A Thought

The world we inhabit — the world our imaginations know and within which our deepest desires must move — is the world after Darwin (and Marx and Freud and a host of other prophets of disenchantment, but first and foremost Darwin); we simply cannot now (if we are paying attention) imagine a universe whose grandeurs and mysteries unambiguously lead the reflective mind beyond themselves toward a transcendent order both benign and provident. There was a time, perhaps, when nature really did seem to speak with considerable eloquence of a good creator and a rational creation. Formal and final causes were everywhere visible, guiding material and efficient causes toward their several — yet harmoniously interwoven — ends. The endless diversity of nature was an elaborate, gorgeous, and glittering hierarchy, rising from the dust to heights beyond the merely cosmic, comprising worms and angels within a single continuum of articulate splendor. That was a while ago, however.
David Bentley Hart