Yes, this is what I believed for a while before I saw that Occam’s razor showed that if a universe could exist entirely on its own without God, the hypothesis without a deity would be favored.
Not necessarily. It can also be a shift away from receptiveness to evidence.
I haven’t kept careful track of the paths taken by all the people I’ve known who’ve converted from theism to atheism (I sometimes wish I had,) but I have noted that it often comes as a result of taking their religions more seriously and seeing them as sets of beliefs with real factual implications, which should pay rent in anticipated experiences, and then realizing that they simply don’t match up to reality. For some people, deism represents a retreat from ever having to think about the implications of their beliefs.
Yes, this is what I believed for a while before I saw that Occam’s razor showed that if a universe could exist entirely on its own without God, the hypothesis without a deity would be favored.
True. But you don’t have to go all the way there in one talk. A shift from theism to deism is a step in the right direction.
Not necessarily. It can also be a shift away from receptiveness to evidence.
I haven’t kept careful track of the paths taken by all the people I’ve known who’ve converted from theism to atheism (I sometimes wish I had,) but I have noted that it often comes as a result of taking their religions more seriously and seeing them as sets of beliefs with real factual implications, which should pay rent in anticipated experiences, and then realizing that they simply don’t match up to reality. For some people, deism represents a retreat from ever having to think about the implications of their beliefs.