A Manual for Creating Atheists (11 page)

Coherentism doesn’t work in the context of a belief intervention because artifacts in one’s epistemic landscape (an ancient text, one’s feelings, one’s experiences) are used to refer to each other. For example, subjects will emphatically state that their personal experiences confirm The Urantia Book is true, and that their feelings are also confirmatory evidence. Using a coherentist model, it’s impossible to break through and meaningfully engage The Urantia Book, or one’s feelings, etc., because of the circular nature of justification. That is, each artifact is justified by other artifacts, yet does not receive justification from any outside source. Thus, from inside a coherentist system everything makes sense—exactly as if one were in the matrix.

Street Epistemologists should use a foundationalist paradigm when deconstructing a subject’s faith.

Foundationalism and Houses

It’s helpful to conceptualize the structure of belief architectonically—a belief system is like a large house. There are foundational beliefs at the base of the house that hold up the entire edifice. There are also secondary and tertiary beliefs that act as scaffolding for the structure—these beliefs are important to give coherence and solidity to the structure but they are dispensable to the structure’s support.

To demolish a building, start with the base. Take out the support beam and the entire structure will fall. Faith is the base. Faith holds up the entire structure of belief. Collapse faith and the entire edifice falls.

TARGET FAITH, NOT RELIGION: FAITH IS THE FOUNDATION

Here’s where I part ways with the Four Horsemen—who have relentlessly attacked and undermined religion. And by all accounts they’ve been tremendously successful at exposing the fraudulent nature and dangers of 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, and it may be easier to help someone to abandon their faith than it is to separate them from their religion. Your interventions should target faith, not religion.

One of my personal and professional goals, and a goal of this book, is to create Street Epistemologists. To do this, I’m providing easy to use tools that help move people away from faith and toward reason, rationality, and the key dispositions that accompany an examined life. The greatest obstacle to engendering reason and rationality is faith. When faith falls, edifices built upon and around faith will also collapse.

Religion is a social experience (Höfele & Laqué, 2011, p. 75; Moberg, 1962). Religious structures (churches, mosques, synagogues, temples) are places where people come together in friendship, love, trust, and community to do things that are fun, meaningful, and satisfying, that are perceived to be productive, or that grant solace. Communal celebrations of life milestones—birth, adulthood, marriage, death—are also significant social experiences. In church, for example, many people make new friends, play bingo in community halls, engage in casual sports with a team, sing songs with their friends and with strangers, date, etc. This is how the vast majority of believers experience their religious life—as a communal and social event that adds meaning, purpose, and joy to their lives (Argyle, 2000, p. 111).

Attacks on religion are often perceived as attacks on friends, families, communities, and relationships. As such, attacking religion may alienate people, making it even more difficult to separate them from their faith.

One of my students asked me if a person could be rational and go to church. I responded, “Can one be rational and sing songs? And read poetry? And play games? And read ancient texts? Of course. One can do all of these things and be rational.” Religion is not necessarily an insurmountable barrier to reason and rationality. The problem is not that people are reading ancient texts. I read Shakespeare with my son. I don’t, however, think that Iago, Hamlet, and Lear were historical figures. I also don’t derive my ultimate moral authority from Shakespeare’s works. I don’t want to kill people who have rival interpretations of Shakespeare’s plays. Nor do I attempt to bring Othello into decisions at the ballot box.

TARGET FAITH, NOT GOD: FAITH IS THE FOUNDATION

Trying to disabuse people of a belief in God (a metaphysical conclusion that comes about as a result of a faulty epistemology) 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.

Positing make-believe metaphysical entities is a consequence of a deeper epistemological problem. Belief in God(s) is not the problem. Belief without evidence is the problem. Warrantless, dogged confidence is the problem. Epistemological arrogance masquerading as humility is the problem. Faith is the problem. Belief in an imagined metaphysical entity—God—is a symptom of these larger attitudinal and critical thinking skillbased deficiencies, one that is supported and made possible primarily by faith, and also by social and cultural elements and institutions that are covariant with, and supportive of, faith. Belief in God is one consequence of a failed epistemology, with social and cultural mechanisms that both prop up this metaphysical belief and stifle epistemological challenges.

Faulty epistemologies are at least part of the reason people believe in God. Faulty epistemologies also contribute to constructing religious institutions that in turn perpetuate, nourish, and sustain one of the principal reasons for their existence in the first place—faith. Theism and atheism are both late developments that occur when the world of prehistoric rites is toppled by the discovery of writing and the beginning of intellectual traditions—including faith traditions and skeptical traditions. Faith is not a cause of religion (Brutus, 2012). Faith is an idea that appears in many religious traditions. Skepticism is an idea that appears in countertraditions. Faith and skepticism emerge together.

Attempting to disabuse people of a belief in God usually takes the counterproductive model of a debate. This is the wrong strategy and is highly unlikely to help people overcome their delusions (it may even force them into deeper doxastic closure and make them better debaters and thus more able to rationalize bad ideas). By targeting belief in God, you also run the risk of modeling the wrong behavior—the behavior of being doxastically closed—of having a closed belief system and an inability to revise
your
beliefs. This is not the behavior a Street Epistemologist should model in order to elicit behavioral change. You should be modeling doxastic openness—a willingness to revise your beliefs.

Targeting belief in God may be perceived as a type of militancy, particularly about things that cannot be known, and may push people even further into their faith-based delusions as a consequence of your perceived metaphysical extremism. In your interventions you can avoid this trap by targeting faith, not God.

If You
Must
Disabuse People of Belief in God . .
.

