Spirituality is a base instinct, and most people -need- to believe something. What ever fills that need, whether it's God, Allah, Buddha, Science or Spaghetti... They are all god if they fill that need for people.

I can appreciate spirituality.

People believing that they are the "true" believers is where the problem comes in, and unfortunately, most religions have that as a feature and not a bug.

To be so conceited... An omnipotent being would at least be smart enough to understand how regional culture works, and would present itself to everyone in ways that were culturally relevant. And a lot of religion started out very, very cool, but got changed and corrupted by whoever was ruling that part of the world.

We all believe in the same shit, just in different ways.

Also: There are far too many people in this world that are comfortable exploiting something so basic to being human.

/soapbox

Replace species with civilization and intelligence with knowledge, then it fits.

Good to know that all of recorded human history has just been a phase. I mean, shit show that it has been.

Pound sign deep

Human intelligence has not materially changed since the Advent of religion.

Human intelligence has not progressed since the Advent of atheism.

Human understanding and human culture have changed.

When your idea is so good you gotta bring in the big ghost to sell it

So... This is based on all the species we know, who practice religion right?

Sadly, the only way I can imagine to obtain experimental confirmation of this hypothesis would be unworkable.

It would be necessary to take a population of infants, raise them in strict isolation and teach them nothing of religion, carefully excluding anything that even hints at the concept, while giving them the scientific method and lots of understanding of reality otherwise. Then allow them to develop their own civilization and monitor them for several centuries to see if the concept ever emerges.