My own faith answered this question on one side. We are not subjects of God, but children of God, as such we are gods too. God loves His Children and teaches them to be God and to eventually have their own children who are also God, and they must be raised up.
So God has a ‘paternal (and maternal) instinct’ to raise His children, it is what He does, and He raises them to rule worlds.
God’s ways is to live with man, coexist in the same flesh of man and to help man on his way to the stars. As such all inspiration, insight and advancement is from God who wants to help us.
The stagnation comes from not acknowledging God and trying to do it on our own, in doing so it makes it very difficult for God to have humanity advance because we have blocked many channels of God giving us the advancements, due to God respecting our free will (which God does because we are also God).
It is my belief and contention that the God I know can be known and active in a person’s life as stated in the OP, so the answer to the OP is with God we would be exploring the stars by now. Note what I am talking about is not ‘religion’ - as religion is a force generally opposed to a person knowing God and must be put aside to know God.
In a world without faith in God, God will still get through some channels, such as inspiration and dreams, just the credit would be given to bio-chemical processes, This would be a back door that God can use, though the person may think of it as natural inspiration, it would advance man, but at a slower pace. But a world devoid of God would have no inspiration at all, so no advancement. It would be a very gray world emotionally.
In my view, it depends upon the properties of God that you’re assuming. Personally, I do believe in an omnipotent God, but it’s his intention behind creation that necessarily prevents stagnation. As such, I view creation as much like a work of art, except unlike some works of art like a painting or a sculpture, creation includes a temporal element, so it is much more akin to music or film.
And this is where I think the idea of stagnation incorrectly enters. We perceive the idea of perfection being like a sculpture where, once it is created, it remains unchanged and perfect in that sense. The entirety of that piece of art remains unchanged in time and, thus, implies that perfection results in that sort of single point of creation and eternally unchanging. But that doesn’t account for the temporal element and, compared to a temporal form of art, change is an inherent part of those forms of art, just as it is creation. In fact, it is that change that makes those forms of art interesting. In a film, we see the characters experience hardships, develop relationships, in music we have similar aspects. But the case is true that, for both, neither can be experienced or viewed without the context of time.
Creation is very much the same way, like a temporal form of art, and we’re like observers of this universe. Expecting stagnation would be like watching a film where the characters have no growth and no challenges or music composed without dynamics.
And so, it does sort of lead back to that light touch. Just like the director or composer could make works with those properties, God didn’t make a universe that is already “perfect”. Instead, it is one in which we learn and grow and his light touch is only in making sure that we do ultimately reach the satisfying conclusion.
