Whatever you're saying here, it's nitpicking, right? I mean, the issue in this article is the origin of religious faith as a covenant of faithfulness which derives in turn from animistic magic (from pseudomechanisms or proto-engineering).
I'm with Nietzsche who said that late-modernity could use updated, viable religious faith and myths. So I'm hardly blind to the need for a worthy secular account of the sacred.
Indeed, the idea of nature playing a joke on us is anthropocentric, strictly speaking. But there is comedy to be found in life's absurdity on atheistic grounds. Speaking of a joke in that context is a figure of speech. You'd want to say we play the joke on ourselves. I'd agree, to some extent, but we'd cash that out differently.