Though it kind of implies that the first followers of any religion are the followers of a lone crackpot...

But you're right: religion is a very social phenomenon. I've wondered whether autistic types are less likely to buy in to it.

Several years ago I was deathly ill and the doctors had no idea what was wrong with me. For several weeks no one knew whether I was going to live or die.

God never crossed my mind. I can't begin to imagine how you think I would find it comforting to suddenly pin my hopes on your god, Marduk, the FSM, an IPU, Russell's Teapot, or anything else I don't actually believe in.

When it's really mild, you can close your eyes and imagine that you're on a train. Or think back to when you were a kid and slept on the back seat while Dad drove down that not-quite-perfect highway on the family vacation.

Also, if his Mom had died we'd be reading about it being God's inscrutable will rather than that God healed her.

IMO the common conceit that "God healed/rescued me/Granny", while letting all the others suffer and die, is the very pinnacle of arrogance.

He was too busy answering other people's prayers for a win in the big game, or for fine weather for the picnic, or to get laid.

People who aren't trying to bring science down to the level of their own superstitions would call it evidence-based.

Or when you look in the oven and see that your biscuits are brown, do you consider your conclusion that they're done to be a faith-based belief?

Or any of thousands of other evidence-based conclusions that you readily accept because they don't conflict with your religious beliefs.

But curiously, those same people reject like testimony from the followers of competing religions out of hand.

I think you haven't stumbled upon the explanation.

You're assuming that AI is supposed to mean something like HAL 9000. The overwhelming majority of AI researchers are just trying to figure out good ways to solve much smaller problems. A tiny minority are trying to model some behavioral or cognitive phenomenon. Only cranks and con artists are trying to make something like HAL 9000.

Some things AI researchers have been doing are being adopted for commerce and industry. And that appears to be accelerating.

No proof, but piles of evidence.

Let us know if you find a more reliable path to reality than evidence.

If I insisted that there were three invisible planets orbiting the sun between Jupiter and Saturn, most people would think I was a crackpot.

If I insisted that there was an invisible being that spoke the whole universe into being, plus a lot of other invisible stuff like Heaven and souls, most people would think I knew what I was talking about.

Go figure...

Huh? I thought it was just a bog-standard troll.

If I said it, I would mean "a world view based on evidence", as opposed to tradition, arbitrary assumptions, etc.

I hate turbulence too. But I remind myself of how many flights leave my airport every day and reach their destination safely.

Why should I have any more trouble believing in an uncaused universe than in an uncaused divinity?

Actually, the atheist assumes less, because s/he merely assumes the universe. The theist has to assume a god that can speak the universe into being. (Plus heaven, hell, souls, etc.)

Ockham says, cut out the middle man.