"According to the first view, we live in a world thrown together by the chance assembly of particles of matter. The suitedness to survival that we discern in its life-forms must represent, not the work of some supernatural designer, but merely those random combinations of globules that have proved capable of perpetuating themselves. To speak of the beauty or goodness of all-that-is or of any of its parts is merely a poetic (or naive) way of saying that certain conglomerations of globules seem pleasing or useful to us. Furthermore, humans are completely free to reshape what nature has thrown together into something that better suits their tastes or convenience; after all, a nature with no purpose of its own provides only raw material for purpose-driven human beings. Nor can there be any inherent rightness or wrongness in the nature of things, haphazard and unstructured as things are.
In principle, then, humans are free to choose what they think best or most desirable for themselves. Since their choices will be diverse, the greatest premium will be placed on the virtue of tolerance (that is, on our ability to live with people who choose differently than we), whereas a great vice will be seen in any attempt to impose one’s own choices on others. Any constraint placed upon us not of our choosing (apart from those required for mutual coexistence) can only be an arbitrary, unjustifiable expression of a “will to power,” a desire to dominate, on the part of the constrainer. (People whose thinking is governed by such a worldview can only view would-be apostles with grave suspicion!)”
“On the second worldview sketched above, however, trouble springs precisely from the human presumption that we are free to remake the world to our own specifications, that nature itself has no order or goodness that we need to respect. Words like “beauty” and “goodness,” while reflecting human perceptions, put us on the right track: they express an awareness of a presence and purpose in nature not our own, to which we appropriately respond with wonder and appreciation. Nor, on this view, can the language of right and “wrong, at its root, be the sheer invention of human beings who want to impose their will on others. However subject to abuse and distortion such language may be, it is nonetheless grounded in a proper sense that there are adequate and inadequate, appropriate and disastrously inappropriate, ways of responding to the reality of life in our world. Obviously, human choice is pivotal to this worldview, as it is to the first. According to the first view, humans choose how to shape an unstructured world to their liking. But according to the second view, the distinctiveness of human beings lies in their capacity to grasp, affirm, and celebrate the already-existing goodness of the created order. They are thus called upon to add a peculiarly human dimension to the goodness and glory of the whole. Yet, alas, the capacity for affirming and celebrating the good inevitably opens to humans the contrary possibility as well: they can refuse to acknowledge or respect any good in the cosmos but that of personal ambition and pleasure. The self-absorption of the latter choice breeds rivalry, distrust, conflict, and destruction."
