Will Gervais: I’ve got a book out soon, grandiosely entitled “Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species.” What’s my book all about, you ask? A thread 🧵👇 www.amazon.com/Disbelief-Or...

I’ve got a book out soon, grandiosely entitled “Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species.” What’s my book all about, you ask? A thread 🧵👇 www.amazon.com/Disbelief-Or...

Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species: Gervais Ph.D, Will M.: 9781633889248: Amazon.com: Bookswww.amazon.com Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species [Gervais Ph.D, Will M.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species

Humans do lots of peculiar things (think: hot dog eating contests, parliaments). But religion stands out as truly exceptional. I argue that religion isn’t so much *an evolutionary puzzle* that we need to solve, it’s 2 intertwined puzzles. I call them The Puzzle of Faith and the Puzzle of Atheism.

The Puzzle of Faith is about the simultaneous uniqueness and ubiquity of religion – how we became the only religious species. What are the cultural and evolutionary pressures that have most members of our species, and no members of other species, worshipping their gods? Why religion and why us?

The Puzzle of Atheism, on the other hand, is about the large and growing number of people for whom religion holds no real appeal. Atheists – merely folks who don’t believe in a God or gods – very clearly do exist in our otherwise universally religious species. What’s the deal with atheists?

Beyond these two puzzles, Disbelief also has a recurring subtheme about belief and disbelief in our own knowledge, in our scientific tools and conclusions. In how we ask questions or our world and (at the best of times) only imperfectly listen to its answers. In short: science is fucking hard.

Now for a brief roadmap of the book! We’ve got ~4ish major sections. A cool 15 chapters.

Before trying to solve the intertwined Puzzles of Faith and Atheism, we need to clear our workspace of popular ideas that *don’t quite* solve them.

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