A Manual for Creating Atheists

If you honestly think that faith is "pretending to know things you don't know", then you are dangerously naive and not just when it comes to religion. For example, Dawkins has said in his great, new book that he was abused when he was younger. I have faith that Dawkins is telling the truth even though his statement is not falsifiable due to the passage of time and there is no hard evidence to support his statement. My conviction that he is telling the truth is based upon my judgment of the man and his character as I understand it from his other writings and statements. If you will not accept anything which is not falsifiable in the scientific sense and directly supported by empirical evidence, then you can toss into the dumpster as well statements like there being any kind of right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". Once that becomes apparent to the listeners of the streetwise atheist, I doubt he or she will be able to drum up much of an audience.

Boghossian's approach will be very popular with the brand of what's commonly referred to as "New Atheists". The complete lack of respect for anyone who doesn't share his views is no different in nature from that displayed by fundamentalists and other "true believers". In fact, it would probably be a better use of your time and money to read the book of the same title by Eric Hoffer who was an atheist. Given Boghossian's description of religion as a nasty and particularly dangerous "virus" that needs to be dealt with, I have a hard time distinguishing him from the inquisitors who were just as convinced of the dangers of atheism and heresy.

For the record, I am an evangelical Christian who has served as a Christian apologist. I also have a healthy respect for science and like Galileo and other Christians believe that God gave us our minds to use and not to deny in the name of faith. Based upon my extensive reading in history both secular and sacred, I am not as convinced as I once was that anyone has a complete monopoly on the truth. Consequently, I have spoken both privately and publicly (as in one case to the Chicago Tribune's editorial board) against discrimination directed at skeptics. I value the contributions of science and reason and respect those who do not share my opinions. I have no truck with those who would compel people to believe and reject using the government to implement religious beliefs into our laws.

Lastly, I gave this book five "stars" because I believe that the author is right about a good chunk of what passes for "faith" in the world and I think it a good thing that illusions are shattered. That's why I've contributed to skeptical causes including work done by James Randi. However, the author's barbs are not going to have quite the same effect upon other believers who have spent time thinking through their faith.

As a recently converted and FULLY free Atheist I agree with the content for sure. But, this one could really be honed into probably half of the number of pages. But, it does have a few unique angles to ponder.

While I appreciate the author's zeal for "reliable epistemology." I am put off by the fact that he chooses foundationalism/evidentialism as his chosen brand of epistemology without providing more justification. He briefly passes by coherentism and quickly dismisses it because it may not be the best theory for his cause. He doesn't even mention contextualism, but he does use an argument based in it during one his interventions. This is the same old story, someone has chosen his project and has become blind or intentionally recalcitrant to theories and evidence that suggest anything to the contrary. While it is refreshing to see someone be a crusader for atheism, he is still that--a belligerent crusader.

Nor can the evidence of reality be blurred out of perspective by religious delusions. No matter what a religious person convinces themselves to believe or deny -their physical existence is still experiencing interconnections with the reality in which they are a part of. I'm glad to have purchased a book such as this. Let us expose the evidence of reality and bask in the existence of what we and everything else are all truly a part of.

I enjoyed reading this book, but I have to say evangelical atheism isn't my style. Nonetheless, the author's point that there is a serious lack of critical thinking in the world is valid. I have tried some of the ideas in this book on neighbors who are true believers in just about anything absurd and have seen cognitive dissonance kick in briefly. That's a good result, I think. I don't want to be the person who challenges EVERY absurd belief or idea out there, but occasionally you just have to say something and this book gives you some ideas about what to say to get people to question their beliefs.

This book is different from Dawkins and Sam Harris books because it takes an epistemological approach to the issue of religious belief.
It combines the issue of belief with the philosophical study of belief, breaking atheism down into a manual that's very entertaining to read.
It's also unique in that it provides people with practical ways of talking to people who are still religious.
It's definitely a great read and I recommend it to everyone.

Like other books of this ilk they assume that the atheist/agnostic/humanist (or whatever) is so fascinating in his/her effort to persuade that the potential convertee will engage in a conversation of more than two minutes in length. I have tried for years to engage Christians in general discussions about religion, faith, spirituality or the like and have found that they nod their heads a few times and walk away. I know I'm not charming, but I am a decent conversationalist except when I comes to any discussion with Christians. Thus the book is of little use to me. Another book of this type, "Conversations with a Christian Proselytizer", by Todd Alan Gates fails for the same reason. Interesting but of little use to me.

This book teaches you how to productively argue with the faithful. It it also explain reasons why developing exactly that skill is in your best interest. I found that it gave me new ways to think about such encounters that I'm pretty sure will be helpful in the future.

Over all, not terrible. It was well written, a few of the arguments as faulty and its obvious he does not have a true understanding of Christian teaching. I'm not saying it was wrong, but I found myself disagreeing with a few arguments in the first chapter.

Peter Boghossian creates a short book that shows everyone, in common everyday language, how to talk about faith. It offers a friendly way to talk to family and friends without getting into a war of words. Prof. Boghossian's approach is something that can be done by everyone; it does not require a degree in philosophy or experience in a debating team. His book provides several examples of actual conversations that took place with friends, students or acquaintances. He even addresses common anti-apologetic responses and you will learn the meaning of two "big" words: Doxastic and Epistemology. The beauty of this book is that you can start practicing the techniques taught here immediately. Religious people have been using all kinds of ways to convince others to believe their particular faith, Dr. Boghossian teaches you how to reverse it. It is our duty to show people that faith is "pretending to know things you don't know". So make sure you have your favorite color highlighter when you read this great book.

I found this to be lugubrious and esoteric, with very few actual suggestions as to how to accomplish what the title says. I also went to see/hear this guy speak at the University of Texas at Dallas a while back, and was also unimpressed with that. I especially didn't like the Q&A part. Mostly college students trying to show everyone how smart they are, not by asking questions, but by making long-winded statements as to their beliefs. A snooze.

It's unfortunate that the true artists who performed hits like this were hidden behind a fake persona. The songs are great and had the producer not been so cynical to think their "look" would not sell, the group may have continued to this day. Now these tunes are a footnote in music history and still worth a listen.

I have loaned the book out at the moment. Might be a few weeks before I get it back.....but just on my own recollection of it I have it four out of five stars. I do not want to scan through it when I see it again and may or may not adjust this initial response at that time.

This book was a bit hard to get into and stay interested in because of the many words that seemed unnecessarily long and complicated. Using big words doesn't always make you sound smarter, sometimes it alienates your audience and can hurt your argument. Beyond that, I am glad I've read it and will need to refer to it more than a few more times. Street epistemology isn't something you absorb the first time you read into it.

unless your a psychologist its very tough reading and in my opinion not enough biblical reasoning behind why a person should become an atheist. I no longer believe in the bible as being truthful but this book wont change anyone's mind - its the way to change someone's reasoning and I believe you have to come to your own conclusion and this book wont help.

Great! I wish I had read this book before my conversation 2 weeks ago, with a deluded "Born Again" Christian fundamentalist acquaintance, I would then have had far more tools to combat his irrationality! This book also could have been named "principals of critical thinking". This is an essential manual for all who want to combat the faith virus that is infecting untold millions who are pretending to know things they don't really know.

I am a rugged, self sufficient, reasonably intelligent and well read man. I believe that is who Peter Boghossian wants to convince you that he is. And I Believe that he feels you will be better for allowing him to impart on you the wisdom he has apparently acquired from his scholarly work.

Back in the 1980's through the early 1990's I use to help families get their children out of religious cults. I've seen how faith, emotion, psychology, ignorance, lack of critical thinking can really mess people up. However, I've always been very clumsy in my debates. while I worked with what was then called "Deprogrammers" I wasn't one of them. I was more of a tactical guy. I found this title and was looking forward to a bit of self improvement time. Thought I would brush up on my debate skills while learning something new.

I lack a belief in supreme being(s) which makes me an Atheist however, apparently Peter feels that you should have a minor in Philosophy and ... whatever else to read this thing it is clearly not written for the average Joe.

So I guess that makes me a bit of a jerk or ignorant or something.

I've made it through the first four chapters and am left with the feeling that a lot of the intended message of this book is being lost in the noise. The writer claims that his intent is to create an army of "horsemen" to spread the gospel of critical thinking which will lead to less religion and mystical thinking.

An admirable goal I guess.

However I just don't find this book very accessible.

I'm no psychologist, but perhaps Peter would feel better about himself if he went back to grad school and got a piece of paper that granted him the status of Doctor of Philosophy. Perhaps then he would stop trying so hard to impress his readers or maybe he does have his PhD and he just is really, really, really proud of it.

In my opinion this book reads like it was written by an erudite, elitist who is preaching down to the common folk from the high walls of an ivory tower.

The author is clearly very well informed (of course this is a statement of faith, since I really don't know if he is or isn't well informed) but he certainly references a great many Philosophers, academic studies, authors. I am sure they are all wonderful and interesting folks, however shy of some of the greats, I've no idea what he is talking about. However, for all of his academic prowess the author has a simplistic view of faith and religion. He boils it all down to if we can just get them to see how wrong they are. Which does work, I just don't think it will work they way he is outlining it.

Look, it isn't that I don't think this is a wonderful read for those who have spent years studying the merits of life without god and have a background in Philosophy. But me? I am just a simple, every day Joe. I was looking forward to a book that in lay terms would guide me in the principles and subtleties of combating the ignorance that is mystical thinking without sounding like a jackass. This is clearly not that book.

Beyond the writing style, I find his disregard for the emotional experience many people have when they go to church or think about god or prey, to be disappointing. This is a very large gap in this strategy. If you want someone to leave a place that they are happy in, you have to give them a good reason to do so.

I would think that an understanding of the emotional underpinnings of faith and religion might come in handy for anyone preparing to engage in the god debate.

Again, I am not saying that book has no value, I just find it a bit pretentious and erudite therefore I can not recommend it.

I find religious evangelism offensive. Boghossian seems to have the same mentality as the "missionaries" that come knocking on my door. I want to be prepared for the twisted logic arguments that believers present as the "Reason for God" (Keller). That is what I assumed this book was about and why I bought it. Boghossian makes good sense in separating faith and religion into two topics. But tactically persuading someone to flip is not something I consider ethical.

Mr. Boghossian advocates reasoning with believers, well knowing that they all embrace unreason. The acceptance and growth of atheism is actually more a matter of a societal groundswell. As more "believers" experience and associate with non believers who live good (or better) lives, atheism will become accepted, and faith based living will fade. Living the example is more effective than engaging in "Street Epistemology".

It will mirror the process that the gay community went through a generation ago.

I lost my religion many years ago, but I quickly realized that being an Atheist says little about one's actual thought process. Faulty reasoning leads to many dangerous ideas, from religion, alternative medicine, horoscopes, psychics, anti-vaccination, anti GMO and so on. Teaching people the value of honest, critical thinking is the best way to ensure that they don't just move from one bad idea to the next. Being able to engage in conversations with people suffering from faulty reasoning or the faith virus, can be exhausting because they are very good at pretending to know things that they don't know. A manual for Creating Atheists is essential or anyone wanting to fight bad science, and dangerous ideas. I was on a plane with a Mormon man while finishing the book, and I felt more confident and able to respectfully engage with him. The approach reminds me of the way Socrates talked to Euthyphro. Respectful and welcoming but it's like catching flies with honey, then swatting them with a logic stick. Read this book, you will be a better and more honest person for it.

This book has completely revolutionized my life!! . When combined with Anthony Magnabosco's videos on youtube where you can see Peter's principles in action, and the Facebook group called Street Epistemology, you will no longer be led into endless debates and arguments with people of faith as you try to help them leave faith and religious beliefs behind. I was a Christian for many years, and finally abandoned it due to its irrationality and ineffectiveness. But I could not seem to explain to believers (and there are still MANY in my life) in a non-threatening way that did not arouse immediate defensiveness in them, why religion needs to be abandoned to truly live a free and healthy existence and appreciate every day that we have here on earth....the one life time we have should not be wasted chasing silly stories, submitting to ancient and outdated doctrines, modern day church domination and authority and worrying about life after death. Religion is terribly harmful and destructive in our world and needs to end. Everyone with a passion to help others be free from religion needs to read this book!!

Author and philosophy professor Peter Boghossian wrote in the first chapter of this 2013 book, “This book will teach you how to talk people out of their faith. You’ll learn how to engage the faithful in conversations that help them value reason and rationality, cast doubt on their beliefs, and mistrust their faith. I call this activist approach to helping people overcome their faith, ‘Street Epistemology.’ The goal of this book is to create a generation of Street Epistemologists: people equipped with an array of dialectical and clinical tools who actively go into the streets, the prisons, the bars, the churches, the schools, and the community---into any and every place the faithful reside---and help them abandon their faith and embrace reason.” (Pg. 15)

He continues, “[This book] is a step beyond [Sam] Harris, [Richard] Dawkins, [Christopher] Hitchens , and [Daniel] Dennett. [It] offers practical solutions to the problem 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… You, the reader… 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.” (Pg. 17-18)

He defines ‘faith’ as “pretending to know things you don’t know… As a Street Epistemologist, whenever you hear the word ‘faith,’ just translated this in your head as, ‘pretending to know things you don’t know.’” (Pg. 24) He continues, “Faith and hope are not synonyms… To hope for something admits there’s a possibility that what you want may not be realized… Hoping is not the same as knowing. If you hope something happened you’re not claiming it did happen. When the faithful say, ‘Jesus walked on water,’ they are not saying they HOPE Jesus walked on water, but rather are claiming Jesus actually did walk on water.” (Pg. 24-27)

He defines ‘Atheist’: “There’s insufficient evidence to warrant belief in a divine, supernatural creator of the universe. However, if I were shown sufficient evidence to warrant belief in such an entity, then I would believe.” (Pg. 27) He continues, “Agnostics profess to not know whether or not there’s a undetectable, metaphysical entity that created the universe… The problem with agnosticism is that in the last 2,400 years of intellectual history, NOT A SINGLE ARGUMENT for the existence of God has withstood scrutiny. Not one… I dislike the terms ‘agnostic’ and ‘agnosticism.’ I advise Street Epistemologists to not use these terms. This is why: I don’t believe Santa Claus is a real person… I am a Santa Claus atheist… I’m not a Santa Claus agnostic… ‘Agnostic’ and ‘agnosticism’ are unnecessary terms. Street Epistemologists should avoid them.” (Pg. 28)

He states, “Faith claims are knowledge claims. Faith claims are statements of fact about the world… IF a belief is based on insufficient evidence, then any further conclusions drawn from the belief will at best be of questionable value… the following are unassailable facts… 1. There are different faith traditions. 2. Different faith traditions make different truth claims. 3. The truth claims of some faith traditions contradict the truth claims of other faith traditions… 5. Therefore, AT LEAST one of these claims must be false… It is impossible to figure out which of these claims is incorrect if the tool one uses to do so is faith…. This is because faith does not have a built-in corrective mechanism… The ONLY way to figure out which claims about the world are likely true, and which are likely false, is through reason and evidence. There is no other way.” (Pg. 30-31)

He explains, “Doxastic openness, as I use the term, is a willingness and ability to revise beliefs… In your work as a Street Epistemologist you’ll literally talk people out of their faith. Your goal is to help them by engendering doxastic openness. Only very rarely will you help someone abandon their faith instantly… As a Street Epistemologist, you will encounter individuals whose beliefs seem immune to reason… two primary reasons for this… (1) an interlocutor’s brain is neurologically damaged, or (2) you’re actually succeeding.” (Pg. 51)

He suggests, “Here’s where I part ways with the Four Horsemen [Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins, and Dennett]---who have relentlessly attacked and undermined religion… I’m advocating that we move the conversation forward by refocusing our attacks primarily on faith. By undermining faith one is able to undermine almost all religions simultaneously… Your interventions should target faith, not religion.” (Pg. 75)

He acknowledges, “One of my roles is to provide support information to those who recover from faith. Beyond this, I wouldn’t presume to tell Street Epistemologists there is something you should or shouldn’t tell your clients. There are just too many variables… for universal dos and don’ts.” (Pg. 133)

He says of the ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ question, “This is the best argument I’ve heard for the existence of God… However, it doesn’t work. There are several related ways to respond… ‘How do you know the universe didn’t already exist?’ … one can never know either that reality is one endless time loop with Big Bangs strung together for eternity, or that … we’re part of a larger multiverse with an infinite number of Big Bangs constantly occurring. Why isn’t there nothing rather than something? On what basis can one claim nothing is the default position for existence?... The possibility that the universe always existed cannot be ruled out. This by definition casts doubt on a creator. No faith is needed to posit that the universe may have always existed.” (Pg. 148-149)

He asserts, “Faith is an unclassified cognitive illness disguised as a moral virtue. Each of us dreads the thought of becoming ill… No so with the faith virus. People infected by faith feel gratitude and appreciation for their affliction. But even beyond gratitude, part of the difficulty in dislodging the faith virus is… that it’s perceived as a moral virtue… People infected with faith don’t think of it as a malady, but as a gift, even a blessing. It’s disturbing that many people who have no faith are untroubled by the possibility of their own infection…” (Pg. 208-209)

He proposes, “It is CRUCIAL that the religious exemption for delusion be removed from the DSM [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual]. Once religious delusions are integrated into the DSM, entirely new categories of research and treatment into the problem of faith can be created… Removing the exemption that classifies a phenomenon as an officially recognized psychiatric disorder legitimizes research designed to cure the disorder… There is perhaps no greater contribution one could make to contain and perhaps even cure faith than removing the exemption that prohibits classifying religious delusions as mental illness… once these treatments and this body of research is refined, results could then be used to inform public health policies designed to contain and ultimately eradicate faith.” (Pg. 222)

It’s difficult to imagine Boghossian’s proposals creating an “army” of Street Atheists (atheist organizations have considerable difficulty in just attracting dues-paying members); and his proposal to try and classify those who disagree with him as “deluded” is rather unsound (although of course merely a fantasy that would never be realized). This book has some value as a work of “anti-Apologetics” for Atheists of a rather “confrontational” temperament.

I was surprised by this book: where I was expecting to see a rehash of the many arguments debunking this or that specific belief, instead I found that the author has drawn upon years of experience teaching critical thinking to students and incarcerated prisoners to come up with a side-on approach to combating religion.

His thesis is that, while it is fun to argue and debate with religious people, all religious and credulous thought flows from a single source, which is a lack of critical thinking. He recommends attacking a person's faith as opposed to their religion, in this case clarifying the definition of "faith" as "pretending to know things you don't know." When a person begins to question their faith itself, or how they arrived at their "knowledge" of reality, the first tiny cracks appear in their worldview and they are likely to start down the path of self-examination and critical thinking.

I really liked the structured approach to this book:
- First he defines "faith" and "epistemology" since they are critical concepts to the rest of the book
- Then he explains the process of socratic dialogue, which is his recommended method of engaging with people in a non-hostile but unflinching examination of their beliefs
- He explains some basic axioms of how to talk to people productively in this context: the end goal is to make a long-term difference in someone's thought process, not to win a debate
- He provides some interesting examples of conversations he's had with people, some successful, some unsuccessful, to give you an idea of the process at work
- He highlights a few specific arguments that people might make which, unless handled correctly, become "showstoppers" to further dialogue (relativism, whether epistemology can be objectively correct, etc)

I put this book down with many new ideas in my head and no small sense of chagrin at how I'd approached conversations with the faithful in the past (the opposite of the approach recommended in this book). On the surface, this book seems to be focused on religion, but it is a useful read for anyone who values critical thinking and would like to help others to reason better. The next time you find yourself rolling your eyes at someone talking about the dangers of vaccinations or the powers of crystal healing, you will have a very useful set of tools.

The title alone will stop you in your tracks, “A Manual for Creating Atheists”, a new book by philosopher Peter Boghossian.

At first glance, I thought I was look at atheist proselytizing, the very thing we atheists often stand against. I was wrong, and in a really good way.

This book will in fact create atheists, and this book will make you the creator of some, but it will not be by preaching atheism, denouncing god or even denouncing religion. You are going to create atheists by simply learning how to talk about and discuss faith like never before.

Faith, as Boghossian describes is claiming to know something you don’t know. Others, such as Richard Dawkins have used similar definitions such as belief without evidence. This definition works just as well and keeping that in mind will help you understand this book even further.

Many atheists, like myself love a good debate or even just a discussion –or as Boghossian refers to them, interventions– about why we gave up the idea of God, or why we left religion but for many these discussions revolve around picking apart evil in the Bible, or simply just how unlikely a God is. However, and I can speak from experience, how many minds have changed from anyone saying God does not exist and really convinced a believer otherwise based on our account of the world and universe alone? None? One if you are lucky?

Boghossian offers a much different tactic here. Faith. Discuss someone’s faith and why they hold the beliefs the hold. They often hold such strong faith in things like the resurrection of Jesus, and we can debate the historicity of Jesus all day and night, but it may be worth more to ask them why they believe in such a story. What would it take for them to not believe the resurrection happened? As pointed out in the book, it is often a reply like “Jesus remains”, knowing very well if someone found remains and claimed them to be of Jesus, the believer would quickly denounce the finding or move the goal post, maybe saying something like “well that was his earthly body”, etc, etc”

Boghossian offers advice on how to answer these replies, what kind of questions are good to ask and how to lead an intervention that forces a believer to answer to such claims of faith that they may never have been forced to think about before.

Discussions like these plant a seed. As Boghossian points out, you will not change minds in front of you, but you will leave these people questioning aspects of their faith they have gone unquestioned and really make them come to terms with what they claim to believe in.

This is a book all atheists must read, especially any of you who speak to others about why you are an atheist and question others who are believers, regardless if you are debating theism or homeopathy, this book will give you the tools to use the Socratic method of questioning all while being entertained by his writing style and his interventions. I spend the whole book reflecting on past conversations that would have gone better if I had this tool already and I have already noticed myself using these tools in discussions now.

A Manual for Creating Atheists may be one of the most important books in a long time that discusses the importance of evidence based thinking instead of relying on faith, or hope, or whatever else someone uses as an excuse to hold into illogical positions.

At first, I just wanted to read this because, the store recommended this to me. However, I wanted to see if he could be respectful while suggesting reason over faith. He managed to do so, even though he called believers delusional. (He explains why towards the end of the book.) At first, I was bothered by this because, I felt that I raised my expectations too high (again). However, I stopped being bothered by that little detail. To be fair, I was bothered by him telling readers to go out and dissuade people from their faith wherever they can at first. That was until I remembered that the faithful will do the same thing. (That happened to me once during the summer. I was at TCC and headed to the library. I think I just needed to pass the time because, my second class was at 1:20 PM. There were three girls standing near the giant plant near the entrance. Soon after I met them, they asked me if I wanted to learn about Mormonism. Even though I agreed, when I think back on, I don't think they considered my feelings. For all they knew, I could've been someone who tried to avoid hot button issues as much as possible.)

I kind of enjoyed reading the foreword. I found the speech inspirational because, there are moments when I start wallowing in self-doubt. I end up stopping because, I know that won't make my life better. (I would become less pleasant to be around.) Also, I don't expect to get lucky and find someone who'll take care of my every need. There was a couple of things I disliked. First off, I felt the explanation for the term atheist was necessary. Also, I didn't agree that this should come bundled with The God Delusion because, the author showed respect for the most part.

