Myth:
Everyone has a God-shaped hole in their hearts; some fill it with God, but others rationalize their way through life and fill it with other things like money or sex.
Response:
The idea that we all have a "God-shaped hole" in our hearts or lives which can only be filled by God's eternal love, but which many try to fill with temporary and material things, has become popular with Christians. Ultimately, though, it's just a rephrasing the traditional argument from instinct: we all have an instinctual need or desire to believe in God, but this instinct wouldn't exist if God didn't also exist. Therefore, God exists and we should believe. This is not a sound argument.
What possible justification can Christians have for asserting what sort of "empty space" exists inside of people they doesn't know and have never met? None, frankly — and it's a bit arrogant of them to pretend otherwise. I certainly don't go around saying that Christians have a big "atheism shaped hole" in their hearts that they fill with rationalizations about their gods. I don't go around saying that religious theists have a big "skepticism shaped hole" in their minds that they fill with poorly reasoned arguments for supernatural beings. I don't presume to know what they "really" need, so why do they presume to know what I or other atheists need?
Some religious theists cite Pascal as a philosophical and religious authority who also claimed that there is a "God-shaped vacuum in all of us," but Pascal never said this. What Pascal really said was that we all have an innate desire to seek happiness: "All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end."
Whether this desire for happiness can or should be filled by religion or theism is another matter entirely, though Pascal did argue on behalf of that as well: "A trial so long, so continuous, and so uniform, should certainly convince us of our inability to reach the good by our own efforts. ...he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself. He only is our true good, and since we have forsaken him, it is a strange thing that there is nothing in nature which has not been serviceable in taking His place; ...And since man has lost the true good, everything can appear equally good to him, even his own destruction, though so opposed to God, to reason, and to the whole course of nature." (Pensees 6.425)
Some Christians cite the Bible as an authority for the idea that everyone really has a longing for God, but the Bible also frequently has disparaging things to say about the instincts and desires of humans. Atheists aren't likely to accept the Bible as any sort of authority on their own situation, but if we were to believe the Bible then we would find at least as much evidence or arguments against the existence of any innate longing for God or innate needs that can only be filled by God as we would evidence in favor of any of this.
Another problem with this myth is how the existence of other religions pose a difficult problem for its exclusivist claims. If there is a hole in all of our lives that is shaped like the Christian God, how is it that adherents of other religions manage to fill it so well with their beliefs? Maybe they are right and there is in fact a Brahman-shaped hole in our hearts, or perhaps an Odin-shaped hole in our lives. None of these alleged holes are any less (im)plausible than the alleged God-shaped hole which Christians talk about.
Then again, maybe none of these supernatural "holes" really exist in the first place. As Pascal describes, everyone has a basic desire for things like happiness, security, love, and comfort which are never entirely and fully satisfied. Isn't it far more likely that these natural, material desires are exploited by religions which claim to offer supernatural, immaterial solutions which are better than anything people can find in material lives. Since the payoff for these promises won't happen until after people die, and thus well past when anyone can complain, even the most outlandish and impossible promises can be made with little fear of contradiction.
