CONTENTS

Foreword by Michael ShermerBorn-Again Atheist

Chapter 1: Street EpistemologyIntroduces Street Epistemology and thepurpose of the book: To give people theconversational tools to talk people out of theirfaith and help them embrace reason.

Chapter 2: FaithClarifies and examines the terms “faith,”“atheist,” and “agnostic.” Articulates faith asan epistemology, underscores the fact thatfaith claims are knowledge claims, and thenbriefly articulates the problem and danger offaith.

Chapter 3: Doxastic Closure, Belief, and EpistemologyDescribes the pathology of closed beliefsystems, how people’s belief systems becomeimmune to revision, argues for the idea thatfaithbased beliefs can be changed, andexplores the study of knowledge

(epistemology) as it pertains to changes inbelief.

Chapter 4: Interventions and StrategiesDraws from diverse peer-reviewed literatureand provides broad conversational strategiesreaders can use when attempting to liberatesubjects of their faith.

Chapter 5: Enter SocratesDetails and explains how the use of theSocratic method is employed to help peopleabandon their faith.

Chapter 6: After the FallExplains what goes in faith’s place once it’sbeen removed.

Chapter 7: Anti-Apologetics 101Explores common responses in the defense offaith and explains effective answersspecifically designed to facilitate beliefchange.

Chapter 8: Faith and the AcademyDiscusses the failure of contemporary

academia in dealing with faith, argues thateducators should give faith-based claims nocountenance in the classroom, and offers aroadmap to disabuse students ofepistemological relativism.

Chapter 9: Containment ProtocolsReconceptualizes the problem of faith, setsgoals, looks ahead, and suggests strategies tostop the spread of faith. Includes a section onhow to raise a child with a skeptical mind-set.

Acknowledgments

Appendixes

Glossary

References

About the Author

Other Titles from Pitchstone

CHAPTER ISTREET EPISTEMOLOGY

street /str t/Noun: A public thoroughfare.

e·pis·te·mol·o·gy /i-pis-t -‘mä-l -j /Noun: The study of knowledge.

This book will teach you how to talk people out of theirfaith. You’ll learn how to engage the faithful inconversations that help them value reason and rationality,cast doubt on their beliefs, and mistrust their faith. I callthis activist approach to helping people overcome theirfaith, “Street Epistemology.” The goal of this book is tocreate a generation of Street Epistemologists: peopleequipped with an array of dialectical and clinical toolswho actively go into the streets, the prisons, the bars, thechurches, the schools, and the community—into any andevery place the faithful reside—and help them abandontheir faith and embrace reason.

A Manual for Creating Atheists details, explains, andteaches you how to be a street clinician and how to applythe tools I’ve developed and used as an educator and

philosopher. The lessons, strategies, and techniques Ishare come from my experience teaching prisoners, fromeducating tens of thousands of students in overcrowdedpublic universities, from engaging the faithful every dayfor more than a quarter century, from over two decades ofrigorous scholarship, and from the streets.

Street Epistemology harkens back to the values of theancient philosophers—individuals who were tough-minded, plain-speaking, known for self-defense,committed to truth, unyielding in the face of danger, andfearless in calling out falsehoods, contradictions,inconsistencies, and nonsense. Plato was a wrestler and asoldier with broad shoulders. He was decorated forbravery in battle (Christian, 2011, p. 51). Socrates was aseasoned soldier. At his trial, when facing the deathpenalty, he was unapologetic. When asked to suggest apunishment for his “crimes,” he instead proposed to berewarded (Plato, Apology).

Hellenistic philosophers fought against the superstitions oftheir time. Lucretius, Sextus Empiricus, Epictetus, MarcusAurelius, and others combated the religious authorities oftheir period, including early versions of Christianity(Clarke, 1968; Nussbaum, 1994). They thought the mostimportant step was to liberate people from fear of torturesof the damned and from fear that preachers of their epochwere spouting. Hellenistic philosophers were trying to

encourage stoic self-sufficiency, a sense of self-responsibility, and a tough-minded humanism.

Street Epistemology is a vision and a strategy for the nextgeneration of atheists, skeptics, humanists, philosophers,and activists. Left behind is the idealized vision of wimpy,effete philosophers: older men in jackets with elbowpatches, smoking pipes, stroking their white, unkemptbeards. Gone is cowering to ideology, orthodoxy, and themodern threat of political correctness.

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

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

But the Street Epistemologist doesn’t just tear downfairytales, comforting delusions, and imagined entities.She offers a humanistic vision. Let’s be blunt, direct, andhonest with ourselves and with others. Let’s help peopledevelop a trustfulness of reason and a willingness toreconsider, and let’s place rationality in the service ofhumanity. Street Epistemology offers a humanism that’staken some hits and gained from experience. This isn’tPollyanna humanism, but a humanism that’s been slappedaround and won’t fall apart. Reason and rationality haveendurance. They don’t evaporate the moment you getslugged. And you will get slugged.2

The immediate forerunners to Street Epistemologists were“the Four Horsemen,” each of whom contributed toidentifying a part of the problem with faith and religion.American neuroscientist Sam Harris articulated theproblems and consequences of faith. British evolutionarybiologist Richard Dawkins explained the God delusionand taught us how ideas spread from person to personwithin a culture. American philosopher Daniel Dennettanalyzed religion and its effects as natural phenomena.British-American author Christopher Hitchens divorcedreligion from morality and addressed the historical role ofreligion. The Four Horsemen called out the problem offaith and religion and started a turn in our thinking and inour culture—they demeaned society’s view of religion,

faith, and superstition, while elevating attitudes aboutreason, rationality, Enlightenment, and humanistic values.

