I think that religion is a wonderful form of cultural glue that bids people together around shared norms and values. I don’t think anyone should view religion as the individual path to attaining inner peace. That’s an individualistic view of an inherently social institution.
Magic Wade, I agree with you that religion shouldn't be used to attain inner peace. Rather, inner peace is a byproduct. When I came to faith, my life was good overall and I wasn't motivated to find inner peace and fulfillment. Instead, I felt a deep God-given intellectual and spiritual interest in Jesus, the Bible and the church. I came to believe that Jesus Christ lived, died by crucification, and was resurrected. The historical evidence for Jesus made sense.
Over the years as I became more rooted in my faith, I realized that I wasn't at peace before my conversion. The joy and steadiness I had with Christ was unlike anything else I had ever experienced.
I'm not unique and there are many people like me who have a conversion that's calm, steady and not rooted in the pursuit of peace and happiness. We are less likely to speak about these experiences.
And I believe 100% that our pets fill a little space that only belongs to them. :) My little Chihuahua agrees too.
Or the opposite. Many communities, especially immigrant ones, unite around a faith none cared too much about back at home. I agree that we each should pick what and where works for us, but there is a special joy that comes from being part of a chosen community. I am part of one where I stand out like a soar thumb, yet I am accepted and valued (even though I am taller, fatter, whiter and blonder than everyone else). Many people I know would likely benefit from joining similar institutions, but they have been brainwashed into a bizarre bigotry against organized religion. Each individual can and should find his/her own way, but it is important to realize that there is no one-size-fits-all.
This does raise the question of why universalist, moralizing, salvific religions have been so successful over a long history in converting most of humanity, no?
It's notable that these religions weren't successful (as far as we know) for most of human history - they've instead been most successful in the period in which people have come to live in large states, governed either by faraway individuals or by democratic bodies or something of that sort. It's unclear if there's a connection here, or just coincidence that these two things happened in the same few thousand years.
I believe the answer to this is that the parent religion (ie Judaism) just happened to chance upon a few deep psychological hooks - exclusive worship, a mysterious God who can't even be looked upon, a chosen people (this was bound to create envy, sadly), the promise of return and redemption. Unfortunately all of these were ripe for exploitation by successive proselytising religions (and sects thereof) of our all-too-often crude mentalities.
I think much of this success came from people who respected a winner and wanted to join the winning team. The US has been cutting its own throat with this self-hatred and lack of historical knowledge. Islam was popular when the biggest, baddest armies were Muslim. Christianity had great appeal when its followers had bigger boats, bigger guns, cooler toys, and unbeatable armies. An unapologetic, power America in the 1950's was admired. The self-loathing America of today is despised for obvious reasons (the same way no one likes a handsome, rich, muscular man joking about how he is loser who is lucky, that kind of false modesty and self-deprecating humor is not charming, it is arrogant, and vulgar).
Honesty is a good thing. The false modesty and arrogance of the hysterical "we are horrible, I am sorry" elites from the West are impossible to admire, or even respect. We would be wise to re-open long-term mental health facilities such people cruelly closed decades ago and fixed our homeless problem, plus extra space for camera-obsessed "activists" and similar to improve foreign relations, make progress on race relations and fix our universities in one policy.
I'm what you describe as a Done, being a Brit its more common here. Not only do I not feel any need for spirituality, transcendence, or the sacred I don't really understand what the words are supposed to mean. I find maths, science, nature and music wonderful - they all give me a very positive emotional response that feels entirely natural. On the other hand when I hear religious people talking or have to go into a religious building I feel pity verging on revulsion. To me religion is irrational, unethical, horrifying and terrifying. No hole in me that I want to fill with that.
Some people call it God-shaped, but that’s just a label for a bundle of at least seven attributes.
Some people experience all seven attributes, some a subset.
Within the rubric of the seven “God-functions”, what’s fundamental in terms of evolution is that we are mammals—highly social, group-living creatures with unusually large brains. Those brains require an extended childhood to develop, and that long developmental runway is not incidental: it is how we are trained into the cognitive and social capacities that let us exploit the advantages of deep sociality and cumulative culture.
In practice, that includes (a) learning and internalizing norms that reduce intragroup conflict and enable cooperation, (b) acquiring shared narratives and rituals that stabilize identity and belonging, and (c) developing problem-solving toolkits that scale beyond individual intuition—up to and including Baconian methods (systematic inquiry and science).
Read through the rubric, this mammalian/cultural baseline helps explain why the seven functions recur cross-culturally: our minds and groups are built to seek intelligible order, to buffer suffering with meaning, to bind communities, to generate and enforce obligation, to orient life toward ends, to experience awe at what exceeds us, and to sustain hope that stabilizes action over time.
1. Order / intelligibility: the sense that reality has deep structure (not mere randomness) and can be apprehended. Science and mathematics delve into this.
2. Meaning-making under suffering: framing loss, finitude, and injustice; making suffering intelligible or transformable.
3. Communal belonging / ritual cohesion: shared practices and stories that create thick identity, mutual duty, and solidarity.
4. Moral binding / obligation: why some duties are required of me, even when costly.
• Norms-as-conflict-management (evolutionary / functional layer): norms can be adaptive because they reduce costly conflict, increase predictability, and enable cooperation and trust in repeated interactions. (This explains why norm-following persists; it does not, by itself, determine whether any particular norm is morally justified.)
