secular ways of achieving transcendence, of feeling lifted into a grand perspective. It's a sense of being awed by existence that almost obliterates the self. Religious people think of it as an essentially religious experience but it's not. It's an essentially human experience.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the universal human experiences that evoke a sense of awe and transcendence beyond the self, often associated with spirituality.
Rebecca Goldstein suggests that experiences such as engaging with math, music, and the beauty of nature can inspire feelings of transcendence and a grand perspective on life that are deeply human. While religious individuals may attribute such feelings to a divine encounter, Goldstein argues that these moments of awe and connection to existence do not require a religious framework; they are inherent to the human experience.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of art in education, one might reference this quote to highlight how creativity can lead to profound experiences.
Our humanist community should be thinking more about demonstrating the fundamental truth that goodness requires neither God nor the belief in God by organizing together as a community to do good. Less money spent on billboards that just make us feel good about ourselves and more on soup kitchens and organized visits to the sick and dying.
As far as income goes, there are three currencies in the world; most people ignore two. The three currencies are time, income and mobility, in descending order of importance. Most people focus exclusively on income.
I'm an American, but being a black American, my experience is a particular one, my struggles have been particular.
The glory of God is the human person fully alive.
This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.
When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing.
Through one all are known, through one all are also seen
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