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

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

Hitchens may be gone, but no single individual will takehis place. Instead of a replacement Horseman, there aremillions of Horsemen ushering in a new Enlightenment andan Age of Reason. You, the reader, will be one of theseHorsemen. You will become a Street Epistemologist. Youwill transform a broken world long ruled by unquestionedfaith into a society built on reason, evidence, and thought-out positions. This is work that needs to be done and workthat will pay off by potentially helping millions—evenbillions—of people to live in a better world.

For the reader eager to get started talking others out oftheir faith, the tendency will be to skip to chapter 4. Thisis a mistake. The early chapters are designed to give youan understanding of the mechanism of belief. Effectiveinterventions depend upon understanding core ideas anddefinitions covered in chapters 2 and 3.

NOTES

1. Other falsehoods include faith as a virtue; theimportance of passionate belief; radical subjectivity;cognitive, cultural, and epistemological relativism;metaphysical entities that scrutinize and thenultimately punish or reward us; men who allegedlyreceived revelations in the desert, or through goldenplates; not blaspheming and being sensitive andrespectful to the faith-based delusions of others;feeling shame in not knowing; unreflective injectingof pervasive egalitarianism into our judgments;unsupported beliefs about what happens to us afterwe die, etc.

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

sums up the vision of Street Epistemology:

Hard-boiled means that you look at thingsstraight on. You play it straight. You don’tsugarcoat it, you don’t play it cute, youdon’t pull your punches. You look at thecold, hard truth. You lay things outtruthfully. That’s your healthy skepticism.You become the investigator—you have tobe your own private investigator—you’rethe detective—so you better learn how tohandle yourself. You’re going to go tosome tough places, the other side of thetracks, and there’s going to be some badguys around—some tough cookies, somepalookas and gorillas and femme fatalesand some snakes… .

The tough guy adheres to a moral code in aworld that has no moral code. It has nomoral values—basically no values at all.The tough son-of-a-bitch stands forsomething, unlike pretty much everythingaround him. He’s a stand-up guy in a sit-down, shut-up world. Philip Marlowe inparticular is all about hanging on to hisdecency and humanity in a world that’schipping away at his soul, at his spirit and

honor. The tough-guy hero is always anexception, a lone wolf—she’s independent,strong, brave, self-reliant—they’re a littlebit on the outside, they’re isolated,estranged, they’re out there on the margins—pretty close to amoral territory. But he’salways got a stance, a code, a worldview.They’ve seen it all—not much shocks them—they’ve been around the block—theseare principled people… .

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

[T]he tough guy hero is “inner directed”—he has what psychologists call an “innerlocus of control”—the opposite of an“external locus of control”—he’s not going

to worry too much about what the next guythinks of him. He knows that he’s got to gethis game face on, tough things out on hisown, stand on his own two feet, put hispants on one leg at a time.

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

Socrates … said that wisdom is the key tohappiness. Socrates was a skeptic abouthappiness, because we do not possesswisdom—no one he knows has wisdom. Iguess I should say that whatever it is thatyou have learned from teachers—includingme—and I hope it is a great deal—it is notwisdom. That you will have to search for inthe school of hard knocks and—if you findit—it’s going to be something you earn onyour own—you’ll have to learn it on yourown—it will also be on your own terms.But tell the rest of us about it, if you find it—tell everyone—help as many people asyou can.

CHAPTER 2FAITH

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

THE MEANING OF WORDS: FAITH, ATHEIST,AND AGNOSTIC

As a Street Epistemologist, you’ll find subjects willattempt to evade your help by asserting that everydefinition of faith offered is incorrect and that you “justdon’t understand” what faith really is.

When pressed, the faithful will offer vague definitions thatare merely transparent attempts to evade criticism, orsimplistic definitions that intentionally muddy the meaningof “faith.” More common still are what Horseman Daniel

Dennett terms “deepities.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The universe exists in awareness alone.”

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

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

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

The word “faith” is a very slippery pig. We need to getour hands on it, pin it to the ground, and wrap a blanketaround it so we can have something to latch onto beforewe finally and permanently subdue it. Malleabledefinitions allow faith to slip away from critique.2

Two Definitions of Faith

The words we use are important. They can help us seeclearly, or they can confuse, cloud, or obscure issues. I’ll

now offer my two preferred definitions of faith, and thendisambiguate faith from hope.3

faith /f TH/

1. Belief without evidence.

“My definition of faith is that it’s a leap over theprobabilities. It fills in the gap between what isimprobable to make something more probable thannot without faith. As such, faith is an irrational leapover the probabilities.”

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

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

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

One can believe the corpse was missing for any number ofreasons. For example, one can believe the body arosefrom the dead and ascended to heaven, one can believealiens brought the body back to life, or one can believe anancient spirit trapped in the tomb merged with the corpseand animated it. Belief in any of these claims wouldrequire faith because there’s insufficient evidence tojustify any one of these particular options. Belief in any ofthese claims would also disregard other, far more likelypossibilities—for example, that the corpse was stolen,hidden, or moved.