I felt that his arguments were well thought out. However, I reread his thoughts about the terms agnostics and agnosticism to understand them. That said, I felt that he didn't give ample reason to not use them. It doesn't help that adults should need a good explanation to do something. In fgact, that needs to apply to everybody.

I felt that the methods he proposed were respectful and reasonable. That said, I had misgivings about him warning to not use facts. Not because it was bad advice, that's just one of my preferred strategies. However, I could see why this be a bad idea in this case. If someone's rooted in their faith, then facts won't deter them. (Of course, that doesn't just apply to conversations about religion.) That said, I don't see the point in stopping the usage of religious vocabulary. I thought that sounded a bit pretentious and didn't see how it could work. (I didn't change my feelings after reading several examples of words being changed due to political incorrectness.) In addition, that's restricting vocabulary, which is being dictatorial. Yeah, I'm sure that wouldn't strengthen your case.

The author came off as a respectable, reasonable man from his interventions. He also showed a lot of patience. Aside from a few leading questions, they weren't rude. That said, the one where he spoke to his relative annoyed me a bit. Of course, that was just because, of the aforementioned relative. However, I had to applaud him for remaining hopeful.

This is a great book for so many reasons. Firstly, it is empathic. Boghassian treats those he is trying to rescue, from what he describes as a "faith virus", with respect, a willingness to listen, and a genuine concern for the welfare of those he writes about and for. Secondly, Boghossian speaks from experience. He clearly has had in-depth conversations with believers, listened to them, and responded to them with targeted "interventions" that fit the person, rather than using blunt instruments to beat people over the head. Thirdly, his approach is philosophically rigorous and rational. So much of what the author says makes sense and resonates with what we know from our own experiences. Fourthly, his suggestion that people move away from discussing conclusions/beliefs to exploring the way we arrive at beliefs, is profound and powerful. Finally (at least for this list - there is so much more that could be said), the book is easy to read. Boghossian is articulate and, despite his expertise in philosophy, speaks in language that is down-to-earth and entirely understandable. Atheists need this book so they can move on from angry rhetoric to respectful conversation.

When I purchased this book I was looking for a reasoned balanced argument along the lines of Dawkins et al and instead found somewhat of a rant reminiscent of radical religious books. It seems to me that the author believes that it is the duty of every non believer to destroy the beliefs of those who choose to have them. Evangilism is the same intrusive obnoxious process whether it is pro or anti the established religions and is the manifestation of the intolerance that leads to religious wars.

Don't focus too much on the title, this book shows you how to think, how to show others to think and get at the truth. Reading this book will help anybody to interact with other humans in a friendly manner. It shows us how to be honest and ask honest questions. When I write ''honest'' I see this as the simple honesty of a child who wants to KNOW. We grown-ups have forgotten this childhood directness of questioning. The pure logic of children. We are now afraid to admit we might not know everything. I would love to regain that, I think being honest and direct like this will improve our relations and our communications enormously. On any subject.

If one is religious and convinced one knows the truth then this book could not not harm you could it?
Although I think that real personal honesty and real searching for truth is a killer for ''pretending to know what you do not know is true'' (faith). Using the friendly and non-aggressive honest techniques outlined in this book one places little wedges in closed magical thinking, letting in a ray of light which will help those who are infected with the faith virus heal.

This book is basically a book on how to help people understand that faith is not a way of knowing. That the only way to know anything is using science and reason. It is a unique book in that almost all other books about atheism or religion focus on arguments for or against the existence of gods or the truth or falsity of various religious books. It is an interesting approach. It seems likely to be very much more effective than other methods and the author gives examples of his successes and failures. I don't think I will be using these techniques much because it just isn't my style to try to get people to change their minds. However, if you are so inclined you should definitely consider this book.

Recommended.

I've been listening to Peter Boghossian's "A Manual for Creating Atheists". Excellent ideas, and help for those who are trying to work out how to get their ideas across in a new and constructive way. Although I tend to disagree with parts of the concept (ie, faith vs god/religion), he really gives an excellent overview of street epistemology. I've learned a great deal about how to express what I want to say, and to listen a bit more to the theist without over-talking him. I will, though, have a very hard time not giving facts, as I think in a linear, logical way, and have never quite understood those who do not.

I listen to a lot (and I mean a lot) of audio books, this one was a bit hard to listen to as there are absolutely no breaks, no pauses, and one chapter seems to become another without the listener being brought to it. However, Mr. Boghossian's delivery was very good (especially for a first book). Kindle version is available and, hopefully, it'll be available on Google Books soon.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've heard a lot of hype about the book, so I decided to get myself a copy. Overall, it's well-written and easy to read.

The basic concept Boghossian wants to get across is creating an environment for "doxastic openness," or admitting when you have limited knowledge and are willing to revise a belief. Faith, Boghossian claims, is a failed epistemology; faith does not give one knowledge, nor is faith a good justification (where faith means "pretending to know things you don't know"). Boghossian does provide compelling grounds to reject faith as a reasonable way to justify beliefs and gain knowledge. Boghossian isn't arguing against religion per se, but against faith as an epistemology.

Boghossian's basic thesis, though, is nothing more than the Socratic Method. The Socratic Method is essentially engaging others in questioning, where the questions lead a subject to acknowledge they don't actually know what they thought they knew. In the case of faith, Boghossian argues that by simply asking questions (in the right way. See book for details), you can get people to admit their beliefs are actually fallible, and thereby sow seeds of doubt in someone's faith-based worldview.

Although I'm on board with Boghossian's overall project, the book read like an atheist missionary handbook (given the title, I couldn't be surprised). The book is filled with many wonderful tidbits of information and many useful ways in which to question people about their faith, but there were times where I thought it sounded too much like a door-to-door conversion manual than a defense of a tried-and-true way in which to get people to doubt.

The title is a bummer because what the book really shows is how to help people abandon unreliable thinking. In fact, the atheist angle is nearly irrelevant, especially given how he discourages "street epistemologists" from even addressing religion, per se, but rather the logic failure that supports it.

He points out how people are at different point on their path to rationality and techniques for engagement differ. He realizes that people of faith are not stupid, they have simply succumb to unreliable thinking in one part of their lives.

I appreciated his encouragement that we have to be willing to apply critical thinking ourselves. That if there is sound, empirical evidence for whatever, that we're willing to consider it. Of course that has been utterly absent so far, but if it's presented, it must be examined like any other claim of knowledge.

Also importantly it lets you know when to give up. Some people are simply not interested in letting reliable thinking nudge their position no matter what you say. At that point it's probably better to respectfully move on.

Lastly, he gives many examples. These are really helpful, especially if used to rehearse responses and get people to see how critical thinking and the application of sound evidence is so valuable.

It's not about religious thinking, it's about unreliable thinking and he does a wonderful job. If humanity is to thrive it must embrace the method of knowledge that has given it so much. This book will help us all work better towards that brighter future.

Dr. Boghossian's book is exactly what the secular movement was missing. Denouncing poor critical thinking, moving past religious dogma, decrying pseudoscience, and talking responsibility for one's beliefs are easy to do if one is already predisposed to self-honesty, suffers little peer pressure, or respects science. A Manual for Creating Atheists is an indispensable guide for rational people to talk to people who value irrationality and to do so with real affect. It is the connection between people who will never read Professor Dawkin's God Delusion and those who already have.

I have never read a book that offered clearer and more practical advice while maintaining such easy readability.

I have one critique- where's the pocket version?

This was a highly recommended book by a noted lawyer for a very active atheist foundation.
I wasn't sure if I wanted to buy it until I read the negative reviews from obvious militant theists. Man, they try so hard... I suppose I am now moved by a moral obligation to proselytize with reason and logic.

It is a good read for the Christian who wants to see what the Atheists are doing to the weak spirited and vulnerable believers in faith. It explains the guerilla tactics used by the "Street Epistemologists" who look for the weak and vulnerable. They have found fertile ground in our institutes of higher learning, ironically, many of which were founded by the Christian movement in the USA.

Where do I even start? This book is basically 250-plus pages of awesome. Dr. Boghossian has taken the concept of enlightenment to an entirely new level. Right out of the gate, with the first chapter titled "Street Epistemology," the stage is set for an thorough, exhaustive and absolutely intriguing step-by-step journey on how to handle just about every apologetic angle and evangelical presentation with confidence.

While the chapters on faith, strategies, and other methods are wonderful, Dr. Boghossian takes the next step on how to interact with the individual after they have been convinced to abandon their faith. His chapters on the Socratic method of helping people is outstanding, as well as "After the Fall" and "Anti-Apologetics 101."

This book is not only extremely informative, but it is laid out with comparisons, examples of how to respond to believers, mock conversations, thought provoking quips, important and pertinent information in boxes, notes, "dig deeper" sections, intervention techniques, question and answer segments and an unbelievable amount of reference to source material and citations.

I've read a lot of books and attended many lectures on this subject, and have been privy to a good amount of educational material relating to the interaction with religious people who have made it their life's goal to evangelize and convert anyone they come into contact with. While there is much good material on the market that deals with this, Dr. Boghossian's book has managed to collect a wealth of information and package it into a page-turning guide that will allow anyone who reads it to be able to defend atheism.

"A Manual For Creating Atheists" is the total package. From initial contact with a believer, various levels of engagement, and follow-up after deconversion, this book has it all. It is simply top-level and has earned a place on the "A-List" shelf in my library.

Well done, indeed.

Mini review of Peter Boghossian’s “A manual for creating atheists”
I agree entirely with the author’s contention that religious faith is, in the final analysis, only a pretence, a believing of things inherently unjustifiable by conventional reasoning. This is the kind of thing that one realises one has known it in the back of the mind all along; I never need any convincing of its power and truth.

The English language urgently needs to improve the vocabulary in order to disambiguate reasonable faith from the unreasonable kind. I have ‘faith’ in the order of the physical universe, I plan my life around it. Nobody can say the same about religious faith, with anything like the same level of assurance that we have from countless previous confirmations of physical regularity aka inductive certainty. The religious have their hope it is true, but these hopes are founded on faith in poorly evidenced doctrine. To criticise inductive logic for its lack of perfection is to question whether or not you should take your next breath. There is simply no comparison between ordinary reason and faith.
The power of reasoned argument is present in overabundance. There is little anger there, but I have a minor concern about the use of the phrase ‘eradicate the faith virus’ The word eradicate could be said to have the connotation of the threat of force; atheists still have to defend the anger and violence of politically motivated atheists in communist pogroms, and that is precisely why I raise this concern. I would not wish violent men to lever this argument in support of persecution. Although everything in the book points to reason, and of the strongest most forceful kind I have ever encountered.
It could even be argued that the Humean is/ought distinction is bridged by such an argument, insofar as the value of truth and sound methodology for arriving at same, is a moral as well as a philosophical good. The practical advice of how to engage persons of faith is afaik unique to this book; I cannot wait to try it out. I feel I have won the argument before I’ve begun, that’s how confident I am in Boghossian’s suggestions. Regarding the title of the book, “A manual for creating atheists” this I must proclaim: Hail FSM, I am become a creationist! We all could be such a being in fact.

Several years ago, when a chaplain asked me to state my religious preference, I was certain enough to state "atheist". He was taken aback and told me that I meant to say "agnostic". He then went on to explain that atheists believed in nothing... essentially, that they were nihilists. I was offended but didn't have the words to explain. After a brief awkward moment, he conceded, strangely, that he would write "atheistic" on my form. I resisted feeling guilty, but sensed that I was challenging him - a difficult thing in the military, since he outranked me by far!
I wish that I had read this book, A Manual For Creating Atheists, many years ago. it summarizes and clarifies why I think the way I do. The book is not perfect, but it is the right tool for the job.
If I had read this when I was fourteen, when it first dawned on me that God might not exist, I may have avoided years of confusing discourse.

A great book by a brilliant thinker. How to gently steer believers toward reason and intelligence by asking questions and making them think. I have found that many believers don't like the questions, and simply brush them off or, when boxed into an intellectual corner, they attack personally. This books provides a way to keep it civil and still help them begin the long thought process that is required for the indoctrinated to wake up. I love it!

Peter Boghossian has advanced a unique and valuable contribution to the project of human emancipation (if I may borrow this turn of phrase from the departed Christopher Hitchens). Faith, Boghossian observes, is nothing more than a flawed reasoning process. A substantial portion of the human population has tried over a period of at least a few thousand years, to use faith as a means by which to learn about the world. The experiments have been run over and over. Faith has proven to be an unreliable method of discovering truths about the universe and ourselves.

Now it's time to admit to ourselves that we are, in fact, our brother's keeper. As Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens observed in slightly different ways, we are rapidly approaching the interaction of apocalyptic weaponry and apocalyptic beliefs. We must help those around us realize that faith is a failed epistemology. If you believe that you owe anything to future generations, then you owe them, at a minimum, the truth.

Boghossian suggests that we become "street epistemologists", taking upon ourselves the moral obligation to help our fellow human emancipate themselves from the cognitive virus of faith.

*My Encounter with kind but deluded "Jesus Freak" Jackie*

Friday night on the streets of Missoula, Montana, I had the opportunity to try, for the first time since reading his book, a few of the techniques. After having dinner in a popular Missoula pub, the Old Post some friends and I walked outside where a "non-religious" proselytizer named Jackie asked if we had submitted to Jesus. With her were two young people in their early 20s and a child of about 8 or 9, all three paying rapt attention to our conversation. My friends proceeded to Charlie B's where I would meet them, later.

Jackie was a true believer. Her responses were all reflexive reaches for occasionally relevant scriptural references (she wasn't a "quoter" and was more interested in the ideas, which I took as a sign that she was a sane person, engaged like much of humanity in a quest for understanding, knowledge, and truth). She was prone to cliche "Jesus freak" claims that she wasn't religious and that submission to Jesus was the only way (to what she wouldn't say.)

So I started asking questions about the things that she was saying. I didn't follow any of the example conversations in Boghossian's book directly, but I did borrow from some of them, and followed the general approach of asking questions, rather than the traditional "debate" approach of making statements and deconstructing her arguments and claims.

As it happened, on the sidewalk in front of the Old Post, I had a great opportunity to observe her companions as we chatted. After a few minutes of patiently trying to draw Jackie into a more meaningful conversation, she asked her first real question, saying, "Is there anything that I could say that would persuade you to submit to Jesus?" She was really all about submission, I made a mental note about that, as I thought, "Bingo!" She had uttered the magic question.

In street epistemology, if the person you're engaging is utterly unwilling to imagine the possibility that they might be wrong, you won't be able to help them throw of the mental shackles of faith. I didn't need to ask the question, Jackie did. She had introduced the complexity of submission, though, which I used as an opportunity.

I took a moment to tease apart this issues, to allow focus on the core concepts. "I'm not convinced that Jesus even existed as a historical figure. I can certainly be persuaded on that point, and I could even be convinced that he was god, or the Son of god, or both. I consider the question of submission to be a moral question, though, and a question that should be considered separately."

Boghossian largely ignores the entire edifice of religion, as these tend to be things which people often feel very deeply about. When we rising (or only just risen) apes feel deeply about something, when our emotions are triggered, we tend to think less reasonably and to be rather less susceptible to reason (The Backfire Effect). Furthermore, those with the least knowledge about a subject are least likely to realize the expanse of knowledge they haven't yet mastered, nor to recognize new knowledge when they see it (The Dunning-Kruger Effect). We are least likely to recognize good ideas in domains we haven't much studied.

Jackie really wanted me to submit, and to be willing to submit. She wasn't able to muster any relevant responses to my questions about what she meant by submission, so I suggested directly that the desire to submission was really an impulse to slavery (avoiding a direct confrontation with the patriarchal nature of the Abrahamic religions, while trying to help her see the point of submission as a separate question from whether Jesus existed as a real person, and whether he was god, or god's son.) I suggested that submission was a moral question, and that as moral persons she and I might be able to discuss whether or not a demand to submit could ever be moral.

Here I had made a mistake, departing from the methods of the street epistemology and slipping into a more traditional "debate" style of making a rational argument. I should have asked a series of questions to circle in on that issue, questions which lead to a natural conclusion that submission to arbitrary authority of self-professed divine entities or their self-proessed representatives on Earth, might be problematic. Is it OK to demand submission of another person? If I threaten you, and you submit, is that OK?

Breaking this down into a few more questions that approach the topic less directly might have been more effective. However, in the context of the conversation, it seemed to have more impact than I would have expected, not on Jackie, but on her companions. They clearly didn't see this coming, and hadn't thought of anything like it. They were genuinely surprised.

Now, later on it's very likely that they'll be told I was evil. It will be too late, though, the seed of reason was sparked in the young folk in her company. It *is* OK to consider the moral implications of the rote scripture with which you've been indoctrinated. You can ask deep questions. You can make moral evaluations yourself.

I know that they'll be told I was evil, by the way, because Jackie tried to turn the tables on me, asking me a couple questions about my own failings, in an effort to convince me that I deserved and chose to spend eternity in hell, if I didn't submit to Jesus. Despite her efforts to convince me that I was, and we all were, unavoidably wicked, she was reluctant to admit that she believed in Original Sin. The deluded are remarkably flexible at self-deception. For her, "original sin" was part of religion, and religion was wicked. I asked her several questions about Adam and Eve and the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She *does* believe in original sin, and in the implications that we are born sinners. She just doesn't like the phrase which describes the concept.

Several questions later, and after several attempts to evade the basic question, Jackie had admitted that she did believe in heaven, and in hell, and she did believe that people who didn't "submit to Jesus with all their heart and soul" would spend eternity in eternal torment -- including me. I knew that she believed this from her prior statements, but it was important to coax her into stating these core beliefs simply and directly. Once she admitted this openly, she next easily admitted that, yes, there is no appeal, no possibility of reprieve, from hell.

So then I asked, "Jackie, when you've gone to heaven, and you're peering over the edge looking at the torments of the damned, how long will you watch this, my profound and desperate suffering, before your inner moral sense compels you to intercede on my behalf? Will you say to god, about me, or someone you know and love perhaps, 'God, I know that person and I'm sure they were a good person, simply because they didn't submit to Jesus in their short lifetime, surely that's no reason to torture them, forever?' Will you wait a billion years? 10 billion years? A trillion years? How long will you wait? Or will you be afraid to ask for forgiveness? on my behalf, because you see infinite torment, and fear that you might be thrown into the pit, to suffer alongside me?"

You should have seen the looks on their faces. Jackie was phased for only a fraction of a second, before falling back to her script, people make a choice to go to hell. Her young companions, however, were shocked. They'd never thought about it, been steered their whole lives carefully away form serious contemplation of the immorality of these core tenets of their religious faith. One of them regained his composer and started citing biblical passages, jumping into the conversation for the first time. It was clear that he was trying desperately to convince himself, not to persuade me.

I had succeeded in helping someone start to question, and questions are the start of knowledge. I had given water to the seed of reason in his mind. He had suddenly a very serious doubt with which he now must grapple. Jackie will spend more time trying to answer the questions that his mind will generate.

*Faith is Virus -- You Can Help Save Humanity*

Boghossian's book arrives at just the right moment, a tipping point in history. We have the opportunity to build a more rational civilization, and to reject faith as the basis of politics and societal organization.

Boghossian is working to remove the layers of obfuscation wrapped around faith, all the alternate oily definitions which allow the shell game or the sleight of hand which protects faith. Faith claims are knowledge claims, he insists, and any other use of the term faith is incorrect. Faith is a flawed reasoning process. If you cannot engage in a healthy reasoned discussion of your claims, and if you insist that faith is the only basis on which your claims will stand, then you are not sitting at the adult table. You have ceded your right to participate in the discussion.

Importantly, Boghossian advances the idea that socratic pedagogy is the most effective way to help people realize that faith is not the only basis, nor even a healthy basis on which to build their world view. He has practiced helping people shed many types of false belief by starting with the question, "Are you willing to be wrong?" or "Can you imagine anything which would convince you that you might be wrong?"

Boghossian's argument is orthogonal to and compatible with the arguments advanced by Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, as well as the many others who have contributed over the past couple millennia.

Peter Boghossian has advanced an argument compelling and a method elegant which take the fight directly to the religious. This by the way, is the primary appeal of the "new atheists" in particular Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, but also Dennett to an extent that isn't as obvious given his comfortable, grandfatherly and gentle manner. (Darwin's Dangerous Idea is a frontal assault on the castle). 



Boghossian's move, once you fully grok it, is truly profound. He rejects the inherent premise that religion is the default, and that it has already dominated the board with a three millennia long flood of obscurant moves, which must be countered. This game has played on for centuries, endless defense against myriad rapidly proliferating and mutating claims (it is with obliviousness to irony that religion itself does indeed evolve). Two millennia of religious apology amounts to little more than a denial of service attack upon the Enlightenment and human reason itself. Boghossian refuses to play the game offered by the religious, endlessly debating silly unanswerable questions and their answers which only make sense when you realize the real objective is controlling your thoughts 



Boghossian defeats them at once, by identifying the claims as knowledge claims, and rebuking them all, with a single move: I don't know, and you cannot know, either. This frees him, and us, to look at the very core problem: the use of faith as a method to sort truth from falsehood. It doesn't work, and has no better chance of working than does random guessing. Faith is a method of reasoning, which does not work, and cannot work.



The Boghossian argument is pure and elegant, like a judo roll, playing the inertia of religion against itself. The religious assert faith as a virtue, and make any arbitrary claim, pretending to know something they do not know. Boghossian steps slightly to the side -- reminding us that pretending to know things that we do not know is not virtuous -- he let's religion come in close as it wants, and lets it strike with any argument in its arsenal, grabs it round the neck of faith, and exposes its inner weakness.

Faith is a fundamentally flawed reasoning process which carries you further from the truth on average. Faith can carry you closer to the truth only by accident, or by cheating (i.e. by using reason and evidence to bolster your faith based claim.) Once you cheat, you have conceded that faith is insufficient, and you've accepted the tools of reason and evidence, so you must and can only accept the outcome of those tools: your claim may be right, wrong, or unknown, but not because of your "faith".

We don't know exactly why, but suddenly about 1/3 of people under 30 have rejected religious faith as the basis of their epistemology (it's likely that the Internet has something to do with it, others speculate the influence of the New Atheist movement). That's up from almost none only 10 or 15 years ago. If we, those interested in civilization, reason, science and love of our fellow human, read this book, if we take a few moments each week to engage with the people around us on the questions of faith, if we take time to model the rational thinking we want to see in politics, then the world can be changed.

If you are a fan of Dawkins, Pinker, Hitchens, Harris, please read this book, and become a street epistemologist. Help those around you liberate themselves from the virus of faith. It might be a risk, but it's a risk we can take, together.

[Note: This review is in two parts, the first I wrote a few moments ago as a result of my first attempt to use the "street epistemology" methods described in this book. The second part, my analysis of Boghossian's methods, is modified from a comment I posted to a blog somewhere over a year ago. It applies very directly to material that Boghossian used in this book, and the purpose of this book itself.]

