(The outline of McGilchrist’s thesis is here: https://jotsandscribbles.blog/2023/11/07/introduction-to-the-master-and-his-emissary/)
One of the ways McGilchrist is very helpful is that he exposes the lopsidedness of much atheistic philosophy and the new atheists. On page 170, he argues that the left and right hemispheres ways of thinking have different definitions of belief that mean many debates are people talking past each other.
170 the left hemisphere ‘s version of belief is that it is just absence of certainty. So belief is just a feeble form of knowing, as far as it is concerned.
But belief in terms the right hemisphere is different, because its disposition towards the world is different. For it, belief is a matter of care: it describes a relationship, where there is a calling and answering, the root concept of responsibility.
It is an acting as if certain things were true about you that in the nature of things cannot be certain.
The New atheists acted as if religious faith were a feeble form of knowing, uncertainty to be replaced with the certainty that science gives. But this ignores the faith stance towards the world that atheists have. Everyone has a faith disposition towards the world. “All knowledge, particularly scientific knowledge, is no more than acting ‘as if’ certain models were, for the time being, true.”
Jots and Scribbles 