"Despite the recent rise of fundamentalism, the crisis of belief continues. Many people, including me, have overcome it to a greater or a lesser degree by locating God in nature. Most of the glimpses of immortality, design, and benevolence that I see come from the natural world- from the seasons, from the beauty, from the intermeshed fabric of decay and life, and so on. Other signs exists as well, such as instances of great and selfless love between people, but these, perhaps, are less reliable. They hint at epiphany, not at the eternity that nature proclaimed. If this seems a banal notion, that is exactly my point. The earliest gods we know about were animals- tigers, birds, fish. Their forms and faces peer out from ancient ruins, and from the totems and wall paintings of our first religions..."- Mckibben