that divine proposition.....................

 

     Is the idea of man as an image of God not utterly preposterous?  How could flawed man, even the lowliest man or woman, possess a direct relationship to the divine?  Man, with his propensity for decrepitude, suffering, and death; his self-evident insignificance contrasted with nature and the cosmos; the brevity of his life—why attribute value to something so fleeting in its existence and contemptible in its inadequacy?  But, in the absence of that divine proposition, where would we be? . . . How could we possible manage without the tradition of inalienable rights and intrinsic individual responsibility that is the logical consequence of that axiomatic proclamation of our sacred worth?

-Jordan B. Peterson, We Who Wrestle with God: Perceptions of the Divine