Sounds like a great bargain. A bunch of people I don’t know and can’t even imagine, who no doubt will have other things on their minds, will find an ancient book on matters that have long been forgotten, written in a language nobody any more knows how to read ­ if anybody knows how to read at all in the year 3000.

There are, it seems, people even in this country, even in this century, who honestly, unironically believe that there is an intelligent, self-conscious force above and beyond humanity and that this force — generally thought of as male, and generally called God — has a will that it exercises over us and everything in the universe. (2000.09.01)