A Manual for Creating Atheists

by Peter Boghossian

  What one is really saying when one states, “My faith is true for me,” is, “I prefer my delusions, and I wish to remain with them in spite of the evidence.”

  5. “Science can’t explain quantum mechanics.”

  This line is tossed out in conversations when all else has failed in a desperate attempt to fortify the fiefdom of faith. As frequently as I’ve heard this, and asked people exactly what they mean, I’m not even sure how this could be a defense of faith. Quantum mechanics is science, discovered through the tools of science, and is verifiable and testable within science.

  The attempt to draw fire away from the discussion may be why I’ve never read this defense of faith in peer-reviewed literature. It also doesn’t fall into one of Harris’s categories. It is not another version of the God of the gaps argument, and is not precisely a deepity.6

  I think this statement may be a way of saying that we can’t really be certain of anything. On one level, this is a feeble attempt to undermine reason by stating that there are some mysteries even our best and brightest can’t grasp—thus giving the faithful license to pretend to know things they don’t know.

  On an even more pedestrian level, I’ve often heard this deployed as a justification for miracles. That is, quantum instability leaks into the visible realm—what Dawkins calls the Middle Kingdom, or what British philosopher J. L. Austin termed the realm of “medium-sized dry goods” (Dawkins, 2005)—and could be responsible for a whole host of bizarre occurrences, like the sea parting or people being spontaneously healed.

  In the latter case, the response to this is that quantum weirdness does not lend itself to a specific faith tradition. That is, if somehow what was happening in the quantum realm seeped into the Middle Kingdom and caused unexplained phenomena (and there is no evidence it has) this wouldn’t be relegated to a single faith tradition. Quantum weirdness didn’t cause only the alleged miracles in the Koran (or the Bible)—but if someone claimed to know this is how the phenomena manifested, I’d ask how they knew this and to produce the evidence. (For practice, you can also argue that quantum states do manifest, but only in [insert any faith tradition other than your interlocutor’s].)

  In the former case, I’m not sure how a lack of understanding about subatomic particles translates into the need for faith. Because we don’t yet and might never entirely understand how the universe is ordered and operates in the realm of the very, very small, this does not translate into needing to use an unreliable epistemology.

  6. “You have faith in science.”

  “But if faith in God requires independent scientific confirmation, what about the colossal faith our new atheists place in science itself?”

  —John Haught, God and the New Atheism (2008, p. 45)

  “Whether they admit to it or not, scientists have faith. It is, obviously, a rational faith that stems from their trust in the scientific method to reveal natural truth. But it is faith nonetheless. Scientists have faith that, based upon past successes, the scientific method will uncover natural truths yet to be discovered. They conduct experiments and make observations without knowing if they will discover something truly new, but they trust that if anything has yet to be discovered in the natural world, science will discover it. That’s faith, and it’s faith that mirrors the rational faith of religious individuals; one that is based on past successes, rationality, and personal experience.”

  —Peter Doumit, A Unification of Science and Religion (2010, p. 24)

  “Scientists have to believe in the validity of materialism. They have to say, ‘For my work, I need to assume the hypothesis that everything is materialistic!’ which is a statement of faith.”

  —Anne Foerst, “Do Androids Dream of Bread and Wine?” (2001, p. 197)

  “What incredible faith an individual must have to trust that science is true and the Bible, Heaven and Hell, and the risen Lord Jesus Christ is a myth.”

  —Floyd McElveen, Faith of an Atheist (2009, p. 11)

  This is usually a “late game” line, offered after faith has been demolished and exposed as fraudulent. People say this because they want to show some parity in belief: they have faith in X and you have faith in Y. You both have faith, but in different things. I’ve also found that people make this statement because they’re afraid of being seen as stupid or ignorant, so they want to leave the conversation and save face.

  Science is the antithesis of faith. Science is a process that contains multiple and redundant checks, balances, and safeguards against human bias. Science has a built-in corrective mechanism—hypothesis testing—that weeds out false claims.

  Claims that come about as a result of a scientific process are held as tentatively true by scientists—unlike claims of faith that are held as eternally true. Related to this, claims that come about as the result of a scientific process are falsifiable, that is, there is a way to show the claims are false. This is not the case with most faith claims. For example, there’s no way to falsify the claim that the Norse god Loki was able to assume other forms.

  Scientists also try to prove claims false (falsification), unlike faith leaders who unequivocally state that their faith claims are true. Related to the bizarre notion that there’s a vast conspiracy among scientists to suppress certain lines of research, if a scientist can demonstrate that a popular scientific claim is false, she can become famous, get tenure, publish her results, earn more money, and become respected by her peers. Moreover, the more prominent the defeated hypothesis, the greater the reward. If a preacher states that the claims of his faith tradition are false, he’s excommunicated, defrocked, or otherwise forced to abandon his position.

  Science is a method of advancing our understanding. It is a process we can use to bring us closer to the truth and to weed out false claims. Science is the best way we’ve currently found to explain and understand how the universe works. It should be jettisoned if something better (more explanatory, more predictive, more parsimonious, etc.) comes along (Schick & Vaughn, 2008).