Peter Boghossian's "A Manual For Creating Atheists" is an indispensable toolkit for sceptics. It provides the reader with conversational techniques--such as the Socratic method--to promote in others--as well as in oneself--the attitudinal disposition necessary to lead an honest and rational life. Peter Boghossian draws upon his years of experience with both prison inmates and university students to give us a manual that goes beyond the works of Dawkins et al. Instead of attacking religion, Boghossian targets faith, divorces it of any ethical precepts, and brands it as a faulty way of knowing the world. His work is a breath of fresh air and I highly recommend it to an audience that is willing to make a difference in the battle against superstition, pseudoscience, and dogmatism. The only thing that I did not like about the book is the title; it easily could have been called "A Manual For Promoting Honest Inquiry," but that is really the only bad thing that I can say about the book as a whole. Buy it, read it, and use the lessons you learn from it in your daily life!

Great book, educational and gives interesting examples to challenge your perspective. Really enjoyed reading this. It's not about proving people wrong, it's about learning how we choose what we trust.

What Dr. Boghossian actually meant was not "creating atheists" but "curing theists," as every human being was and is born an atheist. Occult superstition (religion) is the disease, and curing the disease restores the lack of belief in the gods.

However, the book is excellent for much more than merely helping theists return to mental and emotional health. The exposition also applies to people who believe Earth is round (i.e., a flat disk and not the oblate sphere it is); space alien abduction; the rejection of the evidence that shows humans are the cause of the current sharp increase in global average temperature; astrology; $cientology; homeopathy; making America great "again;" the lunar landings were a hoax; the fear of vaccinations causing autism; and nearly every other kind of falsehood.

People interested in how to communicate science, facts, and observed reality to the morons they encounter every day will find this book worth reading.

As a Christian, I always like talking to atheists like the author. He espouses rationalism, but does not practice it. He touts logical fallacies as logic. He denigrates opinions he does not understand. He espouses thw practice of cult indoctrination techniques while claiming atheism is not itself a cult. I read some of the atheist blogs praising the quality of this work, and I read it hoping to run across a new, well reasoned argument. I was pleased to find nothing he said would withstand a serious debate, certainly nothing I've not successfully countered before. I give this five stars because I am the target audience.

Books by Richard Dawkins, Dan Dennett, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens make very good cases for WHY we should help people escape from religion and faith-thinking, but only this book will show you HOW.

Perhaps no other book will create as many atheists as this book, besides the Bible.

I've reviewed this book elsewhere, but I think this book is so important that I need to restate what I think about it here.

Many people still invoke faith as a way of knowing, despite it being highly unlikely to help one arrive at the truth. This is why I'm grateful for this book. Throughout the work Boghossian provides conversational strategies and tactics designed to lead religious believers from faith to reason. The book offers diagnostic methods, provides practical examples of conversations, and is supported by an impressive body of cross-disciplinary peer-reviewed literature.

Boghossian promotes what he calls "street epistemology," by which he seeks to endow a legion of savvy secularists with the ability to disabuse the religious from the fallacy of faith.

Boghossian draws from a vast body of scholarship, and his extensive experience as a professor, researcher, and teacher in the Oregon prison system to provide practical discursive methods for engaging believers. He discusses theoretical models of belief change and gives practical advice in approaching the religious. He recommends that the street epistemologist target faith, not religion, and suggests the avoidance of facts during the discussion. Above all: Listen - model the behavior you desire to engender, and be open to new facts and ideas.

Boghossian addresses other issues, such as the failure of academic liberalism to combat faith, the Socratic method of dialogue, and long term strategies for the eradication of faith and improper reasoning. This is an incredibly practical book, not a philosophical treatise to be pondered during one's idle hours - it's a book that can be read and put to immediate use in daily, polite conversation. It demonstrates that difficult conversations can be friendly and productive, and not confrontational. I highly recommend the book without reservation.

Please read this book, and thank you, Peter, for writing it.

Alan Litchfield
The Malcontent's Gambit

When gods need an apology or an excuse, deluded and misguided charlatans enter the scene with their bankrupt mental acrobatics to further maintain the already misguided flock. In this arsenal of healthy reasoning, Dr. Boghossian gives the reader an intellectual ladder to climb above the filth and dust of religious apologetics and illogical reasoning and help him or her view the reality that so many are clueless about. Intellect honesty radiates from these pages and I extend my sincere gratitude for him in doing so.

Vahan Setyan, PhD

Industrial Psychologist
Author, "Enigma of the Armenian Alphabet: Letters, Protons, and Paradoxes"

Peter Boghossian's A Manual for Creating Atheists is a curious and ultimately very valuable book.

It's curious because it doesn't make much of a case -- or at least not the sort of case I would have liked -- for why we should create atheists.

It's valuable because, if you believe we'd be better off with more atheists, this is a remarkable tool for accomplishing that goal.

I don't view sloppy thinking as a great evil in itself. It doesn't offend me the way hunger and lack of medicine and Hellfire missiles offend me. So, I look for the argument -- which I think can be made -- that sloppy thinking has serious results, or that belief in a god leads to a lack of responsibility, or that belief in eternal life diminishes efforts to improve real lives. This book does not focus on those arguments.

Boghossian points to abstinence-only sex-ed, bans on same-sex marriage, teaching Creationism, corporal punishment in schools, and other offenses in the United States, as well as pointing to various more-severe abuses by the Taliban, as the undesirable results of theism. But, with the possible exception of Creationism, these things could continue without theism or be ended while maintaining theism. Perhaps they would be less likely to continue in a theism-free society in which good arguments against those practices had been introduced. I'm inclined to think that atheistic openness to questioning assumptions leads toward swifter and more radical political change, whether for better or for worse, and that because we need positive radical change so desperately we need the ability to take that risk.

In arguing against the assumption that we must always have war, or poverty, or private health insurance companies, or corporate television networks, or oil drilling, or billionaires, one could do much worse than to appropriate some of the arguments that Boghossian uses to argue against the assumption of theism. This is the great value in this book. The author provides a guide and numerous examples of how to gently nudge someone away from what Boghossian calls "faith," as distinct from "religion."

I think the shift toward the word "faith" has largely been driven by people's desire to unload the baggage of specific religious beliefs while maintaining a vague conviction in the existence of some vague something that one has no evidence for the existence of. Boghossian chooses to tackle people's "faith," meaning their practice of believing something with no justification, in order not to challenge their social attachment to church attendance, ceremonies, and support structures of religions. However, I've had people tell me they were theists because they are not omniscient and they appreciate profound mysteries, even though they reject such notions as "god" and "heaven" (as if atheists must claim to be omniscient just because they don't celebrate their ignorance). So those wanting to cling to religion as they lose faith may themselves describe it as their faith evolving.

Boghossian's approach to talking people out of faith is a subtle jiu-jitsu -- part therapy, part community organizing, part Socrates. He cites evidence that people can be talked out of faith, as well as that the process often takes far longer than does conversion to faith. Seeking to encourage those using his manual, the author explains how reactions that seem to reject arguments against faith can actually be signs of making progress.

Boghossian advises targeting people's habits of faith, not the beliefs they hold. He advocates a non-combative, helpful, and questioning Socratic approach. Richard Dawkins comments in a blurb on 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." I think that's right, but I also think that for a certain type of person, reading this book would be a way to cure them of their god virus.

Still, Boghossian does little of what I think he could have done to persuade us of the desirability of working as evangelical atheists. When, in the course of a conversation, Boghossian wants to provide examples of very moral people who are atheists, he picks Bill Gates (who hoards tens of billions of dollars while thousands of children starve and suffer for lack of it; something one doesn't question if faith in trickle-down economics dominates your thought) and Pat Tillman because he chose to "give his life for his country" (Tillman joined in the senseless slaughter of the people of Afghanistan, came to regret his decision, was killed either accidentally or intentionally by U.S. troops when no Afghans were anywhere nearby, and has been blatantly lied about by the U.S. military and media -- a case where skepticism and freethinking would seem to have been badly needed, but where our brilliant producer of atheists seems to have followed his faith in nationalism in choosing this example.)

Of course, most atheists don't practice cut-throat computer software monopolism, hoard vast wealth, or join in wars. In fact, atheists tend to be more generous and more antiwar than theists. But among those who truly behave morally, including by working and sacrificing for peace and social and economic justice, civil liberties, and the natural environment, are many who say they're motivated by religion. Boghossian, in advocating steering conversations away from abortion or school prayer, says to aim for the root: "Undermine faith, and all faith-based conclusions are simultaneously undermined." One has to hope that doesn't include the good conclusions along with the bad.

Oddly, Boghossian's approach, in which he strives to understand and sympathize with the person whose faith he is attempting to remove, gives very little mention to such motivators of religious belief as the desire not to die. Boghossian uses Socratic questioning to get people to see the error of their ways. He doesn't try to open them up by addressing their unstated fears of death or a world without an authority figure. When death finally gets mentioned, far into the book, the author refers to the atheist's position as "the unknowable" and "not knowing." Not knowing what, exactly? That everything goes blank and ceases? We do know that.

Maybe Boghossian is right that there's nothing to be said on that subject, and a society in which people are not taught religion will be a society with much less religion in it, even while death remains horrifying. Toward the end of the book, the author claims that sound reasoning will give someone a feeling of control that is superior to the feeling of comfort in imagining that their loved one is still alive in a magical place. But this depends, I think, on recognizing that belief in "heaven" is weak and unsatisfying because at odds with most of one's other beliefs. (See In Bad Faith by Andrew Levine.) Surely actually believing that nobody dies and that one prioritizes rational belief formation would be the most preferable combination. But we don't have that choice.

This is a beautiful book. I wept great sobs at on point as I was left with nothing, other points it was like I was being given a great gift. There is no promise of eternal life here - no warm sunshine or teeny tiny little man living inside your heart. Nothing but the gift of Life and it more abundantly His sacrifice of time and his hard work and wonderfull reading voice make this a gift beyond measure. If you have doubts just envoke the presence of reason - I am capable, I am loving kind and honest I am truthful to myself I will give only honesty in response to pretense. We have no real need for faith when we have hope. Hope and acceptance and honesty are worth more than pretending that people know things they can not possibly know.

Like many other popular books on this topic, AMFCA is written in a conversational style and assumes that you are unfamiliar to to the literature. Dr. Boghossian's style should be commended because he never relies on jargon (the couple of times he does use philosophical words he does a really good job explaining what they mean). One thing that I really liked about it is that it focuses in Socratic reasoning. It teaches one to avoid formal debating and to view faith interventions as conversations. It also does a great job of explaining what concepts from various fields of psychology and pedagogy can help in the progress.

When gods need an apology or an excuse, deluded and misguided charlatans enter the scene with their bankrupt mental acrobatics to further maintain the already misguided flock. In this arsenal of healthy reasoning, Dr. Boghossian gives the reader an intellectual ladder to climb above the filth and dust of religious apologetics and illogical reasoning and help him or her view the reality that so many are clueless about. Intellect honesty radiates from these pages and I extend my sincere gratitude for him in doing so.

Vahan Setyan, PhD

Industrial Psychologist
Author, "Enigma of the Armenian Alphabet: Letters, Protons, and Paradoxes"

Peter Boghossian's A Manual for Creating Atheists is a curious and ultimately very valuable book.

It's curious because it doesn't make much of a case -- or at least not the sort of case I would have liked -- for why we should create atheists.

It's valuable because, if you believe we'd be better off with more atheists, this is a remarkable tool for accomplishing that goal.

I don't view sloppy thinking as a great evil in itself. It doesn't offend me the way hunger and lack of medicine and Hellfire missiles offend me. So, I look for the argument -- which I think can be made -- that sloppy thinking has serious results, or that belief in a god leads to a lack of responsibility, or that belief in eternal life diminishes efforts to improve real lives. This book does not focus on those arguments.

Boghossian points to abstinence-only sex-ed, bans on same-sex marriage, teaching Creationism, corporal punishment in schools, and other offenses in the United States, as well as pointing to various more-severe abuses by the Taliban, as the undesirable results of theism. But, with the possible exception of Creationism, these things could continue without theism or be ended while maintaining theism. Perhaps they would be less likely to continue in a theism-free society in which good arguments against those practices had been introduced. I'm inclined to think that atheistic openness to questioning assumptions leads toward swifter and more radical political change, whether for better or for worse, and that because we need positive radical change so desperately we need the ability to take that risk.

In arguing against the assumption that we must always have war, or poverty, or private health insurance companies, or corporate television networks, or oil drilling, or billionaires, one could do much worse than to appropriate some of the arguments that Boghossian uses to argue against the assumption of theism. This is the great value in this book. The author provides a guide and numerous examples of how to gently nudge someone away from what Boghossian calls "faith," as distinct from "religion."

I think the shift toward the word "faith" has largely been driven by people's desire to unload the baggage of specific religious beliefs while maintaining a vague conviction in the existence of some vague something that one has no evidence for the existence of. Boghossian chooses to tackle people's "faith," meaning their practice of believing something with no justification, in order not to challenge their social attachment to church attendance, ceremonies, and support structures of religions. However, I've had people tell me they were theists because they are not omniscient and they appreciate profound mysteries, even though they reject such notions as "god" and "heaven" (as if atheists must claim to be omniscient just because they don't celebrate their ignorance). So those wanting to cling to religion as they lose faith may themselves describe it as their faith evolving.

Boghossian's approach to talking people out of faith is a subtle jiu-jitsu -- part therapy, part community organizing, part Socrates. He cites evidence that people can be talked out of faith, as well as that the process often takes far longer than does conversion to faith. Seeking to encourage those using his manual, the author explains how reactions that seem to reject arguments against faith can actually be signs of making progress.

Boghossian advises targeting people's habits of faith, not the beliefs they hold. He advocates a non-combative, helpful, and questioning Socratic approach. Richard Dawkins comments in a blurb on 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." I think that's right, but I also think that for a certain type of person, reading this book would be a way to cure them of their god virus.

Still, Boghossian does little of what I think he could have done to persuade us of the desirability of working as evangelical atheists. When, in the course of a conversation, Boghossian wants to provide examples of very moral people who are atheists, he picks Bill Gates (who hoards tens of billions of dollars while thousands of children starve and suffer for lack of it; something one doesn't question if faith in trickle-down economics dominates your thought) and Pat Tillman because he chose to "give his life for his country" (Tillman joined in the senseless slaughter of the people of Afghanistan, came to regret his decision, was killed either accidentally or intentionally by U.S. troops when no Afghans were anywhere nearby, and has been blatantly lied about by the U.S. military and media -- a case where skepticism and freethinking would seem to have been badly needed, but where our brilliant producer of atheists seems to have followed his faith in nationalism in choosing this example.)

Of course, most atheists don't practice cut-throat computer software monopolism, hoard vast wealth, or join in wars. In fact, atheists tend to be more generous and more antiwar than theists. But among those who truly behave morally, including by working and sacrificing for peace and social and economic justice, civil liberties, and the natural environment, are many who say they're motivated by religion. Boghossian, in advocating steering conversations away from abortion or school prayer, says to aim for the root: "Undermine faith, and all faith-based conclusions are simultaneously undermined." One has to hope that doesn't include the good conclusions along with the bad.

Oddly, Boghossian's approach, in which he strives to understand and sympathize with the person whose faith he is attempting to remove, gives very little mention to such motivators of religious belief as the desire not to die. Boghossian uses Socratic questioning to get people to see the error of their ways. He doesn't try to open them up by addressing their unstated fears of death or a world without an authority figure. When death finally gets mentioned, far into the book, the author refers to the atheist's position as "the unknowable" and "not knowing." Not knowing what, exactly? That everything goes blank and ceases? We do know that.

Maybe Boghossian is right that there's nothing to be said on that subject, and a society in which people are not taught religion will be a society with much less religion in it, even while death remains horrifying. Toward the end of the book, the author claims that sound reasoning will give someone a feeling of control that is superior to the feeling of comfort in imagining that their loved one is still alive in a magical place. But this depends, I think, on recognizing that belief in "heaven" is weak and unsatisfying because at odds with most of one's other beliefs. (See In Bad Faith by Andrew Levine.) Surely actually believing that nobody dies and that one prioritizes rational belief formation would be the most preferable combination. But we don't have that choice.

This is a beautiful book. I wept great sobs at on point as I was left with nothing, other points it was like I was being given a great gift. There is no promise of eternal life here - no warm sunshine or teeny tiny little man living inside your heart. Nothing but the gift of Life and it more abundantly His sacrifice of time and his hard work and wonderfull reading voice make this a gift beyond measure. If you have doubts just envoke the presence of reason - I am capable, I am loving kind and honest I am truthful to myself I will give only honesty in response to pretense. We have no real need for faith when we have hope. Hope and acceptance and honesty are worth more than pretending that people know things they can not possibly know.

Like many other popular books on this topic, AMFCA is written in a conversational style and assumes that you are unfamiliar to to the literature. Dr. Boghossian's style should be commended because he never relies on jargon (the couple of times he does use philosophical words he does a really good job explaining what they mean). One thing that I really liked about it is that it focuses in Socratic reasoning. It teaches one to avoid formal debating and to view faith interventions as conversations. It also does a great job of explaining what concepts from various fields of psychology and pedagogy can help in the progress.

The arguments for atheism, naturalism and secular humanism are around for quite a long time. So why is faith so resistant against them and what can be done to address this problem?

You get some answers to this question when reading Peter Boghossians book.
Basically he advocates a Socratic strategy of making people doubt by simply asking questions pointing to possible inconsistencies of their views. That's not novel but always deserves a reminder. More important is the authors insisting claim that we shouldn't accept an intellectual and social preserve for religious faith, treating it as a no-touch private preference or matter of taste. Boghossian's attack on constructivism and epistemological and moral (multicultural) relativism as an academic and social aberration is justified and deserves support. So far the motivating aspects of the book.

But unfortunately there are severe flaws. The author has no empathy for religious people. You can't understand the comforting effects of faith by simply stating that there is no evidence for it. For example many people want to believe that there beloved ones still exist somehow and somewhere after having passed away. Wrong - but we should be able to feel some empathy for the emotionally comforting effect of such wishful thinking. Lack of that pushes Boghossian to demand that we should try to talk everybody out of his or her faith, people personally unknown to us, everybody, everywhere, in principle regardless of the personal situation (desperate life conditions, terminal illness, high age, psychological stability or instability?). And here things begin to turn unpleasant and even potentially dangerous.

When finally classifying religious faith as a mental disease which should be addressed by public health programs Boghossian risks to shift to sectarianism and make his whole principally laudable enterprise look ridiculous. Religions are out-dated ways of interpreting the world and finding orientation in life but they are no diseases (with violent fanaticism as a borderline case between crime and mental disorder). If not so a considerable part of arts and human civilization would just be the product of insane people. Sounds a bit ahistorical, doesn't it?

When I was a Christian, "witnessing" made me uncomfortable. I feel the same way about going out and convincing other people to become atheists. The truth is out there if you seek it. People of faith are either too afraid or too invested in their religion to bother challenging their beliefs and they will tell you, point blank, "Nothing will change my mind."

I tend to take them at their word in the hopes they will leave me the hell alone, too. Unfortunately, many of them have terrible manners and insist on trying to bring me back into the fold at every opportunity. This pisses me off. Why should I want to engage in behavior I would dislike if it were directed at me? The golden rule predates Christianity and I think it applies here.

Call-in atheist shows, books and videos are better. These are indirect approaches that won't annoy theists at inappropriate times. I don't like the idea of using Christian tactics. If I were in the shoes of a theist, I would be pissed off at being harassed.

I'm disabled. I don't have the energy necessary to go out and annoy Christians. I would rather live and let live as much as possible, support atheist call-in shows / books / videos. Most of all I want to do things that make a tangible difference in the lives of others. The economy is so bad that many people are clinging to their faith more than ever. They don't have the luxury of questioning their own beliefs (see Maslow's hierarchy of needs). Helping them in other ways is more important right now than arguing them out of their religion.

I also have a feeling that in many cases, targeting Christians for "intervention" will prove counterproductive. So many proselytization attempts are leveled at me that I finally had to hang a sign on my door to get some peace. This obnoxious behavior makes me LESS likely to listen to anything they have to say.

Reading the reviews, someone wrote, I didn't read the book, but gave it one star! Well, I did read the book, and I'd give it six stars if I could. Peter Boghossian is brilliant and the book has great techniques for engaging people who exhibit delusional thinking. It can help people see the faulty way they came to their conclusions, and offers them a way to see that without debate or argument. I highly recommend this book!!

I really like the idea of an army of street epistemologists changing the world for the better by disabusing people of their weak, corrosive, or irrational epistemology. While this book is full of interesting ideas and (for us anyway) new vocabulary words it was annoying to read. I appreciate repetition of ideas to cement them but I felt like I was reading one paragraph four times in a row. If you read this book try to make it to the end of the chapter before you take a break, I kept thinking my book mark was misplaced because it all sounded like I read it before. The examples of "success" are inconclusive at best. On the Humanist Hour pod cast Peter Boghossian hinted at a reality show that would demonstrate street epistemology, I'd still like to see that.

The book provides a road map of ideas to challenge and recommends the Socratic method of using questions to induce thinking and move the conversation along a specific path. If nothing else this book makes me want to read more Plato and Socrates. This book could use more flowcharts and diagrams.

More convincing evidence needs to emerge to make me believe this can work. And the writing is not great. Peter Boghossian if you are reading this please gather more evidence and a co-author and try again (this has the potential to be great). I'm pretty sure everyone would be happy with more evidence. I recommend following Boghossian on twitter and facebook but I cannot recommend this book to my friends.

I will try to update this review if I find convincing evidence for this method or if I have any success personally applying this method.

A Manual for Creating Atheists is more than just a book about helping others abandon a faulty way of reasoning; it's about creating rapport, having meaningful discussions, instilling wonder and awe, giving hope, and fostering a thirst for inquiry.
What I admire most about Peter Boghossian's material is that it's two fold. On one hand it serves to help people discover a more reliable process of reasoning. And on the other it gives one a more effective (and less confrontational) strategy for communicating with the "faithful."

This book should be required reading for every high school student in the country. Boghossian paints a clear picture of the methods by which any human can utilize critical thinking for analyzing the world around them.

As Atheists, most of us search for the most effective way to do something because see value in that. This book is the answer. We have all been stumbling around trying to spread reason but this book finally concentrates us. I am sad to see that this book only has 200 some reviews, and I really hope that he updates it every year or something so that it spreads and gets bigger. We need this book to spread!

I was skeptical it would be very good with such a provocative title that seemed to scream for media attention. I'm glad I bought it. "A Manual for Creating Critical Thinkers" should be its real title. It's a great read and can be applied to many situations outside of religion.

As someone who appreciates talking to people of different belief systems, I really enjoyed reading Peter Boghossian's book "A Manual for Creating Atheists." His primary point in this book is that faith is not a good tool for making decisions, and that every single person will benefit from removing "faith" as a reason for acting a certain way or believing something.

Respectful. At first glance, I can see why someone would think that this book is snarky, sarcastic, or condescending. The title, right? Well, you would be pleasantly surprised to learn that the book is very respectful towards all people. The author doesn't want to debate the pros and cons of religion with anyone or whether we can know there is a God or not, instead he just wants to remove what he calls a "bad epistemology" and replace it with a better epistemology. If we all think with clear-headed, unbiased reason, then the conclusions we make will be stronger and closer to reality than by making decisions with predetermined, biased faith. When you read the discussions in the book, you can see how respectful he is. He speaks to each person as if they are an individual with individual needs. He is receptive to what they say, and empathetic to their situations. Peter continually stresses to treat people with respect.

