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.
Manipulation, sloganizing, depositing, regimentation, and prescription cannot be components of revolutionary praxis, precisely because they are the components of the praxis of domination.
In the long run, the people are our only appeal. The only ones who can free us are ourselves.
Philosophers play with the word, like a child with a doll.... It does not mean that everything in life is relative.
I have always been full of lust - as I am now - but I have always been placing conceptual obstacles in my own path.
To destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one: it has not been easy, nor quick, but you Germans have succeeded. Here we are, docile under your gaze; from our side you have nothing more to fear; no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgment.
Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderate use rather than total abstinence.
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