  7. “You have faith your partner loves you.”

  Dawkins: We only need to use the word “faith” when there isn’t any evidence.

  Lennox: No not at all, I presume you’ve got faith in your wife? Is there any evidence for that? Or would you base it—

  Dawkins: Yes, plenty of evidence.

  Lennox: Hmmm.

  Dawkins: Let’s generalize it, never mind about my wife …

  …

  Dawkins: … Let’s say that in general, how do we know that somebody loves us? Okay—

  Lennox: Yes.

  Dawkins: Um, you can use the word faith for that, if you like, but it’s not, it’s not the right use of the word—

  Lennox: Oh, it is.

  Dawkins: Because, because you know why, you know your wife loves you because of all sorts of little signs… . That’s the evidence.

  Lennox: Yes, that’s right.

  Dawkins: That’s evidence. That’s perfectly good evidence. That’s not faith.

  Lennox: Yes it is.

  In 2007, Dawkins was asked this question in a debate with British philosopher John Lennox (Dawkins, 2007). Dawkins eventually replied it’s “not the right use of the word.” Lennox responded, “Oh, it is.” It’s not.

  “You have faith your partner loves you” tends to be an “early game” response, given before faith has been razed. It’s similar to, “You have faith in science,” but not as lofty. It’s a more colloquial way of saying that in everyday events you use faith to navigate reality.

  Comparing that for which we have abundant evidence (the actions of a real person) to a faith claim, which by definition is that for which we lack evidence (like the existence of an undetectable creator of the universe), is not analogous. The idea that my wife probably loves me is not a radical hypothesis. The idea that there is a being who created the universe, inseminated a woman, and gave birth to a son who rose from the dead, is an extraordinary, radical claim.7 Equating an extraordinary claim with a mundane one, and then su
ggesting they “both require faith,” is disanalogous.

  FAITH IS USEFUL

  8. “My faith is beneficial for me.”

  “I rely on my faith to help me cope with my diabetes. Prayer is a huge part of my diabetes care and control. I accept the fact that I can do nothing on my own. My faith in God’s love, grace, and providence really helps pull me through. I don’t know why I have diabetes but I know that I have a mission to accomplish with this condition in my life. For me, that focus and faith is essential to my peace of mind.”

  —Nicole Johnson, Living with Diabetes (2001, p. 185)

  “It was faith that restored my sense of purpose and self-confidence. My faith gave me back my joy and enthusiasm for life.”

  —Ali and Ali, The Soul of a Butterfly (2004, p. 147)

  “My faith gives me hope. I say ‘my faith’ because say if at the end of all this there was nothing, my faith would still have sustained me. It helps keep me grounded and focused. It keeps me optimistic. It gives me joy. It drives me. I believe in something much larger and more powerful and omnipresent than myself. I know it’s God that keeps me going.”

  —Sugar Turner and Tracy Bachrach Ehlers, Sugar’s Life in the Hood (2003, p. 215)

  I never allow the conversation to devolve into the merits of faith until my interlocutor has explicitly admitted that faith is an unreliable path to the truth. Almost invariably discussion about the alleged benefits of faith are red herrings, distracting one from the main issue—whether or not faith can reliably help one to arrive at the truth.

  In your work as a Street Epistemologist, once you’ve started engaging the faithful in dialectical interventions, you’ll notice conversations about the merits of faith will have no clear demarcation. Someone won’t say, “Okay, you’re correct, faith is a failed epistemology and thus highly unlikely to get one to the truth. However, having faith is of tremendous benefit both to the faithful and to society.”

  Conversations about whether or not faith is beneficial should only take place after your interlocutor explicitly states that faith is an unreliable path to truth. Once you ask people to acknowledge this, you’ll almost never enter into a conversation about the benefits of faith.

  If you do, however, find yourself in this position, I’d ask how an unreliable reasoning process can benefit someone. I’d also ask how an unreliable and potentially unrevisable faulty process of reasoning can benefit an entire group of people.

  One of the problems with the benefit argument is that people can be mistaken about what’s in their own interest. On an individual level, heroin addicts, alcoholics, and people in abusive relationships will, at various times, claim these states of affairs are beneficial. And in the realm of religious faith, people are often mistaken about what’s in their interest—for example, decisions about personal relationships that are not sanctioned by the faith (my grandfather, who converted to Catholicism, was prohibited by the Catholic Church from walking my mother down the aisle at her wedding because my parents were married in an Apostolic Church), refraining from engaging in homosexual relationships, staying in a deeply unhappy and emotionally harmful marriage due to prohibitions on divorce, physically harmful self-flagellation or extreme fasting, etc.

  On a macro level, the Taliban believe imprisoning half their population and beating them is not only in their interest but also their duty: The more people who share a faulty process of reasoning the greater the magnification of potential harm. Premodern history is littered with cultures that have navigated themselves to extinction in part due to faith.8

  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, all or virtually all of the studies you’ll hear people cite about the alleged benefits of belief communities have nothing to do with faith, and everything to do with religion, community, social networks, social support, etc.9

  It could be that the variables in these studies being tested are social cohesion and group reciprocity. Faith would need to be teased out and isolated before any benefits could be shown. To my knowledge, no study has isolated faith as a variable and shown its positive results.