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

faith /f TH/

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

Not everything that’s a case of pretending to know thingsyou don’t know is a case of faith, but cases of faith areinstances of pretending to know something you don’tknow.5 For example, someone who knows nothing aboutbaking a cake can pretend to know how to bake a cake,and this is not an instance of faith. But if someone claimsto know something on the basis of faith, they are

pretending to know something they don’t know. Forexample, using faith would be like someone giving adviceabout baking cookies who has never been in a kitchen.

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

To start thinking in these terms, the following tablecontains commonly heard expressions using the word“faith” in column one, and the same expressionssubstituted with the words “pretending to know things youdon’t know” in column two.

“FAITH” “PRETENDING TO KNOW THINGSYOU DON’T KNOW”

“My faith isbeneficial forme.”

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

“I have faithin God.”

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

“Life has nomeaningwithoutfaith.”

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

“I don’t haveenough faithto be anatheist.”

“I don’t pretend to know things I don’tknow enough to be an atheist.”Alternatively, if atheist is defined as “aperson who doesn’t pretend to know thingshe doesn’t know about the creation of theuniverse,” the sentence then becomes, “Idon’t pretend to know things I don’t knowenough to be a person who pretends toknow things he doesn’t know about thecreation of the universe.”

“You havefaith inscience.”

“You pretend to know things you don’tknow about science.”

“You havefaith yourspouse lovesyou.”

“You pretend to know things you don’tknow about your spouse’s love.”

“If everyone

abandonedtheir faith,societywoulddevolvemorally.”

“If everyone stopped pretending to knowthings they don’t know, society woulddevolve morally.”

“My faith istrue for me.”

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

“Why shouldpeople stophaving faithif it helpsthem getthrough theday?”

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

“Teach yourchildren tohave faith.”

“Teach your children to pretend to knowthings they don’t know.”

“Freedom offaith.”

“Freedom of pretending to know things youdon’t know.”

“InternationalFaith

“International Pretending to Know ThingsYou Don’t Know Convention”

Convention” “She’shaving acrisis offaith.”

“She’s having a crisis of pretending toknow things she doesn’t know.”Alternatively, “She is struck by the fact thatshe’s been pretending to know things shedoesn’t know.”

Disambiguation: Faith Is Not Hope

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

The term “faith,” as the faithful use it in religious contexts,needs to be disambiguated from words such as “promise,”“confidence,” “trust,” and, especially, “hope.”6 7

“Promise,” “confidence,” “trust,” and “hope” are notknowledge claims. One can hope for anything or placeone’s trust in anyone or anything. This is not the same asclaiming to know something. To hope for somethingadmits there’s a possibility that what you want may not berealized. For example, if you hope your stock will risetomorrow, you are not claiming to know your stock willrise; you want your stock to rise, but you recognize there’sa possibility it may not. Desire is not certainty but thewish for an outcome.

Hope is not the same as faith. Hoping is not the same asknowing. If you hope something happened you’re notclaiming it did happen. When the faithful say, “Jesuswalked on water,” they are not saying they hope Jesuswalked on water, but rather are claiming Jesus actuallydid walk on water.

Thought Challenge!

In my May 6, 2012, public lecture for theHumanists of Greater Portland, I furtherunderscored the difference between faith and hopeby issuing the following thought challenge:

Give me a sentence where one must use the word“faith,” and cannot replace that with “hope,” yetat the same time isn’t an example of pretending toknow something one doesn’t know.

To date, nobody has answered the thoughtchallenge. I don’t think it can be answered becausefaith and hope are not synonyms.

Atheist

“I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in onefewer God than you do.”

—Stephen F. Roberts

Of all the terms used in this book, none is moreproblematic, more contentious, more divisive, or moreconfusing than the term “atheist.”

This confusion is understandable given that the word“theist” is contained in the word “atheist.” It is thusnatural to assume a type of parallelism between the twowords. Many of the faithful imagine that just as a theistfirmly believes in God, an a-theist firmly disbelieves inGod. This definitional and conceptual confusion needs tobe clarified.

“Atheist,” as I use the term, means, “There’s insufficientevidence to warrant belief in a divine, supernaturalcreator of the universe. However, if I were shownsufficient evidence to warrant belief in such an entity, thenI would believe.”8 9 I recommend we start toconceptualize “atheist” in this way so we can move theconversation forward.

The atheist does not claim, “No matter how solid theevidence for a supernatural creator, I refuse to believe.”10

In The God Delusion, for example, Horseman Dawkins

provides a 1–7 scale, with 1 being absolute belief and 7being absolute disbelief in a divine entity (Dawkins,2006a, pp. 50–51). Dawkins, whom many consider to beamong the most hawkish of atheists, only places himself ata 6. In other words, even Dawkins does not definitivelyclaim there is no God. He simply thinks the existence ofGod is highly unlikely. A difference between an atheistand a person of faith is that an atheist is willing to revisetheir belief (if provided sufficient evidence); the faithfulpermit no such revision.

