Despite living in an age of scientific marvels and secular philosophies, humanity’s fascination with gods and the divine has not vanished – it has merely shape-shifted. We continue to invent new gods, even as we reinterpret the old ones to find a place for them in our modern lives. This enduring phenomenon raises a compelling question: Why do humans keep seeking gods? Why, in a world that has mapped the genome and walked on the Moon, do ancient deities resurface in pop culture, and new mythologies form around things like superheroes, celebrities, or even technology? The answer lies in the deep-rooted yearnings of the human psyche and the power of story. We’re going to find examples in the works of fantasy author Neil Gaiman (setting aside his current scandal, so let’s try to separate art and artist). Gaiman’s American Gods and Sandman series offer rich allegories for how old gods persist and new ones arise in our collective imagination. By examining these stories – and the broader context of human culture – we uncover why, even as old religious certainties wane, the gods (in one form or another) refuse to leave us.
Eternal Questions
At the core of our proclivity to create and cling to gods is the suite of existential questions that come with being human. We are aware of our mortality, we marvel at the mystery of existence, we suffer and seek meaning in that suffering. Gods, whether conceived as literal beings or metaphorical ideals, have been humanity’s answer to these dilemmas since time immemorial. They provide a sense of meaning, comfort, and explanation that pure empirical facts often cannot supply. Even today, in an age of answers, we still have big questions – Why are we here? What happens after death? How should we live? For many, the old gods used to answer these; as belief in them wanes, the questions remain, and so we look for new answers or new interpretations that fill the same void.
Several key psychological and social reasons drive us to seek or reinvent gods:
Meaning and Explanation: Humans are meaning-makers. We evolved to seek patterns and intention in the world around us. In ancient times, gods were explanations for natural phenomena and the vicissitudes of life – from thunder and harvests to love and death. Today, science explains the mechanisms, but the purpose behind events (especially tragic or serendipitous ones) can still elude us. Many people, even if they leave organized religion, still feel a pull to believe “everything happens for a reason.” If traditional gods are unconvincing, they might turn to abstract replacements: fate, karma, or the “Universe” as a quasi-intentional force. We invent new gods in the form of ideals or narratives that allow us to frame our lives as part of something larger and purposeful.
Comfort and Coping: Life’s uncertainties and injustices can be frightening or disheartening. Gods and spiritual beings have long been sources of comfort – a divine shoulder to cry on, an assurance that an all-seeing protector watches over us. In modern times, many may not literally believe in guardian angels or patron deities, yet the longing for an external source of hope persists. This can manifest in surprising ways: for instance, the way some speak of the impartial benevolence of “Technology” or “Progress” as if it were a conscious force that will inevitably solve our problems has an almost religious tenor. Likewise, the near-messianic reverence some have for charismatic leaders or self-help gurus echoes the comfort once sought from gods. We reimagine old religious comfort in secular forms – a sort of emotional placebo that keeps despair at bay.
Moral Framework and Community: Gods historically have been lawgivers, the anchors of morality. Even as secular ethics flourish, people often still couch their moral yearnings in quasi-divine terms. We talk about the “sacredness” of human rights or the “evils” that plague society – language that invokes absolute forces of good and evil, reminiscent of religious dualism. Moreover, shared belief in gods (old or new) builds community. Humans are intensely social; we crave belonging to something greater than ourselves. Religion, with its rituals and common faith, provided that. In modern life, many seek similar belonging in fandoms, political ideologies, or social movements, which often have their own canon of revered figures, creeds, and even martyrs. From the passionate devotees of a pop star who refer to her as an “idol,” to die-hard fans of a fictional saga who gather in costume at conventions, we see tribes of belief that fulfill the same community-building role traditional worship once did. We create gods (or god-like icons) to rally around and forge an identity with others.
Imagination and Narrative: Simply put, we love stories, especially grand, mythic stories. If the literal belief in Zeus or Odin has faded, their narratives still enchant us. Humans have a knack for anthropomorphizing and dramatizing concepts – we make stories out of the seasons, the struggle of good and evil, the passage of time. This imaginative impulse means even an atheist can be moved by the image of noble Thor giving his life for humanity, or moved by the idea of Death portrayed as a compassionate goth girl (as in Gaiman’s Sandman). We reinvent gods because they are endlessly useful characters in the story of our world and our lives. They embody forces of nature and aspects of ourselves, making the abstract concrete and personal. Modern literature, film, and art are rife with such figures, because they resonate deeply with audiences. Through them, we explore human nature, values, and fears in a heightened form.
