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.
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.
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 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.
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?
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.
Paul, is it feasible that humans would “evolve” an arbiter (with agreed upon authority) to settle within tribe disputes? I’m curious as to your thoughts here.
Thanks Paul. This is very interesting. It cuts through some lazy phrasing that I've been guilty of.
I think that maybe where I'm sitting is a matter of semantics. Does "God" = "meaning"? Higher purpose? A feeling of being special?
It seems like few people are truly accepting of the fundamental meaningless of life. Not that they tie themselves to a certain god, but generally something. I see it in "Vegans" (I say this as someone who was "vegan" for decades) and the modern Doomers who think they live in The End Times. (Climate catastrophists, AI worshipers / fearers, etc.)
OTOH, I'm probably overweighting this because I see it online. Most people just go about their days.
OTOOH, where does tribalism come in? The need for "our team" to win....
(I'm just rambling. Sorry.)
The timing of your post is particularly good, given that my wife and I just started this
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.
So I have a lot to say about it as a spiritually oriented atheists, and first of all I really hate that the spiritual experience is so tightly woven with metaphysical claims. If we assume natural metaphysics people will still have spiritual experiences, and they do not require transcendental entities. Suzuki had this term "trans-descendence" to describe zen approach to spiritual experience that I think does great job of rethinking the Platonic oriented traditions. Naturalism doesn't falsify spiritual experience, only religious doctrines that.
To add to that I really want to emphasize the third point, philosophically speaking there is no connection between spiritual experience and morality. They are orthogonal and in meta-ethics there is this debate between external and internal reasons, and basically even if there were god given commands, they would've provide only external reasons and thus were not valid commands at all. So religions might have their moral doctrines but I view them as a side effect of social norms elevated via proximity.
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 think the size of the "hole" could depend on the surrounding community. For example, a kid raised in a secular household where the majority of their peers are either Catholic or non-denominational-rock-star-church (as I like to call them) has a harder time connecting and relating to them, and often are left out or just not included. You cover this clearly in your footnote, with it being more of a yearning for social connection, but it's legitimate because those communities don't separate the two. God is just as much the life-blood of their social groups, matched to life events (baptism, first communion, marriage, schooling, social events etc.) as it is a spiritual deity. The spiritual experiences that many have in these environments (not by accident, and optimized by thousands of years of trial and error) are often harder to come by if you do not participate - yet they hear of it and possibly feel left out of it. Especially when going though hard times.
I'm not disagreeing at all - just thinking through it a bit and adding some personal context.
I meant to add the contrast to a kid who grows up in a more secular who does not feel these kinds of pressures and therefore possibly has a smaller or even non-existent hole.
Great article. I have never felt any of the things you're talking about personally. In fact I feel a repulsion to them all. But I do see people who seem very obviously drawn to it. Maybe it's a spandrel from some other traits that helped in evolution? Maybe those people just assume that everybody must feel the way they do, so they project it onto everyone else and can't imagine being any other way?
Isn’t the evolutionary argument that people band together much more tightly when they share a unifying set of beliefs, and religious beliefs are a naturally evolved way to create these strong teams? They win wars, they sacrifice for each other that much harder, etc
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.
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
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 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.
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?
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.
It's interesting to see how the God's moral views evolve and mirror the human worshipers morality over time.
Paul, is it feasible that humans would “evolve” an arbiter (with agreed upon authority) to settle within tribe disputes? I’m curious as to your thoughts here.
Thanks Paul. This is very interesting. It cuts through some lazy phrasing that I've been guilty of.
I think that maybe where I'm sitting is a matter of semantics. Does "God" = "meaning"? Higher purpose? A feeling of being special?
It seems like few people are truly accepting of the fundamental meaningless of life. Not that they tie themselves to a certain god, but generally something. I see it in "Vegans" (I say this as someone who was "vegan" for decades) and the modern Doomers who think they live in The End Times. (Climate catastrophists, AI worshipers / fearers, etc.)
OTOH, I'm probably overweighting this because I see it online. Most people just go about their days.
OTOOH, where does tribalism come in? The need for "our team" to win....
(I'm just rambling. Sorry.)
The timing of your post is particularly good, given that my wife and I just started this
https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Must-Go-Stories-About/dp/152909593X
Take care.
This was excellent. Glad you got to hang with Tony , Sarah, and co.
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.
So I have a lot to say about it as a spiritually oriented atheists, and first of all I really hate that the spiritual experience is so tightly woven with metaphysical claims. If we assume natural metaphysics people will still have spiritual experiences, and they do not require transcendental entities. Suzuki had this term "trans-descendence" to describe zen approach to spiritual experience that I think does great job of rethinking the Platonic oriented traditions. Naturalism doesn't falsify spiritual experience, only religious doctrines that.
To add to that I really want to emphasize the third point, philosophically speaking there is no connection between spiritual experience and morality. They are orthogonal and in meta-ethics there is this debate between external and internal reasons, and basically even if there were god given commands, they would've provide only external reasons and thus were not valid commands at all. So religions might have their moral doctrines but I view them as a side effect of social norms elevated via proximity.
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 think the size of the "hole" could depend on the surrounding community. For example, a kid raised in a secular household where the majority of their peers are either Catholic or non-denominational-rock-star-church (as I like to call them) has a harder time connecting and relating to them, and often are left out or just not included. You cover this clearly in your footnote, with it being more of a yearning for social connection, but it's legitimate because those communities don't separate the two. God is just as much the life-blood of their social groups, matched to life events (baptism, first communion, marriage, schooling, social events etc.) as it is a spiritual deity. The spiritual experiences that many have in these environments (not by accident, and optimized by thousands of years of trial and error) are often harder to come by if you do not participate - yet they hear of it and possibly feel left out of it. Especially when going though hard times.
I'm not disagreeing at all - just thinking through it a bit and adding some personal context.
I meant to add the contrast to a kid who grows up in a more secular who does not feel these kinds of pressures and therefore possibly has a smaller or even non-existent hole.
Great article. I have never felt any of the things you're talking about personally. In fact I feel a repulsion to them all. But I do see people who seem very obviously drawn to it. Maybe it's a spandrel from some other traits that helped in evolution? Maybe those people just assume that everybody must feel the way they do, so they project it onto everyone else and can't imagine being any other way?
Isn’t the evolutionary argument that people band together much more tightly when they share a unifying set of beliefs, and religious beliefs are a naturally evolved way to create these strong teams? They win wars, they sacrifice for each other that much harder, etc