Do the gods drive current affairs?

To judge from current events in the Middle East, the god of Israel appears to be battling the god of the Palestinians, even though they both seem to be the same god. But are they guiding events? And if not, why not? The Greek historian Thucydides (d. c. 400 bc) had no truck with the idea.

In his account of the long war between the two most powerful Greek city states of their time – democratic Athens and oligarchic Sparta (431-404 bc), each with their respective allies – Thucydides was the first historian we know of to discount divine intervention in human affairs. Naturally he reported on the widespread phenomenon of religious belief among the Greeks and the use to which it was put. When, for example, a dreadful plague struck Athens in 431 bc, he described its symptoms and effects in clinical detail and men’s belief that it fulfilled an ancient oracle, but never assigned it, or any other occurrence, to divine intervention.