5. Orientation / ultimate concern: what life is for; what is worth sacrifice; what “the good” is.
6. Awe / transcendence: encounter with the unsolvable aspects of life, that is,, Mystery, “more-than-me.”
7. Hope / eschatology: a “beyond” the current state—redemption, progress, reconciliation, or ultimate resolution.
I was raised in a devout, practicing Catholic home, with a mother who made sure that all 7 siblings followed the rules, attended catechism & the sacraments & I don't believe any of it. I kinda tried b/c I was told that it was all true, but by the age of 12 I realized I just did not buy any of it.
I have no yearning for "god" & I am repelled by the idea that, as the catechism has it, that some supernatural entity made me to love & serve him. I mean, what kind of superior being creates creatures, supposedly w/ free will, for the sole purpose of worshipping him? Seems neurotic to me.
The problem, for many people is that god provides meaning & purpose to their life. They don't have to figure it out, it 's provided. Not having it provided requires many people, like me, to figure it out for themselves & that is not easy.
The question then is — why am I doing this? Why am I going through the pain & grief that life entails? Or as Camus, (I think) said, (paraphrasing) why not just commit suicide? ( which I think there is a strong aversion to, b/c evolution.)
My solution is existentialism, which simply means that my life has the meaning I create with it. And that is difficult b/c one has to figure out what meaning is & how to create it. That difficulty & feeling of free floating anxiety & isolation is why most people choose religion.
Great piece, Paul. I agree with your general analysis that data suggest a "god-shaped hole" isn't universal. I'm less sure the functional evolutionary argument makes sense. We all seem to have the capacity for awe, and I'm never quite sure what the functional purpose of awe is (as other moral emotions produce many of the same outcomes with the exception of an uptick in the belief of supernatural agency). There's also the cultural pressure since the Enlightenment to squash a supernatural urge. But who knows....
The point I do want to make, and where I think Pascal was right, was on his wager of whether one SHOULD be religious whether they feel a hole or not. As you note, health and wellbeing outcomes are higher for the nones who are like the religious in some ways. True, depending on the variable in question, it's not always a huge effect (but sometimes is), but if you're trying to optimize your outcomes, it ain't nothing either. I'm pasting my argument in below and would be interested in your thoughts. I apologize for pasting in the text, but the link to this piece is behind a paywall without options for a gift link, so this is the only way to share it.
Pascal’s Wager: An Update (Originally Published in First Things)
Should you believe in God? For many people, belief is a matter of faith. But let’s say you didn’t grow up with a religion, or you fell away from religion and now are wondering whether that was the right choice. Is there a way to approach the question with reasoned analysis, as you would any other major decision? A rational way to optimize your costs and benefits?
It might seem a strange question. But Blaise Pascal offered a solution to it almost 400 years ago, using what scientists now call decision theory. Pascal framed the choice as a wager—one that you must make, by virtue of being alive. It goes like this: God exists, or He doesn’t. Objectively speaking, none of us knows the probability of this binary. What we do know, and can control, is our response to it. Shall we believe and embrace religion? Or shall we assume that God is a lie and live without concern for the hereafter? It’s that last part that matters, according to Pascal. For if God exists, our choice for or against religion will have eternal consequences.
If God exists—and for now let’s assume we’re talking about the Christian God of Pascal—and you become religious, you stand to gain eternal happiness in heaven. If you forgo religion, your earthly life will be much the same as a religious person’s, though perhaps with more carousing. If God does not exist, the decision to believe or disbelieve has no serious implications for your earthly life and none at all for your eternal prospects, which are nonexistent either way.
If you are certain that God is real, the choice is clear: Be religious, not least because you have a soul to consider. But if you are uncertain, this is where probability comes in. Pascal argues that if you assign to God’s existence even the smallest likelihood, the choice about whether to be religious remains clear from a rational perspective. Only one of the four scenarios he described offers an infinite benefit (the eternal joys of heaven); the others offer merely finite pleasures. So, if you want to optimize your outcomes, best to choose religion. To borrow a term from decision theory, religious belief gives you the greatest expected value—that is, the probability of a positive outcome multiplied by its potential return. The smallest chance of infinite happiness conditioned on God’s existence beats finite rewards any day.
But if the math is clear, why do many of the most hard-nosed rationalists eschew spirituality? It turns out that there are a few good objections to Pascal’s analysis. For the most committed atheists, the probability that God exists isn’t small; it’s zero. There is no chance of eternal reward. The only happiness is earthly happiness. For other nonbelievers, the question is not so much whether God exists, but which God. Though most faiths have a notion of eternal reward (heaven, Nirvana, Jannah), there is always the possibility of choosing the wrong religion. Finally, there is this question: Even if God exists, and even if he permits people to worship him through many different faiths, is an instrumental approach to religion an acceptable one?
These are tricky questions, traditionally understood to reveal the inadequacy of Pascal’s argument. Pascal realized that these rebuttals would lose significance if religious belief improved people’s lives in the here and now—if it provided earthly benefits as well as eternal. In his Pensées, he writes of those who become religious:
You will be faithful, humble, grateful, generous, a sincere friend, truthful. … I will tell you that you will thereby gain in this life, and that, at each step you take on this road, you will see so great certainty of gain, so much nothingness in what you risk, that you will at last recognise that you have wagered for something certain and infinite for which you have given nothing.
The problem was that this was only his opinion. Over the past decade, however, new findings have emerged that shift the calculus in Pascal’s favor.
