Like All Gamblers Know

In the future they will talk about god having a good run on planet earth. They’ll talk with erudition about supernatural causation and the transition to monotheism and the millennia of belief and faith and power. Moreover they will wax about the authentic “at bottom” that is s-a-l-v-a-t-i-o-n. But then they will talk about how things changed and why they changed and how little incidences like the selling of indulgences and the reformation and antisemitism and schisms and wars in the middle east and how the exhaustion of explanatory power over time couldn’t compensate for the inability for religion to improve life on earth. This was no doubt hastened by the natural disasters that befell the planet as a result of climate change. But still. The pews grew empty while the labeling and the classifying as “spiritual” exploded in the twenty-first century till eventually a world of naturalists created the greatest standard of living earth’s inhabitants would ever experience.
But like fashion trends, god came back around. The material world and the real reality of it all was just as exhausting as religion. Or maybe, even with the standard of living, life was b-o-r-i-n-g. Sure the day in and the day out were great but a malaise of routine and mundanity fell upon the species like a wet blanket and the only way to feel warm and good was to have a little danger and a little risk: Supernatural risk; risk that involves not only this terrestrial life but also eternal skin in the game. Like all gamblers know, life is a little more exciting when you are betting big and when you know there is a possibility Vinnie may chop off your thumbs with an axe if you can’t pay up.
Science has its place and naturalism has its place but for real excitement, for real eternal-existential-Vinny-is-a-metaphor-for-hell excitement, you need faith and god and all that bullshit.