Why belief isn’t illogical: A conversation with an atheist peer

I have many colleagues in the IT industry who have a decided distaste for religious belief.

This is quite understandable because the IT industry attracts people who are more inclined to rely on deduction. Deduction involves applying a general premise to a specific observation in order to reach a logical conclusion. A general premise might be, for example, that "all autonomous vehicles use advanced sensor technology" which you apply to a specific observation that "Tesla's self-driving cars are autonomous vehicles", leading you to a logical conclusion: "Tesla's self-driving cars use advanced sensor technology".

In contrast, for everyday life and religious belief, we are all more reliant on a different but equally valid form of reasoning, known as induction.