On the basis of three studies, published between 2016 and 2018 and involving tens of thousands of people, Harvard epidemiologist Tyler VanderWeele and colleagues have shown that those who practice a faith have a 33-percent lower risk of dying from any cause over long periods of time. They have lower rates of cancer and cardiovascular disease, lower rates of depression, and fewer suicide attempts. They also report higher levels of happiness and meaning in life. One major benefit of VanderWeele’s work is that, unlike many other studies that find a health benefit for religion, it follows people through time as they choose to start or stop engaging with their faith. Thus, it is fairly clear that a change in religious behavior produces the observed changes in wellbeing, not vice versa. Two of these studies also show that the benefits of religion aren’t merely a byproduct of socializing—another long-standing objection to this type of research—by demonstrating that the benefits are greater for those who practice a religion than for those who find social connection in other ways. Along the same lines, the third study shows that even private practices such as prayer and meditation offer benefits, especially when it comes to mental health.
What does this mean for Pascal’s wager? Let’s take the atheist objection: If God does not exist, eternal outcomes are off the table, and what’s left is how the practice of faith affects us in this life. What these findings demonstrate is that faith does have an earthly utility. Sure, some might miss the pleasures of libertinism, but those pleasures don’t compensate for the comprehensive wellbeing described above. Of course, religion might lead to negative outcomes for some, as tragic cases of abuse and institutional failures make clear. But as is the case with vaccines, the harm is relatively infrequent. The majority of people will experience a benefit, so that practicing a faith becomes the clear rational choice.
What about the problem of which religion to choose? If God does exist, better to pick some faith—the one you think has the highest probability of being true—than none at all. The former gives a shot at infinite reward; the latter forecloses it. If God does not exist, choosing the option—religion—that enhances health and happiness across cultures and faiths makes the most sense.
But is it acceptable to subscribe to a religion in which you don’t believe, or aren’t sure you believe, for the sake of its earthly benefits? Will you still reap the eternal reward? Only God knows! If you’re not sure that God exists, your uncertainty is doubled, as you certainly can’t be sure of what is in his mind (assuming he exists). But you can be sure of the earthly benefits of acting as though you believed, so religion is to that extent a rational choice.
As to whether it can be a good-faith act to adopt a spiritual practice when you doubt its tenets, I would argue that it can. As many traditions point out, sometimes it is through our actions that we gain understanding or belief. As the people said to Moses in the book of Exodus when he was instructing them on faith, “na’aseh v’nishma”: We will do and then we will understand. That change in belief might come from experiencing benefits you didn’t expect, but it also reveals a basic truth about the mind. As much psychological research over the past 60 years has demonstrated, people’s beliefs will change to match their actions. Studies show that the more effort people put into practices prescribed by a group (for instance, rituals or initiation activities), the more they come to embrace and value the group and its beliefs.
So, should you choose religion? Given what we know (and don’t know) about God’s existence and the benefits of spirituality, I’d say there is no rational reason not to. Of course, people aren’t always rational; they don’t always choose the option that decision models say is best. But if you’re a gambler, Pascal’s wager looks more and more like a good bet.
I agree that awe poses an interesting evolutionary puzzle. I have some tentative, not-so-good ideas on how to solve it, but I think we can agree that this is quite different from spiritual longing.
As for your take on Pascal's wager, I respect the arguments, but I share Alastair James's worries about adopting a belief you don't have for purely instrumental reasons. Lots to discuss the next time we get together!
I don't see how I can choose to believe something my reason tells me is nonsense. I would be pretending and feel dishonest which would be bad for my mental well being. My atheist mother instilled a strong habit of honesty in me and I feel very discomforted when I lie. Maybe your argument would be a reason for me not to try and dissuade the religious from their belief. But I think religion is net bad for society even if it is good for some individuals' well being, so I would rather society taught more philosophy and psychological insight to give people tools to improve their mental well being without resorting to treating fictions as true.
I think the question of whether it is a net good or bad for society is debatable. When it is used for power/policy, it definitely is problematic. But measures of societal flourishing that are based on more than economics tend to identify religious engagement as a net positive (e.g., https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/opinion/happiness-economic-development.html).
That said, I agree that acting in a way that feels dishonest to oneself can be problematic. But it’s also the case that no one knows for sure whether God exists and/or which spiritual path is the right one (if there is a God and if there is a right one). Even Richard Dawkins will tell you that he cannot be 100% sure God doesn’t exist. There is no scientific test for the fingerprints of God. We can’t run experiments on God (if It exists). And we have no insight into the mind of God (if It exists). So all we can say is that we see no empirical proof that God exists. Does that suggest God doesn’t exist. It may well do so. But no one has certainty. And so I think it’s rational given the benefits of faith for people to try and embrace one that feels right to them.
I think people often falsely put religion and science into conflict. Yes, some religious claims are certainly false and can be shown to be false using science. But many religions also foster science. Judaism is one in particular. The Dalai Lama funds neuroscience research. The Catholic Church has its own astronomical observatory. So while certain tensions can and do exist, it’s not the case that most faiths (unless of a fundamentalist bent) object to science as a is of learning. Where the debate bogs down is in the ultimate theological questions on which there’s no real way to come to an empirical answer.
