What is the use of a god who is uninterested in punishing or rewarding? Lucretius insisted that such hopes and anxieties are precisely a toxic form of superstition, combining in equal measure absurd arrogance and absurd fear. Imagining that the gods actually care about the fate of humans or about their ritual practices is, he observed, a particularly vulgar insult—as if divine beings depended for their happiness on our mumbled words or good behavior.
