"These Earthlings are only
in the beginnings of science.
They are still for all practical ends
in that phase of fear and taboos...

The minds of these Earthlings
are full of fears and prohibitions,
and though it has dawned upon them
that they may possibly 

control their universe,
the thought is too terrible 

yet for them to face.

They avert their minds from it.
They still want to go on thinking,
as their fathers did before them,
that the universe 

is being managed for them
better than they 

can control it for themselves. 

Because if that is so,
they are free to obey
their own violent little individual motives.
Leave things to God, they cry,
or leave them to Competition." 

(H.G.Wells - Men Like Gods)