Cognitive Scientists: Unlikely Theists

In this post on Overcoming Bias, Eliezer Yudkowsky describes the incoherence of supernaturalism by basing it on Richard Carrier’s definition of the term, who also describes its incoherence. All religions (theistic or atheistic) suppose that the mind is ontological, and as one commenter at OB (poke) points out, this supposition is flatly proven false by cognitive science, thus almost certainly making it the strongest evidence against religion. Evolution doesn’t compare; some are always inclined to say that it does not exclude God; that it was God’s chosen method of crafting humans, despite it being a massive waste of time and an unnecessarily cruel and arbitrary path. But once you have at your hands the knowledge that the mind is an algorithmic process, comprised of parts that can be understood without invoking the whole, and being the mere label of a brain that processes information through electrochemical reactions, there’s no longer an excuse for the belief in God to remain sound.

And so it becomes quite the anomaly when one hears about cognitive scientists like Justin L. Barrett. Barrett says, “Christian theology teaches that people were crafted by God to be in a loving relationship with him and other people, why wouldn’t God, then, design us in such a way as to find belief in divinity quite natural?”

Of course, one could easily respond by saying, “Why are people so naturally nasty?” Isn’t that something that Christian theology teaches people not to do? Why not make people naturally nice too? And why are we designed to be so naturally suboptimal?

Then he says (?(because it’s not in quotes)) that “having a scientific explanation for mental phenomena does not mean we should stop believing in them.”

Defending against a possible non sequitur? Give me a break.