A Secular Economy

"Secular economy is always discontented. It is based on such hope as is inspired when science has found a process or a tool that promises to win for mankind a fresh advantage from nature. But secularism is not defined merely by the proposal to adopt some specific process or tool: it is defined by a total attitude, which abandons the idea of limitations. Secularism is a wartime economy, and the war is the one which man has declared against nature. It says nothing about God, who vanishes from the picture as soon as men think they see through nature; or perhaps it mentions God, but to the effect that man now becomes the God, and will determine the world according to his will."

—John Crowe Ransom, God Without Thunder (1930), p. 117.