Arminians call this “prevenient grace”. Catholics maintain the same principle. Calvinists as well (and more radically so), with some limitations. It is a practical matter of Christian orthodoxy (even more so than in the Mormon variant) that no good thing ever happens except by or through divine grace of some sort. And with the creatio ex nihilo world of Christian orthodoxy, that makes an enormous amount of sense.

Mormon theology doesn’t generally require that every good thing be so dependent, but it definitely implies that divine inspiration is nigh unto universal in one degree or another anyway.

The fundamental question is, can man as a whole (not just isolated examples here and there) live in a world without the ethics supplied by faith in the transcendent, or religious faith?

To a Mormon there are probably two ways of taking this. After all to a Mormon God is ultimately behind creation. But that’s a trivial sense and Peter clearly means something stronger. I think the LDS notion of a terrestrial kingdom pretty well demands that LDS reject this view.

However I think stronger than that history demands we reject it. After all there have been plenty of highly ethical communities. (Say the Hopi) Sometimes the communities don’t last a long time. But then I’m not sure I’d consider Italy through most of its history the pinnacle of human development either.