Why I Don’t Care about Atheism vs. Theism Arguments Anymore

This used to be a blog about the arguments for and against theism and atheism.

You may have noticed I don’t talk about those subjects anymore.

Instead I write about math and the cognitive science of belief-formation and decision-making.

Why?

The reason I’m an atheist isn’t because of the argument from evil or from unbelief or from inconsistent revelations or anything. No, the reason I’m an atheist is because theism drastically fails Solomonoff induction.

If I want to pull somebody away from magical thinking, I don’t need to mention atheism. Instead, I teach them Kolmogorov complexity and Bayesian updating. I show them the many ways our minds trick us. I show them the detailed neuroscience of human decision-making. I show them that we can see (in the brain) a behavior being selected up to 10 seconds before a person is consciously aware of ‘making’ that decision. I explain timelessness.

And if they have time to consume enough math and science, then The God Question just fades away as not even a question worth talking about.

I don’t have any specialized arguments against fairies like ‘the argument from fairy-unbelief.’ But it’s obvious that the fairy explanation for anything badly fails Solomonoff induction. When you know enough math and cognitive science and physics, The Fairy Question just doesn’t even come up.