Volcano god - A Fable

There was a tribe that lived on a Pacific island that had an active volcano on it. The tribe lived in a village at the base of the volcano. At nights, the volcano would rumble and the tribes people would become frightened. They believed the volcano was a god!

"What must we do to make the volcano god happy?" they would ask and would take sacrifices up the side of the volcano and throw their prized possessions into the volcano to appease its anger. Sometimes they would sacrifice their children to the Volcano god in order to keep it happy.

Their most common means of making the volcano god happy was to perform the elaborate ritual - the dance of the egg shells. As each tribes person danced around on egg shells many times the volcano god would be appeased and not spew lava down upon the village.

Sometimes all the sacrifices and even the dance of the egg shells failed and the villagers would receive the blast of the volcano god and they would wonder - "What did we do wrong to make the volcano god mad and why weren't our sacrifices and egg shell dances good enough to appease?"

Amazingly, the thought never occurred to them that the volcano wasn't a god, they had no control over the volcano, and that the best way to deal with the spewing of the volcano was to move away until it learned to be dormant.