I like this article (but then I liked Dennet’s ideas of belief in belief right from the start) and I’ve been thinking about this off and on all day.
But I think perhaps Eliezer over-analyses: On the surface this person’s beliefs and thoughts seem fuzzy, so Eliezer admiraly digs deeper—but perhaps it’s just fuzz all the way down.
Perhaps she believes P and ~P, perhaps she believes P>Q and she believes P but she beleives ~Q.
Perhaps you just have to shrug, and move on.
My experience is that most religious people give very, very, very little thought to what they actually believe. (About 10,000th of the introspection that Eliezer performs, say :-) ) and analysing it terms of doctrine, beliefs (or indeed impressions) is simply using the wrong tools. Perhaps better to think about emotions invovled in ‘being religious’ and being ‘part of’ a religion.
Eliezer asks “how did you come to rationality?” It surprises me how many people answer: “this is how I lost my religion”
Clearly you can’t be rationalist, while also being religious, but there is a more to rationality than simply absence of religion..
Anyway… personally: there’s no one moment, but I’m a natural born sceptic and persistently urious analyst. Perhaps rationality attracted because it seems like methodical, organised, analytical scepticism
Single biggest book: Hofstadter’s G-E-B, right when it first came out. I just didn’t know there could be a book like that....