Of course there is no empirical evidence that he doesn't exist since he is defined as metaphysical, a word which means little more than outside of empirical reality. However there is considerable empirical historical evidence that religions are made up by people, considerable empirical cognitive science evidence about why we should have evolved psychologies susceptible to god stories and as you say considerable empirical evidence against many of the important physical claims religious texts make. Believing anything for which there is no evidence is arbitrary. You could believe any one of the thousands which have existed, or indeed make your own up like L Ron Hubbard. Believing one because it gives you psychological comfort seems a poor reason when you could get the same comfort studying philosophy and psychology but wouldn't have to make a commitment to getting your ethics from your arbitrarily chosen text rather than reasoning about what is good for individual and collective human flourishing in a dangerous and complex universe. Choose the wrong book and you could believe you are being good by being a violent homophobic misogynist. Observing life in the most religious countries such as those in the Middle East or Africa and the significant contribution the Christian nationalists have made to the ongoing precipitous collapse of US civilisation causes me to question the methodology of any study claiming religion is good for society.
I agree with what you're saying in general, but there is a difference between specific religions/institutions and the question of god's existence. If God exists, Its nature is not likely to be captured by any specific tradition. Just like science, religions are simplifications of reality. Science has the benefit of moving forward due to empirical investigation; institutionalized religions don't. But if one has spiritual yearnings, the benefits of spiritual practices seem to be justified empirically (though I take your point about doing something for instrumental causes).
Religions aren't usually the direct cause of wars or conflicts (there are some cases where groups fight over theology). More often, religion serves as an ideology to be co-opted by the powerful for their own ends. But that is no different than any ideology. Yes, Christian Nationalism is a problem. But it's also the case that religious leaders were some of the most prominent leaders for the civil rights movement in America. Pope Leo right now is arguing for peace and an end to economic inequality. Many religions fund hospitals and charities that bring great relief to those in need. The ideology of unrestrained capitalism causes much strife (as do other political ideologies). Religion offers a set of practices that move hearts and minds. Whether it's for good or ill depends on the intents of those using it. Even the social safety net of the Nordic countries is explicitly and partially based on Christian ideals. Empirically speaking (i.e., debates about God aside) willing religious engagement appears to be a net positive for societies. The correlation isn't perfect, and so there are outliers on both sides. It is a complex relationship, moderated by many other factors. But
This an excellent article. The one thing we know about all religions is that they aren't true. And one of the things we know about transcendence is that it never happens as that would violate the laws of physics. You cannot transcend yourself because by definition you are yourself and more than that you cannot be. When people think they have transcended to a new level of spiritual awareness, they haven't. Whatever insights they gain in life are simply part of who they are, not something above and beyond who they are, as that would be a contradiction in terms.
The hole isn't specifically god-shaped, rather it is a generalized need to be among the righteous. To be one of the "good people".
As a progressive born and raised, a veteran resident of some of the deepest-blue places in the US, I've watched with dismay for a quarter century as millions my fellow-travelers let this need suck us into illiberal foolishness. So many progressives I've known for decades had grown up with churchgoing, become secular as adults, and then consciously or not found a burning need going unfulfilled: to be among the righteous. And here we are....
Upon deeper thinkery, it seems the thing envied by the atheist isn't specifically inner peace through belief, or relationship with the divine. As a confessed transcendence seeker, I personally envy the inner peace of the convicted materialist.
Simplified, I see inner peace is coveted by those that don't have it. While obviously meaningful, the greater context is only a secondary story that the root desire tells itself in order to activate the drive toward the homeostasis it's trying to mirror. Perhaps this is where the evolutionary factors come into play.
At Yale College, I let go of my loosely held faith and declared myself a distracted Catholic. Throughout my twenties, I was indifferent to religion and moved between agnosticism and atheism depending on my mood and the books I was reading. I was excelling and would have agreed completely with your essay, because I felt no God-shaped hole. Influenced by my professors, this piece would have been another data point confirming my confidence in going my own way as a proud “None.”
When I returned to faith in my thirties, it began with a sense of calling from God. Before committing, I examined the historical evidence that Jesus Christ lived, was crucified, and was resurrected, including the investigative work presented in Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ. My decision to repent, be baptized, and place my faith in Jesus Christ was not a retreat from reason but a deliberate and informed choice.
Whether humans possess a God-shaped hole is not a claim that can be validated across all people. Faith is a gift from God, and not everyone will accept that gift or come to recognize the beauty of a life surrendered to God.
And by the way, I took your Intro to Psychology class in 2001 and chose psychology as my major because I felt more intellectually engaged in your class than in any other.
I appreciate your point about Pascal's God-shaped hole theory being incomplete -- though one could argue that any human thought is ultimately discovered (so that in a way, we all have a pickle-ball shaped potentiality within us), this does not mean that we need or long, or need, for that specific function to be used in our minds.
However, I'd recommend The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche by Carl Jung as an alternate definition of what he calls the transcendent function. In his view, there is a natural psychic process which operates as a connecting force between the conscious and unconscious minds, thus creating a "sense" of transcendence as we experience the parts of ourselves we have previously repressed. The paradoxes of spirituality sometimes point us towards this transcendent function by being intentionally irrational in a specific human way.
Love the post! I would agree that none of this is proof of a particular form of higher power -- all it shows is that some people find a certain way within themselves of feeling transcendent. Still, there is much to ponder as to what it means that so many people do.
I had a DOG shaped hole. I filled it with three dogs. I also have a husband who completes me. My life is joyous and transcendent. I am an atheist.
I think that religion is a wonderful form of cultural glue that bids people together around shared norms and values. I don’t think anyone should view religion as the individual path to attaining inner peace. That’s an individualistic view of an inherently social institution.
Magic Wade, I agree with you that religion shouldn't be used to attain inner peace. Rather, inner peace is a byproduct. When I came to faith, my life was good overall and I wasn't motivated to find inner peace and fulfillment. Instead, I felt a deep God-given intellectual and spiritual interest in Jesus, the Bible and the church. I came to believe that Jesus Christ lived, died by crucification, and was resurrected. The historical evidence for Jesus made sense.
Over the years as I became more rooted in my faith, I realized that I wasn't at peace before my conversion. The joy and steadiness I had with Christ was unlike anything else I had ever experienced.
I'm not unique and there are many people like me who have a conversion that's calm, steady and not rooted in the pursuit of peace and happiness. We are less likely to speak about these experiences.
And I believe 100% that our pets fill a little space that only belongs to them. :) My little Chihuahua agrees too.
Or the opposite. Many communities, especially immigrant ones, unite around a faith none cared too much about back at home. I agree that we each should pick what and where works for us, but there is a special joy that comes from being part of a chosen community. I am part of one where I stand out like a soar thumb, yet I am accepted and valued (even though I am taller, fatter, whiter and blonder than everyone else). Many people I know would likely benefit from joining similar institutions, but they have been brainwashed into a bizarre bigotry against organized religion. Each individual can and should find his/her own way, but it is important to realize that there is no one-size-fits-all.
This does raise the question of why universalist, moralizing, salvific religions have been so successful over a long history in converting most of humanity, no?
It's notable that these religions weren't successful (as far as we know) for most of human history - they've instead been most successful in the period in which people have come to live in large states, governed either by faraway individuals or by democratic bodies or something of that sort. It's unclear if there's a connection here, or just coincidence that these two things happened in the same few thousand years.
I believe the answer to this is that the parent religion (ie Judaism) just happened to chance upon a few deep psychological hooks - exclusive worship, a mysterious God who can't even be looked upon, a chosen people (this was bound to create envy, sadly), the promise of return and redemption. Unfortunately all of these were ripe for exploitation by successive proselytising religions (and sects thereof) of our all-too-often crude mentalities.
I think much of this success came from people who respected a winner and wanted to join the winning team. The US has been cutting its own throat with this self-hatred and lack of historical knowledge. Islam was popular when the biggest, baddest armies were Muslim. Christianity had great appeal when its followers had bigger boats, bigger guns, cooler toys, and unbeatable armies. An unapologetic, power America in the 1950's was admired. The self-loathing America of today is despised for obvious reasons (the same way no one likes a handsome, rich, muscular man joking about how he is loser who is lucky, that kind of false modesty and self-deprecating humor is not charming, it is arrogant, and vulgar).
Honesty is a good thing. The false modesty and arrogance of the hysterical "we are horrible, I am sorry" elites from the West are impossible to admire, or even respect. We would be wise to re-open long-term mental health facilities such people cruelly closed decades ago and fixed our homeless problem, plus extra space for camera-obsessed "activists" and similar to improve foreign relations, make progress on race relations and fix our universities in one policy.
Yes, agreed!
I'm what you describe as a Done, being a Brit its more common here. Not only do I not feel any need for spirituality, transcendence, or the sacred I don't really understand what the words are supposed to mean. I find maths, science, nature and music wonderful - they all give me a very positive emotional response that feels entirely natural. On the other hand when I hear religious people talking or have to go into a religious building I feel pity verging on revulsion. To me religion is irrational, unethical, horrifying and terrifying. No hole in me that I want to fill with that.
Some people call it God-shaped, but that’s just a label for a bundle of at least seven attributes.
Some people experience all seven attributes, some a subset.
Within the rubric of the seven “God-functions”, what’s fundamental in terms of evolution is that we are mammals—highly social, group-living creatures with unusually large brains. Those brains require an extended childhood to develop, and that long developmental runway is not incidental: it is how we are trained into the cognitive and social capacities that let us exploit the advantages of deep sociality and cumulative culture.
In practice, that includes (a) learning and internalizing norms that reduce intragroup conflict and enable cooperation, (b) acquiring shared narratives and rituals that stabilize identity and belonging, and (c) developing problem-solving toolkits that scale beyond individual intuition—up to and including Baconian methods (systematic inquiry and science).
Read through the rubric, this mammalian/cultural baseline helps explain why the seven functions recur cross-culturally: our minds and groups are built to seek intelligible order, to buffer suffering with meaning, to bind communities, to generate and enforce obligation, to orient life toward ends, to experience awe at what exceeds us, and to sustain hope that stabilizes action over time.
1. Order / intelligibility: the sense that reality has deep structure (not mere randomness) and can be apprehended. Science and mathematics delve into this.
2. Meaning-making under suffering: framing loss, finitude, and injustice; making suffering intelligible or transformable.
3. Communal belonging / ritual cohesion: shared practices and stories that create thick identity, mutual duty, and solidarity.
4. Moral binding / obligation: why some duties are required of me, even when costly.
• Norms-as-conflict-management (evolutionary / functional layer): norms can be adaptive because they reduce costly conflict, increase predictability, and enable cooperation and trust in repeated interactions. (This explains why norm-following persists; it does not, by itself, determine whether any particular norm is morally justified.)
5. Orientation / ultimate concern: what life is for; what is worth sacrifice; what “the good” is.
6. Awe / transcendence: encounter with the unsolvable aspects of life, that is,, Mystery, “more-than-me.”
7. Hope / eschatology: a “beyond” the current state—redemption, progress, reconciliation, or ultimate resolution.
I was raised in a devout, practicing Catholic home, with a mother who made sure that all 7 siblings followed the rules, attended catechism & the sacraments & I don't believe any of it. I kinda tried b/c I was told that it was all true, but by the age of 12 I realized I just did not buy any of it.
