I’d have to chime in with the first anonymous person, who said:
Eliezer, there is evience that people do have a God-shaped hole in their minds.
In fact there are even scientists who are trying to find evolutionary psychology based explanations for why religious memes co-evolved with specific brain faculties that make us susceptible to them. To put it simply: we may all have a religion shaped hole in our heads, because it may have been adaptive to have them in our Era of Evolutionary Adaptedness. For example:
I’d have to chime in with the first anonymous person, who said:
Eliezer, there is evience that people do have a God-shaped hole in their minds.
In fact there are even scientists who are trying to find evolutionary psychology based explanations for why religious memes co-evolved with specific brain faculties that make us susceptible to them. To put it simply: we may all have a religion shaped hole in our heads, because it may have been adaptive to have them in our Era of Evolutionary Adaptedness. For example:
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10875666
So when you sway this:
Eliezer: If I get tears in my eyes at a space shuttle launch, it doesn’t mean I’m trying to fill a hole left by religion
you may very well be wrong: you may not realize that you are trying to fill a religion shaped hole, but you are.