"The hole in the soul." Plenty of people have a need to escape reality. Some people look to drugs or alcohol or sex or gambling. Others find their happiness in a belief that makes them smarter and braver than anyone else.

Yeah, exactly. This is why I get annoyed when people say it's "harmless fun" when talking about homeopathy, or astrology or whatever. All pseudoscience is dangerous to society for the exact reason you just laid out. It promotes magical thinking over critical thinking, and next thing you know, you've got people buying 100% into shit that has been continuously disproven over and over for hundreds of years.

Every adult human should be required to read, A Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan. He does a much better job than I ever could at explaining why this is an issue.

The "Invisible Dragon in my Garage" is one of my favorite essays in the book, and played a huge role in influencing how I went about questioning, and ultimately leaving, the faith I was raised in. You can find the entirety of that essay if you search his name and the title of the essay. It's not very long, but boy did he have a way of putting things into words that could just make things click.