Pre-scientific conceptions of deity burden the godhead with endless work; divine fingers are curled around the thunderbolt, the supernal hand moulds the clay and the heavenly lungs breathe instil it with life; he or she or it watches over falling leaf and sparrow.

 The situation now is rather different, not because there is any definite proof of non-existence (there can be no such thing). But our understanding of physical process and the record of that process over time has pushed god, gods, and godesses to the margins of time and space. There is almost nothing for such creatures to do, almost "no need for such hypotheses". If we bother with the concept of a god at all, we sketch an almost infinitely distant prime mover, an all but insignificant and only blandly benevolent royalty hesitantly breaking a bottle of cheap fizz over the bows of a universe already sliding down the slipway under its own weight.