Can Man Create Himself?

From an interview in Traces with philosopher Pietro Barcellona, "Can Man Create Himself?"

Man’s freedom requires the mystery, it requires indetermination. Freedom is associated with pain, with loss; this is why men are afraid of freedom. It intimidates the one who commands and the one who is commanded. Ours is a world that wants to be commanded; the majority of men are undergoing an assault that produces a herd mentality, where what dominates is the consumerism that controls desire and exhausts everything in the instant.

He goes on to argue the absurdity of imagining our life as it is without a Creator.  Can we picture a van Gogh painting as random?  And that while intelligence is an attribute of the species for survival, love is something other.