Jill Lepore: “Germ theory, which secularized infectious diseases, had a side effect: it sacralized epidemiology.”
The notion of god is like a bubble trapped under film. You can push it down and out of sight but then it just pops up elsewhere and otherwise. Even the declaration “God is dead” or “There was never a God” requires that you recognize a God, that you give it a shape, a definition, an identity. Imaginary entities exist. If not, what’s a triangle?
Part of the pleasure of witnessing a magic trick is bumping up against the limits of consciousness: you can think up to here but no further. Curiously, recognizing that “blind spot” is liberating.
This strange freedom must have weighed heavily on George Herbert when he wrote The Collar in 1633. To which a modern might respond as Nelson Muntz does on The Simpsons. Or as Woody Allen does in most of his films.