In essence, the persistence of gods – old, new, or disguised – is tied to human nature. Renowned biologist Richard Dawkins (an ardent skeptic of religion) has suggested that religious belief might be a byproduct of cognitive traits that were evolutionarily advantageous. We have a tendency to sense agency even where there is none – a rustle in the grass must be a creature, a stroke of fortune must be someone’s favor. This agent detection bias once kept our ancestors alert to predators; on the spiritual plane, it peopled the world with invisible agents, gods and spirits behind every tree and cloud. Another trait is our propensity for storytelling and pattern-seeking: we connect the dots of random events into a narrative. If one survives a great disaster, one might feel “chosen” or “saved for a purpose” – a narrative readily provided by the idea of a guiding god. These ingrained patterns of thought do not vanish just because we learn about science; they simply redirect. Thus, if traditional religion wanes, we still harbor a “God-shaped hole,” as some have called it, which we fill with new symbols, stories, and objects of devotion.
Old Gods in the Modern World
One of the most vivid explorations of old gods adapting (or failing to adapt) to the modern world comes from novelist Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. In this narrative, all the gods of folklore and mythology are real – but their power depends on people’s belief. Immigrants to America brought their pantheons with them in their minds, so gods like Odin, Anansi, or Anubis found tenuous footholds in the New World. Yet, as times changed, people’s reverence shifted to new idols, causing the old gods to weaken. Gaiman paints a picture of these ancient beings now: many are down-and-out, hanging on at the fringes of society, sustained by the few who still remember them. For instance, the queen of Sheba – once a revered figure – survives in America as a prostitute named Bilquis, taking what little worship she can get from her clients. The Egyptian gods of death, Anubis and Thoth, quietly run a funeral parlor. They have not died, because some cultural memory of them lingers, but they are shadows of their former selves.
Meanwhile, Gaiman introduces the so-called “New Gods” of modern America. These are the personifications of America’s true contemporary devotions: there is a slick, unctuous god of Media, a palpably dangerous god of Technology, and even Mr. World, embodiment of globalization and the modern world’s conspiratorial interconnectedness. There’s a god of abstract concepts like the stock market (Money, essentially) and one of drugs. These new gods have arisen because, as one character puts it, “people believe in them,” albeit often unconsciously. As society poured its time, attention, and passion into television, cars, and the internet, those things gained a kind of metaphysical weight in Gaiman’s mythos – they became deified. This is not far-fetched; terms like “idol” or “worship” are routinely used in secular context. We worship celebrity, we idolize wealth, we sacrifice time at the altar of the screen. Gaiman has simply taken that metaphor and made it literal.
The brilliance of American Gods is how it uses fantasy to reflect reality: Old belief systems compete with new ones, and neither is portrayed as entirely righteous. The Old Gods in the novel want to be respected again; the New Gods are arrogant and hungry for total dominion. This conflict comes to a head in an epic confrontation, which can be read as a commentary on cultural warfare – the past versus the present, tradition versus innovation. Notably, Gaiman doesn’t cast the Old Gods simply as heroes. Many of them are capricious, even malevolent, as they were in ancient myths. The New Gods, while largely antagonistic, are born from the genuine needs and obsessions of modern people (who can deny that Media, for example, rules our lives to an extent?). In the end – without spoiling the intricate twists – the novel suggests that this battle between old and new divinities is somewhat of a distraction from what really ails society. One might interpret that the true “god” pulling the strings is human belief itself, or human folly: we create our gods, old or new, and then blame them for our troubles, when in fact it is us who give them power. As one of Gaiman’s characters muses, “Gods die when they are forgotten. They live on in our stories and hearts.” The lasting message is that gods – whether ancient or fresh off the collective imagination – are reflections of us. We continue to need them because we continue to need mirrors for our own values, fears, and hopes.
Reading American Gods today, it feels prophetic. Consider how the “new gods” of the internet and media have only grown stronger since the book’s publication in 2001. Social media could be seen as a new deity that commands daily rituals (the checking of feeds) and has evangelists and heretics. The algorithm is an invisible force determining fate (who gets heard, who finds community), much like a capricious god might. Gaiman, through fiction, anticipated a truth: we’re never truly without gods, we just call them by different names. And intriguingly, when old forms of worship recede, they often re-emerge in pop culture. American Gods itself, as well as the successful TV adaptation that followed, is part of a larger trend of modern reimaginings of myth. From Marvel’s Thor becoming a Hollywood superhero, to novels like Percy Jackson reinterpreting Greek gods in modern kids’ adventures, to video games featuring gods of every pantheon – the old deities are leading rich second lives as characters in our entertainment. This doesn’t mean people literally pray to Odin after watching the Thor movies, but it shows those figures still captivate us and find relevance. We haven’t consigned them to the dusty attic of history; we’ve invited them into our living rooms via stories. Through them, we enjoy a sense of connection to the past and to something bigger-than-ordinary. Even secular people who would never set foot in a church might feel a sort of awe when a story invokes Zeus or Kali. It’s cultural and aesthetic rather than devotional awe, but it springs from the same well of human nature. We seem wired to be drawn to the sublime and the supernatural, even if we intellectually reject the literal existence of such beings.
