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Academian comments on The scourge of perverse-mindedness - Less Wrong
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I'm wondering whether your statement is true only when you substitute 'some people's' for 'our' in 'our psychology'. I don't feel a god-shaped emotional hole in my psyche. I'm inclined to believe byrenma's self report that she does. I've talked about this with my lapsed-catholic mother and she feels similarly but I just don't experience the 'loss' she appears to.
Whether this is because I never really experienced much of a religious upbringing (I was reading The Selfish Gene at 8, I've still never read the Bible) or whether it is something about our personality types or our knowledge of science I don't know but there appears to be an experience of 'something missing' in a materialist world view amongst some people that others just don't seem to have.
Do you take awe in the whole of humanity, Earth, or the universe as something greater than yourself? Does it please you to think that even if you die, the universe, life, or maybe even the human race will go on existing long afterward?
Maybe you don't feel the hole because you've already filled it :)
I've experienced an emotion I think is awe but generally only in response to the physical presence of something in the natural world rather than to sitting and thinking. Being on top of a mountain at sunrise, staring at the sky on a clear night, being up close to a large and potentially dangerous animal and other such experiences have produced the emotion but it is only evoked weakly if at all by sitting and contemplating the universe.
I don't think I have a very firm grip on the varieties of 'religious' experience. I am not really clear on the distinction between awe and wonder for example though I believe they are considered separate emotions.
I can't speak for mattnewport, but I don't take awe, as a rule - I just haven't developed a taste for it. I am occasionally awed, I admit - by acts of cleverness, bravery, or superlative skill, most frequently - but I am rarely rocked back on my heels by "goodness, isn't this universe huge!" and other such observations.