Agnostic

Agnostics profess to not know whether or not there’s anundetectable, metaphysical entity that created the universe.Agnostics think there’s not enough evidence to warrantbelief in God, but because it’s logically possible theyremain unsure of God’s existence. Again, an agnostic iswilling to revise her belief if provided sufficientevidence.

The problem with agnosticism is that in the last 2,400years of intellectual history, not a single argument for theexistence of God has withstood scrutiny. Not one.Aquinas’s five proofs, fail. Pascal’s Wager, fail.Anselm’s ontological argument, fail. The fine-tuningargument, fail. The Kal m cosmological argument, fail. Allrefuted. All failures.11

I dislike the terms “agnostic” and “agnosticism.” I adviseStreet Epistemologists to not use these terms. This is why:I don’t believe Santa Claus is a real person who fliesaround in a sleigh led by reindeer delivering presents. Iam a Santa Claus atheist. Even though there’s nothinglogically impossible about this phenomenon, I’m not aSanta Claus agnostic. (That is, a large man in a red suitdelivering presents at the speed of light is not a logicalcontradiction.) “Agnostic” and “agnosticism” areunnecessary terms. Street Epistemologists should avoidthem.

EPISTEMOLOGY AND KNOWLEDGE CLAIMS

Now that the terms “faith,” “atheist,” and “agnostic” havebeen clarified, we can have a meaningful discussion about“belief without evidence” being an unreliable way tonavigate reality. We can also examine the dangers offormulating beliefs and social policies on the basis ofinsufficient evidence.

Faith Claims Are Knowledge Claims

The term “epistemology” comes from the Greek“episteme,” which means “knowledge,” and “logos,”which means “reason and logic” and “argument andinquiry” and therefore, by extension, “the study of.”Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that focuses on

how we come to knowledge, what knowledge is, and whatprocesses of knowing the world are reliable.

Conclusions one comes to as the result of anepistemological process are knowledge claims. Aknowledge claim is an assertion of truth. Examples ofknowledge claims include: “The moon is 52,401 milesfrom the Earth,” “My fist has a greater diameter than asoda can,” and “The Azande supreme God, Onyame,created the world and all lesser gods.”

Faith is an epistemology.12 It’s a method and a processpeople use to understand reality. Faith-based conclusionsare knowledge claims. For example, “I have faith JesusChrist will heal my sickness because it says so in Luke” isa knowledge claim. The utterer of this statement isasserting Jesus will heal her.

Those who make faith claims are professing to knowsomething about the external world. For example, whensomeone says, “Jesus walked on water” (Matthew 14:22–33), that person is claiming to know there was anhistorical figure named Jesus and that he, unaided bytechnology, literally walked across the surface of thewater. “Jesus walked on water” is a knowledge claim—anobjective statement of fact.

Much of the confusion about faith-based claims comes

from mistaking objective claims with subjective claims.Knowledge claims purport to be objective because theyassert a truth about the world. Subjective claims are notknowledge claims and do not assert a truth about theworld; rather, they are statements about one’s own unique,situated, subjective, personal experiences or preferences.

Think of subjective claims as matters of taste or opinion.For example, “Mustard on my hot dog tastes good,” “JohnTravolta is the greatest actor who’s ever lived,” and “Thefinal season of Battlestar Galactica wasn’t as good as thefirst two seasons.” These are subjective statementsbecause they relate to matters of taste. They are notstatements of fact about the world. They do not apply toeveryone. Contrast these statements with, “The DalaiLama reincarnates.” This statement is a knowledge claim.It’s an assertion of truth about the world that isindependent of one’s taste or liking; it’s a faith claimmasquerading as a knowledge claim, a statement of fact.

Faith claims are knowledge claims. Faith claims arestatements of fact about the world.

Faith Is an Unreliable Epistemology

“Your religious beliefs typically depend on thecommunity in which you were raised or live. Thespiritual experiences of people in ancient Greece,

medieval Japan or 21st-century Saudi Arabia do notlead to belief in Christianity. It seems, therefore, thatreligious belief very likely tracks not truth but socialconditioning.”

—Gary Gutting, “The Stone,” New York Times ,September 14, 2011

Faith is a failed epistemology. Showing why faith fails hasbeen done before. And it’s been done well (Bering, 2011;Harris, 2004; Loftus, 2010; Loftus, 2013; McCormick,2012; Schick & Vaughn, 2008; Shermer, 1997; Shermer,2011; Smith, 1979; Stenger & Barker, 2012; Torres, 2012;Wade, 2009). There’s no need to recapitulate this vastbody of scholarship. Instead, I’ll briefly explain what Ifind to be one of the principal arguments against faith.

If a belief is based on insufficient evidence, then anyfurther conclusions drawn from the belief will at best beof questionable value. Believing on the basis ofinsufficient evidence cannot point one toward the truth.For example, the following are unassailable factseveryone, faithful or not, would agree upon:

1. There are different faith traditions.2. Different faith traditions make different truth claims.

3. The truth claims of some faith traditions contradictthe truth claims of other faith traditions. For example,Muslims believe Muhammad (570–632) was the lastprophet (Sura 33:40). Mormons believe JosephSmith (1805–1844), who lived after Muhammad, wasa prophet.

