A Manual for Creating Atheists

by Peter Boghossian

  Hellenistic philosophers fought against the superstitions of their time. Lucretius, Sextus Empiricus, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and others combated the religious authorities of their period, including early versions of Christianity (Clarke, 1968; Nussbaum, 1994). They thought the most important step was to liberate people from fear of tortures of the damned and from fear that preachers of their epoch were spouting. Hellenistic philosophers were trying to encourage stoic self-sufficiency, a sense of self-responsibility, and a tough-minded humanism.

  Street Epistemology is a vision and a strategy for the next generation of atheists, skeptics, humanists, philosophers, and activists. Left behind is the idealized vision of wimpy, effete philosophers: older men in jackets with elbow patches, smoking pipes, stroking their white, unkempt beards. Gone is cowering to ideology, orthodoxy, and the modern threat of political correctness.

  Enter the Street Epistemologist: an articulate, clear, helpful voice with an unremitting desire to help people overcome their faith and to create a better world—a world that uses intelligence, reason, rationality, thoughtfulness, ingenuity, sincerity, science, and kindness to build the future; not a world built on faith, delusion, pretending, religion, fear, pseudoscience, superstition, or a certainty achieved by keeping people in a stupor that makes them pawns of unseen forces because they’re terrified.

  The Street Epistemologist is a philosopher and a fighter. She has savvy and street smarts that come from the school of hard knocks. She relentlessly helps others by tearing down falsehoods about whatever enshrined “truths” enslave us.1

  But the Street Epistemologist doesn’t just tear down fairytales, comforting delusions, and imagined entities. She offers a humanistic vision. Let’s be blunt, direct, and honest with ourselves and with others. Let’s help people develop a trustfulness of reason and a willingness to reconsider, and let’s place rationality in the service of humanity. Street Epistemology offers a humanism that’s taken some hits and gained from experience. This isn’t Pollyanna humanism, but a humanism that’s been slapped around and won’t fall apart. Reason and rationality have endurance. They don’t evaporate the moment you get slugged. And you will get slugged.2

  The immediate forerunners to Street Epistemologists were “the Four Horsemen,” each of whom contributed to identifying a part of the problem with faith and religion. American neuroscientist Sam Harris articulated the problems and consequences of faith. British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins explained the God delusion and taught us how ideas spread from person to person within a culture. American philosopher Daniel Dennett analyzed religion and its effects as natural phenomena. British-American author Christopher Hitchens divorced religion from morality and addressed the historical role of religion. The Four Horsemen called out the problem of faith and religion and started a turn in our thinking and in our culture—they demeaned society’s view of religion, faith, and superstition, while elevating attitudes about reason, rationality, Enlightenment, and humanistic values.

  The Four Horsemen identified the problems and raised our awareness, but they offered few solutions. No roadmap. Not even guideposts. Now the onus is upon the next generation of thinkers and activists to take direct and immediate action to fix the problems Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, and Hitchens identified.

  A Manual for Creating Atheists is a step beyond Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens, and Dennett. A Manual for Creating Atheists offers practical solutions to the problems of faith and religion through the creation of Street Epistemologists—legions of people who view interactions with the faithful as clinical interventions designed to disabuse them of their faith.

  Hitchens may be gone, but no single individual will take his place. Instead of a replacement Horseman, there are millions of Horsemen ushering in a new Enlightenment and an Age of Reason. You, the reader, will be one of these Horsemen. You will become a Street Epistemologist. You will transform a broken world long ruled by unquestioned faith into a society built on reason, evidence, and thought-out positions. This is work that needs to be done and work that will pay off by potentially helping millions—even billions—of people to live in a better world.

  For the reader eager to get started talking others out of their faith, the tendency will be to skip to chapter 4. This is a mistake. The early chapters are designed to give you an understanding of the mechanism of belief. Effective interventions depend upon understanding core ideas and definitions covered in chapters 2 and 3.

  NOTES

  Other falsehoods include faith as a virtue; the importance of passionate belief; radical subjectivity; cognitive, cultural, and epistemological relativism; metaphysical entities that scrutinize and then ultimately punish or reward us; men who allegedly received revelations in the desert, or through golden plates; not blaspheming and being sensitive and respectful to the faith-based delusions of others; feeling shame in not knowing; unreflective injecting of pervasive egalitarianism into our judgments; unsupported beliefs about what happens to us after we die, etc.

  On September 10, 2010, my friend, Steven Brutus, gave the graduation speech for The Art Institute of Portland at the Gerding Theater in Portland, Oregon. I’ve included portions of it here because it perfectly sums up the vision of Street Epistemology:

  Hard-boiled means that you look at things straight on. You play it straight. You don’t sugarcoat it, you don’t play it cute, you don’t pull your punches. You look at the cold, hard truth. You lay things out truthfully. That’s your healthy skepticism. You become the investigator—you have to be your own private investigator—you’re the detective—so you better learn how to handle yourself. You’re going to go to some tough places, the other side of the tracks, and there’s going to be some bad guys around—some tough cookies, some palookas and gorillas and femme fatales and some snakes… .

