The issue before us is to discover or determine what we are, and what we are for. Traditional believers–among whom I count myself–suppose that there are answers to those questions, and that they can be found by prayerful examination of the Word of God in Scripture–and the world. Less traditional believers, reacting against the follies that have often been taught as gospel, believe instead that the answers are not for us to discover, but rather to decide. The question is not (for them) about our present world, but about the world to come, and its coming rests on human enterprise. Humanity is a bridge between the unmeaning world of brute biology and the future happy world of human artifice. I am myself less optimistic about the sort of world that human beings, unaided, will create, but also less enthralled by any present order than conservative believers are. It is precisely because I think our nature is imperfect that I distrust the plans of those who would remake it. Conversely, it is because I catch occasional glimpses of a redeemed humanity that I can believe we are not bound for ever within the circles of this world. — Stephen R.L. Clark, Biology and Christian Ethics, pp. 7-8