(Also, I don't quite understand what part of my post can be interpreted as suggesting to "act as though religion is the "real thing," or that scientific worldview is a quick-and-easy hole filler -- it obviously isn't. Perhaps I wasn't clear enough -- I'm not a native English speaker.)

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you were implying that religion is epistemically the real thing. More that...our sense of sweetness is supposed to detect sugar. Sugar is the real referent of our pleasure in sweet-tasting things, while something like sucralose is simply a substitute, a way of replacing it. I worry that by saying "God-shaped hole," we imply that the supernatural -- whether or not it exists -- really is the original referent of the desires which religion exploits. This could be true, but I do not think it is, and I do not think it is a point we should concede just yet.