  The tough guy adheres to a moral code in a world that has no moral code. It has no moral values—basically no values at all. The tough son-of-a-bitch stands for something, unlike pretty much everything around him. He’s a stand-up guy in a sit-down, shut-up world. Philip Marlowe in particular is all about hanging on to his decency and humanity in a world that’s chipping away at his soul, at his spirit and honor. The tough-guy hero is always an exception, a lone wolf—she’s independent, strong, brave, self-reliant—they’re a little bit on the outside, they’re isolated, estranged, they’re out there on the margins—pretty close to amoral territory. But he’s always got a stance, a code, a worldview. They’ve seen it all—not much shocks them—they’ve been around the block—these are principled people… .

  What makes them the exception is that they’re tough, they hang in there, they won’t go down for the count. But not just that—it’s also that they’re fighting for something—fighting the good fight—they’re not in it for themselves—they’re principled, they’ve got their pride, their honor, their dignity. But they never talk about it. They don’t tell you how great they are, they don’t tell you what great stuff they’re doing for you—they just do it. They don’t preach. They act.

  [T]he tough guy hero is “inner directed”—he has what psychologists call an “inner locus of control”—the opposite of an “external locus of control”—he’s not going to worry too much about what the next guy thinks of him. He knows that he’s got to get his game face on, tough things out on his own, stand on his own two feet, put his pants on one leg at a time.

  I am … talk[ing] about toughening up and finding some strength in yourself to be self-confident and able to take some hits and to stay in the game—to come back from setbacks—to be resilient.

  Socrates … said that wisdom is the key to happiness. Socrates was a skeptic about happiness, because we do not possess wisdom—no one he knows has wisdom. I guess I should say that whatever it is that you have learned from teachers—including me—and I hope it is a great deal—it is not wisdom. That you will have to search for in the school of hard knocks and—if you find it—it’s going to be something you earn on your own—you’ll have to lear
n it on your own—it will also be on your own terms. But tell the rest of us about it, if you find it—tell everyone—help as many people as you can.

  CHAPTER 2

  FAITH

  This chapter has two parts. The first part clears up the terms “faith,” “atheist,” and “agnostic.” It does so by offering two definitions of faith: “belief without evidence” and “pretending to know things you don’t know.” It then disambiguates “faith” from “hope.” Once the meanings of these terms have been clarified, the second part of the chapter articulates faith as an epistemology, underscores the fact that faith claims are knowledge claims, and then briefly articulates the problems and dangers of faith.

  THE MEANING OF WORDS: FAITH, ATHEIST, AND AGNOSTIC

  As a Street Epistemologist, you’ll find subjects will attempt to evade your help by asserting that every definition of faith offered is incorrect and that you “just don’t understand” what faith really is.

  When pressed, the faithful will offer vague definitions that are merely transparent attempts to evade criticism, or simplistic definitions that intentionally muddy the meaning of “faith.” More common still are what Horseman Daniel Dennett terms “deepities.”

  A deepity is a statement that looks profound but is not. Deepities appear true at one level, but on all other levels are meaningless. Here are some examples of deepities:

  “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

  “Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.” (Alma 32:21)1

  “Faith is the act in which reason reaches ecstatically beyond itself.” (Tillich, 1957, p. 87)

  “Faith is faith in the living God, and God is and remains a mystery beyond human comprehension. Although the ‘object’ of our faith, God never ceases to be ‘subject.’” (Migliore, 1991, p. 3)

  “Making faith-sense tries to wed meaning and facts. You can start with either one, but it is important to include the claims of both.” (Kinast, 1999, p. 7)

  “Having faith is really about seeking something beyond faith itself.” (McLaren, 1999, p. 3)

  … and additionally, virtually every statement made by Indian-American physician Deepak Chopra. For example, Chopra’s tweets on February 7, 2013, read:

  “The universe exists in awareness alone.”

  “God is the ground of awareness in which the universe arises & subsides”

  “All material objects are forms of awareness within awareness, sensations, images, feelings, thoughts”

  One could easily fill an entire book with faith deepities—many, many authors have. Christians in particular have created a tradition to employ deepities, used slippery definitions of faith, and hidden behind unclear language since at least the time of Augustine (354–430).

  The word “faith” is a very slippery pig. We need to get our hands on it, pin it to the ground, and wrap a blanket around it so we can have something to latch onto before we finally and permanently subdue it. Malleable definitions allow faith to slip away from critique.2

  Two Definitions of Faith

  The words we use are important. They can help us see clearly, or they can confuse, cloud, or obscure issues. I’ll now offer my two preferred definitions of faith, and then disambiguate faith from hope.3

  faith /fTH/

  1. Belief without evidence.

  “My definition of faith is that it’s a leap over the probabilities. It fills in the gap between what is improbable to make something more probable than not without faith. As such, faith is an irrational leap over the probabilities.”

