Human beings have always been “religious”...

From the very beginnings of human history, human beings have attempted to reach out to God, knowing with certainty, by the light of their own reason (that is, the use of the intellect, or mind), that someone greater than themselves must exist.

They have done so not only because of the beauty and harmony present in the world around them, for which the only truly reasonable answer is the existence of a Creator, but also because of the wonder of their own being: the beauty and intelligence of the human person. In our own day, the noisy clamour of ‘new atheism’ can deafen us to the fact that, throughout history, in every time and place, individuals and societies have expressed a belief in God as foundational for the flowering of culture and moral and political life as well as for their own happiness and fulfilment. It also remains true that even in this age, only a tiny minority in the Western world espouse atheism, a historical anomaly never seen before as a movement and which will, presumably, soon pass.