Having been born into a highly secular society and raised in an irreligious and agnostic family background, I have been an atheistic materialist and naturalist for most of my life until my late thirties, and was only interested in nature and natural sciences. Between 2004-2006 I developed a stronger popular science interest in modern physics (cosmology, relativity theory, and quantum mechanics), and read the bestselling books by David Deutsch, Brian Greene, John Gribbin, Richard Feynman, and Michio Kaku, as well as later by other physicist authors such as Sean Carroll and Max Tegmark. I soon came to realize fundamental philosophical problems concerning time, causality, laws of nature, and the effectiveness of mathematics. I also realized the hard problem of consciousness, the problem of reason (incl. intentionality / aboutness), the problem of universals (one and the many), the standard problem of free will, and the problem of objective morality, as well as the ultimate question “why is there anything rather than nothing”. This led to a spiritual journey beginning in 2006 and spanning about 15 years in search for a coherent world view, which implied the exploration of very different philosophical and metaphysical approaches like ontic structural realism and mathematical monism (ontological mathematics of Pythagorean Illuminism and its woke ripoff cult Hyperianism, Max Tegmark, Gary Drescher), pantheistic neopaganism (panpsychism, hylozooism, animism), Eastern philosophies like Daoism and Shintoism, non-dualism (Advaita Vedanta) and neoperennial integral thought (Ken Wilber), Whiteheadian panentheistic process thought, Bergsonian flux and Nietzschean flux (as well as perspectivism and will to power), monistic / quantum idealism (Amit Goswami, Johanan Raatz and Michael Jones from Inspiring Philosophy, Bernardo Kastrup), Neoplatonism with objective idealism (Timothy Sprigge, John Leslie), and classical theism. All these views turned out to be at least partly incoherent, incomplete, and unacceptable. I also thoroughly studied and evaluated the pro and con arguments for Christianity, esp. Roman Catholic (esp. Thomism) and Reformed theology, as well as Biblical exegesis and ANE history (just for the record: no, I was definitely not converted by my wife, who rather was a kind of Cafeteria Catholic and ‘Chreaster’).

I ultimately settled for the hyper-rationalist system of Pythagorean Illuminism (Ontological Mathematics) as described by Mike Hockney in the 32 books of the God Series (yes, I read them all cover to cover). I only beg to differ in the following three important points:

1.  I am convinced that given the primacy of the PSR, genuine contingency, such as the value of Planck's Constant, cannot be derived from pure mathematics and logical necessity (problem of modal collapse), but only from a necessarily existing infinite regress of contingent causes (similar to Bede Rundle's views). 
2. I do not consider the ultimate Monad or Singularity (‘God’) as a mere hive mind formed by the collective thoughts of all mathematical monads, but think that the latter have only virtual existence in the former. The world is a kind of mathematical simulation in mind at large, with finite minds being nothing but dissociated alters (sensu Bernardo Kastrup). This has also implications for the feasibility of sentient AI, which I affirm contrary to Hockney, Kastrup, Hoffman, and Tononi.
3. I do not think that Illuminism and Ontological Mathematics is incompatible with sophisticated forms of traditional religion, including Christianity (e.g., sensu Teilhard de Chardin, Richard Rohr, Frank Tipler, and Leibniz' monadology). Therefore, I disagree with Hockney's strong anti-Christian sentiment, but I explicitly reject all kinds of fundamentalist religion and blind faith, including Biblical literalism, as simplistic and naive cargo cults. I see Illuminism as a modern form of Neoplatonism, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, and Perennialism, as well the more esoteric traditions of the major world religions. It is also well compatible with the thought of Bernardo Kastrup's analytical idealism, Donald Hoffman's conscious realism, and Johanan Raatz' quantum idealism (note: I do not talk about “quantum woo” a la Deepak Chopra, but about the combination of the growing consensus in modern theoretical physics that spacetime is not fundamental but emergent from quantum entanglement, with Giulio Tononi's Integrated Information Theory as the leading secular theory of consciousness).

My ‘conversion’ from atheistic naturalism and materialism to an idealist word view did not involve any faith in holy scriptures or private religious experiences, but was exclusively based on reason and a careful critical evaluation of empirical evidence and philosophical arguments. However, I am also convinced that even without sophisticated arguments we can simply know as a properly basic belief that materialism is wrong and a universal mind exists as ground of all being. I am a rationalist and think that all answers to fundamental questions of ontology are only available to reason as necessary truths, and not to the senses as contingent empirical truths. My fundamental priority is a strict version of the principle of sufficient reason (PSR), as well as mathematics, the laws of logic, and Ockham's razor. The empirical scientific method is only of instrumental value for researching contingent spatiotemporal reality and of practical value for advancing technology and medicine.

