When I was teaching my Tactics class at Church, I came across several street epistemology videos on Youtube. After viewing the videos I found them to be very useful in getting my students to analyze both the method the questioner was using as well as the responses given by the Christian. Greg Koukl’s Tactics places a great emphasis on teaching Christians how to “stay in the driver's seat” of a conversation.  One does this primarily by practicing active listening skills and asking effective questions.  Several months ago it was brought to my attention that the street epistemology technique, if you can call it that, was introduced by Peter Boghossian in his book A Manual for Creating Atheists.  Boghossian is a philosopher at Portland State University and is an outspoken atheist. Since I have made it my practice to read various atheistic literature from time to time to challenge my thinking, and since I am so passionate about the tactical method Koukl writes about, it only made sense for me to read Boghossian’s manual. I have also made it a common practice in my home to challenge our two teenage children with skeptical objections to Christianity in an attempt to grow their critical thinking skills. When I would pose an objection to Christianity, both of our children have grown in their ability to ask good questions, spot logical fallacies, and stay in the driver's seat of the conversation. A Manual for Creating Atheists was a great book to help facilitate discussions with our children since the intellectual rigor of the objections was on a high school level. The following are my thoughts and reflections on A Manual For Creating Atheists.

If Boghossian is going to create more atheists through this book, then he will have to rely on the naivete and ignorance of the Christian theist. This is made clear very early on in his book when Boghossian defines the word faith in Chapter 2 of the manual.  Boghossian provides 2 definitions for the word faith. The first definition is on page 23 where he claims faith is “belief without evidence” and the second definition is on the following page where he claims faith is “pretending to know things you don’t know.” Both of these definitions are problematic for several reasons. The book of Hebrews specifically defines faith in chapter 11 when the author states that faith is the assurance of things hoped for the conviction of things not seen. The Christian understanding of faith is trusting in that which you have good reason to believe is true. Another definition of faith that is consistent with Christian doctrine is faith is confidence that God is who he says he is and will do all he has promised to do. Boghossian has then misdefined and misrepresented the Christian understanding of faith. This is the central problem with Boghossian’s manual. Boghossian’s definition of faith amounts to nothing more than a strawman fallacy, therefore his critiques of the Christian “faith” are invalid. 

The definition of the term “atheist” is also one that I have found to be interesting in my reading of more modern so-called atheists. The classical atheist thinkers such as Nietzsche seemed to be content with the definition of atheism as making the claim there is no God or God does not exist. Nietzsche famously stated in 1882 that “God is dead. . . We have killed him.” This statement was not ambiguous nor was he speaking to a person's psychological state. Neitzsche was attempting to make a truth claim related to the existence of God, and his nihilistic outlook was a logical deduction from this claim. Nietzsche was bold and didn’t make statements such as, “I lack belief in whether or not God lives,” of “I just haven’t seen enough evidence to convince me that God exists,” Nietzsche said, “God is dead.” 

Boghossian’s definition of atheism is consistent with the more contemporary understanding of the term where atheism is a lack of belief in the existence of God. On page 27, Boghossian states, “There is 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.” William Lane Craig remarks about this contemporary definition of atheism when he states, “Such a re-definition of the word “atheist” trivializes the claim of the presumption of atheism, for on this definition, atheism ceases to be a view.  It is merely a psychological state which is shared by people who hold various views or no view at all.  On this re-definition, even babies, who hold no opinion at all on the matter, count as atheists!  In fact, our cat Muff counts as an atheist on this definition, since she has (to my knowledge) no belief in God.” 

When it comes to the term Agnostic, Bohossian suggests it is problematic by stating on pg 28, “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.” There is much that could be said about this statement, but I will attempt to keep my comments brief. How easy it must be to dismiss many of the classical arguments for theism with one word. While respected philosophers such as Anselm, Aquinas, Pascal, or more modern day philosophers such as William Lane Craig and Alvin Plantinga have written volumes defending these arguments, Boghossian has the temerity to simply assert their status with the word “fail.” I would respectfully disagree with Boghossian’s one word response to these theistic arguments, and would recommend he provide some defense of his “fail” assertion. Perhaps Boggossian would like his readers to use his definition of “faith” when it comes to his claims about theistic arguments for God’s existence. Just believe these arguments “fail” without any evidence and pretend to know things about these arguments and their validity that you don’t know. Boghossian’s blunder here becomes evident to the careful reader, and it is his assessment of these arguments along with his definition of Christian “Faith” that might be characterized by the one word; fail.

