Imagine a list of all the gods and goddesses worshipped over the centuries, in Greece and Rome, in India and in China, on the two American continents, in Africa, and elsewhere. The list would include thousands of names. Unless we believe all those gods and goddesses genuinely exist, we must regard at least some of them as fictions.

Such a prolific invention of gods and goddesses might cause us to wonder if we should regard the various gods and goddesses worshipped today as fictions, too. But it might also lead us to wonder if an obscure intuition of some reality motivates those inventions.

How might we construct an accurate (or, at least, more accurate) picture of that reality? We should start with what we know, with solid fact; we should begin with the knowledge we’ve collected, refined and repeatedly verified over the centuries. In other words, we should attempt to dispassionately infer the theological consequences, if any, of science.