In his recent book, Secular Philosophy and the Religious Temperament, Nagel puts it this way: “Existence is something tremendous, and day-to-day life, however indispensable, seems an insufficient response to it, a failure of consciousness. Outrageous as it sounds, the religious temperament regards a merely human life as insufficient, as a partial blindness to or rejection of the terms of our existence. It asks for something more encompassing without knowing what it might be.”—Peter Watson

However, where get people this idea that there must be something out there?

“The very idea that belief is natural is historically rooted in an attempt by early modern scientists to find God in nature. Although the scientific methods we used have changed, some of the ideas keep coming back in different guises. Our studies here suggest that it is probably about time psychologists reconsider their understanding of belief as ‘natural’ or ‘intuitive’, and instead focus on cultural and social learning factors that give rise to supernatural ideas. Religious belief may be rooted in our society and culture (a sociocultural ‘meme’), rather than in some primitive gut intuition.”—Riikka Möttönen