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A Manual for Creating Atheists, by Peter Boghossian
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For thousands of years, the faithful have honed proselytizing strategies and talked people into believing the truth of one holy book or another. Indeed, the faithful often view converting others as an obligation of their faith--and are trained from an early age to spread their unique brand of religion. The result is a world broken in large part by unquestioned faith. As an urgently needed counter to this tried-and-true tradition of religious evangelism, A Manual for Creating Atheists offers the first-ever guide not for talking people into faith--but for talking them out of it. Peter Boghossian draws on the tools he has developed and used for more than twenty years as a philosopher and educator to teach how to engage the faithful in conversations that will help them value reason and rationality, cast doubt on their religious beliefs, mistrust their faith, abandon superstition and irrationality, and ultimately embrace reason.
- Sales Rank: #30145 in Books
- Brand: imusti
- Published on: 2013-11-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.00" h x .60" w x 6.00" l, .84 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 280 pages
Features
Review
"Up to now, most atheists have simply criticized religion in various ways, but the point is to dispel it. In A Manual For Creating Atheists, "Peter Boghossian fills that gap, telling the reader how to become a 'street epistemologist' with the skills to attack religion at its weakest point: its reliance on faith rather than evidence. This book is essential for nonbelievers who want to do more than just carp about religion, but want to weaken its odious grasp on the world." --Jerry Coyne, Ph.D., author of Why Evolution is True
"Dr. Peter Boghossian's 'A Manual for Creating Atheists' is a precise, passionate, compassionate and brilliantly reasoned work that will illuminate any and all minds capable of openness and curiosity. This is not a bedtime story to help you fall asleep, but a wakeup call that has the best chance of bringing your rational mind back to
life."--Stefan Molyneux, host of Freedomain Radio, the largest and most popular philosophy show on the web
"If we want to live in world that is safer and more rational for all, then this is the guidebook we have been waiting for. Relying on extensive experience and a deep concern for humanity, Peter Boghossian has produced a game changer. This is not a book to read while relaxing in a hammock on a sunny afternoon. This is the how-to manual to take into the trenches of everyday life where minds are won and lost in the struggle between reason and madness." --Guy P. Harrison, author of 50 Simple Questions for Every Christian and Race and Reality
"I wouldn't be surprised if ten years from now we realized that this book's publication was a turning point in the decline of Christianity in the West..." Tom Gilson, Christian apologist and author, Thinking Christian
"A 'how to' book for the ages. Boghossian manages to take a library's worth of information and mold it into a concise and practical tome to guide through the murky waters of magical thinking, docking the reader safely on the shores of reason, logic and understanding. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, and highly recommend it."--Al Stefanelli, author of A Voice of Reason In An Unreasonable Word-The Rise of Atheism On Planet Earth and Free Thoughts-A Collection Of Essays By An American Atheist
"A book so great you can skip it and just read the footnotes. Pure genius." —Christopher Johnson, cofounder, the Onion
"There is nothing else on the market like this book that helps atheists talk believers out of their faith. Every atheist interested in doing so, or who talks to believers about faith at all, should read it. It's both needed and brilliant!" —John W. Loftus, author, Why I Became an Atheist and The Outsider Test for Faith
"Boghossian has provided an indispensable chart book for all of us who must navigate the rising sea of magical thinking that is inundating America today." —Victor Stenger, PhD, author, God: The Failed Hypothesis and God and the Atom
From the Author
"If I started reading A Manual for Creating Atheists as a Christian I would have been an atheist by the time I finished it. Peter Boghossian's book is the perfect companion to Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. They should be bundled like an atheist software package to reprogram minds into employing reason instead of faith, science instead of superstition."
--Michael Shermer, from the foreword to A Manual for Creating Atheists
From the Back Cover
"Peter Boghossian's techniques of friendly persuasion are not mine, and maybe I'd be more effective if they were. They are undoubtedly very persuasive--and very much needed."-- Richard Dawkins
Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
Bad title, good book
By Mark Hornberger
I enjoyed this book because it finally shifted the focus away from religion to the efficacy of faith as a route to knowledge. Many books have focused on debunking the arguments for God, or against religion's historical record. This is not one of those books. Moving the focus to faith as a basis for knowledge is much more effective, because that question underlies not just religion per se, but also belief in the paranormal, new age, and similar issues.
I subtracted a star because I felt the title was needlessly inflammatory. The book is about epistemology, and belief is God is a tangential issue. Yes, belief in God is much less tenable if you take away faith, but to me the critical issue is faith. The author could have almost taken God out of the picture altogether and just addressed the viability of faith as a route to knowledge. If you knock that down, then faith in God will be weakened without you needing to address it explicitly. Putting "atheism" right in the title makes prospective readers think you're attacking their religion, something the author warns against explicitly. I don't know if the title was from the author or from the publisher, but I feel it detracts from the focus of the book.
However, I think the author makes and sustains a great point throughout the book, that our focus should be on the inadequacy of faith as an epistemology. It's a given that some will say "you're attacking God!" but it's faith as a route to knowledge, not the existence or intervention of God, that he is writing about. If faith is a good route to knowledge, then it would be so even in areas not touching on God or religion. If faith isn't a good source of knowledge in other areas, why pretend that it suddenly becomes competent just because we're talking about religion?
17 of 19 people found the following review helpful.
This is a great idea and has a lot of possibility
By Amazon Customer
This is a thoughtful, well-reasoned book that I personally learned a lot from. I have personally argued religion a lot, however, this book takes a different approach by attacking the logic underlying religion rather than religion itself. This is a great idea and has a lot of possibility.