Another of Neil Gaiman’s contributions to exploring our relationship with the divine is The Sandman comics series. In it, he introduces The Endless, a family of seven anthropomorphic personifications: Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and Delirium. These aren’t gods in the traditional sense; they are beyond gods, in fact. As one commentary on Sandman notes, “the Endless are not gods, because gods die when no one believes in them anymore – but the Endless are forever”. Each Endless embodies a fundamental aspect of existence. Dream (also called Morpheus) rules over the realm of imagination and stories; Death is both a perky goth girl and the gentle guide who meets you at life’s end; Desire is androgynous and cruel; etc. Through these characters, Gaiman effectively creates a new pantheon – one that resonates with modern sensibilities. People might not believe in Zeus these days, but everyone “believes” in Death and Dream in the sense that we all acknowledge those experiences. Gaiman’s personifications give faces and voices to the inescapable truths of life.
What’s fascinating is how warmly received these new mythic figures have been. Sandman’s portrayal of Death, for example, became iconic: far from the skeletal reaper, she is kind and humane. Many readers – including those who’ve long left religion behind – found comfort in this fictional character, saying if Death were like her, maybe it’s not so frightening. This is a subtle form of creating a god (or at least a minor deity) for our times: an idea that helps people cope with mortality, given shape in a story. Fans cosplay as the Endless at conventions, quote their lines, build little mythologies around the comic’s lore. It’s not worship, but it’s a form of veneration of concepts through art. We might call it mythopoetic imagination – the human drive to make myths – still very much alive in the 21st century.
The popularity of works like Sandman or American Gods suggests that modern people still crave myth. Even if we know these are just stories, we want them. We invite the gods back in, on our own terms. This also ties to the concept of the “disgraced artist as prophet.” Neil Gaiman, as of this writing, has been enveloped in personal scandal – multiple serious allegations that have understandably tarnished his public image. It is important to acknowledge that; heroes of culture can fall, and Gaiman’s reputation has taken a hit due to these allegations of misconduct. Yet, it’s also a testament to the power of story that many readers and thinkers still engage with his works for their ideas, separate from the man himself. In discussing why we seek gods, we reference Gaiman’s creations not to elevate him (indeed, one must look past his personal failings here), but because his stories encapsulate something fundamental about human nature. As an author, he tapped into our myth-making impulse. The current scandal does not erase the value in examining those imaginative constructs. It serves as a reminder that sometimes the message outlives the messenger – a rather mythological notion in itself (how many Greek myths involve flawed gods or heroes whose tales still taught lessons?). So, setting aside Neil Gaiman’s personal controversies – as readers, we can still glean insight from the worlds he built, just as we might still learn from a myth told by an ancient bard who, in life, was no saint.
Beyond Gaiman, we see new gods emerging in real life metaphors. Consider the way people talk about artificial intelligence and technology in reverential terms. Some have literally started a church for AI, claiming that an AI more intelligent than humans could be seen as a “Godhead” worthy of worship. Tech visionary (or alarmist, depending whom you ask) Elon Musk calls advanced AI “god-like” and warns of its power. Historian Yuval Noah Harari muses that big data algorithms could form a new kind of religion. While these may be hyperbolic statements, they illustrate that when confronted with something vastly more powerful or knowledgeable than us, our minds drift to deification. In the late 19th century, some thinkers referred to the unstoppable march of scientific progress as the new “God.” In the mid-20th century, sociologist Émile Durkheim suggested that society itself becomes a god-like object of worship in secular contexts (for example, nationalism sanctifies the nation). And indeed, if we look at how people behave, there is often ritual, reverence, and dogma even in ostensibly secular domains. Political rallies have chants, anthems, and almost liturgical repetition of slogans. Brands command loyalty that verges on the fanatical (just witness the quasi-religious devotion some have to their favorite tech brand or sports team, complete with pilgrimages to events and sacred merchandise). All of this is to say: the gods never really left; they just wear new faces. Sometimes it’s Zeus’s face on a comic book cover. Other times it’s an iPhone held aloft like a totem. The underlying human behaviors are strikingly analogous to worship and myth-making.
We Will Always Seek the Divine
Ultimately, the continuous reinvention of gods speaks to a dual aspect of humanity: our imagination and our existential dread/hope. No matter how rational or modern we become, we still imagine – we still personify the universe’s forces in story and symbol. And we still yearn – for guidance, for meaning, for transcendence. These drives are like two sides of an ancient coin minted in the human psyche. Organized religion may decline in one era or region, but mythology – the broader category of creating narratives that imbue the world with meaning – is an eternal companion.