Insightful. One of the first impressions I got reading this book was that the author did years of research in writing it. There are so many pertinent references from outside sources in each chapter that you could consider this book as truly central in your library of reason and rationality. If you want a better idea, the References section is 18 pages full of diverse sources. The text of the book smoothly incorporates salient ideas and conveniently adds footnotes for extended explanations where needed.

Sensible. Peter Boghossian's argument just makes sense. He defines faith, not as hope (which is its own word for a reason), but as "pretending to know something you don't know." He discusses the problems involved with being close-minded about beliefs and encourages "doxastic openness" which simply means that one is willing to alter a belief on the account of new information or evidence presented. He introduces the Socratic method, a dialogue that incorporates 5 steps to promote open-mindedness about deep-rooted beliefs, and he gives several examples of the Socratic method in practice. He also proposes that people learn to be okay with not knowing. Too many times people give out answers to questions when either they don't know the actual answer, or the answer cannot be known at present. We need to just be able to say, "I don't know," without our pride getting bruised. This is humility in its truest form.

This book is for anyone who values reason and rationality. This book is for anyone who wants to acknowledge reality using the best tools possible. This book for anyone who needs help practicing empathy and respect in talking to various people. This book is for anyone with an open mind and the courage to genuinely analyze our deepest beliefs.

Someone trained in the rules and skills of debate will especially appreciate this book. A welcome addition to books being published that join in the battle to end irrational theistic nonsense being taught to credulous children. "JUSTIFIABLE HOMICIDE?" -Growing Up A Baptist Fundamentalist- Recommend this book also as one that makes a clear argument about the root moral disconnect of the Abrahamic religions.

-
"A Manual for Creating Atheists" (Or, Theists?)
By Peter Boghossian
-
Bombastic obscure jargon obfuscates, befuddles, discourages, and alienates.
Proper nomenclatural terminology should describe the subject.
Words are the key to the meaning and intent.
Absence of specific descriptive wording indicates diversion, and aberration.
-
Can we believe this author is seriously promoting atheism when:
on page 221 'he' a 'presumed' promoter of atheism suggests:
"---read different religious texts---attend religious services---(and)
read religious literature---" .
--------------
Glossaryshould specifically explain content!
But many of these words are missing from books about atheism:
addict, addiction, assertion, beginning, brainwash, children, coercion, compulsion,
conjecture, contagion, corruption, debauchery, dogma, fables, fairy-tale, fakery, force,
fraud, generational, generations, hearsay, helpless, hypothesis, indoctrination,
inducement, infection, infinite, infinity, lies, lures, masses, mind-control, myth,
mythical, mythology, pedophile, plague, rape, seduction, slavery, thievery, victims
---
Too many of the ABOVE /\ words are missing from this book to support
the reasoning behind the author's hope to accomplish and desired result.
-

It "dragged" a bit in the beginning, maybe the first third of the book. Then, it became interesting. The book emphasizes the importance of rational, critical thinking. I have no interest in converting someone to atheism but I will vigorously defend thinking unmuddled by myth.

I had very mixed feelings about this book. I liked Boghossian's idea that the way to help people escape from nutty religious belief is to help them think through what they believe and why they believe it, and to show respect. That's a good idea. The problem is that Peter Boghossian has an intense and often annoying knowitall attitude: On the one hand, he insists that his socratic 'interventions' are respectful of others and that he has an open mind to the possibility that faithful believers may know things that he himself doesn't know -- but on the other hand he also insists that faith is a faulty epistemology, that the Bible is a book of nonsense, and that its believers are suffering from a virus-like delusion. I don't really believe that you can simultaneously have deep personal respect for your interlocutor and also hold a mocking and disparaging attitude towards his/her beliefs.

A much more respectful, less obnoxious approach is presented in the fascinating 'street epistemology' interviews that have been conducted by Anthony Magnabosco,
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLh10RgQgGuM-Jy4ADVLUjJZfCnaO9ILBR

Further, his definition of faith as 'pretending to know things you don't know' is deliberately provocative but probably doesn't hold up to close scrutiny. For example, a person who pretends to know things he doesn't know is usually not articulating faith. Rather he is usually delivering what we call bullsh*t (which is the topic of a much better book by Harry G. Frankfurt). It's not the same thing. In any case, people who have faith in God rely on evidence that they consider reliable, and so it is not entirely accurate to say that they hold beliefs based on no evidence - it's more accurate to say that skeptics or atheists question that evidence.

I listened to the Audible version of this book, which probably gives a very different experience than the print version. An unintentionally comic experience at times ... Peter Boghossian is the narrator of the audiobook, and he has a slightly unusual voice (not like an actor) and that makes the book sound a little odd and quirky. This lends a comic effect at times, as when he rants about his absurdly medicalized view of faith, e.g. about how each socratic treatment of the patient will help to immunize that patient with rationality and block progression of the faith disease. It gets a bit ridiculous and at times I wondered if the whole thing was just a big joke.

Which raises the question of whether Peter Boghossian is just kidding. Should we believe any of this? Is he really this obnoxious to total strangers? Does he really choose his seat on an airplane so that he can sit next to someone reading a Christian book? Is there any evidence at all that his socratic interventions can actually cure people of doxastic closure? How many atheists has Boghossian created? He says he has conducted numerous socratic interventions. But I listened to the entire book waiting for Boghossian to give one single example of a 'patient' whom he had 'cured' with his prescribed treatment, and I did not hear a single example given. What is the evidence that his method actually works? Are we supposed to take it on faith?

This book is so over the top that if religion were politics, I'd suspect that Mr. Boghossian may not really be an atheist at all, but a religious moby. What rational rationalist regrets not having attempted to convert his own mother to atheism on her deathbed? It's not as though she died thinking she was going to hell; in that case, disabusing her of the notion that such place exists would have been an act of kindness. No, she died thinking she was going to heaven, and her own son now feels bad for failing to persuade her in her final hour that she would really just cease to exist. And then there's the final chapter, which equates religiosity with mental illness. Jesus Herbert Walker Christ! Oh wait, per Note 2 to that same chapter, I'm probably not allowed to say that, either.

Two stars vs. one because the book really does make some decent points along the way, and because given its smug and self-righteous tone, it probably should be read by evangelists of other stripes.

This is a really fun read. Rather than arguing about the metaphysical underpinnings of Christianity, it focus on how to actually talk people out employing faith-based reasoning. Along the way, the author explains a lot of techniques from psychology, cult exiting, pedagogy, and substance abuse counciling. A lot of these techniques are peer reviewed and the author merely reverse engineered them.

I am a Christian who read this book to better understand the mindset of atheists, deists, and those with general theological doubt or questions. This helped me in my beliefs because I could see the inconsistencies of their arguments. It also helped me understand the helpful means of approaching metaphysical truth via the Socratic method (as the author used to approach his anti-metaphysical views).
Christians, don't be scared to read such material - you will feel very attacked initially, and rightly so, but in continuing to read you will see that the secular and anti-God minds of the atheist (and deist) are full of unanswered questions and doubt regarding their own beliefs (or lack thereof).
I will encourage you to do as the author recommends: buy from the used bookstores so that the author isn't compensated!

I am giving this five stars even though I haven't read it; overseas customers are not privy to such joy without paying absurd shipping prices. I was going to order this and one other paperback and the shipping cost was $20, and I would have to wait over a month to get two damn books. I know, stop being a scrooge and just pay the charge? Well flippers, that is twice the cost of the book, and I just wanted to complain about it. Stop rubbing those next day delivery and prime membership ads in my face. Once it is available on book depository I will come back and leave a fascinating review, but who knows when that day will come. Unless someone else wants to post this to me in Australia?

First, a disclaimer: I did not read this book cover-to-cover. I skipped past the appendices, the bibliography, and a few footnotes. By the end of chapter 8 the book had become repetitious.

I won't introduce Peter Boghossian's "A Manual for Creating Atheists" beyond noting that it has as it's goal the elimination of "faith" through fielding an army of "Street Epistemologists" who "view interactions with the faithful as clinical interventions designed to disabuse them of their faith" using reason, evidence and rationality to confront the claims of faith.

There are many things one could say about Peter Boghossian's Manual, but really one need not read past chapter 2, because that's where the whole thing collapses in spectacular fashion.

The goal being the elimination of faith, Boghossian begins by laying out what he thinks faith is. Now one might think that someone in search of an understanding of faith might start, say, by checking out what the great Christian thinkers had to say on the subject. Read Augustine. Peruse Anselm. Look through Aquinas. Take a gander at the great creeds and confessions of the various Christian churches. Study papal encyclicals and the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You know, stuff like that.

Boghossian, however, neatly sidesteps that enterprise, dismissing all the great Christian statements on faith with the single, unsupported assertion that all they provide is "deepities", "slippery definitions" and unclear language to define faith. Having rather cleverly dodged his responsibility to ask Christians what Christians mean by faith, he's now ready to tell you what HE says faith is, which is:

"Pretending to know things you don't know."

More generally, Boghossian insists that faith is an epistemology, a process through which one attempts to discover truth. It is upon this assumption that Boghossian builds the entire argument of his Manual. His interventions are based on it. His understanding of and responses to "faith" assertions (see especially chapter seven) are predicated upon it. Even the rationalist utopia he lays out in chapters eight and nine are constructed on the foundational assumption of faith-as-epistemology. The mantra of "pretending to believe" is repeated endlessly throughout the nine chapters and three appendices of his tome. Faith-as-epistemology, faith as "pretending to know things you don't", is not some mere obiter dictum. It is the ratio decidendi on which his every argument hangs.

Given the importance of the hypothesis, then, one might reasonably expect Boghossian to have a solid argument to support it. But one would be disappointed. What one discovers, in fact, is that, aside from a single footnoted referral to James Lindsay, he offers absolutely NO evidence or argument in support of his assertion at all. None whatsoever. He merely asserts without evidence (and we all know what Hitchens had to say about that).

And then immediately proceeds to blow his own argument right out of the water.

About a third of the way (I'm reading the electronic version; I can't give you page numbers) into chapter two, in his argument "disambiguating" faith from hope, Boghossian offers the following (grammatically-challenged) grammatical challenge:

"Give me a sentence where one must use the word 'faith', and cannot replace that with 'hope', yet at the same time isn't an example of pretending to know something one doesn't know. ... I don't think it can be answered because faith and hope are not synonyms."

Boghossian is proposing a simple and effective linguistic test: to test whether B is a synonym for A, take a statement using A (call it SA) and substitute B for A. If the result (call it SB) is essentially semantically equivalent to SA, then B is a synonym of A; otherwise, it's not.

Fair enough. Good test.

Now skip back a few pages to where Boghossian, having set forth his definition of faith, attempts to insert that definition into several faith assertions. If SA is "Teach your children to have faith" then SB becomes "Teach your children to pretend to know things they don't know", and so forth.

Boghossian's intent here is clear: he thinks the gibberish that is his collection of SBs says something about the incoherence of faith. Unfortunately, the very test he proposed proves rather the opposite: since his SBs are not semantic equivalents of their corresponding SAs, all he has proven is that his definition of faith is a straw man. (By way of comparison, try substituting a proper synonym for faith; Webster's dictionary offers "trust", for example. This time, "Teach your children to have faith" becomes the semantically equivalent "Teach your children to trust [in God]".)

Further, other examples could be found that work against Boghossian. Surely, "My wife is faithful" doesn't mean "My wife believes things she doesn't know"; "He's restored my faith in politicians" does not mean "I've started believing things I don't know about politicians again"; "to break faith" doesn't mean "to stop believing things one doesn't know"; and so forth.

One could also simply check a dictionary; look up the etymology of the word (it derives from the Latin "fides", which means simply "trust" or "confidence"); or simply note that faith is a noun, not a predicate.

But then, a definition is not a theory. Boghossian seems unaware of the distinction.

With Boghossian having demolished his own major premise, the rest of his book simply collapses.

There are other issues one could note -- abuse of the Socratic method, mistaking reason for an imperative, intellectual dishonesty (the Tertullian pseudo-quote; the response to "Why is there something rather than nothing?") -- but one that struck me as particularly odd was Boghossian's admission of doxastic closure.

In chapter four, Boghossian introduces the question "How could your belief [in X] be wrong?", by way of discussing doxastic openness. He then offers his own answer to the question by referencing Lawrence Krauss' example, but then immediately bails from it: even that, Boghossian says would be "far from conclusive as it's a perception and could be a delusion." There is, then, nothing that would convince Boghossian.

And that is the very definition of doxastic closure.

I expected to see reasons why gods do not exist and evidence from various scriptures proving that men wrote them and that they are fantasy. This is a psychology book about how to convince people to your point of view (don't argue, repeat yourself etc) and could create anything at all including believers if used in the right way. Disappointing.

Felt like I was reading a compilation of the usual atheist blog content. Expected a little more. Some good points. But the Bible remains the best manual for creating atheists. Felt it didn't do enough to take down religion.

It is hard to imagine some people (back during the inquisition) who would not recant or would believe (do anything) to get out of being tortured when it is all just a big fairy tale anyway. Tell the pooped Pope (or the inquisitor) whatever…to allow (the then unknown) natural selection of Darwin to…well, evolve…you and maintain your existence. People may tell you anything, even things they know are false (aaah usually they are called, lies); but I don’t ‘believe’ I could ever find anyone who knowingly tells lies who would go smiling to a torturous death; especially when one is given many opportunities to recant (and certainly may be then mildly punished as a motivator to stop telling those lies)—we get punished people today too if we catch them telling lies in a court of law.
Then again (to be fair) no one: atheist, agnostic, or ‘believer’ should want to hurt others, or lie…or do anything which we ‘all’ KNOW is morally incorrect; that ‘book’ was written for an audience in an around the years way before anything we now call science was available. Let me see if I can pop a few examples: aaaah, well, “in the beginning” (a good place to ‘begin’ I guess). Back during the times of the Bbible I ‘believe’ they all thought that the universe was eternal: nothing moved in daylight except the sun and at night all the stars were fixed and nothing moved except those pesky wanderers—heck we still say: “sunrise is at yada yada and sunset is at yada yada.” Only 100 or so years ago the standard model for cosmology was the steady state theory, which was proved wrong by a Belgian Priest George Lemaitre and too Einstein (and then many others). Oddly, but the universe is now believed to have an “in the beginning”…to include time, space, matter and energy. It was the ad homenum attack of Fred Holye who was out to ridicule Lemaitre who derisively then coined the phrase “big bang” (and that’s the only reason we have the term “Big Bang” for the singularity event was not big nor was there any bang). I certainly doubt that any believer would expect the boney finger of God to come popping through the clouds to hand out an errata and magically (or is the miracle) add in “Big Bang”…to Genesis. You would not expect that either; correct? How about the idea of, “from dust you came and to dust you will return”? Well, crudely (even for science books) we are reminded that we are either stardust or nuclear waste (I guess that all depends if you’re a positive person or a negative person—aaah that’s humor everyone), but I certainly would not expect to see in the pages of any religious book mention of the “periodic table”, or “stellar nuclear synthesis”? Who in all honesty and being reasonable would expect to find such words; or to go even further with “Proton-proton chain” or “CNO Cycle”? We have to get Dmitri Mendeleev here first (and do you know what his mother had to go through to get her son to succeed?! Wow, what a story of sacrifice). However, if I were to write some informative book about how we got here and what it is we are really made up of, and I could not use those two phrases then “dust” is not a bad substitute (what would you use?). Adam and Eve are both a bit of a mystery (scientifically) but biologically even if Darwin is perfectly correct (and where is science ‘perfect’? The fact is that it is always changing and updating itself) no where do we have a good way of explaining how non-living periodic table elements becomes (or became) “living” material/dust. It really is a poke in the eye for science—frankly, it’s a bit embarrassing. We have left four dune buggies on the moon, yet we do not even KNOW what we are or who we are or how we got here or even if we go somewhere outside of time (and “time” is another ‘rub’)! But here is a thought (something to get one’s curious up—it’s not science, but it might kindle a spark in someone to do science to find out). One thing that has always bothered folks about evolution and Darwinism is that if natural selection is the only gig in town (which must operates via no plan no purpose no outside influence—no DESIGN) then why do humans have a brain that evolved way past any survival value precepts? If we are to gain abilities to not go extinct (survive via natural selection) to: eat but not get eaten; rise/adapt to changing environmental threats; and prorogate our species, then why are we so curious (even too have an unneeded/unwanted/limiting conscience) to the point of wasting energy, materials, and time conjuring up ideas such as particle physics, big bangs, or even abstract numbers…in to a large hadron colliders, innumerable satellites, and (for the numbers) binary code and our now beloved laptop computers? Not one of those items and hundreds more have one iota of Darwinist survival value!! Aaaah, I’m not going to give up my laptop (or electricity) to prove this point…I’m just trying to look at this without bias; without coming with preconceived prejudices—I know that all non-believers herald such freedom, that they will not dogmatically be fundamentalist conservatives and limit their thinking. There is another stretch in the bible in the book of Job (aaah, that name is pronounced as if with a long ‘o’ or written/spelled like “jobe” just in case you have not got that far in reading that which is…all wrong). Job is thought to be the oldest book in the Bible and so it too can contribute ‘their’ inspired thoughts about how and why they got here (creation and all that stuff) but it is still interesting that they…had the ability to ‘think’ about it. I always figured they were all just ignorant, stupid, slaves and/or sheep herders who were being harnessed and harassed by the superior Roman soldiers. But then I also learned that Eratosthenes discovered, via some rather intuitive mental deduction and mathematics ‘thinking’ that the earth was round AND this was accomplished around 200 BC. I was told/taught that is was Columbus and Magellan that proved it was round in and around 1492 and later with Magellan. Our modern education systems lead me astray! Now, it’s hard to know what to believe especially when scientists speak of reality (all material) as being mostly empty space (to the tune of 99.99% empty) and that what is left (the baryonic mater) represents only 4% of the 96% unseen Dark matter and Dark Energy—so then; to quote a “role model” president… “just what is, is” anyway?! Frankly, we do not have a clue what is going on. We could all be internal eternal intelligent spirit energy caught up in these electro-chemical bio-mechanical earth suits and on a temporary duty to steward this earth and name (care for) the animals and guess what…be in relationship with IT all and to our spiritual Home. Existence is weird; there should be nothing rather than something; and life…is even stranger than we can suppose. Einstein said that “it is strange that we can comprehend the incomprehensible” Aaaah Albert did a lot of ‘gedankenspiel’ and that’s not science—should he then not have had these thoughts? There is a verse somewhere in Romans (chapter 8 I think) where it hints to the fact that; ‘the creation is caught in the bondage of decay’. Why couldn’t that be an ancient reference to the issue of entropy? Does that make the Bible out of date? Well, yes the terminology is off, but the concept of the Second Law of Thermodynamics is still valuable and would (quite logically and reasonable) be stated as “bondage” and “decay” and too “caught” because we all want to stop our heat death and redirect ‘times arrow’…as it causes us to get old and eventually die? Or do we graduate life through death and then our energy (which can never be created or destroyed—it just changes) returns home leaving our earthsuit to go back into dust? Well, I don’t know, maybe some atheist or believer or agnostic can fill in the…gedankenspiel (I don’t really care who or what you are—as long as you use the brain you…aaaah acquired). Thanks.

I've abandoned other books, but I haven't yet abandoned the Manual. The word "epistemologist" has wandered from my passive to my active vocabulary, so I have hopes for more, but so far the ROI, return on invested reading time seems low.+

Religious faith has become a public health crisis, according to Dr Boghossian. This idea is delusional. In psychiatry, a delusion is defined as an irrational belief, held with unshakeable conviction, and maintained despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Dr Boghossian is a university instructor in Philosophy, and rather than suffering from a psychiatric illness, he is simply jumping on a bandwagon: the militant atheists' attack on religion. Presumably he does this to boost sales of his book and increase enrolments in his classes.

His actual message, stripped of the fashionable polemics, is about critical thinking: the process of analysing ideas. This is important. It is core business in the sciences. Politics and public life would benefit enormously from clarity in the analysis of problems. And none are better placed to expose the conceptual errors and traps which get in the way of logical thought than professional philosophers like Boghossian. This book is terrific as an introduction to critical thinking.

But Boghossian goes overboard when he describes religious faith as a public health problem.

To set this in perspective, think about some real crises in public health. Smoking kills 5,000,000 a year worldwide. The obesity epidemic is delivering a generation whose life expectancy, for the first time in modern history, is shorter than that of their parents. Alcohol causes deaths in car crashes, impairs work performance, and leads to domestic violence and family breakups. Mental conditions, particularly depression and Alzheimer's dementia, impose an enormous burden of suffering on patients and carers.

Is Boghossian serious about religious faith being reclassified as a mental illness, demanding treatment like depression or schizophrenia? Mental illness, as recognized in orthodox medicine, impairs the life quality of the sufferer and those around them. Untreated depression leads to the tragedy of suicide. Psychoses with delusions of persecution lead to loss of work productivity, withdrawal from family and society, and even (occasionally) violence.

But how many religious people suffer from such adverse consequences? Boghossian writes from the USA, a country predominantly protestant Christian. For how many does religion break up families or lead to loss of employment? How many Christians chop up the neighbours, or suicide on the basis of their beliefs? The raving lunatic who quotes the Old Testament while wielding an axe is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, not an overdose of religion. He needs a shot of an anti-psychotic medication, such as haloperidol, rather than a debate about the manifest irrationality of ancient prophets.

As a reviewer, I should confess that I reside in Australia, a remarkably godless society compared with the USA. From my perspective, the religiosity of the USA seems quaint, and at times even hypocritical. In the US, the poor die in the street, unable to access medical care, while political leaders assume pious poses. The wealthiest country on Earth has dismal health care by all the standard statistical indices: for example, infant mortality in the USA is 6.1 per 1000, compared with 4.6 in the UK, and 4.1 in Australia [Britannica Yearbook, 2013].

Boghossian's book spends a lot of time on God. Again, this seems odd from a non-USA perspective. Anglicans, major stakeholders in the UK and Australia, don't focus much on God, though they are very fond of Jesus of Nazareth, who (quite apart from any magical interpretations) was a social reformer of unparalleled significance, replacing the vengeful "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" with repentance and reconciliation. Stripped of the layers of interpretation generated by millennia of religious elaboration, the core teachings of the historical Jesus, delivered mainly as parables, were very much what we would today call secular humanism: egalitarianism, brotherly love, pacifism, liberation of women, acceptance of diversity.

In one weird aside, Boghossian even questions whether Jesus actually existed. I couldn't believe my eyes! We know more about Jesus than we do about many important figures in the ancient world. Multiple independent sources attest to his life. Josephus (the Jewish historian writing in the first century) mentions him, as does Tacitus (the Roman historian) and the letters of Pliny the Younger (a Roman provincial governor). The Gospel of Mark is clearly a primary source, writing in Greek from an oral tradition. Matthew and Luke quote another source, now lost, which contains many of the sayings of Jesus. Paul's voluminous writings include reference to his spending two weeks in conversation with Simon Peter and James, both of whom travelled with Jesus during his ministry. The Gospel of Thomas, known since the third century but only found intact in 1945, is yet another collection of the sayings of Jesus. But the ultimate killer for the idea of Jesus being a fictional creation is the simple realization that anyone inventing the story of a messiah would surely have done a better job of it. Fiction would never have created the paradoxes and interpretative difficulties which riddle Christian doctrine.