I have no yearning for "god" & I am repelled by the idea that, as the catechism has it, that some supernatural entity made me to love & serve him. I mean, what kind of superior being creates creatures, supposedly w/ free will, for the sole purpose of worshipping him? Seems neurotic to me.
The problem, for many people is that god provides meaning & purpose to their life. They don't have to figure it out, it 's provided. Not having it provided requires many people, like me, to figure it out for themselves & that is not easy.
The question then is — why am I doing this? Why am I going through the pain & grief that life entails? Or as Camus, (I think) said, (paraphrasing) why not just commit suicide? ( which I think there is a strong aversion to, b/c evolution.)
My solution is existentialism, which simply means that my life has the meaning I create with it. And that is difficult b/c one has to figure out what meaning is & how to create it. That difficulty & feeling of free floating anxiety & isolation is why most people choose religion.
Great piece, Paul. I agree with your general analysis that data suggest a "god-shaped hole" isn't universal. I'm less sure the functional evolutionary argument makes sense. We all seem to have the capacity for awe, and I'm never quite sure what the functional purpose of awe is (as other moral emotions produce many of the same outcomes with the exception of an uptick in the belief of supernatural agency). There's also the cultural pressure since the Enlightenment to squash a supernatural urge. But who knows....
The point I do want to make, and where I think Pascal was right, was on his wager of whether one SHOULD be religious whether they feel a hole or not. As you note, health and wellbeing outcomes are higher for the nones who are like the religious in some ways. True, depending on the variable in question, it's not always a huge effect (but sometimes is), but if you're trying to optimize your outcomes, it ain't nothing either. I'm pasting my argument in below and would be interested in your thoughts. I apologize for pasting in the text, but the link to this piece is behind a paywall without options for a gift link, so this is the only way to share it.
Pascal’s Wager: An Update (Originally Published in First Things)
Should you believe in God? For many people, belief is a matter of faith. But let’s say you didn’t grow up with a religion, or you fell away from religion and now are wondering whether that was the right choice. Is there a way to approach the question with reasoned analysis, as you would any other major decision? A rational way to optimize your costs and benefits?
It might seem a strange question. But Blaise Pascal offered a solution to it almost 400 years ago, using what scientists now call decision theory. Pascal framed the choice as a wager—one that you must make, by virtue of being alive. It goes like this: God exists, or He doesn’t. Objectively speaking, none of us knows the probability of this binary. What we do know, and can control, is our response to it. Shall we believe and embrace religion? Or shall we assume that God is a lie and live without concern for the hereafter? It’s that last part that matters, according to Pascal. For if God exists, our choice for or against religion will have eternal consequences.
If God exists—and for now let’s assume we’re talking about the Christian God of Pascal—and you become religious, you stand to gain eternal happiness in heaven. If you forgo religion, your earthly life will be much the same as a religious person’s, though perhaps with more carousing. If God does not exist, the decision to believe or disbelieve has no serious implications for your earthly life and none at all for your eternal prospects, which are nonexistent either way.
If you are certain that God is real, the choice is clear: Be religious, not least because you have a soul to consider. But if you are uncertain, this is where probability comes in. Pascal argues that if you assign to God’s existence even the smallest likelihood, the choice about whether to be religious remains clear from a rational perspective. Only one of the four scenarios he described offers an infinite benefit (the eternal joys of heaven); the others offer merely finite pleasures. So, if you want to optimize your outcomes, best to choose religion. To borrow a term from decision theory, religious belief gives you the greatest expected value—that is, the probability of a positive outcome multiplied by its potential return. The smallest chance of infinite happiness conditioned on God’s existence beats finite rewards any day.
But if the math is clear, why do many of the most hard-nosed rationalists eschew spirituality? It turns out that there are a few good objections to Pascal’s analysis. For the most committed atheists, the probability that God exists isn’t small; it’s zero. There is no chance of eternal reward. The only happiness is earthly happiness. For other nonbelievers, the question is not so much whether God exists, but which God. Though most faiths have a notion of eternal reward (heaven, Nirvana, Jannah), there is always the possibility of choosing the wrong religion. Finally, there is this question: Even if God exists, and even if he permits people to worship him through many different faiths, is an instrumental approach to religion an acceptable one?
These are tricky questions, traditionally understood to reveal the inadequacy of Pascal’s argument. Pascal realized that these rebuttals would lose significance if religious belief improved people’s lives in the here and now—if it provided earthly benefits as well as eternal. In his Pensées, he writes of those who become religious:
You will be faithful, humble, grateful, generous, a sincere friend, truthful. … I will tell you that you will thereby gain in this life, and that, at each step you take on this road, you will see so great certainty of gain, so much nothingness in what you risk, that you will at last recognise that you have wagered for something certain and infinite for which you have given nothing.
The problem was that this was only his opinion. Over the past decade, however, new findings have emerged that shift the calculus in Pascal’s favor.