On pg 47 Boghossian cites “an interesting 2012 study, Analytic Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief.” In this study he states, “While mechanisms of religious disbelief and various factors that contribute to disbelief are not entirely understood at this time, the authors demonstrated that improvements in analytic processing translate into an increased likelihood of religious disbelief.” One could only wonder what these mechanisms of religious disbelief and various factors are? I am equally as curious to know how the author demonstrated the improved analytic processing that increased the likelihood of religious disbelief?  Did the unnamed “mechanisms” and “factors” influence this demonstration? Was this some sort of scientific demonstration or is this Boghossian wanting his readers to use his definition of “faith” again and believe him without any evidence. Boghossian, however, need not be concerned with the Christians ability to wonder, since he remarks a few pages earlier, “Faith replaces wonder with epistemological arrogance disguised as false humility.”  Boghossian follows the citing of this study with disparaging comments about Christian Apologists (specifically Dr. Craig) who “have had considerable success reasoning people into holding unreasonable beliefs.” How exactly would one reason a person into unreasonable beliefs using arguments that Boghossian states earlier all “fail?” People can be reasoned out of unreasonable beliefs, but I fail to see how the reasoning process when intact will lead to unreasonable beliefs. 

I find it puzzling that throughout the Manual Boghossian seems to clearly understand the psyche of the Christian theist, and their reason for why they come to belief in God. He states on pg 50, “Combine clustering in like-minded communities with filter bubbles, then put on top of a cognitive architecture that predisposes one to belief  and favors confirmations bias, then throw in the fact critical thinking and reasoning require far more intellectual labor than acceptance of simple solutions and platitudes. . . voila: Doxastic closure.” Boghossian defines this doxastic closure as the unwillingness and ability to revise beliefs. According to Boghossian all these psychological factors and others are pressing against the Christian theist locking them in the box of their belief in God. Of course the psyche of the atheist is so much more complex. The atheist must be immune to the psychological factors that create doxastic closure, as they are open to following the evidence wherever it may lead. The truth is all people hold the beliefs they do for a variety of different reasons, and the reasons why one holds a belief says nothing about the truthfulness of the belief itself. Both Christians and atheists can be guilty of Boghossian’s doxastic closure idea and reject seeking the truth in fear of where they think the evidence may lead. It was the famous atheist writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley who stated in his book Ends and Means, 

“I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning - the Christian meaning, they insisted - of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever.”

Boghossian demonstrates his own doxastic closure when he attempts to answer the question of what it would take for him to believe in the existence of God. He suggests here on pg 82  a variation of Lawrence Krausss’s answer to this question when debating Will Craig. He said, “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.” He continues in the following paragraphs to conclude if he had this experience, the most reasonable conclusion would be that he was delusional. This seems to be a common response from atheists when confronted with this question. Atheist philosopher Keith Parsons gave a similar response in a debate with Dr. Craig when he stated that if a Thor-like figure came to him and announced his existence he would join Dr. Craig’s theistic position, only to be followed by the statement that he would conclude he was in a studio somewhere in Hollywood. These responses demonstrate for many atheists, the foundation of their atheism stems from an a priori rejection of the miraculous. The atheist philosopher Mike Begon was asked this same question in a debate with Dr. Craig and his response was, “I could respond flippantly to say it’s not for me to design your experiments for you. You write your own grant applications.” This sarcastic, evasive answer is just another example of the atheist demonstrating a close minded approach to the question of God. 

Boghossian’s persistence that the Christian is not willing to change their mind avoids the central question of whether or not the Christian worldview is true or best reflects reality.  Dr. William Lane Craig remarked, “It is a way of avoiding the arguments and looking at the premises for the arguments and the evidence for those premises. The value of the arguments is unaffected and independent of the objectivity of the person offering those arguments.” Boghossian may retort at this point that the doxastic closure of the theist keeps him from evaluating the arguments objectively. If this were to be his retort, then he would need to demonstrate this or provide an argument to which none is forthcoming. Dr. Craig continues, 

“And I think many, many times people don't understand this. I know this is true, that atheists will say, “He's closed-minded, there's nothing that would cause him to change his mind. He's totally biased and dogmatic.” And they think thereby that somehow they've refuted his position or that they have somehow shown his arguments to be unsound. And that's just not true. If you were arguing with some atheist, and he was so utterly closed-minded that no amount of evidence would ever convince him, that has no impact at all upon the soundness of his arguments, whether they're logically valid, whether the premises are true, and whether the premises are more plausible in light of the evidence. His closed-mindedness or open-mindedness is just an irrelevant psychological fact that has no bearing on the augments. And it's the same for the theist. Even if I am utterly closed-minded and would never change my mind, that gives the unbeliever no grounds whatsoever for ignoring the evidence and arguments that I offer.” 