One annoying error keeps recurring in the text of Boghossian's book. It is reference to religious people claiming the Earth is only 4,000 years old... Who? Where? When? ... No one of note has ever claimed that. This seems to be a muddled reference to the 17th century cleric, James Ussher, who dated the creation to 4004 BCE ... which is a little over 6,000 years ago, not 4,000.

Despite these faults, Boghossian's book is an accessible introduction to critical thinking, and as such is to be commended. The rabid anti-religious slant, unfortunately, gets in the way of the theme. And while this focus seems to be aimed at increasing the readership, it is more likely to deter all but evangelical atheists. Which is a pity, because muddled thinking (rather than religion) really is a crisis in our society.

I do not like the author's heavy use of obscure words which makes reading this book a chore. HIs word "Epistemology" appears repeatedly on almost every page, yet I still can't incorporate it into my working vocabulary! Some words I couldn't find in the dictionary. I want the information, but not the tedium. I WILL finish reading it!

First, the good news: Asking questions rather than debating the content of a flawed argument is a great strategy. The author, Peter Boghossian, describes this strategy in really useful detail, helping his readers see how and where and when to apply it.

Then, the bad news: While Boghossian talks about humility, I strongly suspect he doesn't have much. Face it, if an author tells his readers how much better, smarter, and more ethical he is than they, he's going to lose them, so of course, he has to talk about the value of humility. But, first, he takes a gratuitous slap at Atheism +, without ever explaining why he dislikes it. If you disagree with something, fine, make your argument and defend it to the best of your ability. But to stick in a snarky remark is just petty and pointless.

Next, he refers to the people he wants us to convince as "subjects". Not in the sense of "I am the king and you are my subjects", but rather in the sense of "research subjects". But still, this conveys an attitude. Why not just call them people?

Third, he spends two pointless chapters trying to impress us with his encyclopedic knowledge of philosophy. Chapters Two and Three are jargon-filled wastes of time. "Doxastically closed?" Is he serious? Speak plain English, please; stop trying to prove how smart you are. Also please realize that while professors and students of philosophy find that stuff highly entertaining, most of us out here think it's a complete waste of time.

Finally, he admits to GOING OUT LOOKING for people to "fix". He describes looking for a seat on an airplane, checking out what people are reading, hoping for a center seat because that gives him two potential "subjects" (yech) rather than just one. It's one thing to have a great strategy to engage religionists when they get in your face; it's quite another to see yourself as a crusader.

My advice to potential readers is to skip over Chapter Two and Chapter Three. I suspect that the author himself knows how irrelevant those chapters are, since he makes an argument about their necessity, rather than just presenting them.

The meat of the book is worth reading. The author's pretensions are not.

Boghossian’s book in the past month or so has been the subject of great conversation on the internet. Why is this the case? Is it because there’s a new argument in here? No. There’s nothing new. Is it because there’s a really powerful demonstration of atheism in here? No. That’s not here also. It’s because now, Boghossian claims to have a way to apply principles of critical thinking and train others in them so that they can become “street epistemologists” with the goal of deconverting others.

Unfortunately, what I’ve seen is that these epistemologists are thoroughly unequipped for the job, and it’s no surprise because the apple has not fallen far from the tree.

And yet at the same time, I found great confirmation for so much of what I’ve been saying for years. I have for years been correcting Christians on their definition of faith. I have been telling them that their testimonies will not be persuasive to many skeptics out there and to avoid emphasizing their feelings, and in fact I’d prefer they not discuss feelings altogether. I’ve also been encouraging them to study, and not just the Bible, but good history and philosophy and any other field they have a passion for.

Well now those proverbial chickens are coming home to roost.

In fact, Boghossian wants to start a show called “The Reason Whisperer” where he will show conversations with the faithful seeking to deconvert them. If this show takes off, I have high hopes that he will come to my church. I really want to see that.

So to get to the meat of the matter, how is a street epistemologist supposed to do his job? He starts with faith and it all goes downhill from there. Boghossian defines faith as “belief without evidence” or “Pretending to know things that you do not know.”

In this section, he also talks about deepities. These are statements that sound profound, but are really meaningless. An example that he gives of this is Hebrews 11:1, a passage that Boghossian does not understand, probably because he didn’t really look into any major commentaries on the work. (You know, what we call, looking for evidence)

Therefore, Boghossian has the deck stacked in advance. Want to make a statement about faith? The street epistemologist is to read it as saying one of the two things Boghossian says it is. There is no concept that perhaps the other person might have a different definition. Perhaps the other person has done proper exegesis and study of the Greek word pistis to show that it more accurately refers to loyalty in the face of evidence that has been provided.

Boghossian regularly sees faith as a way of knowing. It is not. No one should know anything by faith. Faith is rather a response to what has been shown. The medievals would hold, for instance, that you could know that God exists on the basis of argumentation that was deductive, such as the five ways of Aquinas. They held that you believed that God was a Trinity, since this could not be known by reason alone but required trust in revelation. You can know historically that Jesus died on the cross. You believe that He died for your sins on that cross.

Unfortunately, Boghossian does not have any understanding of this and this straw man runs throughout the whole book. As soon as any street epistemologist comes across anyone who knows better, then they are caught in a bind. It is a shame also that Boghossian insists that these are the definitions of the word, since he is the one who encourages practicing “doxastic openness” which we shall get to later.

Boghossian gives a brief look at the resurrection which starts off with saying that it is assumed that a historical Jesus existed. For atheists who always want to talk about evidence, it amazes me that so many of them buy into this Christ-myth idea. To go to studies of ancient history and the NT and say Jesus never existed is on par to going to a geologist convention and telling them that the Earth is flat.

Boghossian says even if you grant the burial and the empty tomb, there are all number of ways to explain it, including the theory of space aliens. All of them require faith because of insufficient evidence. Any interaction with a Habermas, Licona, or Wright in this? Nope. We should ask Boghossian what methodology he took to arrive at this conclusion. By what methodology should street epistemologists accept it? Will it be a faith claim?

On page 28, Boghossian says that not a single argument for God’s existence has withstood scrutiny. He lists the five ways of Aquinas, Pascal’s Wager, the ontological argument, the fine-tuning argument, and the Kalam. He is emphatic that these are all failures and has an end note for that.

So when you go there, what will you find? Will you find a listing of works where these arguments were refuted? No. Will you find descriptions saying why these arguments are problematic? No. What will you find? A long statement on epistemologies?

On what grounds am I to believe these arguments have all been refuted? Boghossian’s say so? Is that the way a critical thinker should work?

Boghossian also says believers are told that ignorance is a mark of virtue and closeness to God. Sadly, I’m sure this is the case for several. In reality, if this is the Christianity Boghossian wishes to take down, more power to him there. I’ve been trying to take down this kind of Christianity for years. It has nothing to do with what Jesus taught and what the church has defended intellectually. Several decades ago in fact, the church was repeatedly warned the greatest threat to the church was anti-intellectualism.

It is at the end of the third chapter that we start seeing interventions, these are dialogues that Boghossian tells us about. The only one worth mentioning is a professor at an evangelical university who goes unnamed. Unfortunately, we have no idea what he teaches so I don’t know why we should take his opinion seriously. Most of these interventions consist of talking to people who I have no reason to believe are informed on their faith. It’s a reminder of what Bill Maher did in Religulous. It is like saying to tune in when a bodybuilder takes down a little old lady in a street fight.

Also in this chapter, he talks about doxastic openness. Closure is when someone is impervious to a reasoned argument and will not change their beliefs. The sad reality is this is a good description of street epistemologists and as we will see later on, Boghossian himself.

I fully think we should all be open to seeing if our beliefs are wrong. It is why I, as a Christian, have changed my stance on numerous issues over the years. This is something quite simple to do when your positions are based on evidence and argumentation.

One could think Boghossian has this view since in chapter 4, he does say to be willing to reconsider and be open to the idea that the faithful know something you don’t. (Such as the proper definition of faith in its proper social and historical context. Those who study the language might know this better than someone like Boghossian who does not.)

Interestingly, one of his strategies in this chapter is to avoid facts.

I’m not kidding. p. 71 and part II. The heading is “Avoid Facts.”

This strikes me as odd. If I am supposed to change my worldview, aren’t the facts relevant to that? Boghossian says that if people believed on the basis of evidence, they wouldn’t be where they are today. Isn’t this part of the doxastic closeness that he earlier condemns? Could it be the evidence just might be on the side of the Christian. Maybe I’m wrong on that of course, but should we not be open?

Boghossian says it is how we arrive at our conclusions that matter. Now I do agree this is important to discuss. Yet I tell people I am an empiricist. Knowledge begins with sense experience. I use that to reason to God. (Say the ways of Aquinas for instance.) Then with history, I try to read the best scholarship on both sides of the issue in forming an opinion on what happened to Jesus. I am also actively reading what I disagree with, such as Boghossian’s book, to see if I might have missed anything.

Does Boghossian fault that procedure?

Now Boghossian could say my conclusion is reached in advance and I have confirmation bias, but that needs to be shown rather than just asserted. The best way to show it if my methodology is sound is to show how I am not following it properly and that is done by looking at the evidence.

It is amusing to see him say Gary Habermas reached his position by starting with the divinity of Christ and the truth of Scripture and reasoning backwards. Anyone who has heard Habermas speak on doubt before knows that this is not the case. Knowing him personally, I have heard far more than most readers I am sure and know about the hours he spent agonizing over questions and not being wiling to commit to Christianity. He was quite close to being a Buddhist in fact.

It is a wonder where Boghossian gets his information then. Did he just assume it? Has he taken a faith position?

In actuality, what this can allow Boghossian to do is to discount any opinion that disagrees with him by claiming “confirmation bias.” The problem is anyone else could do the same with Boghossian’s position. A Christian could say “Well of course he’s not going to let the evidence lead him to God. He doesn’t want that.”

For example, let’s suppose there was an atheist who held to his atheism for known emotional reasons. Let’s suppose these were reasons such as he grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home and hated his parents and everything to do with Christianity. Let’s also suppose he wants to sleep with any girl he meets and knows that Christianity would require him to give that up. This man has reasons to want to be an atheist that can cloud how he views the evidence. I don’t think anyone would doubt this.

Does that mean that he’s wrong?

No. The only way you know if he’s right or wrong is by looking at the evidence.

This is also shown with Boghossian in, like I said, he does not practice doxastic openness. For instance, he has been asked what it would take to make him believe, he uses a line from Lawrence Krauss. If he walked out at night and saw all the stars in the sky aligned to say “I am God communicating with you, believe in Me!” and every human being worldwide saw this in their native language, this would be suggestive. (He adds it would be far from conclusive. It could be a delusion.)

Yes. This is from the one who says we should practice doxastic openness.

What does this mean? It means formulating an argument for God’s existence will not work with Boghossian. What he requires for himself is a personal experience, and even then a grand personal experience is only suggestive. Why should anyone attempt to reason with someone like Boghossian who says the arguments won’t convince him but that it will require a personal experience?

Shouldn’t we go with the arguments instead of personal experience?

The sixth chapter spends much on interventions, including arguments over a topic such as if the universe had a beginning. Boghossian has this idea that an eternal universe would mean no God. I, meanwhile, say I’m willing to grant an eternal multiverse. What is needed is to explain not just its existence but its act of existing.

Seeing as I plan to focus more later, I’m going to move on to chapter 8, because in many ways I found this an excellent chapter. I really appreciated Boghossian’s viewpoints on relativism and the modern definition of tolerance being bogus and the problem with adding “o-phobia” to something.

Boghossian is certainly right that ideas need to be open to criticism and if he says “faith ideas” need to be open, I fully agree! In fact, I am one who goes out in public really hoping someone will see me reading a book by an atheist and think I’m one and try to talk me out of it, or see me reading a book about the resurrection of Jesus and try to talk to me out of that. I have always said that I want us to just come together and discuss the evidence and let Christianity work in the marketplace of ideas. Which case should we go with? Whoever brings forward the best arguments and evidences.

I also agree with what is said about faith-based claims. Those students who stand up in class and have nothing else to say except “The Bible says” are a sign of a problem that we have. It is not a problem with the Bible, but with a claim on how Christian education is done. It has too long been made that Christians are just told what the Bible says. Say anything about why you should trust the Bible? Nope. Say anything about worldviews that oppose the Bible? Nope. It’s part of what I’ve called the escapist mentality.

In fact, that’s what’s so ironic about Boghossian’s book. There is much in there that I could agree with generally on reasoning, and ironically, much of the attitudes that he sees in the faithful are the same attitudes that I see in the faithless. The atheists I meet more often than not have a hubris built into them where they think they are rational and right by virtue of being an atheist. I will also not deny many Christians have that same mindset to them as well.

As I plan to write on this further, I will conclude at this point by saying that Boghossian is someone to take seriously, not because he has new information, but because he is an evangelist for atheism that is seeking to make other evangelists. Boghossian would say someone like me is upset about a show like “The Reason Whisperer.” On the contrary, I am thrilled about it. I adore it whenever something like this happens. The Da Vinci Code, The New Atheists, and now this. Hopefully more and more soon the church will wake up and realize it needs to get up and do something and actually start learning what we believe. I think a show like this could be the shot in the arm the church needs. Of course, if the church does not wake up soon, I think it will only be around for about another generation or so in America.

The reality is the arguments are still simple to deal with and the street epistemologists are thoroughly unequipped in their quest. The problem on the side of the church is not lack of information. The problem is desire to have that information and awareness of the problem a lack of information causes. When someone abandons the life of the mind, it is sad. When a Christian does it, it is a travesty.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
Deeper Waters Christian Ministries

Just finished reading Peter Boghossian's "A Manual for Creating Atheists," in which he advocates producing essentially an army of evangelical atheist street preachers who go around trying to destroy the belief systems of the religious. He calls them "Street Epistemologists." Amazing book. I'm also impressed by the number of enthusiastic 5 star reviews for his book here, given how Stalinist an approach Boghossian takes. During the Soviet Union, political dissent was considered so fundamentally irrational that it was seen as a sign of mental illness and political dissidents were subsequently confined to mental institutions. During the Jacobin Terror following the French Revolution, the Jacobins made every effort to forcibly strip society of every element of religious allusion. Similarly, Boghossian literally wants to treat religiosity as a mental illness, strip society of any reference to "faith", and wants his "followers" to actively try to bankrupt religious institutions and go around intentionally trying to destroy the religious belief systems of people (out of an allegedly altruistic desire to "cure" them) regardless of how psychologically and emotionally useful such systems may be to them (Some mother is comforted by the thought of one day seeing her deceased young daughter in Heaven? Some terminally ill person is comforted by the notion that death is not the end? Faith has helped save you from suicide or substance addiction? Boghossian doesn't care and doesn't care about your back story. He wants to destroy your faith regardless). Goes to show that even those promoting what they insist is a "rational" approach to the world can be led down the rabbit hole of totalitarianism.. Intolerant ideological extremism is the disease here, whether it's religious or otherwise, and Dr. Boghossian certainly seems to suffer from it (and thank you Michael Shermer for showing your true totalitarian colors by enthusiastically endorsing this book, even though you have otherwise pretended to be a libertarian).

The good:

Boghossian early on advocates treating people with respect when talking to them (even though he contradicts that later by advocating treating them as mentally ill and promotes telling them to go to the "kid's table" for expressing their religious beliefs - I've never seen an academic philosopher actually advocate engaging in ad hominems before)

The bad:

1. He relies on a "definition" of faith that he just made up and no religious person need embrace - "pretending to know something you don't know", or on other occasion "believing something without evidence." Obviously few if any religious believers think they're "pretending." Every believer thinks he has some reason to believe. No one goes to sleep an atheist and wakes up a theist for no reason whatsoever. Boghossian's complaint then is not in the end the epistemological approach of the religious but rather that he personally doesn't see good reason to be religious - not a philosophically respectable basis upon which to be an intolerant a-hole running around trying to destroy people's belief systems.

Furthermore, Boghossian also erroneously treats "faith" as an epistemological system, when it's really just a subset of belief. I know of no one who believes that every single belief one embraces should be taken on faith. The epistemic category of "faith" simply refers to those beliefs we cannot immediately confirm but upon which we trust to be true. EVERYBODY has such beliefs. We couldn't operate as human beings without them. If we required some empirical or analytic justification for every belief we had, we wouldn't be able to justify any belief or any action we make based on an "ought.". You believe A? Why? Well, because of B of course. Oh, so why do you believe B? Well, because of C of course? So why do you believe C? Well, because of D! Every justification assumes some premises that they themselves need to be believed. Either one falls into an infinite regress and has an infinite amount of time to justify every belief of theirs and every justification of every justification (which no finite being has), or else one has to stop somewhere at some foundational point beyond which one cannot go and upon which one trusts, which would have to be faith. As I mention below, talk to someone who passionately believes in animal or human rights and get them to empirically or analytically demonstrate the truth of their fundamental moral beliefs.

"You don't believe that young girls should be forced to have their clitorises cut off by garden sheers even if the vast majority of a culture agrees with such a practice (as in certain west African countries), or that a society should not provide the legal opportunity for a family to murder their daughter just for being raped or for wanting a divorce from an abusive husband (as in the case in Pakistan)? Why? Please provide the empirical evidence for such a belief, and the evidence for the beliefs that underlie the justifications for such a belief."

Most likely someone would just get dirty stares of disbelief for such a reply, and they should. Beliefs in foundational values cannot be empirically or analytically justified, yet they it is perfectly reasonable (and human) to embrace such beliefs. Yet such beliefs would be "faith" by Boghossian's standards, and Dr. Boghossian thus wants his followers to go around systematically trying to destroy such "delusions" (which Boghossian seems to mean any belief that doesn't fit his unjustified personal epistemology) of such people.

Of course, Boghossian would not admit to wanting to destroy secular value systems that embrace such things as human rights, but that's only because his focus on religion is ad hoc bigotry. But attacking the belief systems of those who advocate human rights logically follows his logic entirely.

3. He obviously believes that he's doing some public service by going around actively trying to destroy the belief systems of the religious. He doesn't however cite any empirical evidence that doing so is in the end more socially beneficial than not, and in the absence of having such evidence to justify his personal crusade against the religious, by his own standards then he is driven by faith and mental illness.

4. I've never seen a professional academic philosopher so dogmatically certain of his position (talk about his label "doxastically closed" (i.e. closed minded) which he condemns religious people of being) that he would automatically judge anyone who disagrees with his epistemological approach as being mentally ill and that people should actively try to bankrupt the organizations of people who disagree with him. The guy should not be an instructor at a public university (he is). No one so dogmatically judgmental of those who disagree with his philosophical approach should be in the business of grading the philosophical papers of students who may challenge his philosophical approach. He should be working instead at some atheist advocacy group.

5. I seriously laughed out loud when he whined about atheists like him being called "religiophobic" as he claimed that doing so treats them as having some mental illness themselves and that such "medicalizing" of the expression of one's position is contrary to liberal principles of open expression of ideas. Hilarious given how he explicitly treats those expressing religious points of view as being mentally ill.

6. His book is pretty sloppy and unorganized as a "manual." He doesn't really offer a systematic approach. He mostly relies on anecdotal examples of his attacking the beliefs of philosophically uneducated people. That seems to be his bullying technique (talk about "bullying off the table", which again he criticizes the religious as doing) - find people who are philosophically uneducated and use that disadvantage to tear apart their belief system.

7. As mentioned above, there's an obvious counter-example to his approach that he doesn't address. Plenty of people, religious and nonreligious, are fundamentally committed to and fight for certain moral beliefs, such as human rights, but aren't able to provide any empirical evidence to support such beliefs. By his reasoning, such people are promoting (and are trying to influence public policy with) "mentally ill" epistemological systems and such belief systems should be actively destroyed. Obviously his approach would be marginalized if he tried to apply his reasoning to human rights activists and organizations. He even gives resources for contacting atheist organizations that promote humanist values, entirely missing the fact that belief in humanist values would be "faith" by his reasoning. He makes one passing reference to using a secular basis to demonstrate the truth of moral propositions by hand waving at John Rawls, but Rawls' approach assumed an embrace of western liberal values in the first place - Rawls never attempted to provide objective evidence of the truth of such values.

8. He never attempts to systematically explain why his epistemological approach is superior. For a "manual" designed to produce "street epistemologists", he does a terrible job of "training" readers to understand and apply epistemology in any systematic way. His "training" basically amounts to "Keep asking them questions until they can't answer any more", which is basically an approach you can use against anyone regarding anything, since (as noted earlier) one cannot provide an infinite series of justifications of beliefs and then justifications of justifications of justifications ad infinitum.

9. Atheists in general employ a series of arguments against religion: epistemological, moral (criticizing religious practice, the God of the Bible, and the existence of evil); logical (attempting to demonstrate logical incoherences in the concept of God and in the Bible); social (arguing that religion is socially harmful); and scientific (arguing that some element of religion is unscientific or that a science based world view or epistemology is superior). Boghossian seems to rely entirely on the epistemological critique, which hamstrings atheists because it allows theists to limit their response to critiquing the atheist's epistemological approach, an approach that many philosophically educated people argue relies on a discredited remnant of logical positivism that has long been known to be naive, self-refuting, impossible to justify, and not a reflection of how human beings actually operate and survive epistemologically.

A clever title, but I was hoping for something better in the book than what I got. Instead what I got was bored. This a book filled with straw man arguments, and discussions that show a total lack of knowledge about Christianity. There's nothing new here, and nothing of value -- even for someone interested in learning about atheism. If you are going to argue against something, you need to at least understand what you oppose sufficiently such that you can make a rational and reasonable case for your position. That is not what this author has done. This book tries to make a case against a fiction that does not exist. That fiction is a god and a Christianity the author has created, and they are both far from the truth and reality of God and Christianity. A total waste of time.

"...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."

This quote from the book description, while a criticism of those of other faiths, in fact sums up concisely what this book is about...spreading the gospel of the author's faith over all others...and the OBLIGATION of all faithful Progressive Dupes to not only spread the faith, but know how to marginalize, suppress and destroy Christians and their foolish, old fashioned superstitions.

As he demonstrates in his training manual for soldiers against God in the spiritual warfare raging unseen around us, his Humanist faith is, in fact, far less tolerant of other faiths than Christianity... on par only with Muslims on vicious jihad against all who believe any strain even of their own faith that differs from their own.
His means of attack is words and ideas rather than swords and bombs, but he's a Progressive Jihadist nonetheless...and every bit as intolerant as Islam of "blasphemous" criticism of his faith and any of it's essential doctrines (i.e: abortion rights, gay rights, man-made global warming, white people are bad, old rich white people are evil, the United States is an imperialistic bully, Muslims are to be respected for the faith and defended from any references to those few bad Muslims who want to destroy them and all Western culture, celebrities are spiritual icons, Barack Obama is the U.S. version of Mahatma Gandhi leading the faithful into a new age of enlightenment and equality and anyone who says different is a racist hater deserving of ridicule and destruction and it's the duty of every true believer to do their part in accomplishing that destruction...
That's just a top-of-the-dead jumbled listing, and I know I'm leaving out some others of the other required beliefs...such as the Required-To-Hate list, always topped by Rush Limbaugh, followed closely by Fox News and of course by whomever is seen as garnering attention of the faithful with a blasphemous, un-Progressive message...or provides a convenient diversion for the dupe masses, as old faithful G W Bush still does in a pinch. )

Maybe your little contribution will become an icon of the Humanist cause...like The Communist Manifesto and The Origin of Species, and your name will be remembered as one who made a real contribution toward giving humans hope in their hopeless cause, as Marx and Darwin have been canonized for doing...helping people believe that there is no God. I imagine that is as high an aspiration as anyone seeking to be a contributing dupe, such as yourself, can "pray" :-) for.
Maybe you'll become fabulously wealthy for your contribution to the cause, like anti-God darling Richard Dawkins has!