  —John W. Loftus, “Victor Reppert Now Says He Doesn’t Have Faith!” (Loftus, 2012)

  If one had sufficient evidence to warrant belief in a particular claim, then one wouldn’t believe the claim on the basis of faith. “Faith” is the word one uses when one does not have enough evidence to justify holding a belief, but when one just goes ahead and believes anyway.

  Another way to think about “belief without evidence” is to think of an irrational leap over probabilities.4 For example, assume that an historical Jesus existed and was crucified, and that his corpse was placed in a tomb. Assume also that eyewitness accounts were accurate, and days later the tomb was empty.

  One can believe the corpse was missing for any number of reasons. For example, one can believe the body arose from the dead and ascended to heaven, one can believe aliens brought the body back to life, or one can believe an ancient spirit trapped in the tomb merged with the corpse and animated it. Belief in any of these claims would require faith because there’s insufficient evidence to justify any one of these particular options. Belief in any of these claims would also disregard other, far more likely possibilities—for example, that the corpse was stolen, hidden, or moved.

  If one claims knowledge either in the absence of evidence, or when a claim is contradicted by evidence, then this is when the word “faith” is used. “Believing something anyway” is an accurate definition of the term “faith.”

  faith /fTH/

  2. Pretending to know things you don’t know.

  Not everything that’s a case of pretending to know things you don’t know is a case of faith, but cases of faith are instances of pretending to know something you don’t know.5 For example, someone who knows nothing about baking a cake can pretend to know how to bake a cake, and this is not an instance of faith. But if someone claims to know something on the basis of faith, they are pretending to know something they don’t know. For example, using faith would be like someone giving advice about baking cookies who has never been in a kitchen.

  As a Street Epistemologist, whenever you hear the word “faith,” just translate this in your head as, “pretending to know things you don’t know.” While swapping these words may make the sentence clunky, “pretending to know things you don’t know” will make the meaning of the sentence clearer.

  To start thinking in these terms, the following table contains commonly heard expressions using the word “faith” in column one, and the same expressions substituted with the words “pretending to know things you don’t know” in column two.

  “FAITH”

  “PRETENDING TO KNOW THINGS YOU DON’T KNOW”

  “My faith is beneficial for me.”

  “Pretending to know things I don’t know is beneficial for me.”

  “I have faith in God.”

  “I pretend to know things I don’t know about God.”

  “Life has no meaning without faith.”

  “Life has no meaning if I stop pretending to know things I don’t know.”

  “I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.”

  “I don’t pretend to know things I don’t know enough to be an atheist.”

  Alternatively, if atheist is defined as “a person who doesn’t pretend to know things he doesn’t know about the creation of the universe,” the sentence then becomes, “I don’t pretend to know things I don’t know enough to be a person who pretends to know things he doesn’t know about the creation of the universe.”

  “You have faith in science.”

  “You pretend to know things you don’t know about science.”

  “You have faith your spouse loves you.”

  “You pretend to know things you don’t know about your spouse’s love.”

  “If everyone abandoned their faith, society would devolve morally.”

  “If everyone stopped pretending to know things they don’t know, society would devolve morally.”

  “My faith is true for me.”

  “Pretending to know things I don’t know is true for me.”

  “Why should people stop having faith if it helps them get through the day?”

  “Why should people stop pretending to know things they don’t know if it helps them get through the day?”

  “Teach your children to have faith.”

  “Teach your chil
dren to pretend to know things they don’t know.”

  “Freedom of faith.”

  “Freedom of pretending to know things you don’t know.”

  “International Faith Convention”

  “International Pretending to Know Things You Don’t Know Convention”

  “She’s having a crisis of faith.”

  “She’s having a crisis of pretending to know things she doesn’t know.”

  Alternatively, “She is struck by the fact that she’s been pretending to know things she doesn’t know.”

  Disambiguation: Faith Is Not Hope

  Faith and hope are not synonyms. Sentences with these words also do not share the same linguistic structure and are semantically different—for example, one can say, “I hope it’s so,” and not, “I faith it’s so.”

  The term “faith,” as the faithful use it in religious contexts, needs to be disambiguated from words such as “promise,” “confidence,” “trust,” and, especially, “hope.”6 7 “Promise,” “confidence,” “trust,” and “hope” are not knowledge claims. One can hope for anything or place one’s trust in anyone or anything. This is not the same as claiming to know something. To hope for something admits there’s a possibility that what you want may not be realized. For example, if you hope your stock will rise tomorrow, you are not claiming to know your stock will rise; you want your stock to rise, but you recognize there’s a possibility it may not. Desire is not certainty but the wish for an outcome.