In some ways, religion can be explained by one simple thing: communication is extremely important for humans. To decipher messages, our brains are closely attuned to correspondences. When certain flavors of pattern are detected, we try to read what is being said to us. These patterns may show up - we'd then call them coincidences - when no one is speaking. Chance will produce some naturally. Yet our brains are still triggered, on this primordial level, to search for a message. We feel as if someone is talking to us, even watching us, when no one is there.

It's the same broad class of phenomena as deja vu: you didn't actually experience an exactly matching situation before, but that *feeling* has been triggered. Deja vu seems to happen when an *element*, some small piece, of the situation is familiar but you can't identify which one; the feeling of familiarity can then infuse and even overwhelm the gestalt. Similarly, coincidences that make us wonder whether they were somehow intended can give us the conviction that they *were*. Therefore, the feeling goes, *someone* must be there to have *intended* them for us. Someone extremely highly informed and aware of everything, to be able to arrange for this special moment, this message we have received from beyond.

Imagine you're walking in the woods. You hear a sharp rustle behind you. What's more evolutionarily sensible:

1) to assume no one is there

2) to assume someone is there

If you guessed 2, I think you got the right answer. We evolved to *assume*, for safety or other important reasons, that someone is there when we experience certain categories of sensation.

We know some of these will happen at random without anyone being there. And we can posit that evolution will have given zillions of people the *feeling* that someone was there when no one was there.

We can also guess that some of those people will continue to believe their initial hunch, even when no clear evidence follows.

I often think of the wind. The wind will have been one of the phenomena *most* responsible for giving creatures - many animals before us, not just us - the *feeling* that someone was there when no one was there. It makes good evolutionary sense to be able to filter this well, but wind is highly variable and "inventive," so it'll fool *anyone* some of the time.

Now imagine you are a deer, or a monkey. You don't have the same critical thinking skills. Maybe when you hear the wind, or the sharp rustle, and you turn around, your initial feeling is that someone is there, but then when you see nothing more, you simply assume they have left and you move on with your day.

That is, you might not have particularly clear thinking about how it works. And, contrary to the usual assumptions, you, as an animal, might have rather an animistic view of nature. That is, you might well think the wind and rain and streams and light above and so on are changes possessed of a certain amount of sentience, like yours or even greater. They might self-evidently be spirits. Or gods.

I suspect a number of animals have feelings we might call religious.

Or maybe our hyperspecialization in communication enhances this phenomenon and sets us apart, gives us much more of a feeling of hiding sentiences.

I have a sympathetic view about all this. I too have such feelings, and they're interesting. And am I a perfect gauge of when there is and there is not someone there? No. I'm also limited in how much I can say for sure. My filter and everyone else's is finite. It cannot be perfect.

But that just means I could be wrong about anything and so could you.

The argument I'm making here could be extended, but I think it's sufficient to explain a lot.