On the basis of three studies, published between 2016 and 2018 and involving tens of thousands of people, Harvard epidemiologist Tyler VanderWeele and colleagues have shown that those who practice a faith have a 33-percent lower risk of dying from any cause over long periods of time. They have lower rates of cancer and cardiovascular disease, lower rates of depression, and fewer suicide attempts. They also report higher levels of happiness and meaning in life. One major benefit of VanderWeele’s work is that, unlike many other studies that find a health benefit for religion, it follows people through time as they choose to start or stop engaging with their faith. Thus, it is fairly clear that a change in religious behavior produces the observed changes in wellbeing, not vice versa. Two of these studies also show that the benefits of religion aren’t merely a byproduct of socializing—another long-standing objection to this type of research—by demonstrating that the benefits are greater for those who practice a religion than for those who find social connection in other ways. Along the same lines, the third study shows that even private practices such as prayer and meditation offer benefits, especially when it comes to mental health.
What does this mean for Pascal’s wager? Let’s take the atheist objection: If God does not exist, eternal outcomes are off the table, and what’s left is how the practice of faith affects us in this life. What these findings demonstrate is that faith does have an earthly utility. Sure, some might miss the pleasures of libertinism, but those pleasures don’t compensate for the comprehensive wellbeing described above. Of course, religion might lead to negative outcomes for some, as tragic cases of abuse and institutional failures make clear. But as is the case with vaccines, the harm is relatively infrequent. The majority of people will experience a benefit, so that practicing a faith becomes the clear rational choice.
What about the problem of which religion to choose? If God does exist, better to pick some faith—the one you think has the highest probability of being true—than none at all. The former gives a shot at infinite reward; the latter forecloses it. If God does not exist, choosing the option—religion—that enhances health and happiness across cultures and faiths makes the most sense.
But is it acceptable to subscribe to a religion in which you don’t believe, or aren’t sure you believe, for the sake of its earthly benefits? Will you still reap the eternal reward? Only God knows! If you’re not sure that God exists, your uncertainty is doubled, as you certainly can’t be sure of what is in his mind (assuming he exists). But you can be sure of the earthly benefits of acting as though you believed, so religion is to that extent a rational choice.
As to whether it can be a good-faith act to adopt a spiritual practice when you doubt its tenets, I would argue that it can. As many traditions point out, sometimes it is through our actions that we gain understanding or belief. As the people said to Moses in the book of Exodus when he was instructing them on faith, “na’aseh v’nishma”: We will do and then we will understand. That change in belief might come from experiencing benefits you didn’t expect, but it also reveals a basic truth about the mind. As much psychological research over the past 60 years has demonstrated, people’s beliefs will change to match their actions. Studies show that the more effort people put into practices prescribed by a group (for instance, rituals or initiation activities), the more they come to embrace and value the group and its beliefs.
So, should you choose religion? Given what we know (and don’t know) about God’s existence and the benefits of spirituality, I’d say there is no rational reason not to. Of course, people aren’t always rational; they don’t always choose the option that decision models say is best. But if you’re a gambler, Pascal’s wager looks more and more like a good bet.
I agree that awe poses an interesting evolutionary puzzle. I have some tentative, not-so-good ideas on how to solve it, but I think we can agree that this is quite different from spiritual longing.
As for your take on Pascal's wager, I respect the arguments, but I share Alastair James's worries about adopting a belief you don't have for purely instrumental reasons. Lots to discuss the next time we get together!
I don't see how I can choose to believe something my reason tells me is nonsense. I would be pretending and feel dishonest which would be bad for my mental well being. My atheist mother instilled a strong habit of honesty in me and I feel very discomforted when I lie. Maybe your argument would be a reason for me not to try and dissuade the religious from their belief. But I think religion is net bad for society even if it is good for some individuals' well being, so I would rather society taught more philosophy and psychological insight to give people tools to improve their mental well being without resorting to treating fictions as true.
I think the question of whether it is a net good or bad for society is debatable. When it is used for power/policy, it definitely is problematic. But measures of societal flourishing that are based on more than economics tend to identify religious engagement as a net positive (e.g., https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/opinion/happiness-economic-development.html).
That said, I agree that acting in a way that feels dishonest to oneself can be problematic. But it’s also the case that no one knows for sure whether God exists and/or which spiritual path is the right one (if there is a God and if there is a right one). Even Richard Dawkins will tell you that he cannot be 100% sure God doesn’t exist. There is no scientific test for the fingerprints of God. We can’t run experiments on God (if It exists). And we have no insight into the mind of God (if It exists). So all we can say is that we see no empirical proof that God exists. Does that suggest God doesn’t exist. It may well do so. But no one has certainty. And so I think it’s rational given the benefits of faith for people to try and embrace one that feels right to them.
I think people often falsely put religion and science into conflict. Yes, some religious claims are certainly false and can be shown to be false using science. But many religions also foster science. Judaism is one in particular. The Dalai Lama funds neuroscience research. The Catholic Church has its own astronomical observatory. So while certain tensions can and do exist, it’s not the case that most faiths (unless of a fundamentalist bent) object to science as a is of learning. Where the debate bogs down is in the ultimate theological questions on which there’s no real way to come to an empirical answer.
Of course there is no empirical evidence that he doesn't exist since he is defined as metaphysical, a word which means little more than outside of empirical reality. However there is considerable empirical historical evidence that religions are made up by people, considerable empirical cognitive science evidence about why we should have evolved psychologies susceptible to god stories and as you say considerable empirical evidence against many of the important physical claims religious texts make. Believing anything for which there is no evidence is arbitrary. You could believe any one of the thousands which have existed, or indeed make your own up like L Ron Hubbard. Believing one because it gives you psychological comfort seems a poor reason when you could get the same comfort studying philosophy and psychology but wouldn't have to make a commitment to getting your ethics from your arbitrarily chosen text rather than reasoning about what is good for individual and collective human flourishing in a dangerous and complex universe. Choose the wrong book and you could believe you are being good by being a violent homophobic misogynist. Observing life in the most religious countries such as those in the Middle East or Africa and the significant contribution the Christian nationalists have made to the ongoing precipitous collapse of US civilisation causes me to question the methodology of any study claiming religion is good for society.