It is telling that even staunch secularists often find themselves drawn to meta-narratives that function a bit like religion. The belief in unstoppable human progress is one (sometimes nicknamed the “Religion of Progress”). The commitment to human rights and dignity – though a secular ideal – is upheld with a kind of sacred fervor, as something beyond question, reminiscent of divine law. We encode some values as inviolable (“All humans are equal” can be seen as a sacred creed of modernity). Carl Sagan, a famous atheist astronomer, once wrote about the feelings of awe and wonder one gets looking at the cosmos, describing it in almost spiritual terms. He called our shared scientific endeavor a quest to know the mind of the cosmos – effectively casting the universe as a kind of pantheistic god. Sagan’s student, Neil deGrasse Tyson, has spoken of science filling the spiritual void for some, offering the sublime revelation of our connection to the stars. These are not god beliefs in the traditional sense, but they illustrate that the needs once met by gods – awe, belonging, moral order, meaning – find new outlets.
Then, of course, there are instances of literal new religions forming. L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology in the mid-20th century created a new pantheon of sorts (albeit a secretive and controversial one), proving that entirely novel theology can spring up even in the modern day. The Neo-Paganism movement has seen people revive or reconstruct old polytheistic practices – some sincerely worship Norse or Egyptian gods again, blending ancient rites with contemporary life. Others adopt a more symbolic approach, treating those gods as archetypes for self-improvement or connection to nature. In either case, it’s a conscious decision to bring gods into modern life. One might view this as spiritual experimentation, or as a reaction to the alienation of a hyper-rational world. It seems some people, when the prevailing systems don’t feed their soul, will shop around in the collective storehouse of myth and faith and assemble something that does. The gods are versatile that way – they endure because they adapt to what we need from them.
There’s a passage in American Gods where one of the deities admits that gods are figurative as much as literal: they are real if enough people invest belief in them. This lands on a profoundly insightful idea: we create gods in our image, and then they shape us. In modern contexts, our “belief” may not always be conscious worship, but the investment of attention, love, fear, and ritualistic behavior is a form of belief. By that measure, do we “believe” in Google? In Money? In Justice? If belief means a willingness to sacrifice for something and let it guide our decisions, many abstractions have effectively become our gods.
We continue to seek gods because, in seeking them, we find a narrative for ourselves. The old pagan gods Gaiman wrote about thrived on story and belief – and that’s exactly what we continue to provide, just with updated storylines. As long as humans remain storytellers who desire meaning, we will populate our mental worlds with entities larger than life. Even our endless pursuit of knowledge and improvement can be seen as a quest for godhood – either in union with a deity or becoming godlike ourselves. Ray Kurzweil (whose futurist style, sans explicit mention, echoes here) talks about humanity merging with AI and achieving a kind of digital immortality; that’s essentially a techno-religious vision promising transcendence, a fate once reserved for souls in heaven. If one looks closely, even the most futuristic dreams often resemble age-old religious themes: immortality (eternal life), omniscience (all-knowing AI), and omnipotence (total control over matter). We can’t seem to escape the template of gods, even when we forge ahead with science. We reinvent them in silicon and software, in nation-states and narratives.
Humans continue to invent and reimagine gods because gods are a storytelling medium for our deepest needs. Whether through a beloved fantasy novel or through half-joking references to the “god of algorithms,” we signal that we are not content with a world of pure mechanism and no meaning. We know atoms and equations underlie reality, yet we persist in speaking the language of personified forces. It may be poetic, it may be psychological, it may be spiritual – likely all of the above. Our ancestors painted thunder as an irate deity; we might smile at their naiveté, but then we turn around and call Nature “wise” or the Universe “cruel,” effectively doing the same anthropomorphism. The gods are our way of relating to existence on a human level.
We shouldn’t be surprised that even in a largely secular, rational age, new idols pop up and old gods get fresh makeovers. It is as natural to us as breathing. The form changes with the times: today’s altar might be a glowing screen and today’s prayers typed into a search engine or a social network feed. In a more metaphorical sense, our values are our gods now – concepts like Freedom, Equality, Love, Science. We champion them with religious zeal. We have faith that they will triumph. And often we capitalized them in writing, as one would the name of a deity. Humans are inherently religious, not necessarily in the sense of orthodox theology, but in the sense of seeking something sacred. We continue to seek gods because we continue to seek meaning beyond the mundane. As long as the stars wheel above us and death waits for us all, as long as beauty and terror exist in the world, we will create narratives that involve powers greater than ourselves to make sense of it. In those narratives live the gods – ancient or newborn, glorious or disgraced. They are, in a reflective twist, both our own creation and our creators, shaping culture as we shape them. And thus, the dance of humanity and its gods goes on, eternally reinventing itself, an endless story written in the language of myth and longing.