[CliffFletcher]

Gods aren’t really a way to ensure nothing bad will happen to you. They’re a way to find solace from the awful conditions most humans lived in for most of history.

Every half-dozen years or so, the crops would fail and famine would descend on your village, afflicting everyone with dreadful hunger and leaving suckling babies dead in their mothers’ arms. There was nothing you could do about this. Plagues would rise out of famine and kill one in four, sometimes wiping out whole villages. There was nothing you could do about this. Bandits and rampaging armies would sweep into your village, raping and slaying with impunity. There was nothing you could do about this.

Your parents and their parents and their parents and their parents suffered these calamities and there was nothing they could do about them either.

If you were fortunate, a strong and wise king might sustain a commonwealth and protect you from the worst catastrophes for 10 or 15 years. Then the only suffering you had to endure was the endless toil of trudging through ditches and #### farming rice or wheat by hand from sunup to sundown 300 days a year until your body broke down. And you couldn’t change that either.

Is it any surprise people living in that state turn to spiritual succor and the structure of ritual for meaning and security?