I strongly reject the modern cults of atheistic naturalism (esp. ‘New Atheism’), eliminative materialism, functionalist physicalism, mechanistic determinism, and reductionistic scientism as incoherent, irrational, empirically refuted, and thus absurd dogmatic faiths, which are mostly based on sloppy argumentation and shallow philosophy (esp. among internet infidels), and ultimately imply detrimental nihilism.

Political position:

I am a techno-optimist and techno-utopian transhumanist, who endorses decentralized effective accelerationism (d/acc instead of e/acc). I have no doubt that every aspect of human society will be fundamentally impacted and transformed by the current AI revolution within the next decade, which eventually will bring about a technological singularity of AGI/ASI with an end of scarcity (super abundance) and end of human labour, requiring a major reformation of the current Western model of capitalist liberal democracy and the fiat money system (in favour of decentralized crypto-currency and blockchain technology). The old stereotypes of political left vs right or of capitalism vs socialism will become obsolete anachronisms with the AI revolution.

I support equality of opportunity but not equality of outcome, with reasonable limits to both ends of the wealth spectrum (e.g., a max. 10x difference between lowest and highest incomes). I endorse a kind of social free market system and resource based economy (as championed by the Venus Project and the Zeitgeist Movement) as best solution for sustainable human flourishing, which combines green growth with universal health care, universal education, and a citizen's dividend (universal / unconditional basic income aka UBI or even universal high income). I support a technocratic meritocracy (sensu Plato) and digital participatory democracy with e-government (supported by AI), preferably distributed in independent city-states. As fiscal system I endorse a 100% inheritance tax (with reasonable exemptions, and only if there is also UBI and free universal health care and education in place), very high property and income taxes for the super wealthy top 1%, very high taxes on profits from fully AI-automatized production (robot tax), low taxes for small and medium businesses, a land value tax (Georgism / Geoism), and Pigovian taxes on pollutants and unsustainable use of natural resources.

Concerning environmental issues, I endorse a positive anthropocene and promethean ‘bright green’ environmentalism (ecomodernism, cornucopian techno-optimism, technogaianism) and eco-capitalism (blue greens). This includes the general expansion of nuclear energy (esp. modern reactor designs for production of red hydrogen, SMRs, LFTRs, nuclear fusion) in addition to 100% renewable energies (with smart grid, sector coupling, and green hydrogen), deep seafloor mining for rare minerals (asteroid mining in the future), massive geo-engineering (esp. enhanced weathering with basalt), and negative emission technologies (BECCS and DACCS) to fight and reverse climate change, a major transition from self-owned ICE cars to on-demand self-driving EVs (TaaS), as well as a second green revolution with fully embracing GMOs, cellular agriculture (incl. lab-grown meat and precision fermentation dairy), and industrial vertical farming as solution to feeding 9-11 billion people in 2100, as well as even more urbanization with smart mega cities. The Paris climate goal to limit global warming below 2°C or even 1.5°C is totally unrealistic. It may be desirable but it is not going to happen. We will certainly also not get a runaway global warming of 5°C or above. We will have to accept a warming of 2.5-3°C by 2100 and adapt. This is bad, but not the end of the world. I strongly oppose climate alarmists, who scare young people into irrational fear of imminent human extinction. Overall, human life has never been better than today (the past was not better but just sucked). Generally, environmentalists have to abandon the delusional notion of preserving pristine wilderness and all of biodiversity, and instead embrace the pragmatic future of nature as a ‘well-tended garden’ for human enjoyment and recreation. Ultimately, the goal should not be the preservation of the limitations and suffering of biological reality but to overcome them.

I greatly appreciate the achievements of Western civilization and hate liberal leftism, wokesism, political correctness, cancel culture, SJWs, critical race theory, and crazy gender ideology and other forms of degenerate human stupidity. Therefore, I support right-wing populist parties like the AFD in Germany, the FPÖ in Austria, and Donald Trump's MAGA movement in USA, even though I disagree with some of their positions. I especially despise ecosocialist luddite hippies and prophets of doom and collapse, who dream of degrowth or even returning to the caves to save ‘mother Earth’ from the evil ‘cancer’ humanity. Gaia theory is romantic nonsense and the harsh truth is rather Peter Ward's Medea hypothesis: nature not only wants to sterilize Earth with mass extinctions, but wants 5 of 7 children dead before the age of 5, it wants you to be dead by the age of 50, and in the meantime it wants you to be mostly hungry, frightened, sick, and full of parasites. Anything better than that is thanks to modern science, technology, and evidence based medicine. I also concur with late Hans Rosling's brilliant statement that “humans never lived in harmony with nature, but died in harmony with nature”. Radical environmentalists with their anti-human and primitivist anti-civilizational attitudes are even more dangerous for the future of humanity than climate change denialists and stupid anti-vaxxers.