I think, on a generous reading of Kierkegaard's "Three stages of life" [1], I could probably say that Kierkegaard probably thought that way.

Also, interestingly, people like Dawkins himself seem to be waking up to this way of thinking. Right there on his YouTube channel [2] he has a video called "Is Religion Inevitable?" In it, Peter Boghossian states the "substitution hypothesis": As one form of deranged belief (of which he thinks religion is one kind) recedes, another (like wokism) expands to fill the void. Dawkins says he hadn't really thought of that before. He thinks it's plausible, and hopes it's wrong, because it would mean he has wasted his life. Of course there's a few steps missing to get from there to my position.

The first is that they call it "deranged belief", where I call it "religion". But it would make a lot more sense, if the substitution hypothesis simply was: As one form of religion recedes, another expands to fill the void.

The second element that's missing is that they can't get themselves to be optimistic about it, which I am. I believe, religion can be a good thing if it's done well, which, usually, it's not, which is where I too am a pessimist, so the two positions aren't that far apart after all.

And third: If it were me debating Dawkins, and I wanted to make the debate really interesting, I would confront him with the idea that the hypothesis might apply to individuals. As one person denies his religiosity, a new religiosity will take hold within him to fill the void, that he may not even recognize as such. And by implication Dawkins himself has been religious all his life without knowing it. There is even a word for what Dawkins' religion would be if that were the case, and that word is "scientism" [3].

Finally, I want to mention the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams who is a heavy hitter not just as a religious leader but also a public intellectual with strong ties to academia, including science. I recall him saying in a sermon that religion, if it's treated as if it were science, makes for very bad science. That's how you get stupid beliefs like creationism that seem to be the thing that people like Dawkins are primarily bothered by. But also: Science, if it's treated as if it were a religion, makes for a very bad religion. And, in my mind, that's an interesting way of characterizing a lot of the problems facing society at the moment.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_S%C3%B8ren_Kierk...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgJ9-othjJk 3:09

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientism