Theism is a symptom of epistemic deficiency. Atheism follows from epistemic sufficiency, but not all atheists are rational or sane. The epistemically virtuous do not believe on insufficient evidence, nor ignore or groundlessly dismiss evidence relevant to beliefs they hold.
That goes for both of you. The Litany of Tarsky is the correct attitude for a rationalist, and it’s about not thumbing the scales. If your brother were sane (to rationalist standards), he would not hold such a belief, given the state of readily available evidence. If he hasn’t figured this out, it’s either because he’s put his thumb on the scales or refuses to look. Organized religions (that have survived) teach their adherents not to look (ironically), and that it is virtuous to thumb the scales (faith), and that is something they have in common with cults, although not always to the same degree. These tactics are dark arts—symmetric weapons, that can promote any other beliefs (false or otherwise) just as easily.
If you feel like talking to him about it, but don’t want it to devolve into a debate, Street Epistemology is a pretty good approach. It can help dislodge irrational beliefs without attacking them directly, by instead promoting better epistemics (by Socratically poking holes in bad epistemics).
Theism is a symptom of epistemic deficiency. Atheism follows from epistemic sufficiency, but not all atheists are rational or sane. The epistemically virtuous do not believe on insufficient evidence, nor ignore or groundlessly dismiss evidence relevant to beliefs they hold.
That goes for both of you. The Litany of Tarsky is the correct attitude for a rationalist, and it’s about not thumbing the scales. If your brother were sane (to rationalist standards), he would not hold such a belief, given the state of readily available evidence. If he hasn’t figured this out, it’s either because he’s put his thumb on the scales or refuses to look. Organized religions (that have survived) teach their adherents not to look (ironically), and that it is virtuous to thumb the scales (faith), and that is something they have in common with cults, although not always to the same degree. These tactics are dark arts—symmetric weapons, that can promote any other beliefs (false or otherwise) just as easily.
If you feel like talking to him about it, but don’t want it to devolve into a debate, Street Epistemology is a pretty good approach. It can help dislodge irrational beliefs without attacking them directly, by instead promoting better epistemics (by Socratically poking holes in bad epistemics).
To answer your direct question, I think Privileging the Hypothesis is pretty relevant. Einstein’s Arrogance goes into more detail about the same key rationality concept of locating the hypothesis.