Philosophy with a deadline

Today I was walking home from dental x-rays (having taken a large detour to walk by the riverside) listening to the latest episode of the excellent Practical Stoicism podcast , where the topic of atheism was touched up upon. It got me tempted to write an entry about atheism and identity or something a bit broader, but it also got me thinking about the empirical question about the existence of God (an old favorite and a topic for yet another blog post). The crux of the matter is this: If we suppose an involved personal God, that theory makes predictions clearly different from predictions made by atheism/naturalism such as effectiveness of prayer in treating disease, and proposes experiments such as those described in Kings 18:16-40 : suffice to say most believers wouldn't dare to put these to the test. If we suppose a God that no longer interacts with the world or never did, this theory makes the exact same predictions as naturalism, but loses HARD due to the immense complexity pena

It has been observed by many, including such prestigious figures as Stephen Hawking , that philosophy does not seem to be advancing: they note that contemporary philosophers discuss very much the same things as the pre-Socratics, or that whatever advances have been made in philosophy cannot be credited to the philosophers themselves, but "actual scientists doing the real work" (my words, not anyone else's). I don't think that's an entirely fair assessment especially when it comes to usefulness of philosophy, but it is undeniably true that whereas physics (ever since it started its journey as a distinct field from natural philosophy) has undergone multiple revolutions each of which has only replaced already accurate and practically useful theories with an even deeper and more predictive ones, we still debate the merits and demerits of ideas by ancients who by now have been dead for two millenia. The prime reason for that, I think, is that science, and mathematics e