I agree with what you're saying in general, but there is a difference between specific religions/institutions and the question of god's existence. If God exists, Its nature is not likely to be captured by any specific tradition. Just like science, religions are simplifications of reality. Science has the benefit of moving forward due to empirical investigation; institutionalized religions don't. But if one has spiritual yearnings, the benefits of spiritual practices seem to be justified empirically (though I take your point about doing something for instrumental causes).
Religions aren't usually the direct cause of wars or conflicts (there are some cases where groups fight over theology). More often, religion serves as an ideology to be co-opted by the powerful for their own ends. But that is no different than any ideology. Yes, Christian Nationalism is a problem. But it's also the case that religious leaders were some of the most prominent leaders for the civil rights movement in America. Pope Leo right now is arguing for peace and an end to economic inequality. Many religions fund hospitals and charities that bring great relief to those in need. The ideology of unrestrained capitalism causes much strife (as do other political ideologies). Religion offers a set of practices that move hearts and minds. Whether it's for good or ill depends on the intents of those using it. Even the social safety net of the Nordic countries is explicitly and partially based on Christian ideals. Empirically speaking (i.e., debates about God aside) willing religious engagement appears to be a net positive for societies. The correlation isn't perfect, and so there are outliers on both sides. It is a complex relationship, moderated by many other factors. But
It's interesting to see how the God's moral views evolve and mirror the human worshipers morality over time.
This an excellent article. The one thing we know about all religions is that they aren't true. And one of the things we know about transcendence is that it never happens as that would violate the laws of physics. You cannot transcend yourself because by definition you are yourself and more than that you cannot be. When people think they have transcended to a new level of spiritual awareness, they haven't. Whatever insights they gain in life are simply part of who they are, not something above and beyond who they are, as that would be a contradiction in terms.
We know the same thing about science. It isn't true. It's a truth-seeking apparatus known to be false
The hole isn't specifically god-shaped, rather it is a generalized need to be among the righteous. To be one of the "good people".
As a progressive born and raised, a veteran resident of some of the deepest-blue places in the US, I've watched with dismay for a quarter century as millions my fellow-travelers let this need suck us into illiberal foolishness. So many progressives I've known for decades had grown up with churchgoing, become secular as adults, and then consciously or not found a burning need going unfulfilled: to be among the righteous. And here we are....
I propose a God shaped horizon https://scottcave.substack.com/p/a-god-shaped-horizon
Upon deeper thinkery, it seems the thing envied by the atheist isn't specifically inner peace through belief, or relationship with the divine. As a confessed transcendence seeker, I personally envy the inner peace of the convicted materialist.
Simplified, I see inner peace is coveted by those that don't have it. While obviously meaningful, the greater context is only a secondary story that the root desire tells itself in order to activate the drive toward the homeostasis it's trying to mirror. Perhaps this is where the evolutionary factors come into play.
faith is utterly alien to me and I have a hard time imagining how my wife, who is deeply religious, has such a visceral connection to her God
At Yale College, I let go of my loosely held faith and declared myself a distracted Catholic. Throughout my twenties, I was indifferent to religion and moved between agnosticism and atheism depending on my mood and the books I was reading. I was excelling and would have agreed completely with your essay, because I felt no God-shaped hole. Influenced by my professors, this piece would have been another data point confirming my confidence in going my own way as a proud “None.”
When I returned to faith in my thirties, it began with a sense of calling from God. Before committing, I examined the historical evidence that Jesus Christ lived, was crucified, and was resurrected, including the investigative work presented in Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ. My decision to repent, be baptized, and place my faith in Jesus Christ was not a retreat from reason but a deliberate and informed choice.
Whether humans possess a God-shaped hole is not a claim that can be validated across all people. Faith is a gift from God, and not everyone will accept that gift or come to recognize the beauty of a life surrendered to God.
And by the way, I took your Intro to Psychology class in 2001 and chose psychology as my major because I felt more intellectually engaged in your class than in any other.
I appreciate your point about Pascal's God-shaped hole theory being incomplete -- though one could argue that any human thought is ultimately discovered (so that in a way, we all have a pickle-ball shaped potentiality within us), this does not mean that we need or long, or need, for that specific function to be used in our minds.
However, I'd recommend The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche by Carl Jung as an alternate definition of what he calls the transcendent function. In his view, there is a natural psychic process which operates as a connecting force between the conscious and unconscious minds, thus creating a "sense" of transcendence as we experience the parts of ourselves we have previously repressed. The paradoxes of spirituality sometimes point us towards this transcendent function by being intentionally irrational in a specific human way.
Love the post! I would agree that none of this is proof of a particular form of higher power -- all it shows is that some people find a certain way within themselves of feeling transcendent. Still, there is much to ponder as to what it means that so many people do.
Perhaps we don’t have a god shaped hole so much as religions come up with really good hole shaped gods.
I think you need to look at the data on faith/meaning/spirtuality and ageing. We start looking for this stuff way more as we age....
A hole may be shaped like God but you can still fill it with whatever you want (in my case I use food)