4. It cannot both be the case that Muhammad was thelast prophet and someone who lived after Muhammadwas also a prophet.

5. Therefore: At least one of these claims must be false(perhaps both).

It is impossible to figure out which of these claims isincorrect if the tool one uses to do so is faith. As a tool, asan epistemology, as a method of reasoning, as a processfor knowing the world, faith cannot adjudicate betweencompeting claims (“Muhammad was the last prophet”versus “Joseph Smith was a prophet”). Faith cannot steerone away from falsehood and toward truth.

This is because faith does not have a built-in correctivemechanism. That is, faith claims have no way to becorrected, altered, revised, or modified. For example, ifone has faith in the claim, “The Earth is 4,000 years old,”how could this belief be revised? If one believes that theEarth is 4,000 years old on the basis of faith, then there’sno evidence, reason, or body of facts one could present to

dissuade one from belief in this claim.13

The only way to figure out which claims about the worldare likely true, and which are likely false, is throughreason and evidence. There is no other way.

THE DANGER OF FAITH

“No amount of belief makes something a fact.”

—James Randi

The pretending-to-know-things-you-don’t-know pandemichurts us all. Believing things on the basis of somethingother than evidence and reason causes people tomisconstrue what’s good for them and what’s good fortheir communities. Those who believe on the basis ofinsufficient evidence create external conditions basedupon what they think is in their best interest, but this isactually counterproductive. In the United States, forexample, public policies driven by people who pretend toknow things they don’t know continue to hurt people:abstinence-only sex education, prohibitions against gaymarriage, bans on death with dignity, corporal punishmentin schools, failure to fund international family planningorganizations, and promoting the teaching of Creationismand other pseudosciences are but a few of the manymisguided conclusions wrought by irrationality.

The less one relies on reason and evidence to formconclusions, the more arbitrary the conclusion. Inaggregate, conclusions that result from a lack of evidencecan have incredibly dangerous consequences. TheTaliban, for example, have rooted their vision of a goodlife on the Koran. By acting on what they perceive to bedivine injunctions revealed to God’s Prophet, they thinkthey’re creating a good life and a good society. They arenot.14 15 Consequently, the conclusions they act upon—covering women and beating them, beheading people whohave rival interpretations of the Koran or who act in waysthey deem un-Islamic, perpetrating violence againstfemales who seek an education, denying citizens basicfreedoms, executing people for blasphemy—take themaway from a good life. They’ve misidentified the processthat will allow their community to flourish becausethey’ve identified and used faith, not evidence and reason,as a guide.

How do we know the society the Taliban created has notled to human flourishing? By virtually every modernmetric: exports versus imports, literacy, economic aid,public health, life expectancy, infant mortality, householdincome, GDP, Happy Planet Index, etc. Afghanistan underthe Taliban was an unmitigated catastrophe. It is not inanyone’s interest, particularly the people who live undertheir tyranny, to have created a dystopian, premodern,

misogynistic theocracy.16 (If you don’t think they created adystopia, or if you’re a relativist and think they created asociety that’s merely different, not better or worse, fromDenmark, for example, then there’s nothing I can say toyou. Nothing I write in this book will persuade you.)

The vast majority of people use faith to understand theworld, to guide their actions, and to ground theirinstitutions. Nation-states like Saudi Arabia, Yemen,Mauritania, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran adhere to Islamiclaw (sharia) as the basis for state law. This is a problemthat would be unimaginable in its scope and severity wereit not for the fact that we’re currently witnesses to thisepistemic horror show, such as the beheading ofhomosexuals, blasphemers, adulterers, and apostates andradically disproportionate treatment of individuals basedupon their gender.

Yet there is hope. Faith is slowly falling into disrepute.The forces of unreason are diminishing in number.Thousands of new Horsemen, Street Epistemologists, areemerging.

DIG DEEPER

BooksSam Harris, The End of Faith (Harris, 2004)

Stephen Law, Believing Bullshit (Law, 2011)John W. Loftus, The Outsider Test for Faith (Loftus,

2013)Michael Shermer, The Believing Brain (Shermer, 2011)Al Stefanelli, A Voice Of Reason in an Unreasonable

World: The Rise of Atheism On Planet Earth(Stefanelli, 2011)

Victor Stenger, God and the Folly of Faith: TheIncompatibility of Science and Religion (Stenger,2012)

Lawrence Wright, Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood,and the Prison of Belief (Wright, 2013)

VideosPeter Boghossian,“Jesus, the Easter Bunny, and Other

Delusions: Just Say No!”http://www.philosophynews.com/post/2012/02/14/Jesusthe-Easter-Bunny-and-Other-Delusions-Just-Say-No.aspx

Peter Boghossian, “Faith: Pretending to Know Things YouDon’t Know,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp4WUFXvCFQ

Jerry Coyne, “Why Science and Faith Are Incompatible:My Talk in Edinburgh,”http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/why-science-and-faith-are-incompatible-my-talk-in-edinburgh/

QualiaSoup’s YouTube channel, “UK Secular HumanistDiscussing: Science & the Natural World, CriticalThinking, Atheism, Philosophy, Religion,”http://www.youtube.com/user/QualiaSoup

The Atheist Experience, “The Atheist Experience is aweekly cable access television show in Austin, Texasgeared at a non-atheist audience. Every week we fieldlive calls from atheists and believers alike, and younever know what you’re going to get!”http://www.atheistexperience.com

