Thankful

In fantasy fiction, we are often confronted with worlds where history extends for thousands of years without so much of an advancement in technology, politics or philosophy. Obviously, the reason for this is because history in fiction is but a narrative tool, however it also makes a lot of sense when you consider the aspects of fantasy that do not appear in our own world. If we lived in a world where our problems could be solved by magic, prayer, or a convenient deus ex machina; if we lived in a world where we saw first-hand indisputable evidence of miracles that implied an intelligence beyond ourselves, then we would simply be convinced of our world's indiscriminate physics. There would be no way to study the behavior of matter that could easily be manipulated by gods that we knew to exist. The explanation for why things are would be right there in front of our face with no reason to question it. So we should be thankful that there is no god and there is no such thing as magic and that our wills cannot bend reality. Elsewise, there would be no inner search for what is right and no progress to be made in a world that exists exactly as its god created it.