A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by formulating conceptions of a general … - Clifford D. Simak

He knew that there was death—that there must be death if there were evolution, that death was one of the mechanisms that biologically spelled progress and advancement for evolutionary species.

In those villages, he wondered, how much ability and genius might be lying barren, ability and genius that the world could use but would never know because of the intolerance and hate which was held against the very people who were least qualified as the targets of it.
And the pity of it was that such hate and such intolerance would never have been born, could never have existed, had it not been for men like Finn—the bigots and the egomaniacs; the harsh, stern Puritans; the little men who felt the need of power to lift them from their smallness.

To cover up actual lack of knowledge, the tale develops an explanation which amounts to divine intervention. It is an easy and, to the primitive mind, a plausible and satisfactory way to explain something of which nothing at all is known.