Actually we have theory-of-mind shaped holes in the brain. I don't have an iPhone, and I haven't seen a live demonstration of the Siri app yet, but the commercials and videos about Siri I've seen on YouTube show that it doesn't take much to trick the theory of mind into treating Siri as a person.
Gods make me think of Siri-like apps. People attribute the theory of mind to their "god apps," and they try to communicate with these apps through worship, prayer, the study of obscure scriptures and the infliction of self-harm, as David Hume describes in my post below.
I believe that and agree that it's gotta be a major factor in driving god-belief and other types of animism (it's one of the brain-holes I'm talking about). Yet, religion seems to be a superset -- and sometimes a large one -- of god-belief. There's seemingly more to explain. There are likely several other brain-holes involved here.
Today's post, Is Humanism A Religion-Substitute? was originally published on 26 March 2008. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Amazing Breakthrough Day: April 1st, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.