"With a life all its own...." Believe it or not, there are "cosmologies of wholeness" emerging that postulate the entire universe is a living being. One Logos — an algorithm from inception? — constitutes a "common" or universal information set, a/k/a "meta-information" or biological information. David Bohm referred to this as "the implicate order" of the universe....
This IS fun!
Animism goes along this line of thought..
My brother the buffalo, sister the grass.. "the great Spirit".., even Cargo Cultism, like that..
Could be the animists are detecting the Spirit "on some level".. "Primitive minds" can have a hard time with long winded rational.. and tend to simplify to the point(maybe) of being simplistic.. Not every one can be as "smart" as materialist scientists.. {cough}...
Could be all seeking of God can have an element of the truth in it.. Even MINE!..