Okay, dear reader…back to the discussion we were having earlier this week, before the bacchanalian rumpus of last night.  And regrettably, this may have to be on the brief side, as I am still rather exhausted from last night.   First, the briefest recap of my assumptions:
There is no god.
Humans are animals  Remarkably advanced animals, but animals nonetheless.
It is impossible for (and therefore completely unrealistic to expect) an animal to go against its nature.
I should probably attempt to tie this weirdness together before we progress.  So here goes.
Humans, in general, have a psychological need for belief in some kind of higher power.  Such belief keeps one from having to do any real heavy lifting when it comes to the existential questions that any thinking and intelligent person is faced with pretty much every day of their lives.  Why are we here?  What is the meaning of life?  Why do I have the life I have, and why am I on the path that I’m on?  Or why does there seem to be no path or order or direction to my life?  And give me one good reason why I should ever get out of bed again.  You can either spend your entire life wrestling tormentedly with each of these and very probably never coming close to any truly satisfying answer, or, you can believe in a god and have instant answers to all of these questions.  Most people are not psychologically equipped to truly grasp an essentially meaningless existence in a universe that is governed only by chaos and chance if it can be said to be governed at all.  When faced with the cold harshness of the pure loneliness and existential dread that rushes in and fills one;s psyche when one begins to even consider such a reality, the vast majority of humans will (and do) panic and run to whatever church/belief system they are most familiar with and take deep and immediate comfort in the warm blanket that is faith and trust in a higher power.
I’ve noticed that even atheists or people who do not file any kind of organized belief system “believe” in conspiracy theories or secret societies and other secular entities that are godlike in their power and mystery (i.e., “worshiping” the Illuminati instead of Yahweh…it’s exactly the same thing).
I think that the tendency to believe there is any kind of dichotomy between Nature and Humans typically occurs comorbidly with a belief (perhaps even subconscious one) in some sort of omnipotent god that created humans.  The common thread between virtually all religions with a creator god is the belief that that god thinks humans are special or sacred or blessed and are superior to animals.  Before science, it was considered common sense that the earth was the center of not only our solar system but indeed all of creation.  When Copernicus came along, and Galileo after him, proving the theory of a heliocentric universe, society had a bit of a collective nervous breakdown, which is understandable: proving that people’s reality as well as the most basic precepts and tenets of whatever religion they had chosen to govern their lives  is essentially wrong and based on nonsense really pisses people off and they tend to find it easier to silence the voices who are discrediting their cherished beliefs than it is to attempt to successfully incorporate an entirely new belief system and admit they’ve been philosophically wrong about everything their entire uneducated lives.

Okay…that was a lot, and I’m worried I’m going to lose you in all this, particularly if I go on tonight whilst exhausted.   So I’ll leave it here for now.

N.P.: “Deus in Absentia” – Ghost