There are 2 enormous blankets of darkness competing for the honor of extinguishing the "light on the hill" that has been the United States of America: Progressive Humanism and Islam. This author is a cheerleader for his team, making his little contribution to the Progressive cause, and earning high-fives and Dupe Points from the drone dupes for his efforts.
(I don't know if it'll earn Mr. Boghossian any of the coveted Dupe Awards for literature or philosophy, but I'm sure his little book will be a welcome additional weapon in the arsenal of many Progressive Dupes in their personal jihad against the God of the Bible.)

In the long run, they'll need all the weapons they can get to keep them from having to admit their battle is ultimately against themselves...and a God loves them so much that He gives them the complete freedom to choose rebellion against Him and thumb their noses at Him, and raise themselves to be de facto gods.
Very sad.
But hey, have at it, Peter! Express that rage at God...join the long line of those who've spent their lives obsessively devoted to that precise cause throughout history!

Prayers for you and the scales on your eyes, Mr. Boghossian...for the sake of your eternal soul....which will be a concern for you long after your little training manual is forgotten, no matter how much acclaim it brings you now.

I'm an atheist who recently heard Peter Boghossian speak and read from his book, Manual for Creating Atheists. I was underwhelmed. Here's the idea. Divisive dogma stems from irrational faith - the "virus" of belief. Therefore, the atheist is obliged to save the world by pounding reason into Swiss-cheese-for-brains believers. Sample conversations in the book purport to teach us how to convert our victims with irrefutable rationality. It's a gospel of evangelical atheism.
So, to show us how easy this is, the author invited a sweet-faced young Christian woman to the podium so he could demonstrate how his barrage of annoying questions will plant seeds of doubt. Here's the rub. This lovely young lady beamed at him with admirable turn-the-other-cheek charity whilst he, in polite, but arrogantly self-righteous tones, hammered on her. So, while he arguably won the rational argument, who cares? The woman with the bright, loving spirit beat him hands down, like a faith-filled martyr looking calmly down the lion's maw.
I asked the author if it is always appropriate to challenge people of faith. He said there are no exceptions. I countered that I live among sick and dying people, and not only is it not my job to try to disabuse them, but that it would be cruel to upset their belief in a promised afterlife, just as it would be cruel to deny those in pain their end-of-life morphine. Only then did the author admit he remained mum while his mother clutched her statue of Jesus when she was dying of cancer.
I dislike evangelism in all its forms, because evangelism is divisive. It says, "I'm right, and you're wrong, and only I know the truth." Evangelistic atheism is as bad as any other kind. Yet I'm glad to live in a time when we can discuss these differences without getting burned at the stake. But even in modern times, atheists must endure pitying gazes from believers who feel sorry for our lost souls, so it's empowering when authors like Boghossian come out swinging.
Constance Emerson Crooker
Author of Melanoma Mama: On Life, Death, and Tent Camping

If you want to turn the nominally religious (those who don’t really know what they believe or why they believe it) into atheists, the methods in this book will probably work. However, if you encounter people who know what they believe and know why they believe it, following Boghossian’s methods will fail miserably.

The foundational problem with this book is Boghossian’s definition of “faith.” In chapter two, the author gives us his two definitions for faith:

1. Belief without evidence.
2. Pretending to know things you don’t know.

The problem is that these are “his” definitions and not definitions found in most (if any) dictionaries. It’s not until chapter nine that he tries to justify these definitions by asserting that this is how the faithful use the word “faith” in religious contexts. That’s a might broad statement. No doubt, there are some who use the word “faith” in this way, but Boghossian gives no evidence that this is universal (ironic, as he says that belief without evidence is faith).

What does Boghossian consider to be insufficient evidence to make a belief “faith?” He never says. At one point he writes, “many apologists (especially American theologian William Lane Craig) have had considerable success reasoning people into holding unreasonable beliefs,” but never gives a standard for what is an unreasonable belief. If the evidence is insufficient for belief, what qualifies as sufficient evidence? Apparently, Boghossian doesn’t find the evidence sufficient, but he never says why. I was left with the feeling that he finds any evidence for faith insufficient simply because, in his mind, there can not be any sufficient evidence for faith.

Boghossian claims in chapter three, that if street epistemology (his term for creating atheists) doesn’t work on someone it’s because they either have brain damage, or that it just appears to not be to be working—they just seem to be holding onto their faith, but they’re on the way to recovery. So, don’t worry, even if there is no evidence that street epistemology is working, just believe that it is! Now who’s pretending to know things they don’t know?

Then in chapter five, Boghossian contradicts what he says in chapter three. With regards to a friend of his family he writes, “I’ve been engaging her on the topic of faith for more than five years, but to no avail.” He gives no indication that she has brain damage, so why hasn’t it worked? According to what he said in chapter three, she should be getting better, but he writes that it has been “to no avail.” Maybe his problem is having “faith” in his street epistemology.

To demonstrate how someone is closed minded about their beliefs, Boghossian relates an interaction he had with a professor of an evangelical university. At one point, the author asks, “What evidence would you need to make you change your mind?” The professor answers with, “the bones of Christ.” The author goes on to say that the professor has created impossible conditions and that this demonstrates the professor is closed to evidence. Perhaps realizing that this may be turned on him, later Boghossian says that if he’s asked what it would take to believe, he says something like, “if I walked outside at night and all of the stars were organized to read, ‘I am God communicating with you, believe in Me!’ and every human being worldwide witnessed this in their native language, this would be suggestive (but far from conclusive as it’s a perception and could be a delusion).” Note that his parenthetical comment allows him an escape if this highly unlikely event were to take place. However, Boghossian really doesn’t mean any of this. Three chapters later, he rejects the “God of the gaps” argument, which is precisely what his requirement to believe is. He proves that he’s as closed minded as any person of faith.

What Boghossian doesn’t seem to understand (or is unwilling to acknowledge) is that his unbelief is not because of the lack of evidence. It is because he starts with a presupposition of naturalism and interprets evidence from this lens. How can evidence lead you to belief in something supernatural when you can only interpret evidence with naturalistic explanations.

Where do we begin? Perhaps where Boghossian does; and redefine the entire discussion that exists between theism and atheism. He simply creates an entire strawman structure to house a logic so convoluted and willfully ignorant that it makes Dawkins and Hitchens look like Bertrand Russell or Kai Nielson (who were very serious philosophers).

First, Boghossian redefines "faith" to mean 1) belief without evidence or 2) thinking you know something you don't know. Faith certainly exists along a spectrum (a nuance that escapes Boghossian), moving from near certainty (and the interface between highly probable and entirely certain) to "blind faith," in which one holds an entirely unjustified or unverified belief. Believing (which is nearly synonymous with having faith) that a light will come on when one flips the switch would be an example of near (but not entire) certainty. Believing that the world is held up by an infinite number of sequentially larger turtles is a clearly erroneous blind faith. Only in the extreme case is Boghossian's definition correct. As a side note, he seems quite confident that theists are the ones with this disease of unfounded or undemonstrated faith. Apparently, atheists do not suffer from this delusion, even though all interactions among atheists suggests that they agree on almost nothing about reality (all have strong but conflicting views on the origins of the universe, the origins of life, the efficacy of Darwinian theory, the capacity for human free will, objective morality, etc.). His errant characterization of faith forces the term to represent the antithesis of reason. This is a false dichotomy, and he should know better.

His larger mistake is a very simple philosophical misstep; he posits that BECAUSE millions of people "believe" things for bad (or no) reasons, IT FOLLOWS that their beliefs are wrong. Let me illustrate the fallacy in this view. Boghessian could ask my daughter why she won't touch an object. She might answer, "because my daddy said it's hot." He could then follow up by asking why she believes me, and what evidence she might have in support of her claim. Her belief in the temperature of the object is not well defended. [Frankly, the examples Boghessian uses in his book (10 year old pot smokers, college kids, prisoners) demonstrates that his victories usually come in conversations with people as well thought out as my daughter)]. But, if he were to ask me, I might tell him that the object is a cast iron skillet that's been over a flame for the past 15 minutes and was measured to be ~500 F. My belief is not a belief at all. It is a factual statement about reality. However, my daughter's faith claim is actually consistent with reality, even though she cannot explain why. That is, just because many a painfully ignorant of the evidence behind their claims, it does NOT FOLLOW that their beliefs are necessarily wrong.

I have but two more quick examples that I believe slay this mass of philosophical fecal matter. Boghessian's entire enterprise is based on the idea that faith is a virus, that it's false, and that it is damaging and immoral (he never actually attempts to ground objective morality). That is, he seeks to eradicate faith in light of its consequences. If he believed faith to be entirely benign, he would not wage war against it. This is ironic, because (on pg 161) he writes, "[The statement, "Life has no meaning without faith] 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 on to truth." This is called a contradiction. He's good at making them.

He is also capable of simply lying in order to achieve his goal. This is evidenced in "Intervention 4: Immediate Success" (pg 123). The best argument his adversary can offer is that, because the universe exists, it demands a creator. Implicitly, this is a very logical observation. IF something comes into existence, THEN something must have caused it to exist. It is logically impossible to suggest that something emerges from true nothingness. Further, it is also more reasonable to posit an agent (i.e. agent causation) rather than an event (i.e. event causation), because agents to not require prior events (the are uncaused causes), but events always require prior events. If we had only a string of events, as Boghessian attempts to argue when retorting that perhaps the universe has always been here (he expands on this later in the book), then we fall into the infinite regress fallacy. Like jumping out of a bottomless pit, one cannot ever get started. If history extends infinitely into the past, then it never begins. Anyway, the point is moot because the universe IS NOT eternal. All science for the past 70 years indicates that the universe had a beginning. He argues, "No faith is needed to posit that the universe may have always existed." First, because science rejects this view, it would take an immensely ignorant faith claim to hold the position. Second, he might consider the probability of either starting position (a finite or an eternal universe). Based on our knowledge of mathematics, physics and cosmology, I think it would be extremely generous to put the two views on equal footing (50:50). Still, if an eternal universe is evidence against a creator (which it is not), then a finite universe must be evidence for a creator. This means that there is at least a 50:50 chance that all of those poisoned minds he's trying to free are actually right in their faith claim! Thus, his book would be wrong. He slits his own throat on this argument.

This is but a sampling of the truly distorted, bizarre and logically flawed items on display in this house of horrors. It's perhaps the most pathetic attempt yet from the New Atheists. If utterly and entirely fails.

Atrocious. Absurd. Ridiculous. Of course this depends on your point of view. If you like to read obvious logical fallacies like attacking strawmen, question begging and the one less God fallacy as well as quite a few others, then this book is for you. :(
Sadly, I was hoping for something a bit more substantial in the areas of philosophy and logic but I had to settle for silly arguments that any 1st year philosophy should notice are noting but absurd caricatures of the religious faith. This book was written for what is called Street Epistemologist, a type of street preacher for atheism. I was somewhat hopeful for the book but soon figured this was nothing but a mess of epic proportions. He credits the four horsemen of atheism (the late Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris, and sadly enough, he thinks YouTube atheists such as thunderf00t are examples one should follow, OMG!) as forerunners of his and as examples to follow. Sadly enough he does seem to follow them well enough, as on the 2nd page of his book he bring up the obvious question begging technique that many of the new atheists use by proclaiming their use of rationality and reason as guides. Somehow he also comes to the conclusion that since there are different faith types that is proof that there is no God. Yes, this guy actually teaches philosophy.
He not only does not understand what actual philosophers speak of when they refer to faith, but this is the logic he uses when he explains how to refute 1 Peter 3:15 “in the last 2400 years of intellectual history, not a single argument for the existence of God has withstood scrutiny. Not one. Aquinas’s five proofs, fail. Pascal’s Wager, fail. Anselm’s ontological argument, fail. The fine-tuning argument, fail. The kalam cosmological argument, fail. All refuted. All failures.” Now since this is quite a claim, I was interested in exactly how All these arguments have been refuted. So when I checked all I saw was example of Aquinas argument of the 5 ways (overly simplistically stated) but not all that accurate. Per Boghossian, Victor Stenger is said to have refuted the fine-tuning argument in his 2011 book The Fallacy of Fine-tuning, however when ones reads the book, one notices how this is not quite accurate and he seems not to have noticed how badly Stenger's arguments were stated and how other physicists have refuted his arguments. This is just one example of his confirmation bias and poorly researched arguments he uses. In regards to the kalam cosmological argument, Boghossian simply says, “The possibility that the universe always existed cannot be ruled out” and then calls this the “death-knell” of the argument. What he clearly does not know is that many forms of the cosmological arguments (of which Kalam is only one) it does not matter if the universe was created or not. Had he actually taken the time to study these differing forms of the cosmological argument or just prefers to strawman them or not is not for me to say here. But it is disappointing that he fails to notice what is obvious, he has done a poor job of countering any real arguments Christians offer.
OK, if you are an atheist feel free to read the book. However I would avoid the rhetoric and the obvious condescension he uses in the book. If you really want to express yourself and try to talk a believer out of their faith, this book is not the way to do it or even a model of thinking about what you know.
If you are a believer in God(s) then this book will probably just annoy you (especially if you know the arguments he claims to defeat or have taken an actual philosophy class). Just understand that there are people out there in the world who think these arguments are going to work. No need to treat them with the condescending tone this book uses on believers, just remember to love your enemies and pray for them.
Would I recommend the book? Nope.

Any atheist who tries to use this with someone who actually has any training in philosophy is going to get his butt kicked. Boghossian wants to talk about epistemology, but offers no epistemological position in the book. There are atheists, past and present who have demolished the ideas in this book. Boghossian is stuck in a naive realism that has already been defeat by David Hume and rejected by real atheistic philosophers, such as Rorty, Quine, Popper. Compare this to Alex Rosenberg's, "An Atheist's Guide to Reality." Rosenberg offers a more consistent and thought out position for the atheist reader.

It may be good fodder for the unthinking masses in the atheist community, but any thinking atheist will find no value.

Let me begin this review with one of those enlightening conversations Portland State University philosophy professor Peter Boghossian is fond of. A Christian Scholar (CS; Boghossian is also fond of initials) who has studied Christian thought on the concept of "faith," watches a lecture by an atheist philosophy professor (PB) on the same topic. He sends him a polite e-mail, describing his relevant credentials (recently, author of "Faith Seeking Understanding," with leading Christian scholars contributing, blurbs from Yale, Penn State, etc), and suggesting a debate.

The following exchange ensues:

"Good morning!

"Yesterday I noticed on the website for (X), that you had endorsed his new book on the "Outsider Test for Faith." I haven't seen the book yet, but I'm pretty sure he responds to my critique of the OTF in True Reason, somewhere in that book.

"I think I've also seen you make comments about "faith," with which I strongly disagree.

"Since we're both in the Northwest -- my home is east of Seattle -- I was wondering if you would consider a civil public debate on the topic of faith?" (Names titles of books, well-known scholars who have endorsed it, academic background.)
.
"Thanks much, (CS).

PB: "Answer this question: What would it take for you to lose your faith?"

CS is taken aback by the social minimalism -- no greetings, no explanation, no hint of civility. But he gulps, and responds guardedly yet still politely, aware of the need to define terms and ask questions before getting into details:

"Do we agree on what the word 'faith' means? Do you know what my 'faith' is, yet?"

"If the reasons I believe in God, and in Jesus Christ (or, say, that Io has active volcanoes), proved mistaken, and none better were forthcoming, then I think I would have little intellectual right to hold those beliefs any longer. But it is the very nature and grounds of faith, that I propose to debate."

PB: "This does not answer the question. Please answer the question or this will be our last communication. What reasons would have to be mistaken? Give me an example of a reason and how you know it would be mistaken. What would this look like?"

Now irritated at the undisguised rudeness, and the demand that arguments developed over hundreds of pages be reduced to a quick sound bite, CS checks PB's CV, finds a name there that may explain the fondness for questions, but not the discourtesy, and replies:

"Sorry, Peter, Socrates is a friend of mine. You're no Socrates.

"I'm duly warned off. I'll look forward to reading, then debunking, your book."

PB: "You're a fraud. Don't contact me again."

According to Peter Boghossian's A Manual For Creating Atheists, a dialogue should pass through four stages: (1) Wonder; (2) Hypothesis; (3) Q & A; (4) Accept or Revise Hypothesis.

In this case, the Q and A came first, but itself prompted wonder on the part of CS, and then a series of hypotheses. Why was PB so prickly? Is this his normal style of conversation? Is he unfamiliar with the social niceties, or does he habitually scorn them? Is PB, as they say in the professional literature, a jerk? Or just having a bad day?

And what did PB mean by diagnosing CS (PB is fond of medical lingo, too) as a "fraud?" Did he mean CS had not, in fact, written the books he claimed, and was not knowledgeable about what Christians mean by faith? If so, on what grounds did the "street epistemologist" deduce this? Mental telepathy, perhaps? Or did he mean that, without knowing what CS believed, or why he believed it, those beliefs must be wrong, and he must actually be aware of the fact that he is peddling falsehoods?

In any case, not considering himself a fraud, as promised, CS purchased the book, which was by this time among the top 500 in America.

Manuel for Creating Atheists proved more interesting than that short conversation might have led CS to believe. Perhaps PB had been having a bad day. The book proved punchy, passionate, original, and respectful of the ancients (never mentioning, however, that Plato or Epictetus were infected by the epistemic pathology of theistic faith.) PB even offers a biting critique of multiculturalism and what he calls "academic leftism" that almost inspired CS to break out in a one-man football season, Seahawks-are-on-Monday-night-football-tonight wave.

This is, indeed, a manual for a new generation of skeptics. It has been field-tested by the philosopher himself in, it seems, every conceivable setting: in classrooms, with parents who complain about his attacks on religion in classrooms, on the phone, in prisons, by email (the first line of his response to CS's query turns out to be a set challenge that is part of a field-tested stratagem). PB even looks for empty seats on Southwest Airlines (center aisle!) next to people reading religious texts, to enlighten them. (Wonder again: is this man simply a pest? Worse than CS, even?)

PB's mission strategy devolves around asking a set of Socratic questions designed to relentlessly deconstruct what he takes to be the false epistemology of faith.

But what is faith? Here is the question, again, which elicited CS's original desire for a dialogue.

For it turns out that PB's book, and apparently his whole career as an atheist evangelist, are based on a remarkably bold, but quite hollow, bluff. This bluff involves defining "faith" as "pretending to know things you don't know."

And that is precisely what PB is doing.

Anyone who has read much in the Christian tradition -- and PB evidently has not, his bibliography is replete with first and second string New Atheists, he seems to assume Tertullian did say "I believe because it is absurd" and meant exactly that, and that Pascal wrote a "Wager" and said nothing more to support Christian faith intellectually -- will of course reject this definition with a groan and a sigh. But PB calls for an army of "street epistemologists," not new Socrates who will seek out the most famous thinkers in modern Athens and sincerely try to find out what they know. He is after low-hanging fruit, injured caribou at the back of the herd. People who do know the tradition, and its reasons, who contact him rather than the other way around, may be dismissed peremptorily and magisterially. And so PB sends his disciples into the highways and biways, to pester people into the Kingdom of Reason, (wonder again: will this make Southwest stock go up or down?), to teach what has already long been the defining delusion of the Gnu Age, what CS calls the "Blind Faith Meme." (Don't read Justin, Augustine, Aquinas, Ricci, Locke, Sherburne, McGrew, read Plantinga and Craig alone but take care not to buy their books and thus support their causes -- yes, PB can be that petty.)

Confronted with the Christian tradition, unlike Socrates, PB simply has not yet bothered to really listen. (Shouldn't that come before "Wonder?") This is evident in small things, such as PB's repeated mention of the Young Earth Creationist belief that the world is only 4,000 years old. That would be 6,000 years old: of course it's a silly notion, but get the numbers right, just so we know you're paying attention! PB cites few serious Christians, but works in Ray Comfort, Benny Hinn, Ted Haggard, and Deepak Chopra. So where does he get his information about religion? There are some interesting studies cited, and respectable skeptics like Pascal Boyer and Phil Zuckerman, but he also seems to rely heavily on such party-trick fanatics as Hector Avalos, Greta Christina, John Loftus, and Victor Stenger. He also recommends a "refutation" of theistic arguments by John Allen Paulos that CS found to be as embarrassing, groan-worthy a cavalcade of caricatures, tattered straw men, and ignorance, as one might fear between the covers of a single volume. (Even worse than The God Delusion.)

Which suggests that when it comes to Christianity, this bit of false humility would mark needed progress for PB:

"I only know that I know nothing."

In conclusion, let CS briefly explain what faith really means for Christians, since skeptics have been so badly mislead on this subject. (As Tom Gilson points out in another review here, several of us CSs have a book coming out later this year called True Reason, where this is demonstrated in some detail.)

Faith should be defined as "Holding firmly and acting on what you have good reason to believe is true, in the face of existential difficulties."

Note that on this definition, which fits both New Testament usage and most Christian usage for 2000 years, and which is also affirmed (in CS' experience, which is wider than PB's) by most experienced Christians (not talking about lame caribou, here), faith is not a distinct epistemology, but along with reason, it's twin, one basis for all possible epistemologies.

There are, in short, four "levels of rational faith," and all sane people participate (critically, one hopes) at least in the first three: (1) one's own mind; (2) one's senses; (3) other people (PB is very confused on this head, not recognizing that most appeals to science as well as any old text like Acts of the Apostles or the Koran are in essence at least appeals to the authority of people, which can be warranted or not -- see Cold Case Christianity for an interesting discussion); (4) God or other super-human beings. All of these can and should be tested rationally, and perhaps in some cases rejected. (One may know that one is not thinking straight after too many beers.) All can at least potentially also be reasonably cited as sources of true knowledge.

But PB does not understand this, which makes this book an often interesting, sometimes rather crazed and epic, Hunting of the Snark. In short, until he begins to ask questions with the goal of truly understanding and not caricaturing so as to put notches on his belt and destroy that mythical monster, "Faith," PB will not be Socrates. He will remain a clever, but irritable, and often irritating, and intellectually irrelevant, sophist.

Peter Boghossian insists that faith is "pretending to know things you don't know." If that's true, then it aptly describes this book. Boghossian calls himself a "doctor" but is apparently quite proud of being thrown out of the doctoral program at University of New Mexico's philosophy department. And like many atheist philosophers, he claims knowledge of philosophy but is blissfully unaware that he is committing numerous logical fallacies in his arguments and in his book, at large.

