The majority of the humans on the planet believe in things that cannot be seen, proven, or experienced. As stated multiple times on this site, regardless of the original reasons, these beliefs survive today for two simple ideas: indoctrination and Pavlovian conditioning. 

 

Believers love to describe their experience as having a hole filled by their religion. This is especially true for someone that has left a belief system but is having a hard time adjusting. Believers will point to any distress and try and say that this is because they need the hole filled with God. This is incorrect for two reasons. 

 

Christianity survives for the reasons of indoctrination and conditioning, as any other religion, but the conditioning itself is what creates in Christians the sense that they need something from Christianity—whether salvation itself, or a relationship with Jesus, or ‘foundation for morality,’ or the idea of an afterlife—the list can go on indefinitely. The Christian worldview has successfully been implanted into one’s brain when they are convinced that they are missing something without it. This is the hole created by religion. 

 

There are a growing number of people worldwide that are being born to parents who either do not practice a faith or are not interested in indoctrinating their children. Children who are raised in a household where science is valued and evidence is required to determine what is and isn’t real can be found in cultures all over the planet. All it takes is talking to a single well-adjusted nonbeliever to realize that they have no experience of a ‘hole that needs to be filled.’ As the number of such nonbelievers continues to grow, the evidence for the ‘God-shaped hole’ is evaporating. 

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If you have left Christianity and find yourself experiencing a 'hole,' there are two things to recognize. Firstly, that hole is an illusion created by the religion itself. Secondly, if you understand that but still feel like something is missing, you simply need to find the things that you thought Christianity provided you and replace them with real-world alternatives. Meaning, morality, peace about death--all are readily available in the natural world without needing to believe in fairytales. Check out the Good Reason section of the site for more.