Sometimes a God-shaped hole is just a cigar.

then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said, touch grass

“But if there is a lack, Martha?” said Dolly. “Then it ought not to be filled,” said Martha. “If it’s a real lack, it’s a necessary hollow in life that can’t be stuffed up, like a chicken. Insufficiency. Shortcoming. I don’t need God as a measure to feel that. Do you, Dolly?” “God, no!” said Dolly.

—Mary McCarthy, A Charmed Life

Religious people, by and large, prefer miserable atheists—like Philip Larkin, or Ingmar Bergman. I don’t think this is for the obvious reason necessarily (i.e., all things being equal, you prefer people who disagree with you to be miserable rather than happy). I think it’s more the sense that a miserable atheist agrees with religious people about the world: they feel the insufficiency of it all, too. They just don’t have anything else.

The other reason is that if you’re a religious person with a list of favorite atheists, you’re probably somewhat intellectual, and intellectual people, whether religious or secular, prefer miserable people. I assume this is some f…