Both Christians and Atheists can be close minded and unwilling to consider arguments and think logically on the issue of God’s existence. Dr. Craig, however, has correctly pointed out that the person's psychological state does not impact the truthfulness of the claim. This is a smoke screen that Boghossian uses to deflect his readers, and Boghossian is using his Manual to create atheists who avoid interacting with arguments and truth claims. This continues to strengthen my case stated earlier;  Boghossian’s Manual is geared towards an uneducated and naive audience that he hopes will use his definition of “faith” (believe me without evidence) when considering his claims.

One feature of the book that I did enjoy was the Intervention sections. These sections in the Manual document personal discussions and interactions Boghossian has with Christians. They provide the reader with examples of Boghossian putting his “street epistemology” into action. The intervention portions of the Manual provide good thought exercises for my teenage children to role play as if they were interacting with Boghossian’s method. In many of these sections, the Christians he interacts with are misinformed and give very poor responses to questions asked. I did find it interesting that he never cites an interaction with a Christian intellectual, but rather prefers to use his “street epistemology” with lay people he encounters. For Boghossian’s sake this is a good thing, as his interactions are very surface level and often contain logical fallacies his opponents are apparently ill equipped or unwilling to point out. One example comes on pg 142 where Boghossian commits the common genetic fallacy. Like so many Atheists before him, Boghossian attempts to instill doubt in his conversation partner by pointing out that if he had been born in another part of the world like Saudi Arabia he would be a devout muslim. Boghossian has no way of knowing what a person would believe given his hypothetical situation of being born in a predominantly Muslim country, and of course the origin of one’s belief says nothing about the truthfulness of a belief. Boghossian’s conversation partner could have easily responded to him by stating if he had been born in Saudi Arabia there is a greater probability that he would be a Muslim and not an atheist. When reading Boghossian’s Manual, I question if he has interacted at all with a Christian intellectual. He states in a letter on pg 132 that there is no evidence for Christianity. Of course there are arguments for the existence of God, but those would not count as evidence since Boghossian has told us, not shown us, that they all “fail.” 

The chapter on anti-apologists contains some of the more generic atheist assertions that internet infidels promote on a regular basis. On page 151 Boghossian suggests his atheist students corner the theist by stating, “If they respond, “I don’t know,” to the question of whether little blue men live inside of Venus, I ask them why they don’t take the same stance with God and say, “I don’t know.” The answer to this question is simple. The reason the informed Christian theist wouldn’t say, “I don’t know” regarding God’s existence is because they have good arguments for holding the position that God exists. These classical arguments such as the cosmological argument, fine tuning argument, moral argument, evidence for the historical resurrection of Jesus, and others have been defended as sound arguments. The informed Christian theist is not convinced by Boghossian’s “fail” claim of these classical arguments. 

In this section Boghossian also attempts to suggest since we don’t know if little blue men live on Venus we should also say we don’t know if God exists. It is hard to comprehend that someone with a doctorate in philosophy could make claims so ignorant and simplistic. Just like I could provide arguments for the existence of God, with some time I could provide arguments for the non-existence of little blue men on Venus. Let me give an example of what an argument against these little blue men might look like. The definition of “men” is the plural to “man” which is defined as an adult male human. As a human being, there are certain physical conditions needed to survive. One of those conditions is air temperature. The mean air surface temperature on Venus is 867 degrees Fahrenheit, which is significantly above the livable air temperature range for a human to survive. Now this is just many of a plethora of arguments one could give for concluding that little blue men do not live on Venus.

Many atheists have attempted to use pain and suffering as an argument against God’s existence or to show the concept of God is logically incoherent like the concept of a married bachelor or a round square. These arguments for the non-existence of God have been debated in scholarly writings and formal debates, and it is my position that they are unsuccessful. Since Boghossian doesn’t attempt to recycle some of these arguments on the non-existence of God, maybe he agrees with my conclusion.

There are many other issues with Boghossian’s Manual for Creating Atheists that could be addressed. I have attempted to highlight some of the more egregious problems in the book. Books such as this tend to strengthen my faith (the Biblical definition not Boghossian’s) and for that reason I am thankful to have read his manual.