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By Jack Joseph Smith
By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Nature and God are reduced to a hard wager, where the safest guess is that divine and natural desire runs opposite to human expectation.
The brevity gives the statement its force, as if long argument has already failed. "Best bet" makes belief sound less devotional than practical, almost like survival advice. Nature and God are joined not as comfort but as a double refusal of what the mind wants.
The 'Prayer' coda distilled to its sharpest wager: 'And your best bet / with nature and God / After all / And what they want / is most likely / the oppisite / of what we think.' The brevity is the argument -- belief reduced to survival arithmetic, 'best bet' more practical than devotional, with nature and God joined only as a double refusal of what the mind wants.