Humans have willpower and choice, allowing us to deviate from our natural instincts. This loss of natural direction makes the line to the future uncertain, because it is disconnected from our natural and DNA past. This is unique to humans, and separates humans from other species. Since humans can choose to be natural or unnatural, and can even choose to call natural, unnatural or unnatural, natural, due to subjectivity, humans needed a set of guiding principles, which they could choose to learn, which can help them maintain a closer connection to natural human instinct. At that point, they can be defined as a human species following the vector of evolution.
An analogy is, say you find an alien device in a cave. Since the device is odd shaped and made of strange materials, and you are not exactly sure what it is, or what it does. So you bring to a group of scientists, who then examine it make assumptions as to what it is, and what it is supposed to do. Since this device is alien and unique, we may or may not be right. This with the most prestige may try to sell their inference, as correct, even without knowing for sure. It is the blind leading the blind.
If this guess is not correct, but accepted anyway, then the device is not exactly what it was meant to be. It may not have been meant to be a alien door stop. Rather is was really a transmission device for engaging advanced computer cores drives. On the other hand, if you go back too the cave and find the operating manual, which outlines its operation, the device can finally becomes what it was meant to be; another species. Religion goes to the cave seeking the operating manual.
Humans are an apex predator that tends to overpopulate and over use resources. This tends to upset the natural balance of things. To allow the human species to coexist with nature and be part of its integration, we would need certain types of internal constraints or instincts. Willpower allows us to override these constraints, causing an imbalance in nature; become the door stop and not the core drive transmission. We become detached from species.