Thunderf00t’s YouTube channel, “The true beauty of aself-inquiring sentient universe is lost on those whoelect to walk the intellectually vacuous path ofcomfortable paranoid fantasies,”http://www.youtube.com/user/Thunderf00t

NOTES

1. The Book of Alma is one of the books in the Book ofMormon. The complete title is “The Book of Alma:The Son of Alma.”

Religious belief is very often defended throughthe use of clever semantics. There are someimportant things to note about these dodges.When a person of faith is questioned over one or

more specific, illogical tenets of their belief,they often respond with, “Well, of course I don’tbelieve that,” leaving the Street Epistemologistat a disadvantage since the believer continues toprofess their unaltered faith-based beliefregardless. If pressed further, the believer willeither respond with deepities or with asomewhat different version of “why” theycontinue to believe despite a lack of evidence.This entrenched position results in a cycle ofindefinite repetition. My sense is that those whouse meaningless words to protect theiremotional ties to faith are engaging in self-deception. (This type of “conversation” is nottwosided; it is a monologue masquerading as adialogue.)

The emotional satisfaction of religious beliefvitally depends upon the beliefs being takenliterally; the epistemic defense of such beliefscrucially depends on taking them nonliterally.This type of cognitive disruption does not bodewell in the search for truth.

What nearly all sophisticated believers do issimultaneously deceive themselves whilealternating between two stances: they absolutelydon’t believe in that—of course he didn’t walk

on water—while voicing unflappableconviction about this—the world was createdby a higher power. When defendingepistemically, they characterize the belief as notliterally requiring the existence of a SpecialPerson (“God loves us” means “Love isimportant,” “Love prevails in the end,” etc.), butthen as soon as they have satisfied the epistemicchallenge, they reframe the belief more literally(“God loves us” means “There is a SpecialPerson who loves us”).

I think this latter issue is far more important toaddress than critics of faith realize, and it isprobably a more common phenomenon (notlimited to intellectuals) than one might think. Itis at least a part of what the believer is doingwhen replying to criticism by simply andmysteriously saying, “You just don’tunderstand.” The other part is, “You lackdetailed familiarity with the culture, history, andtheology of my religion.”

This is a separate issue, and is often enoughtrue, though the response to that is like replyingto someone who points out Star Trek is fictionby saying, “You wouldn’t say that if you had thedetailed and rich experience of being a Trekkie

that I have,” which is, of course, absurd.

2. Hebrews 11 defines faith, “Now faith is thesubstance of things hoped for, the evidence[elenchus] of things not seen.” What is interesting isthe use of the term “elenchus” in this passage.

“Elenchus” in Homer (8th century) is variously:to put to shame, to treat with contempt, toquestion with the aim of disproving, with theaim of censure, accusation, to accuse someoneand perhaps to convict him—oftentimes in useswhere superior officers dress down rank andfile soldiers. In courts of law the term is alsoused: to bring charges, to bring accusations, butalso to bring proofs, evidence, to offerconvincing proofs. Pre-Socratics likeParmenides (early 5th century) use it asSocrates does: as argument, scrutiny, cross-examination for the purpose of refutation ordisproof.

In Koine, the verb elencho is “I accuse, rebuke,reprove,” and also “I expose, I show to beguilty, I prove” (in the sense of putting the lie toa public statement). It’s in John 3:20; 1 Cor14:24; Eph. 5:11, 13; James 2: 9. Souter’sLexicon of the New Testament lists elenchus as

“proof, possibly a persuasion” (Souter, 1917).This evidence points to a straightforward fact:in the Apostolic Age, the word elenchusexpands in an important new context to take onthe sense that is on stage in Hebrews 11, that is,people began using the word in a new way.They advocated, practiced, and helped make asuccess of using the word “elenchus.” Socratesused this term to indicate a rigorous process ofargumentation by strict application of logic. Inthe new sense elenchus is used as conviction orpersuasion or some other species of willing andsatisfied affirmation—without argument—without going through the Socratic process ofrigorous argumentation.

Socrates earned the right to claim a conclusionfrom philosophical examination. The anonymousauthor of Hebrews writes instead that faith is theassurance of things hoped for, and theconviction or persuasion (elenchus) of things notseen. If Socrates were to hear this phrase, Iimagine he’d say, “This may be conviction, butit is not an argument, not a crossexamination andtest by scrutiny, but is a jump without anyjustification—without proof, and withoutearning it. Where is the virtue in this?”

3. For more, see American mathematician James A.Lindsay’s, “Defining Faith via Bayesian Reasoning”(Lindsay, 2012). Lindsay provides a cogent analysisof faith using Bayes’ theorem.

4. The exceptions to this are those people who are notpretending. These individuals are either delusional,or they’re victims of a wholesale lack of exposure toalternative ideas and different epistemologies. In thelatter case, many people in the Islamic world fall intothis category. For example, most of the people inSaudi Arabia are not pretending to know somethingthey don’t know about the Koran. They’ve neverencountered nor been given an opportunity togenuinely engage in competing ways of understandingreality. In a very real sense, they’re epistemologicalvictims. Additionally, anyone reared byfundamentalist parents deserves credit for theexceptional struggle from indoctrination toenlightenment.

