Welcome to the new look Atheist’s Guide website. This will be a slimmed down version of the original, and will focus on helping poor downtrodden atheists and agnostics understand, if not appreciate, religion.

The broader community, and everyone who has ever questioned the role of religion in their lives or society in general should visit my companion site for more detail.

Simply click on this link:  www.spiritualityinstinct.com

Now to the business at hand. This long dead Roman orator knew nothing about evolution or genetics, yet could there be some truth in the above quote? If so, it would go a long way towards explaining why religion persists in today's modern world with its scientific focus. Cicero was not the only one to conclude that something in our natures predisposes us towards religion.

It is probably not the idea of God though, that Nature has imprinted on our minds. After all, if there is something in our DNA inclining us toward religion, it would likely date back to the very dawn of humanity, and the brain of primordial man wasn't capable of even framing the concept of a god, or gods.

The idea of God depends upon a much more basic thing: a belief in the supernatural, or things which lie outside the normal laws of nature. This is the realm of Spirituality and includes such things as magic, spirits, ghosts and the human soul. If evolution has passed on anything genetically then, it would most probably be an instinctive belief in spirits.

Instinctive or not, spirituality is likely as old as the human race. That would mean it stretches back over two million years, and predates religion by a huge span of time. It is the keystone of all religions.

The implications are huge. Without this belief in spirits, and the concept of a human soul which is so fundamental to any religious viewpoint, a belief in a Great Spirit, or God, would seem impossible. Religion would be a non-starter.

Not until human reasoning abilities had developed enough would an attempt to put this spirit world into some sort of hierarchy see spirituality culturally morph into religion.

The main premise of this website and my book is that because religion has evolved from spirituality, it harbors a lot of evolutionary mental baggage capable of causing serious harm in today's modern world.

Indeed, it could also be argued that organised religions have hijacked this spirituality instinct in ways that bend it to serve their own interests. Just as the major food companies quickly learned  to capitalise on our instinctive taste for sugar, salt and fat, so religious leaders seeking a power base have ridden on the coat-tails of spirituality. Whatever else they may be, the mainstream modern religions are powerful institutions with serious financial clout, thanks to Mr and Mrs believer.

They get away with this because most of humanity (hard core atheists excepted) feels a need for some form of spirituality and its attendant ritual. Throughout history, thousands of competing religions have rushed to fill this void, often with bloody consequences. Modern humans may still need some form of spirituality, but do they really need religious wars, faulty ethical codes and outdated prejudices?

Atheists and agnostics who choose to reject religion should still be aware that the spirituality instinct is always hovering around inside their skulls. The good news is, it can, and should, be rechannelled into a more positive direction than the ones provided by the modern day religions.

Read The Spirituality Instinct to find out how!