I rated the book two stars because there is some good content. He uses conversational skills in order to have good conversations with religious people, like asking questions (the Socratic method), listening to understand, and even finding common ground with religious people. He also mentions that convincing someone rarely happens on the spot, which is true. I've found this in my own discussions. And by using the Socratic method, he helps people make up their own mind rather than just telling them the conclusion that he wants them to come to. This can be very effective in helping someone see the error of their reasoning.

But that's about where the good parts end. Boghossian insists on using a faulty definition of faith. The Christian concept of faith is a trust based on evidence. We place faith in God because we have good reason to believe that God exists, and that the Christian God is the god who exists. By telling atheists to use this faulty definition of faith, he is setting them up to talk past the Christian theist. They may convince a Christian who has never put any thought into their views, but the atheist will be in for a rude awakening when they encounter a thoughtful Christian. The arguments that the atheist will be refuting are not the arguments that the Christian will be using. In short, Boghossian is helping atheists to attack strawmen. Ironically, Boghossian refuses to use the Christian definition of faith in his discussions (despite his even acknowledging that he is redefining the term), but insists that we use *his* definition of atheism, which is a false definition. He defines atheism by the new definition, that atheism is just a "lack of belief in God(s)," and even contrasts that with agnosticism, and doesn't seem to be aware that his definitions of atheism and agnosticism are essentially the same. However, he refuses to use the actual definition of atheism, which is the belief that God(s) do(es) not exist(s). He claims that using these definitions will help move the conversation forward, but in reality they will just muddy the waters.

It seems fairly evident that Boghossian has read Plato, but I'm not convinced he has ever actually *studied* Plato, or Socrates. Socrates believed we should question everything, but we should question everything in order to find truth. Boghossian is already convinced religion is a delusion before the conversation even starts. His questions are not to help him find more truth, or to help the people he is talking to find more truth, his questions are designed to embarrass and confuse religious people into abandoning their faith. For example, on page 138, he talks about a conversation in which he talked with a woman who was concerned for her boyfriend's eternal soul. While he was asking her questions, he asked which she would rather have: her boyfriend be good or her boyfriend to believe in Jesus. He forced her to choose one, rather than having both. He was presenting a false dichotomy. While Christians believe that atheists can do good things and lead generally good lives, we can't be good enough to get into Heaven because of our sins, which is why we need to believe in Jesus and be forgiven of our sins. Granted she should have realized this and pressed Boghossian on his faulty question, but these kinds of false dichotomies present a faulty view of Christianity.

He is also dishonest and inconsistent. On page 59, he recounts a conversation he had with an intelligent Christian, and who "surprisingly" claims to base his beliefs on evidence. When Boghossian asks him what would convince him otherwise, he says the bones of Christ would (since the Resurrection is central to the Christian faith). He gets on the Christian's case for not knowing exactly how someone could use the bones of Christ to discredit Christianity (since it would be very difficult to prove they were Christ's). Yet on page 82, he says if asked what evidence would convince him that there's a God, he would echo Lawrence Krauss that if there were a message written in the stars by God, that might convince him, but it's far from conclusive as it's a perception and could be a delusion. In other words, his atheism is unfalsifiable, he has no idea what would convince him that there is a God, and he's pretending to know things that he doesn't know (that there is no God). The problem is when most atheists claim they will be convinced by evidence, the evidence they want is evidence that is beyond a Christian's ability to provide, and really wouldn't convince them, if you really press them on the "evidence" they're looking for. It's just an excuse to avoid having to do the intellectual work of supporting their atheism.

A good portion of the book is just an exercise in narcissism. He takes quotes from Christians out of context in order to try and make his position, and as a philosopher, he really ought to know better. There's really no excuse for it. Dawkins can be forgiven for not observing philosophical rules of thumb, like giving your opponent the benefit of the doubt and making sure you're representing their views accurately. Boghossian has no excuse.

Atheists like Boghossian (and he's a philosopher, so he really ought to know better) completely ignore the writings of Christians, so they level sophomoric objections to Christianity and just ignore the fact (or are probably just ignorant of the fact) that these objections have been answered in spades. All it takes is a little bit of looking around to see this. For example, he asserts (he doesn't even argue) that all the arguments for God's existence have been refuted. But this isn't how philosophy works. No philosopher has the last word on anything. For example, Boghossian argues that Anselm's Ontological Argument has been refuted. It is widely believed that Kant had delivered the deathblow to that argument, but modern philosopher Alvin Plantinga has written an article that refutes Kant's rebuttal to the Ontological Argument, and formulated one of his own using modal logic. He also argues that the Kalam Cosmological Argument has been refuted, but his only argument against it is it's *possible* that the universe has always existed. Ignoring, first of all, that there is scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning, the fact that it's possible that the universe has always existed is not a refutation, because it's also possible that the universe *hasn't* always existed. Besides this, there are other Cosmological Arguments, like Aquinas' and Leibniz', that don't rely on the universe having a beginning. More dishonesty from Boghossian. Since he presents no positive case for atheism, he is not rationally justified in his atheism. As even atheist philosopher Kai Nielsen has admitted, all arguments for God's existence could fail and God could still exist. Like most New Atheists, he just tries to argue that people have faith have psychological disorders, so we don't need to believe in their "hokum." It's just childish name-calling.

Boghossian asserts that faith is a disease and that people of faith have an "as yet undiagnosed cognitive disorder." He asserts that people have faith use a "flawed epistemology" and that their thought processes are unreliable. This is just utterly ridiculous, as many of the geatest thinkers who have ever lived have been Christians, and Christianity is responsible for modern science. But faith is also not an epistemology. We don't come to knowledge by faith, we place faith *in* an object after drawing conclusions about said object. His assertion that atheists don't have faith is ridiculous. Every time you get into your car, you are placing faith that your car will get you to your destination and back safely. If you didn't have faith it would do that, you wouldn't get into the car. Faith is not a dirty word, but if you're going to convince yourself that faith is evil, then I guess you would have to. Sounds like Boghossian is the deluded one, not people of faith.

There is much more to be said on this book, and I could continue my complaint about it, but I think I've said more than enough. Boghossian is not a clear thinker. I had really high hopes for this book. I really wanted to like it. But it should have been written by someone else.

Boghossian has written this book in an excellent style. I admit, after picking it up he kept me interested all the way to the end. The conversations in the book were very interesting, and I heard some approaches I have not heard from atheists before. Boghossian starts out by defining faith, and as I see it he is defining it much as some modern dictionaries and authors do, which is to define it as believing in something without having evidence, or as he puts it as well "Pretending to know things you don't know." Let's run with this definition for a while. Indeed, all of the examples of conversations regarding the use of faith he had in the book were excellent demonstrations that his definition is correct. The religious people he spoke to were basing their religion on nebulous, unsound thinking, feelings, emotions, and tradition. They are indeed pretending to know things they do not know. If Boghossian's goal is to take down these people, he has done it expertly. The fact is, most religion does not have a good defense because it has no evidence, authority, or foundation.

Where Boghossian goes wrong is his characterization that every person who believes in a god is like the vast majority. He sees the atrocities and problems of religion, and then categorizes all who believe in God as falling into the same category. The real argument is not between the person who believes in God, and the person who does not, the true argument is between humanism and the Bible. All those that Boghossian spoke to and wrote of in the book based their belief on something they had experienced, or some idea of faith in the Boghossian definition. Nobody interviewed actually held the correct position of holding absolute faith in the inerrant and infallible word of God.

Before I digress too far down that road, let me define faith, as this is the real clincher in this book. If we allow Boghossian to say that the faith that we as believers in the Bible as inerrant hold is the same as the "faith" that those he interviewed hold, than we will lose. But this is actually a bait and switch. What is the Biblical definition of faith? I'm going to start by pulling out Hebrews 11:1 "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Now let me interject that I personally enjoyed Boghossian's dismissal of deepities. For those who are relativistic and you cannot nail down to a real position, those deepities must be taken down. Also, the quotes of religious leaders he gave were mostly accurate at also being vague deepities. However, Hebrews 11:1 is not a deepity, it is just somewhat difficult to understand on first read. It is actually saying that faith is belief in something based on evidence that cannot be refuted, but not evidence that forces one to believe. Let me give an example. We do have evidence that man landed on the moon. We have videos, we have mirrors placed on the moon's surface, and we have hundreds of eyewitness accounts. However, if someone does not want to believe in the moon landing, they can do so. They can say that mirrors were placed by unmanned craft, that the videos were recorded in a studio, that the eyewitnesses are all part of a conspiracy. In the end, we cannot go in a lab and run a scientific experiment to prove to these people that man really walked on the moon.

As a Bible believer, I seek to know what is true, whether that truth can be proven in a lab or not. I believe that man really walked on the moon, because I have evidence that says we did, even if that evidence is not sufficient to force me to believe. But even better than that is my beliefs based on the Bible. Although I could be wrong about the moon landings, maybe it was all a myth designed just to trick me, the Bible has a far better record of reliability. We have a record of hundreds of thousands of words and not one error. We have thousands of eyewitnesses and four very long eyewitness accounts of Christ's life in the gospels. We have physical evidence that validates biblical accounts in biology, archaeology, historical texts, etc., and we have the promise from God that it is His inspired word. So my faith is built on evidence, evidence that is 100% true and 100% solid.

You might ask "Why didn't God give us undeniable proof?" Carl Sagan asks the same question in His book 'Contact' and gives God a suggestion: God should put a glowing cross in the sky at night to serve as irrefutable proof of Jesus' resurrection. Number one, even this would not prove anything. The humanists would simply say that we don't know why the cross is there, but there is a naturalistic origin (Or maybe they would say aliens put it there? Your guess is as good as mine), but the real issue is number two: Does God really want people to believe in Him because they have no other logical option? The answer is no. Here is the reason: God wants to have a mutual relationship with mankind.

Anyone who is logical or cares about self preservation would likely admit that if God showed up tomorrow, and wiped out half the earth, and told everyone to worship Him, presenting undeniable proof, that most people would say "OK!" Many of those who despise the Bible and those who today are atheists would likely even fall into line. (You can say that you wouldn't, and that's fine, this is not my point) At this point, God would have a relationship with man. But is it a loving relationship? Is it really a relationship of choice? No, it is not. Man would have this relationship because he knows God's power to destroy Him, and he is looking out for his own skin. God wants His relationship to man to be mutual and desired; this is why He does not give incontrovertible proof.

God created man to have a relationship with him by choice, and this is why even back in the Garden of Eden he left man a choice of another option than to follow him- man could eat the fruit of the one tree God said to not eat from. Well guess what? Man ate that fruit, and now we all are guilty of this sin (Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:) God, as a just judge, requires that there be a penalty for sin. (Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.) However, man being imperfect can never pay for His sin, because no good works of man can ever meet God's standard. (Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.) That is why God sent his son to pay the penalty for us, because we could not. Christ died on the cross, capital punishment, to pay the fine of death we all owe. Since he is infinitely perfect, his death was infinitely powerful to pay the fine of eternal death in hell we all deserved. All we need to do is turn from our sin and believe in Christ for this salvation (John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.) This is an amazing act of love on God's part that I can get behind!

The above is why Boghossian's book is wrong. I admit, his argument against baseless religion is strong. However, the "faith" he attacks and takes down is not Biblical faith, and yet he wants to see Biblical faith wiped out under the same arguments.

God Bless, Joshua Lindsey

I figured this book was going to be about atheism and its truths, ie if you read this book you will become and atheist because of how much truth it shows. Nope. It is literally how to turn people into atheists, who wants to walk around there whole life trying to take peoples faiths away from them?

Boghossian is blunt.

He wants to "contain" and then "eradicate" religion. I wonder what would happen if he actually had politicall power?

I appreciate books like this, because it lets us know up front exactly what the atheists would do if they could.

Fortunately, with their personalities, and with more books like this being published, if is unlikely that they will achieve political power by electoral means.

I am NOT religious. Most likely I am an agnostic. But Boghossian's definition of Faith (pretending something you don't know) is straw man argument. I returned this book. This guys ideas sound remarkably like the religious fundies and like other fascist beings. It is a bald attempt to change meaning of words.

First, why do so many atheists believe it necessary to prove their standpoint and force others to agree? It's one of the things we get so irritated about when religious folks do it to us. Even other religious folks get irritated when other religions do it to them. Everyone should just stop it since we can all agree it's annoying.
One could say a diety created singularity.
But, if you really want to be purely scientific minded person then all you can accept is observable data and theories associated based on said observations. Arguing if a deity created singularity is impossible to speculate one way or the other as there is no evidence that far back to base a theory on. Thus a purely scientific mind does not care one way or another until more data is available to analyze. This means that until more data is available one who is scientific must keep an open mind because anything is possible. That's more like agnosticism.
I would venture that most atheists are scientific and philosophically minded. Philosophy allows for room to explore possible realities or truths based on what we know, or believe we know, currently. Even if you disagree with another's standpoint, if that standpoint does not interfere with known science, you can't really say they are wrong without evidence that proves that their idea is impossible. So if someone says, I believe God exists and that the bible is his word, but that it was written in a way we, as humans, interpreted them. As such God said the world started 6k years ago but as humans with limited knowledge, almost none really, we misinterpreted the information as it would be difficult to get an impression of time from an infinite being. Now, in this Christians mind, God could easily have created the circumstances that science shows happened.
This is how I see it:
Pure Theist - Someone who believes in a God or Gods and believe it by a strict set of rules. Many if not all are at odds with science as we understand it. Many theists fit here.
Theist - Believes in a God or Gods, follows a set of rules/scriptures, but is more open to interpretations. Most theists I have met in my lifetime go here.
Scientific Theists - Belief in deity, belief in rules, belief that there must be an accurate answer that satisfies observational evidence and belief.
Pure Scientist - Believes laws based on observations. Is often wrong but advances with new knowledge. Doesn't care to give answers about anything other than the observational truth as they understand it. Many agnostics belong here.
Philosophical scientist - Most athiests go here. Rely on scientific data to define our basic existence but using wisdom evaluate, discuss, and dismiss thoughts and theories about what caused the observable events that define our world.
Philosopher - Someone who studies for knowledge (A loose definition). Some might disagree but I think simply being self aware means that to some degree or another we all are philosophers in a way. Atheists, Agnostics, and Theists can all go here. Some debate whether science can be without philosophy like I describe above, but most agree philosophy cannot exist without some or all degrees of science.
Pure agnostics - Does not believe or disbelieve in a deity, but they don't aren't necessarily strictly scientific either.
Agnostic theist - Believes in God or Gods but believes that it is impossible to know or is not known as of yet.
Agnostic athiest - Does not believe there is a god but thinks it is impossible to know.
Athiest - Rejects the believe in a diety. Could also be called Scientific atheist. The difference from agnostic athiest in my terms is that they think is possible to prove they do not exist, simply not with the evidence we have currently.
Personally, I am an agnostic atheist. I believe it is possible that everyone has a valid approach and should pursue that path as they all lead to the same end ultimately.
One common theme is that judgement of those who do not adhere to a faith lies with the diety or dieties. For those who don't believe that it's no big deal if other people think the way they like and there is really no motivation to convince them to change. The only debate should be the limits of their practices in the public sector which directly interfere with the others' beliefs.
For example, the debate on public worship in schools or government. Does it hurt to wait while others pray to their God if you don't believe it. Absolutely not, even if your faith sees that as an insult let your diety sort it out. The problem isn't so much that their prayers offend though, as many use to debate the issue. It's that in order to be fair and equal they would then need to let anyone of another belief have their turn. In a diverse culture that would be a long, long time waiting and official functions would halt. So how do we pick fairly? Some places take turns over time, some allow multiple displays on an exhibit, but often there is no fair choice or simply the many different people will not agree that any choice is fair. The easiest fair solution is to avoid the need to worship in official public events and keep it with the congregations in the interest of getting along. That's why the founders of the US pushed for freedom of religion. Many ask why then is Christianity ingrained into our history? Well, ideals and virtue are often easier to define than to live by. Also, almost all the people in the US in that time were there to practice Protestant faith without persecution of the Catholic Church. Eventually many other variations and people of the Catholic faith came too. None of these would find only the Christian God represented as unfair. It has taken time for our diversity to develop. If our forefathers, freshly delivered from persecution into todays USA, they would stand by their decision to be fair to those of all persuasions. If not, then maybe it's time to follow our moral compass and do the right thing no matter what they would have done. Be kind, be just, and love your fellow man.
There's no need, or room, in a debate or discussion amongst diverse beliefs for bigotry, snideness, or belittlement; a problem rampant among atheists, and thiests alike.
Conversely, people who believe that those behaviors are the right way (WBC for example) also have the right to thier beliefs and as long as society as a majority agree that rights like freedom of speech and assembly are indeed rights the only thing we can do is take it graciously and not contribute to the hate.

I can't believe a public University lets him teach there. He attacks the wrong student on public time and property and he could be looking at a lawsuit. At a public University teaching religion or attacking one's religion is illegal. It's a two way street. Then again it's a philosophy class and with the way the system is set up he and his bigotry would be protected. I found his definition of faith to be ridiculous and a strawman. In fact this book is filled with strawmen. Lots of assertions and where's the proof? ALL the defenses of theism have been refuted? By whom and when? Faith isn't an epistemology it's means to trust is the primary meaning based on evidence given. Many people base their faith on emotion and this bombastic buffoon feels it's his job to destroy someone's faith and walk off and leave them with nothing. Call it whatever you want to call it, but atheism is a belief system hardly different from so many of the religions it disparages. It is the clarion call of nothing and at its bottom it is nothing. You come from nothing that began nowhere at no time and your life means nothing and you will end up as nothing. Try to give your atheist's life all the meaning you want, but in the end it is nothing but nihilism as many philosophers have testified, Nietzsche or Camus anyone?

Why would you want to evangelize people to such a bleak view and using disingenuous methods to boot? I thought Dawkins was the biggest antitheist bigot published, but this guy beats even him and is giving a few others a run for their money and money is why he wrote this pedantic poltroonish book you can be sure.

POP CULTURE ATHEISM WITHOUT SUBSTANCE!

The lack of intellectual integrity here is baffling. This author utterly dismisses any and all types of profound or contemplative insights as "Deepity" ---a neologism which had to be coined in the last decade of pop culture atheism and which shows its fundamentalist intolerance for art, human dignity, subjective experience, psychology, symbolism, human myth creation and anything else which fails to play predictable word games in neat and tidy logic packets.

Highly recommended to all high functioning autistic persons, borderline personality disorder people, Aspergers cases or those with stunted empathic abilities.

The author equates faith to the definition: "Pretending to know things you do not know" and it's all downhill from there because he is usually grounding his investigations in the Greek classics exclusively, to the detriment of what we know and understand about the human psyche---that is, the role of the unconscious as a barrier against 'pure reason'. Not only does the author work from a point of pretending to know things he does not know, he is actually ignoring things he really should know after being an active College professor for 20 years or whatever.

The ultimate low point of the book is where he bullies and peer pressures a girlfriend of one of his ex-students in a random, casual public setting, wielding his brutal authority as an educator in the same way as a midieval priest. Worse yet, he offers nothing viable as a substitute for what he is taking away from these poor simpletons...not art or compassion or psychology or Buddhism or anything...just an ego trip of telling mediocre minded people they are outright wrong for having edifying or comforting symbols or myths to sustain their emotional imagination.

I would encourage the modern atheist to instead read "ATHEISM IN OUR TIME" by IGNACE LEPP for a well-balanced and cultured set of case studies of real people and real atheist artists that matter.

Also, one might enjoy Camus, Sartre, Nietzsche, William James, Freud, Carl Jung, Barzun's history books, Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Fernando Pessoa, Spengler, Cioran, Derrida, Foucault, Thomas Bernhard, Celine, Bukowski, Li Po, Lin Yutang, Chang Tzu, Heraclitus, Epicurus, Diogenes, Dostoyevsky, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Conrad, Delillo, Kierkegaard, Unamuno, Gide, Malraux, Rimbaud, Marx, Fauerbach, Goethe, Saul Bellow, Salinger's short stories, Norman Mailer, etc.

I really didn't like this book. The style of the writing was off-putting. Boghossian's tone is smug with all the over-the-top emotion of a stereotypical big church pastor who writes for an adoring flock. His definition of faith is ludicrous. This has been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere. He describes faith as a virus of the mind that must be eradicated. How very Stalin-esque. He acknowledges loss of faith is emotionally significant but has only the vaguest of ideas about what to do about that. He describes with great glee disabusing an incarcerated gentleman of his faith and leaving him confused, "freaked out" and without resources. (Chapter 5) This is no different from any evangelist who bullies someone into "praying a prayer" and then walks away. The rhetorical tricks are even the same. And this is the person who advocates kindness. It seems hypocritical. Perhaps, he means maintaining a pleasant demeanor. The only thing I liked about this book is that a search of the author's last name led me to a book about realism vs. relativism by Paul Boghossian which is infinitely more informative.

Irresponsible and arrogant! I'm an atheist, but this guy is a real a-hole. He seems to delight in messing with vulnerable minds and the walking away leaving them hanging. A lot of believers are believers precisely because they are disturbed and religion provides what they need to cope at the time. To destroy the only thing they have to hold onto without gradual preparation, without providing something else, is not only callus, but unethical. I can see why this guy was kicked out of the doctoral program in NM. He seems to have mental problems of his own.

Faith doesn't mean what this author claims. This means the foundations of the book are extremely rocky, and based on a very scant understanding of any faith community's intellectual tradition. It is surprising that such shoddy work is taken seriously by anyone.

Self-styled 'street epistemologist' Peter Boghossian attempts to redefine faith in a way no Christians actually do. He then attempts to cast Christians as people with mental disorders.
Real Epistemologist Tim McGrew compared this approach to newspeak in 1984.
If you want an intelligent critique of religion , or how to better relate the nonreligious point of believers , you won't find it here.
You find declaration by fiat , many factual and epistemological errors and just plain bigotry.
Stay away

This is probably one of the worst books I've ever read in my life, and I couldn't tell whether or not Peter Boghossian is just a poe, but then again I have met a good number of new atheists and I wouldn't be surprised if this silliness was meant to be taken seriously. Half the time I was reading this I was laughing out loud, and the other half I was shaking my head. This book was an absolute disaster from start to finish.

Well let's get right into this book that should truly be in the comedy section:

Boghossian doesn't believe a God exists, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't have to deal with the arguments that one would see from the atheist existentialist camp, so lo and behold we have another godless conglomeration of matter who thinks this purposeless, nonrational, nonconscious, unintelligent naturedidit mechanistic universe has given him a goal in which he `ought' to fulfill. Now he may say that he doesn't think with the mindset of having a telos, but if it looks like a spade it's a spade.

See here:

"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 guild 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."

Forgive me as I couldn't help but laugh here, as there are so many problems with this quotation alone.

1) why does it matter if his cult of street epistmologists exist? Is there some goal that I'm missing, well what is it?

2) Epistemology is a field that Peter Boghossian isn't an expert in, you can look at how small his contributions are to the subject, and how he is hardly, if ever cited by other academics in the field. So why should we listen to Peter? I mean it would make a bit more sense if Paul Boghossian started making a cult called `street epistemologists' as at least Paul has the CV to back it up.