Unsurprisingly, there seems to be a dramatic gulf between the 5-star reviews and 1-2 star reviews, and these are mostly focused around the argument, not the book (and somewhat ironically do not make well-reasoned arguments). Some criticisms are fairly valid; the middle of the book is a bit repetitious, and hones in heavily on the rather simple concept that critical thinking is a superior form of understanding truth than faith.
That being said, I have to address some of the negative reviews:
1. "Faith" doesn't mean what the author says it means. This is by far the most common complaint I see. Sadly, it appears that those who object to his definition ("belief without evidence") never actually manage to address it in the actual context of the book. The author discusses it at length, preemptively discussing things like "faith in your wife" or "faith that the sun will rise" as not faith-based in *religious* contexts, which of course is the entire point of the book. The fact is that no religious statement based on faith has ever, EVER stood up to scientific scrutiny. In other words, all faith-based claims lack evidence. If they had evidence, then there wouldn't be any reason to have faith...you could just believe an established fact of the world.
But these are not facts, are not based on reality or evidence, and thus are, BY DEFINITION, "beliefs without evidence." This is very clear in the context of the book, and addressed not just in Chapter 2 but again later in the book, and I have yet to see someone come up with any sort of empirical evidence proving that there are religious claims based on faith that have actual evidence to back them up.
A couple reviewers mentioned that just because someone has faith in religion does not mean they have faith in all beliefs, which is a complete red herring as it's both completely obvious and is not what he's talking about when he uses the word "faith" (which he spends the entire second chapter explaining). The problem is that there is an assumption that believing without evidence and believing with evidence are compatible or even equal epistemologies. Which is what he spends the entire rest of the book refuting.
2. The second biggest complaint is the "tone." In other words, people believe challenging other's beliefs is rude or insulting. I suspect that much of the complaint from atheists on this particular topic is related to his stance on relativism, for which there is an entire chapter explaining why he holds this view. My issue with this is that I (and the author) believe we have a moral imperative to spread the truth. If I had a fatal cancer, and my doctor told me I was fine because it would be "rude" or "insulting" to my belief that I were healthy, I'd be pretty upset at being deceived.
Likewise, in the examples he gives of actual discussions, he doesn't take a hostile tone towards the people themselves. Every discussion uses Socratic dialog and not once did he insult anyone directly. I have a ton of respect for him for this...I find it extremely difficult to do myself as ridiculous beliefs are extremely difficult not to ridicule.
3. The third main complaints are religious, which can be pretty much ignored for (I hope) obvious reasons.
Overall it was solid and took a different approach compared to other books on the subject. My favorite chapter was on leftist ideologies and relativism and this particular issue is endlessly annoying to me and he has good ideas for addressing it. Highly recommended.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Good points about critical thinking, but some extremism that turned me off
By Brian McPherson
A Manual for Creating Atheists – Review
As an atheist I read this book with the hope of finding some insight into how one might employ persuasive strategies when engaging those with a religious belief in God with the hope of getting them to see what to me appears to be obvious fallacious reasoning. In comparison to other books by the more militant atheist (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Dennett - Boghossian’s “four horsemen”) this work does a much better job at taking into consideration the psychological subtleties of such a task. The tone of one’s argument does matter and Boghossian knows this and has good insight into how to avoid losing your argument through outright dismissal of a person’s belief. As a teacher of critical thinking the author knows and has presented in the book good strategies for getting others to look at their belief system in an objective manner as opposed to telling them they are stupid. For these strong points, which take up the first two-thirds of the book, the tome is well worth reading.
However, I have problems with three topics the author deals with in the last third of the book. Let me begin with the one that troubles me the most. In the last chapter he argues that the DSM (the manual used to diagnose mental illnesses) should classify as delusions all religious beliefs, even those widely held by all members of a religious community. He believes that this change in DSM classification could be the best way to contain, or as he says “cure,” faith. Speaking as a PhD psychologist, I must say that such a change seems highly unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future, not only for political reasons but also because it goes against the understanding that psychologists have about mental illness in general and delusions in particular.
A second issue that gives me pause is his refusal to acknowledge epistemology of scientific materialism. He does touch on the issue on pages 156-157, but only to coach readers how to respond when someone points out the materialist assumption of science. Instead of addressing the issue he side-steps it and says that you should reply that science has checks through the scientific process of testing for validation or falsification. Like a large majority or persons in academia he does not even acknowledge that consciousness may be a fundamental property in the universe. Indeed, a number of recent scholars point to evidence that best gets explained by positing consciousness as a fundamental property of nature. His failure to acknowledge this growing pool of evidence falls in line with the majority of academia at this point in time, but I think because he wants to address the topic of faith with critical thinking his dismissal of this aspect of the subject weakens his thesis.
Finally, Boghossian launches a searing attack on the academic world, or rather academic leftism, for taking a position of relativism. I would be one of the first to agree with his admonishments for not excusing behavior of certain groups because of a belief that every point of view is valid and one should withhold judgment. He gives the example of people excusing the Taliban for their savage treatment of women and apostates. I just don’t see this extreme position of relativism in academia. It seems to me that he mixes his disciplines. While anthropologists must look at each culture as having some inherent value or at least rational explanation, psychologists don’t rationalize away abhorrent behavior as valid. In this section he seemed to adopt the militancy of those that I have already read. I’m sure he has
some basis for making his arguments, but the examples he gave as complaints about academia in this regard did not strike me as on target. I suppose he wants to sound a clarion call for all educators to take up the atheist banner, but I believe he ignores the subtleties of the situations. Where he simply sees toleration of problematic faiths others see a much more complex circumstance, one that requires a more judicious approach. As a result I believe he will run into push-back on this topic.
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