What is remarkable about Lovecraft is that, in spite of his prodigal invention of “gods” in his fiction, his is among the most secular temperaments in all human history. Religion has no place in his world view except as a sop to the ignorant and timid. The “gods” in his tales are symbols of all that lies unknown in the boundless cosmos, and the randomness with which they can intrude violently into our own realm is a poignant reflection of the tenuousness of our fleeting and inconsequential existence.