3) Not everyone agrees to this definition of faith, cf: `"pretending to know what you don't know." Or "A belief without evidence"

Ummm, earth to Peter....Religious Theism does not necessarily equate to fideism, so this is indeed a strawman against religious Theists who are not fideists. For instance let's use MY definition that I get from an academic on the subject.
Faith/faithfulness

"These terms refer to the value of reliability. The value is ascribed to persons as well as to objects and qualities. Relative to persons, faith is reliability in interpersonal relations: it thus takes on the value of enduring personal loyalty, of personal faithfulness. The nouns 'faith', 'belief', 'fidelity', 'faithfulness,' as well as the verbs 'to have faith' and 'to believe,' refers to the social glue that binds one person to another. This bond is the social, externally manifested, emotionally rooted behavior of loyalty, commitment, and solidarity. As a social bond, it works with the value of (personal and group) attachment (translated 'love') and the value of (personal and group) allegiance or trust (translated 'hope.')

"Handbook of Biblical Social Values." By Pilch and Malina pg72

Peter doesn't seem to engage scholarship that much, due to his lazy approach to things, so this sloppiness on his part isn't surprising.

4) There are many Theists in the past and present who have made great contributions to science Francis Collins, John Polkinghorne, Christopher Isham, Denis Alexander, Simon Conway Morris, John T. Houghton, Alister Mcgrath, Rodney Holder, Ernest Lucas, R. J. Berry, Colin A. Russell, Stuart Judge, Stephen Barr, Pamela Gay, Justin L Barrett, Ard Louis, Jennifer Wiseman, Ghillean Tolmie Prance, Rosalind Picard, Noella Marcellino, Henry F. Schaefer, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, J. Richard Gott, Joan Roughgarden, Werner Arber, William D. Phillips and Peter Clarke. These are just modern scientists

How about Philosophers? Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, Alex Pruss, Michael Almeida, Charles Taliaferro, Tim Mcgrew, Robert Koons, George Bealer, Eleanore Stump, Linda Zagzabski, E.J Lowe, Robert Maydole, Lydia Mcgrew, J.P Moreland, Edward Feser, Robert Audi, Mark Linville, William Alston, Paul Moser, Peter Geach, Stephen T. Davis, C. Stephen Evans, Michael Rea, Timothy O'Connor, Robert M Adams, Paul Copan, Brian Leftow and William lane Craig just to name a few Theists in academia.

5) Why can't Theists be street epistemologists? What's the secret ingredient that makes a Theist incapable of possessing any of the positive qualities that a Non-Theist would have? I sense a strong bias here based purely on emotion. Peter is waving the pom poms for atheism, but isn't really giving the opposition enough respect which leads me to 6)

6) Why not at least give Theists some respect in this regard and just say that it's at least possible to be a Theist and be rational?

Well I could go further and beat up on this quote a bit more, but there is so much garbage in this book to address that I don't think I have enough space to go over EVERYTHING.

Now let's go into the topic of `reason' and `rationality' (By the way Peter never lets us in on how rationality came from a nonrational universe I guess he just assumes a godless universe, therefore naturedidit makes the most sense even if we don't know 'how') Boghossian actually gets into epistemology here when he speaks on foundationalism a view I hold to as well, Peter states:

"Descartes is a good example of a foundationalist. He starts with the fact that he exists as the foundation for his beliefs: `I think therefore I am.' Descartes constructs additional propositions based upon this proposition. For example, once he establishes the reliability of his senses, he then constructs propositions about the accuracy of his perceptions of the world - when he perceives something clearly and distinctly he's not deceived. Descartes and other foundationalists come to know the world by basing their beliefs on fundamental and often irreducible propositions.""

Rene' Descartes was a Theist you ignoramus, he actually argued for God as well, so what was that about people of faith?

/Godzilla Facepalm...

Oh and if you want two respected Theist epistemologists who are also foundationalists in modern times, check out the works of Paul Moser and Robert Audi. Audi has a academic beginners book on the subject of epistemology, Peter Boghossian doesn't, Gee...I wonder why, considering how bad Peter bashes Theists I would think that this must be embarrassing to Peter

`Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy)' By Robert Audi....who defends God in academia with respect to moral arguments, though it doesn't matter if Audi defends God or not, because Audi is a Theist and he has a faith virus according to Peter Boghossian the street epistemologist cult leader

Oh speaking about arguments for God, check out this excellent rebuttal from our man of expertise!

Boghossian tells us:

"`Atheist', as I use the term, means, "There's insufficient evidence to warrant belief in a divine, supernatural creator of the universe. However, if I were shown sufficient evidence to warrant belief in such an entity, then I would believe." I recommend we start to conceptualize `atheist' in this way so we can move the conversation forward."

Insufficient evidence eh, now how hard did Boghossian read his opposition? In a footnote he writes:

"The problem with agnosticism is that in the last 2,400 years of intellectual history, not a single argument for the existence of God has withstood scrutiny. Not one. Aquinas's five proofs, fail. Pascal's Wager, fail. Anselm's ontological argument, fail. The fine-tuning argument, fail. The Kalam cosmological argument, fail. All refuted. All failures."

But yet, as I looked around this book, I was never was shown exactly where these arguments failed...Perhaps this is because Peter Boghossian is just lazy, and he truly takes his precious atheism on EMOTION, and since he is getting attention from this nonsense (as there are many lazy atheists out there who don't ever take the time to look at the arguments for Theism and/or Christianity) or maybe Peter just argues in the sense of 'Peter says so, therefore it is' mentality.

Has Peter ever read Alex Pruss' Cosmological Argument? How about Victor Reppert's Argument from Reason? Which Theists have you read besides William Lane Craig? Speaking of Ontological argments have you read up on the new one's or do you think that Anselm's was the only version that came out? This is just pure ignorance and laziness on the part of the street epistemologist leader.

I don't know how anyone could seriously bear this joke of a book, and with respect to intellectual rigor I feel like the street epistemologists are the Westboro Baptist Church of atheism. Though there will be many emotional atheists that hate Christianity because they have been brought up in fundy Christian homes who will be convinced by this snake oil salesman. There will probably be a good number of lazy atheists who are too afraid to pick up a book like the `Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology' as they just want Theism to be false in their hearts. (though I see this mentality from both sides, the point is Peter is claiming that atheists are the champion of reason which is the funniest thing I've ever heard.

I'll finish with this script as Peter is pretending that there is a teleology in this universe when he says:

"Your new role is that of the interventionist. Liberator. Your target is faith. Your pro bono clients are individuals who've been infected by faith."

You have an obligation in this enormous universe as a pointless conglomeration of matter who shifts in the way of A (atheism) instead of B( Theism) to persuade me out of my belief in God. Please target me, by all means I want every street epistemologist to give it all you got and try to persuade me into thinking that agency and consciousness was not an initial feature of this universe. Then we can live this purposeless life together until the day we become worm food and make this pointless universe happ.....uhhhh....well anyways, I'd like to see how well you do on topics of ethics, epistemology, metaphysics, religion and logic! We can then see who has the infection, as it would be nice to see how one becomes superior at reasoning just because of a biased label...

Peter, I suggest you wake up from your delusion, because you've never stepped into a debate with an academic whether it be in a scholarly article in academia or a formal debate. I highly doubt you'll ever see Peter Boghossian debating someone like John Lennox, and this is simply because Peter is nothing but a fake. He knows that there are a good number of lazy people out there who are on the emotional side and will put money in his pocket.

Oh well, all he is doing is taking the emotional believers from our side and putting them into his camp, not my problem. Like I always say

Quality > Quantity

He seeks out to evangelize. He says his bank teller wears a cross so he purposely waits on her line in order to perform an intervention.
This is why polls say the average human being wouldn't even trust an atheist to watch their cat. The reason is we have experiences with these people and we know that something has gone horribly wrong with their intellects. He doesnt bother to mention in his book that some studies suggest they lack crucial insight into "purpose", while other studies suggest they have sociopathic attributes. Whatever the reason, this book is a study in itself of just how deep the pathology goes. When a supposed trained philosopher doesn't even understand epistemology coupled with faith is a blatant category error, we know he's in trouble.

In regards to epistemology, he seems to see no problem with all he has to deny to uphold his incoherent worldview.
So they have to deny there is One universe
They have to deny there is freewill
They have to deny Time is real
They have to deny DNA is Information
They have to deny that something cant come from Nothing
They have to deny infinity is just a concept
They have to deny an infinite regress is incoherent
They have to deny rape is wrong
They have to deny Love is real
They have to deny Objective Moral Values

Its no shock that Only atheists believe these things--which seems quite convenient. They have to hold contradictory beliefs like these..
"I freely deny that freewill exists. "
"I have reasoned with my super critical intellectual skills and have come to the DETERMINATION that I have no choice what I believe"
"because the particles in your brain didnt randomly collide into a pattern that creates the illusion that you dont have freewill...you are supertitious"
Its completely astonishing that people could hold such incoherent, contradicary beliefs but you have to...to affirm atheism.

So he sets up a false dichotomy between faith and reason, and in the next breath denies some of the most simplest truths that every human being understand in seconds.

Lastly, Boghossian, in his tirade on faith(apparently without even understanding his entire worldview is based on faith) and others like him, in rejecting a coherent explanation for the universe and its intricate design, are essentially believing in Magic when they claim reality popped into existence and designed itself. Now that takes enormous faith and the smug, matter of fact attitude wouldn't even fool the cat people wont let him watch, let alone his poor bank teller.

Reading the quotes of people who supplied blurbs to advertise this book, and finding that at least one who is publicly stating that he does not endorse this book and had it quote mined from his blog, I have to wonder whether the author can be trusted enough for me to shell out cash to read. Maybe I'll wait until it shows up in my local library and leaf through it.

Edit. Found a free copy and read it.

It is a manual to show how to argue like a 5 year old. Keep asking Why until you get the person to admit that they may be wrong and then assume that they are right, while at the same time changing definitions of words to suit one's argument and then argue as if everyone has always used your definition.

Sophistry. No real value to the book. If you want to the gist of the more sophisticated stuff, talk to a jr high kid.

And now I keep bleeding.
I keep, keep bleeding, a lot.

It cut my finger and I
I keep bleeding
I keep, keep bleeding, a lot.

Trying hard not to hear but they talk so loud
Their piercing sounds fill my ears, try to fill me with doubt
Yet I know that the goal is to keep me from falling

But nothing's greater than the rush that comes with your embrace
And in this world of loneliness I see your face
Yet everyone around me thinks that I'm going crazy
Maybe, maybe

But I don't care what they say, I'm in love with you
They try to pull me away but they don't know the truth
My heart's crippled by the vein that I keep on closing

You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love
I keep bleeding, I keep, keep bleeding love
Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love
You cut me open

And it's draining all of me
Oh, they find it hard to believe
I'll be wearing these scars for everyone to see

I don't care what they say, I'm in love with you
They try to pull me away but they don't know the truth
My heart's crippled by the vein that I keep on closing

You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love
I keep bleeding, I keep, keep bleeding love
Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love

You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love
I keep bleeding, I keep, keep bleeding love
Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love

You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding, keep, keep bleeding love

Read more: Leona Lewis - Keep Bleeding Lyrics | MetroLyrics

He's well trained in persuasion theory due to his years of working in prisons with prisoners and he is trying to use that skill to persuade people to not believe in the reality of a God or Intelligent Design. He practices self-defeating claims and greater than knowledge claims throughout his book. He errs in numerous areas but an easy one is his definition of faith: 1) faith is belief without evidence and 2) faith is pretending to know things that you don't or cannot know. He is emphatic about his two definitions and that faith should only be applied in religious areas. Self-defeating! In a lecture he gave which can be found online he claims that he has NO empirical evidence for it. In other words he has FAITH that his definition(s) is/are correct. That's a self-defeating statement and should not be trusted. This book is more pointless and ungrounded blathering from someone who cannot support or prove their points without borrowing from a theistic God. Don't waste your money!

What a sad attempt to overthrow logic, apologetics, ontology and metaphysics all at once. The hubris is stunning. When reading Hitchen's book I was struck by the primal anguish of his life; the loss of his mother in a dramatic suicide that scarred him for life. He became the eternal skeptic.This just sort of left me saying "meh'.

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche both posited the decadence and ennui of the life lived without meaning and faith. Sartre and Camus found little concrete meaning in the end with existentialism.The choice is ours to look behind the masks we wear. In fact, there is a medium which we seek to balance between the esthetic and the profound.

C.S. Lewis spoke of the Tao that is common to many faiths and the "right life" that faith brings.

Boghossian begins with Derridan deconstruction and Gramscian historicism. History, context, and logic are discarded in favor of the latest flavor. Straw men are set up and toppled. The structure and order of all of nature are defined with human constructs viewed as infallible. A sense of wonder is replaced with "s*** just happened".

The point of philosophy is to get the essential truths. Socrates, Aristotle, the Stoics, Aurelius, and even Emerson have all sought the meaning of "who are we and why are we here?" As Hubble looks farther and farther into the cosmos and we reach down to the Higgs Boson and beyond, we keep on finding ourselves stymied on these questions.

Boghossian is philosophical..ish but in fact his arguments are weak. There is far more evidence of the complexity and meaningful structure of the universe than there is of his random nihilism.

This book purports to be on critical thinking and sound epistemology. Other reviewers here have hailed it for its groundbreaking contributions. It has some good to offer, yes -- but unfortunately very little. Boghossian's arguments against faith, in particular, are misinformed, poorly argued, and obviously wrong.

A Few Words of Appreciation—But Only a Few

Dr. Boghossian does three things in this book that I do consider quite helpful. He takes a serious swipe at postmodern-ish relativism concerning truth, he makes a strong plea for rational thinking, and he recommends a Socratic approach to learning about religious beliefs.

All of this is excellent; in fact elsewhere (breakpoint.org) I’ve written previously on his similarity to several top Christian apologists in his Socratic methodology. There are just two things amiss about it in his application. The first is that, properly applied, these approaches have little to do with creating atheists. The second is how terribly improper Boghossian’s application is—not because it’s anti-Christian, but because of his irresponsible disregard for evidence and good reasoning.

Boghossian’s Values, Continued

Throughout the book, Dr. Boghossian emphasizes rationality, willingness to revise one’s beliefs if new evidence or reasoning calls for it, and the epistemological deficiencies of faith. Elsewhere [...] I have questioned his willingness actually to proportion his beliefs to evidence. Here I will zero in on his definition of faith, and explore whether that definition reflects rationality and attention to evidence on his part.

This is crucial, for if he gets faith wrong, then the entire argument of his book collapses. For this is not, in spite of its title, a manual for creating atheists. He really doesn’t recommend arguing people out of belief in God. On pages 76-77 he writes:

"Trying to disabuse people of a belief in God … may be an interesting, fun, feel-good pastime, but ultimately it’s unlikely to be as productive as disabusing people of their faith. Attempting to disabuse people of a belief in their God(s) is the wrong way to conceptualize the problem. God is the conclusion that one arrives at as a result of a faulty reasoning process (and also social and cultural pressures). The faulty reasoning process—the problem—is faith."

Why Faith is “The Problem”

Faith is a faulty reasoning process because, as he defines it on pages 23 and 24, it is “belief without evidence,” and it is “pretending to know things you don’t know.” It’s not clear to me where these definitions came from, except that they're derived from and deeply colored by atheistic conceptions of reality and, of course, faith. Dr. Boghossian provides no citations, no references, no reason to believe that these definitions are correct; he expects us to take it on his authority alone.

Well, I overstated that a bit. He presents a list of straw-man usages of “faith” yanked utterly out of context, from mostly liberal theologians, New Age authors, and his personal interpretation of the difficult passage in Hebrews 11:1. (Had he looked at the way faith is used elsewhere in the same chapter of Hebrews he might not have made the mistakes he made there.)

And not only that, he also quotes John Loftus, born in 1950, a leading crusader against Christianity: certainly the one authority we would all rely on as proof that Dr. Boghossian got his understanding of faith right for all times, all people, all places.

And Why It Is Not

Both Loftus and Boghossian are, quite simply, wrong. Faith simply is not belief without evidence, nor is it possible that it could be. To state just one reason: if it were, then Jesus would be one of history’s greatest crusaders against faith. When he rose from the dead, he presented himself alive as a demonstration of his resurrection. If the disciples were expected to believe in his resurrection on “faith,” as Dr. Boghossian understands the term, then by showing himself alive, Jesus would have been destroying any opportunity for them to have “faith” in his resurrection.

The same pattern presents itself throughout the Bible. From the Exodus to the miracles of Elijah and Elisha, to the great signs and wonders that Jesus performed, to his resurrection from the dead, and finally to the miracles done by and through the apostles, there was evidence for the reality of God all along the way.

So by Dr. Boghossian’s way of looking at it, the Bible is one of history’s great manifestations of an anti-faith religious text. The Bible presents faith as being directly associated with and the result of experience with evidences. Christianity down through the centuries has also conceived of faith as being directly tied to evidences and to reasoning.

Undoubtedly some will want to object, "but this depends on believing in the Bible, and only faith-heads do that." But no, it only depends on recognizing the Bible as the literary and cultural source of the Western world's understanding of "faith"—an understanding that Boghossian turns upside down, and which he expects us to topple over with him, based on no source except his own opinion.

Ther's more that could be said about that. Down through the centuries Christians have viewed faith as being integrally associated with good thinking, based on good evidences. (The following examples are from a chapter by David Marshall and Timothy McGrew in the forthcoming second edition of True Reason, edited by Carson Weitnauer and me.)

Justin Martyr (ca. 100-165) wrote, “reason directs those who are truly pious and philosophical to honor and love only what is true, declining to follow traditional opinions.” Origen (ca. 184-254) wrote,

"In the Christian system also it will be found that there is, not to speak at all arrogantly, at least as much of investigation into articles of belief, and of explanations of dark sayings, occurring in the prophetical writings, and of the parables in the Gospels, and of countless other things, which either were narrated or enacted with the symbolical signification, (as is the case with other systems)."

Other Christian thinkers emphasizing the importance of evidence and reasoning have included Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, Pascal, Lock, Berkeley, Calvin, Wesley, Edwards, Ricci, Butler, Paley, Warfield, Greenleaf, and many, many more. Many more.

The point is that Boghossian’s definition of faith is idiosyncratic, tendentious, and formulated falsely yet conveniently for the purpose of undermining belief in God. It bears no relation to evidences of actual Christian belief or practice. It entails that Jesus, the great promoter of faith, was at the same time the great destroyer of faith.

Thus in this we see him throwing to the winds his own stated value of proportioning one’s opinion to the available evidences. His hypocrisy stands revealed. And since his definition of faith is wrong, and since his whole book depends on that definition, his entire argument fails utterly.

Urging Extremism

This is not just about playing innocently with words. Dr. Boghossian recommends a set of “containment protocols” regarding faith, which include the following:

1. Use the word “faith” only in a religious context.
He recommends this on his own authority: it’s just wrong, he says on his own authority, to speak of having faith in one’s spouse. This is because “when the faithful are pressed on the definition of faith… they usually retreat to the words ‘hope,’ ‘trust,’ and ‘confidence,’ abandoning knowledge and certainty”—as if the importance of his recommendation follows from that observation.

2. Stigmatize faith-based claims like racist claims.
Specifically, he says, don’t let people of faith “sit at the Adult Table. Those at the Kid’s Table can talk about anything they’d like, but they have no adult responsibilities and no voice in public policy.” In other words he wants us muzzled; if we speak up we should be told, “You are pretending to know things you don’t know. Go to the Kid’s Table, this is a conversation for adults.”

8. Treat faith as a public health crisis.
“We must reconceptualize faith as a virus of the mind … and treat faith like other epidemiological crises: contain and eradicate.” Never mind that faith is positively associated with personal health in virtually every measure: Dr. Boghossian’s adoration of evidence has its limits, you see; and even though all the research shows that it tends to be good for physical and mental health, still it’s a “public health crisis” because he says it is.

11. Remove religious exemption for delusion from the DSM.
This bears an extended quotation:

"Once religious or delusions are integrated into the DSM, entirely new categories of research and treatment into the problem of faith can be created. These will include removal of existing ethical barriers, changing treatments covered by insurance, including faith-based to special education programs in the schools, helping children who have been indoctrinated into a faith tradition, and legitimizing interventions designed to rid subjects of the faith affliction.…

"In the long term, once these treatments and this body of research is [sic] refined, results could then be used to inform public health policies designed to contain and ultimately eradicate faith."

At least he doesn’t suffer the flaw of being overly subtle. Now, if faith really were what he says it is, and if it really were a faulty epistemology, then there might be some reason to “contain” it. Still, to treat it as a “public health crisis” and to “stigmatize it” like racism, is dangerously extremist language. To call it a virus, to remove ethical barriers(!) regarding its treatment(!) is reminiscent of nothing quite so much as Soviet “psychological” approaches toward dissent.

This is the language of hatred toward the beliefs of not just millions but billions. And it would be so even if Dr. Boghossian’s view of faith were accurate; which it is not.

One Redeeming Virtue

If there is any good that could come out of a book like this, it would be this: it amounts to an excellent exercise for Christians who want to sharpen their thinking. In the hands of a skillful an well-trained Christian thinker, this could provide an outstanding case study in the irrationality of new atheism – that strange new cultural stream that which claims supreme rationality, but (as my co-authors and I show in True Reason) rarely if ever succeeds in living up to it.

I have not read this book because of my contacts with the author after listening to him talk about the book during an hour-long radio interview with Canadian Stefan Molyneux.

I pointed out to Professor Boghossian that his premise (the claim that readers can be taught how to reason Christians into atheism) is falsifiable on its face.

All god claims are based upon the prior claim (whether stated or merely assumed) that the god exist; but existence cannot be reasoned, only corroborated. I cited the leading authority of the last century (Stephen C. Pepper's World Hypotheses).

Boghossian replied to the effect that he had no idea what I was talking about and severed all further contact, even refusing a simple request for his curriculum vitae.

Presuming that Professor Boghossian does hold a ph.d. from somewhere (odd that he will not say if he does or from where), nevertheless, based upon the only contact that he would allow, I would rate his abilities at senior undergraduate level.

Whatever the truth about him might turn out to be, my experience of him is that second-rate would be a generous ranking--right on par with every other militant atheist of recent times.

=========
Update December 6, 2013

After a month, the following replies illustrate the type of audience to which all militant atheists resort.

Not even one of them has ever published a peer-reviewed paper or book on this topic, because their academic colleagues won't have anything to do with it--or with them. One if them, Daniel Dennett, so infuriated his academic colleagues that they convened an international conference in Denmark for the sole purpose of condeming him as the best example of how NOT to conduct research in his own chosen field. Another, Sam Harris, was sued for fraud and his lawyer and the trial judge ended up as co-defendants with him. A third, the late Christopher Hitchens, was barred from attending graduate school owing to mediocre academic performance as an undergraduate. A fourth, Richard Dawkins, has never conducted any original research at all after a single stab at it as a post-doctoral fellow a lifetime ago. He is literally a hired mouthpiece. When I say second-rate, that's what I mean.

Those who are legitimately interested in why merely the title of this book triggered my response, will find it adequately presented (free of charge) at my You Tube channel (AlOlmstead).

For the rest, who know nothing about formal philosophy and plainly don't want to learn, the types of comments you have made in defense of this author illustrate the caliber of audience to which he must appeal since his academic colleagues won't have anything to do with him.