5. A recent move by apologists is to avoid the use of theword “faith” entirely, and instead to use the word“trust.” Given that the word “faith” is inherentlyproblematic, I think this is an excellent strategy. Thecounter to this, however, is identical: “Withoutsufficient evidence how do you know what to trust?”If the response is, “There’s sufficient evidence,” then

your reply should be, “Then you don’t need faith.”

6. In this vein, I’ve also heard faith defined as, “Anattitude about things we don’t know.” When asked tospell out the nature of this attitude, it seems to be akind of confidence or assurance or untroubledconviction, which in normal parlance is what weassociate with the attitude of a person who hasadequate justification for saying, “I know.”

The problem with defining faith as “an attitudeabout things we don’t know” is that it functionsin exactly the same way as an attitude aboutthings we do know. From a critical perspectivethe question is, “How can an attitude that doesnot have sufficient justification to warrant beliefwork in the same way as an attitude that flowsfrom actually having sufficient justification towarrant belief?” And the straightforwardanswer is: it cannot.

Because people adopt this kind of attitude it’stherefore fair game to call them on this and say,“You are not justified in this assurance orconviction that you have. And the fact that youare not worried about it shows that you have notaimed your intellectual honesty at this attitude—in fact, you seem to be afraid or unwilling to do

this—when the honest thing would be to say,‘My faith is not like knowledge, it is notjustified, but is something else … maybe(charitably) a choice.’”

7. An alternative definition of “atheist” is: a personwho doesn’t pretend to know things he doesn’t knowwith regard to the creation of the universe.

8. Some noted atheists, like American historian RichardCarrier, view atheism as an identity (Carrier, 2012).Others, like Horseman Sam Harris, do not. Myopinion is that self-identification as an atheist is apersonal choice. (Personally, I’m more interested inbalancing my home and work lives, or in getting afull night of sleep.)

I am frequently asked if atheism is part of myidentity. My answer is always, “No.” As odd asit may seem, given this book, my career, and myspeaking engagements, atheism is not a part ofmy identity. My lack of belief in leprechauns isalso not part of my identity. I don’t definemyself by what I don’t believe or what I don’tdo. I don’t do a lot of things. I don’t practice taichi. The lack of tai chi in my life is also not partof my identity.

I do not define myself in terms of opposition toother people: I don’t refer to myself as an atheisteven though the vast majority of people do notconsider themselves atheists.

When friends who are atheists come to ourhome, we don’t sit around talking about the factthat there’s insufficient evidence to warrantbelief in God. We also don’t talk about the factthat we don’t do tai chi. I don’t identify as anatheist because nothing extra-epistemological isentailed by the fact that I do my best to believeon the basis of evidence. Neither my reasoningnor my conclusion about the probability of adivine creator means I’m a good guy, or I’mkind to my dog, or I’m a patient father, or I havean encyclopedic knowledge of science fiction,or I’m fun to have at a party, or I am good at jiujitsu. If “good critical thinker” were to besubstituted with “atheist,” then perhaps it wouldbe clear that atheism entails nothing beyond thefact that one doesn’t believe there’s sufficientevidence to warrant belief in God.

Whether a person is an atheist or a believer isimmaterial with respect to morality, and yet,moral ascriptions are frequently made to atheistsand to the faithful. For example, currently

there’s a (hopefully) short-lived movementcalled Atheism+. Among Atheism+’s tenets aresocial justice, support for women’s rights,protesting against racism, fighting homophobiaand transphobia, critical thinking, andskepticism (McCreight, 2012). The problemwith this is, as Massimo Pigliucci writes, “a-theism simply means that one lacks a belief inGod(s)… . That lack of belief doesn’t comewith any positive position because none islogically connected to it” (Pigliucci, 2012).Many people try to make atheism into somethingit’s not. Atheism is not about racism,homophobia, or not practicing tai chi; it’ssimply about not having enough evidence towarrant a belief in God. Atheism is aboutepistemology, evidence, honesty, sincerity,reason, and inquiry.

Finally, perhaps because I don’t view atheismas an immutable characteristic, like eye color, Idon’t consider it an identity. I’m willing tochange my mind if I’m presented withcompelling evidence for the existence of a Godor gods. I can understand why many theistsconsider belief a part of their identity, as theyoften claim that they’re unwilling to change theirminds. One may be more likely to consider

something a part of one’s identity if it’s notsubject to change.

9. In an e-mail I asked American physicist and best-selling author Dr. Victor Stenger where he placeshimself on the Dawkins’ God Scale. Vic replied, “8.It’s not a matter of belief. It’s a matter of knowledge.I have knowledge beyond a reasonable doubt thatthere is no God” (personal correspondence, August15, 2012). For more on why he thinks this, see God:The Failed Hypothesis (Stenger, 2007).

10. Aquinas’ five proofs: (1) motion (as nothing movesitself there must be a first, unmoved mover), (2)efficient causes (something must exist that is notcaused), (3) possibility and necessity (becauseeverything that’s possible to exist must not haveexisted at some point, then there must be somethingthat necessarily exists), (4) gradation of being(because gradation exists there must be somethingthat occupies the highest rung, perfection) (5) design(because natural bodies work toward some end, anintelligent being exists to which natural things aredirected).

For more on Pascal’s Wager, see footnote 11 inchapter 4.