Many readers won’t heed my suggestion to target faith (epistemology) instead of God. People like to debate the existence of a God, and that’s understandable as it’s a clear, easy to hit, oversized bull’s-eye. The Street Epistemologist doesn’t just aim to hit the bull’s-eye, but instead aims to raze the target and the entire field upon which the target rests. Wannabe Street Epistemologists don’t have the patience or just want to enjoy the “sport” of debate.

But if you must disabuse people of a belief in God, then it’s important to consider your objectives because there will be no win, no victory. About the best that can be expected is that your subject will experience a shift in confidence over God’s existence. Thus, knowing that my advice will not be heeded, I’ll briefly lay out one broad strategy for undermining someone’s confidence in God.

In arguments about the existence of God, consider victory conditions. A victory is lowering the probability your subject assigns to the existence of God on the Dawkins’ Scale, with 1.0 representing an absolute belief in God and 7.0 representing an absolute belief that there is no God. For example, if someone starts out at a 1.0, you can attempt to help them arrive at a 1.1, or even a 2.0. (While it is possible to help subjects achieve a 6.0, a belief that God’s existence is highly improbable, this is overly ambitious.)

Early in the intervention, explicitly ask subjects to assign themselves a number on the Dawkins’ Scale. At the end of the intervention ask them to again assign themselves a number. By doing so you can test the effectiveness of your intervention. It may be possible for you to figure out what works and what doesn’t, and then adjust your approach accordingly. Planting seeds of doubt and even moving someone 0.1 on the Dawkins’ Scale should be considered a meaningful contribution to their cognitive life. (One consequence of thinking more clearly and learning how to reason is that one will place less confidence in one’s conclusions. That is, one will assign one’s beliefs lower confidence values.)

A solid strategy for lowering your conversational partner’s self-placement on the Dawkins’ Scale, and one that I repeatedly advocate throughout this book, is to focus on epistemology and rarely, if ever, allow metaphysics into the discussion. This is even more important in discussions about God—a metaphysical entity.

In other words, focus on undermining one’s confidence in
how
one claims to know what one knows (epistemology) as opposed to what one believes exists (metaphysics/God).
¹⁰
Instead of having a discussion about the actual existence of metaphysical entities that can neither be proven nor disproven, direct the discussion to how one knows that these alleged entities exist. (This may also avoid one of the most common retorts among uneducated, unsophisticated believers, “You can’t prove it not to be true.”)

Target each epistemological claim separately. For example, “I feel God in my heart,” or “Literally billions of people believe in God.” Do not move on to another claim until the subject concedes that the particular claim in question is not sufficient to warrant belief in God.

Again, it’s always advisable to target faith and avoid targeting God.

DIVORCE BELIEF FROM MORALITY

It’s crucial to undermine the value that one should lend one’s belief to a proposition because of something allegedly noble in the act of believing, or in the act of professing to believe. There’s nothing virtuous about pretending to know things you don’t know or in lending one’s belief to a particular proposition. Having certain convictions—even the belief that one should form one’s beliefs on the basis of evidence—is not noble. Formulating beliefs on the basis of evidence and acting accordingly does not make one a better person. It just makes it more likely that one’s beliefs will be true and far less likely that one’s beliefs will be false.
¹¹
Similarly, not formulating beliefs on the basis of evidence (faith) does not make one a bad person. Aristotle made the distinction between a moral virtue and an intellectual virtue, and working toward developing a reliable epistemology is a step toward developing intellectual virtue.

Street Epistemologists should diligently try to uncouple the idea that the act of belief, the tenacity with which one holds a belief, and the epistemological system to which one subscribes, are moral virtues. Dennett terms this “belief in belief”—the idea that people believe that they should have certain beliefs—and he writes about this extensively in “Preachers Who Are Not Believers” and
Breaking the Spell
(Dennett & LaScola, 2010; Dennett, 2007). The belief that faith is a virtue and that one should have faith are primary impediments to disabusing people of their faith.

Faith is bundled with a moral foundation. Many people, even those who do not have faith, buy into the mistaken notion that faith is a virtue. The perceived association between faith and morality must be terminated. Faith-based interventions need to target and decouple the linkage between faith and morality.

As a Street Epistemologist, one of your treatment goals is to change the perception from faith being a moral virtue (similarly, the idea that belief in a proposition makes one a good person) to faith being an unreliable process of reasoning—that is, from faith being something to which one should morally aspire, to faith being a failed epistemology.

There’s not just one correct way to conceptually divorce faith from morality in the minds of the faithful. Contextualizing and understanding the reasons why subjects believe faith claims is important. I’ve tried many strategies, to various effect. My current preferred ways to begin the disassociation between faith and virtue are:

• By redefining faith as “pretending to know things you don’t know.” Even though much of the discussion tends to revolve around the meaning of the word “faith,” I’ve found interventions using this strategy to be surprisingly productive. This strategy also provides an opportunity to further disambiguate faith from hope.
  
• By explicitly stating that having faith doesn’t make one moral, and lacking faith doesn’t make one immoral. I usually provide examples of well-known atheists most people would consider moral: Bill Gates (for donating his vast fortune to charity) and Specialist Pat Tillman (for abandoning an incredibly promising football career to give his life for his country). I then ask subjects if they can think of any examples of the faithful who are immoral.
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Many people haven’t considered the fact that having faith is unconnected to morality, and so stating it bluntly may achieve a certain “shock and awe” among a particular segment of the faithful. When I treat someone who understands that faith may not be a virtue, but has trouble disassociating the two, I usually steer the conversation back to the definition of “faith” and to faith as an epistemology.