  9. “Life has no meaning without faith.”

  “Without faith, life becomes worthless and meaningless, and failure or death is the outcome.”

  — Herminio Gamponia, Great Prescriptions to a Better You (2010, pp. 67–68)

  “Without hope or faith life becomes meaningless; an empty charade to be played out before an unseeing and unhearing audience.”

  —Lewis Solomon, From Athens to America (2006, p. 1)

  This is a remarkably common statement, although I’m not sure how this is a defense of faith. This is a statement about the consequences of faith as opposed to whether or not one’s faith latches onto truth. Many people allege that their lives would be meaningless and that they’d have no life purpose without faith.10

  If life has no meaning for someone unless they pretend to know something they don’t know, then I would strongly and sincerely urge extensive therapy and counseling. This is particularly true if feelings of meaninglessness and lack of purpose lead to depression, which is a serious illness. Absent a mental disorder, or head trauma, there is no reason an adult should feel life is meaningless without maintaining some form of delusion.

  When I hear someone say, “Life has no meaning without faith,” I suggest possible sources of meaning one could find in one’s life: children, music, art, poetry, charity, reading, hobbies, simply trying to make the world a better place, small acts of kindness, etc. I usually try to tailor the source of meaning to the person with whom I’m speaking. I also talk about our daughter who was adopted from China as a “waiting child.” I discuss the meaning and joy she’s brought into our lives.

  The overwhelming majority of people will acknowledge that they can find sources of meaning in their lives. For those who don’t, I sincerely recommend seeking professional psychological services.

  10. “Why take away faith if it helps get people through the day?”

  This is a common line among blue-collar liberals who’ve not been indoctrinated by leftist academic values.11 I’ve never really understood how removing a bad way to reason will make it difficult to get through the day. If anything, it would seem that correcting someone’s reasoning would significantly increase their chances of getting through the day. With reliable forms of reasoning comes the capability of crafting conditions that enable people to navigate life’s obstacles. By using a more reliable form of reasoning, people are more capable of bringing about conditions that enable them to flourish.

  Another interpretation of this statement is that it’s the contents of one’s beliefs that help people cope. For example, if one believes a recently deceased loved one has gone to the Happy Hunting Ground (a belief found among certain Native American tribes) where the wild game is in abundance, this makes it easier to deal with that person’s passing. However, if one used sound methods of reasoning one would produce better results and feel more in control of one’s life than unreflectively buying into a commonly held belief about what happens after death. One would thus rely less on the content of one’s beliefs and more on the process one uses to arrive at one’s beliefs.

  To argue that people need faith is to abandon hope, and to condescend and accuse the faithful of being incapable of understanding the importance of reason and rationality. There are better and worse ways to come to terms with death, to find strength during times of crisis, to make meaning and purpose in our lives, to interpret our sense of awe and wonder, and to contribute to human well-being—and the faithful are completely capable of understanding and achieving this.

  ATHEISM IS CORROSIVE

  11. “Without faith, society would devolve morally.”

  “I think a world without faith would be a world on the path to tragedy and disaster, I really believe that.”

  —Tony Blair (as quoted in Hallowell, May 15, 2012)

  “Last century we tried Godlessness on a grand scale and the effects were devastating: Nazism, Stalinism, Pol Pot-ery,
mass murder, abortion and broken relationships—all promoted by state-imposed atheism … the illusion that we can build a better life without God.”

  —Anglican Archbishop Peter Jensen (as quoted in Stefanelli, 2012b)

  This tends to be a late-game line, with Stalin and Hitler always included, sometimes followed by Pol Pot, Mussolini, and the Kims thrown in for good measure. The basic idea is that without objective standards of right and wrong, not only do ordinary people descend into savages, but vicious dictatorships are also inevitable.

  “Without faith, society would devolve morally,” is an empirical claim. It’s a claim about the world. It’s also false. To respond, one need only survey religiosity and livability indices among various societies. Scandinavia has the lowest rate of religious belief in the world, yet on virtually all measures of well-being Scandinavian countries top every index (for more on this, see American sociologist Phil Zuckerman’s work).

  I usually hear this defense from Christians. One response I offer is, “Saudi Arabia.” (For a one-word response, try “Iran.”) Saudi Arabia has one of the most devout, adherent populations on the planet, yet its citizens lack basic freedoms and are subject to the tyranny of religious police.

  Finally, people use the Stalin/Hitler card in an attempt to argue that the worst dictatorships in recent times have had atheists at their helm (Hitler was more likely a deist if not a theist).12 However, even granting this argument’s assumption, these men didn’t act like they did because they were atheists. That is, their nonbelief in a deity didn’t dictate particular actions they took. (This would be akin to arguing that Pol Pot—who was a bad man—didn’t believe in leprechauns, you don’t believe in leprechauns, therefore you’re as bad as Pol Pot.) Their systems were horrific precisely because they resembled faith-based systems where suspending warrant for belief is required (as is the wholesale adoption of an ideology, like Communism, Nazism, Fascism, etc.).13