Paul Bloom at Small Potatoes:
We are born with a yearning for the spiritual and transcendent, and the difficult truths about life that we learn about as we grow older—such as the inevitability of death and the existence of terrible injustices—further push us towards faith. Without religion, or something close enough to religion, we are unhappy and unsatisfied. Blaise Pascal was wise when he said that secular pursuits can’t quench our thirst—“the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.” As it’s sometimes put, there is a God-shaped hole that we all need to fill.
I know a lot of people who believe all this. But I’m becoming increasingly confident that all of the above sentences are false.
There was always reason to be skeptical. For one thing, the idea of inborn spiritual yearning never made much evolutionary sense.
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.