Prophets, Providence, and Problems: An Observation

This is one of those notions I stumble on from time to time while daydreaming or free associating.  I've been doing a lot of thinking about religion of late—as how could many people not be, what with the state of the world (he says with tongue in his other cheek, being both ironic and absurd)?—and trying to come up with some theory of it that might bleed off the poisons that seem to bubble up from it from time to time.

Someone said something to me that triggered this idea and it's probably...