I have found that the logical approach like this one works much more rarely than it doesn’t, simply because it appears that people can manage not to trust reason, or to doubt the validity of the (more or less obvious) inferences involved.
Additionally, belief is so emotional that even people who see all the logic, and truly seem to appreciate that believing in God is completely silly, still can’t rid themselves of the belief. It’s like someone who knows household spiders are not dangerous in any way and yet are more terrified of them than, say, an elephant.
Perhaps what’s needed in addition to this is a separate “How to eschew the idea of god from your brain” guide. It would include practical advice collected from various self-admitted ex-believers. Importantly, I think people who have never believed should avoid contributing to such a guide unless they have reasons to believe that they have an extraordinary amount of insight into a believer’s mind.
To expand a bit on the first paragraph, I feel that such reasonable arguments are to many people about the same as the proof of Poincaré conjecture is to me: I fully understand the proposition, but I’m not nearly smart enough to follow the proof sufficiently well to be confident it’s right.
Importantly, I can also follow the outline of the proof, to see how it’s intended to work, but this is of course insufficient to establish the validity of the proof.
So the only real reason I happen to trust this proof is that I already have a pre-established trust in the community who reviewed the proof. But of course the same is also true of a believer who has a pre-established trust in the theist community.
So the guide would require a section on “how to pick authorities to trust”, which would explain why it’s necessary (impractical to verify everything yourself) and why the scientific community is the best one to trust (highest rate of successful predictions and useful conclusions).
I have found that the logical approach like this one works much more rarely than it doesn’t, simply because it appears that people can manage not to trust reason, or to doubt the validity of the (more or less obvious) inferences involved.
Additionally, belief is so emotional that even people who see all the logic, and truly seem to appreciate that believing in God is completely silly, still can’t rid themselves of the belief. It’s like someone who knows household spiders are not dangerous in any way and yet are more terrified of them than, say, an elephant.
Perhaps what’s needed in addition to this is a separate “How to eschew the idea of god from your brain” guide. It would include practical advice collected from various self-admitted ex-believers. Importantly, I think people who have never believed should avoid contributing to such a guide unless they have reasons to believe that they have an extraordinary amount of insight into a believer’s mind.
To expand a bit on the first paragraph, I feel that such reasonable arguments are to many people about the same as the proof of Poincaré conjecture is to me: I fully understand the proposition, but I’m not nearly smart enough to follow the proof sufficiently well to be confident it’s right.
Importantly, I can also follow the outline of the proof, to see how it’s intended to work, but this is of course insufficient to establish the validity of the proof.
So the only real reason I happen to trust this proof is that I already have a pre-established trust in the community who reviewed the proof. But of course the same is also true of a believer who has a pre-established trust in the theist community.
So the guide would require a section on “how to pick authorities to trust”, which would explain why it’s necessary (impractical to verify everything yourself) and why the scientific community is the best one to trust (highest rate of successful predictions and useful conclusions).