With global Internet use being at the highest it's ever been, a new religion on the block is set to take over. Its numbers will grow to gargantuan proportions; eventually eclipsing the billions of Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Taoists and Scientologists.

This is the religion of conspiracy, be it 9/11 or JFK, from Diana to the moon landing, there is a new breed of people who believe all or most of these theories. But the monster of all of these is the Illuminati or New World Order conspiracy.

For those of you not familiar with this particular conspiracy I will explain in brief. The legend of this particular conspiracy says that a secret society has been running the world for its own gains since (again depending on who or what you read) the sixth century.

The New World Order are part of everything from banking to politics; they are in place at every level of society, making sure that they grow more rich and powerful, whilst us poor serfs suffer and grow less empowered and get poorer.

There are a number of documents and videos all claiming to back up these claims, most of which you'll find on the Internet. Without the Internet these stories have no conduit to the masses. Mainstream broadcasters stay away from films such as Zeitgeist and The Truth About 9/11.

The Conspiracists say that this is evidence of a conspiracy to hide the truth. Others say that it is because films such as The Truth About 9/11 contain too many Internet 'FACTS!' The rule of thumb is if someone feels the need to scream "FACT!" at you after making a seemingly outrageous statement, the chances are that it's not a fact.

Mainstream broadcasters also tend to have pretty good research tools at their disposal, add litigation into the mix and a valid reason for not broadcasting some of the more extreme theories presents itself.

Finding out the truth is a side issue where conspiracy is concerned; it is the function of belief that is of utmost importance to the modern Conspiracist, rather like the blind faith of traditional religion, built upon the translation of ancient text. The Conspiracist has absolute belief built upon the rumors spread on the Internet.

In the same way a Christian only has to read the words; '...and on the fifth day he made man in his own image' to believe, a Conspiracist only has to find one page on the Internet that confirms his or her beliefs about a New World Order or the moon landing before it becomes a truth worth spreading.

The Internet serves both as holy scriptures and church, as you cannot only 'research' your beliefs, but the fanatic Conspiracist can take part in holy worship on Internet forums and message boards where they can meet and share views with others who think in their way.

There should be no surprise at the rise of the Conspiracist; religion is in itself conspiratorial, and whilst for the modern secularist belief in a supernatural being is a leap too far, belief in the possible actions by some human beings in order to affect the lives of others, is not so hard to accept.

Ask a religious person to justify the existence of God and they'll point to all of the amazing things that nature has to offer and say that it could not have happened by mistake or random chance. Ask a Conspiracist why they think that the American military in conjunction with a secret society planned and executed 9/11, and the answer you'll get will be remarkably similar to the religious answer. They'll tell you that there are far too many facts that you can find that simply could not have happened by chance.

This is where we come to the crux of the argument, because if you look at religion and conspiracy theory they are fundamentally the same; in religion we worry there is a force or forces at work controlling our lives beyond the control of individual choice and random events. We worry that if we do not follow a certain path of behavior, then this or these forces will conspire to make our lives hell, if not now, then at some point on our eternal journey.

Religion takes chance, randomness and entropy and derives from them worship; in the pre-technological era mankind used natural events like solar eclipses, earthquakes, droughts and floods to form religious beliefs and dogma. Even after scientific explanations for these natural phenomena have come about; religion uses the get out clause of God created everything so therefore God created all natural biological process.

The new religion of Conspiracy uses chance, randomness and entropy in exactly the same way - man made disasters and terrorist atrocities replace natural phenomena. Both the Conspiracists and the religious can't seem to accept that random things happen, yet in an infinitely expanding universe with an infinite amount of things happening in an infinite variety of ways, strange things will happen.

One day, two complete strangers will be born with the exact same DNA match, the lottery will be won three times in a row by the same person, someone will fall 30,000 feet from a plane and live, someone will get struck by lightning every day of the week and survive. This is the nature of life and entropy.

In the beginning there was very little happening, the universe was in a state of low entropy and high order, but then after the big bang the universe moved and is still moving today from a low to a high entropic state, from high to low order. As time progresses the more chaotic things become, the more things happen and the more coincidences will happen - something that is too hard to comprehend and or accept for the Conspiracists or the mainstream religious.

Scientology is the ultimate bridging between mainstream religion and conspiracy. The Church of Scientology claim that we all came from outer space, that we were fleeing souls from an oppressive alien in a galaxy far away and that we'll return to our respective planets once our mortal bodies have died. They claim that there is plenty of evidence on this planet and in outer space, but that this great truth is being kept from us for some reason or another.

The fact that these theories came from a not-very-good science fiction writer in the 50s bothers them about as much as it bothers Christians that the bible was written by a bunch of men that lived thousands of years ago who thought that the earth was flat and had no idea as to the movements of tectonic plates in relation to earthquakes.

Perhaps then it's prudent to hypothesize that there is a region in the brain that just deals with matters arising from religion and conspiracy...maybe part of being human is that we have to believe in something.

Maybe it's the refusal to accept that there's nothing out there and that nothing happens without reason that spurs us on in our quest for knowledge and survival. Perhaps this is the function of religion to help train our cognitive powers to help us evolve and further ourselves.

Even the atheist needs religion and that's where conspiracy comes in, although personally I've converted from the Church of Conspiracy and now get my religious fix from the Temple of Chaos.