What do you mean that we substitute human effort over that of the Gods? Don’t the philosophers (at least) believe that the Gods are discovered by human effort and that we share a part of their divinity (the soul)? The author is using as much human judgment as I am, when he subscribes to a certain religious tradition and defends it. Hubris is an interesting accusation, but I will turn it entirely on its head, with three considerations. First, it was hubris on the part of the Greek philosophers (whom the author follows) to invent their own systems in opposition to the traditional conceptions of their day, as if they knew everything and scorned what everyone else believed. Secondly, it is hubris for those who believe in the Late Antiquity religious system to apply it universally and arbitrarily upon all the rest of people (which won’t work anyway for various reasons, colonial and cultural)—whereas on the other hand, the traditional system is fair in that it seeks to return to an even field where all or the vast majority of traditions existed distinctly (with measurable overlap, as explained before) and without interference from distant foreigners. And now the greatest hubris of all: believing that an Immortal God, all-powerful, etc. can stoop to *call on you* in particular…I thought the Platonic position was that the Gods didn’t need anyone, is it not so, because they were perfect and absolutely self-satisfied? I disagree. I believe that we need the Gods and they us, but that in any case they don’t call on us—rather, the ancestors (and their culture) act as mediators in this case. I don’t believe the Gods are universally all-powerful, because then the world would not stand from a continual war (theomachy, if you will). This is another essential reason why a theology of the Gods that encompasses the distinctions in the world (based on land and people) is necessary. Otherwise, if the Gods cross here and there, changing constantly like Heraclitus would say, their power loses meaning to us, and then, like the philosophers, people will become monists, deists, skeptics or monotheists, rather than polytheists.