Anselm’s ontological argument, fromProslogion II: “Thus even the fool is convincedthat something than which nothing greater can beconceived is in the understanding, since when hehears this, he understands it; and whatever isunderstood is in the understanding. Andcertainly that than which a greater cannot beconceived cannot be in the understanding alone.For if it is even in the understanding alone, itcan be conceived to exist in reality also, whichis greater. Thus if that than which a greatercannot be conceived is in the understandingalone, then that than which a greater cannot beconceived is itself that than which a greater canbe conceived. But surely this cannot be. Thuswithout doubt something than which a greatercannot be conceived exists, both in theunderstanding and in reality.”

For more on the fine-tuning argument, seefootnote 5 in chapter 7.

For more on the Kal m cosmological argument,see footnote 3 in chapter 7.

11. One of my Arts and Sciences colleagues asked me,“If faith doesn’t have the earmarks of anepistemology, why call it an epistemology? For an

epistemology to be an epistemology, must empiricalevidence play a significant role?” What he wasgetting at was that with faith, because empiricalevidence does not play a role (or as philosopherssay, faith “fails to satisfy the conditions” of anepistemology), why call it an epistemology?

There are many epistemologies, like rationalismand pragmatism, which do not rely uponempirical evidence. Descartes, for example, hasa rationalist epistemology. For Descartes,reason by itself without any experience of theworld is a source of knowledge. I don’t have togo out in the world—I can be a brain in a vatattached by electrodes to a computer, and justfrom the process of thought alone I can come toknowledge about the world. That’s basically arationalist position. Hume, Locke, and Berkeleywould deny that position and respond, “No, byitself reason can organize experience but it’s nota source of knowledge about experience.There’s only one source of knowledge aboutexperience and that is empirical content, anencounter via the senses with the physicalempirical universe.”

Historically, Kantians are yet another school.Their position is that both rationalism and

empiricism are correct in different ways. ForKant, concepts without experience are empty butexperience without concepts is blind;knowledge is a combination of the organizingfunction of the mind and sensory input.

Then there’s the pragmatist school, fallibilism,and also intuitionist positions that allow fordifferent kinds of knowledge. All of theseschools define knowledge slightly differently.

Faith is an epistemology because it is used as anepistemology. It is epistemology as use; peopleuse faith as a way to know and interpret theworld. For example, approximately a third ofNorth Americans think the Bible is divinelyinspired, and more than half think it’s the actualword of God (Jones, 2011). It’s a commonbelief among Americans that angels or spiritsguided the hands (depicted by Caravaggio’s1602 “Saint Matthew and the Angel”), orwhispered in the ear (seen in Rembrandt’s 1661“The Evangelist Matthew Inspired by anAngel,” Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo’s 1534“Saint Matthew and the Angel,” and GuidoReni’s 1640 “St Matthew and the Angel”), ofthe Gospel writers. Consequently, the faithfulroot many of their beliefs in the authenticity of

the Bible. That faith is unreliable, ordiscredited, only makes faith unreliable ordiscredited, it does not entail that faith is not anepistemology.

Part of the confusion on the part of those whodon’t use faith to navigate reality is that theyunderstand that faith is an obviously unreliableprocess of reasoning. Consequently, they eitherdon’t view faith as an epistemology, or theydon’t think others really use it as anepistemology. They view it as something else,something weird, something other, somethingpersonal, something malicious, perhaps evensomething redemptive.

But at its root, faith remains an epistemology. Itis a process people use to understand, interpret,and know the world.

Faith produces knowledge claims. Claims thatarise out of epistemologies unmoored to reasonare exactly like other claims that arise out ofother epistemologies—they are assertions oftruth about the world. Faith claims may beendemically flawed, bizarre, or highlyimplausible, but they are still knowledge claims.

12. An exception is the so-called Satanic verses from theKoran. In his early suras, Muhammad madecompromises with popular, preexisting goddessworship; later he revoked these verses—calling themSatanic verses—and created a new principlepermitting newer revelations to supersede earlierrevelations. Thus there is another way to figure outwhich claims about the world we should accept andwhich are likely false, though not through reason orevidence. The new principle is based upon the latestrevelation. Later suras in the Koran supersede earliersuras. Unfortunately, many of the more militant surasare found later in the Koran.

13. I’ve never understood such claims of the faithful—inthis example, Muslims who state that other Muslimsdo not have the correct interpretation of the Koran.Once one buys into a system of belief withoutevidence, it’s unclear on what basis one could makethe claim that there’s a correct or incorrectinterpretation of the Koran.

14. There are many ways we can rationally determinewhat’s in our own interest and what sort ofcommunities we should construct. For example, inThe Theory of Justice, American philosopher JohnRawls offers us thought experiments to reason ourway to an ideal political and economic system

(Rawls, 2005). He details ways to create mutuallyagreed upon principles of justice.

15. One doesn’t have to look to the most extremeexamples to find other instances of peoplemisconstruing what’s good for them. Fad diets are amore pedestrian and close-to-home example. A fewyears ago I met someone at a local gym who atepounds of watermelon everyday in the hope that thiswould help him lose weight and regain his health. Hedidn’t lose weight and he didn’t regain his health. Hedidn’t manage to do either because eating pounds ofwatermelon every day is almost certainly not anactivity that will lead one to health or to sensibleweight loss.