I think you're mixing up pantheism and theism. It's true that most worldiews posit some higher powers, something other than ourselves which precede and which will outlast us. Theists say the Supreme Power is God, a perfect person who created the natural universe.

Pantheists say nature is the highest power. So pantheism is compatible with atheism, in that pantheists deny that there's a supernatural, personal Creator. The pantheist just says that nature is divinely creative and is in some sense sacred and worthy of worship or of the utmost, existential terror or awe.

My view is that the progress of secular civilizations presupposes pantheism, in that we retreat to our artificial environments to escape from engaging with the highest power of nature, as it were. We escape our existential confrontation with the terrifying absurdity of the wilderness, by immersing ourselves in human-centered activities, in our cultures, jobs, hobbies, families, and so on. The theistic gods are redundant because nature itself is already much "greater" than us.