A Manual for Creating Atheists [Unabridged] [Audible Audio Edition] Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B00HJ9FVC2 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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For thousands of years, the faithful have honed proselytizing strategies and talked people into believing the truth of one holy book or another. Indeed, the faithful often view converting others as an obligation of their faith - and are trained from an early age to spread their unique brand of religion. The result is a world broken in large part by unquestioned faith. As an urgently needed counter to this tried-and-true tradition of religious evangelism, A Manual for Creating Atheists offers the first-ever guide not for talking people into faith - but for talking them out of it.
Peter Boghossian draws on the tools he has developed and used for more than twenty years as a philosopher and educator to teach how to engage the faithful in conversations that will help them value critical thinking, cast doubt on their religious beliefs, mistrust their faith, abandon superstition, and ultimately embrace reason and rationality.
Direct download links available for A Manual for Creating Atheists Epub Free
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 8 hours and 30 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Pitchstone Publishing
- Audible.com Release Date: December 26, 2013
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00HJ9FVC2
Peter Boghossian's new brilliant book will change our nomenclature and effectiveness in disabusing believers of their faith. His book will definitely change the religious landscape.
Nomenclature refers to the names we give to phenomena. I love Boghossian's nomenclature. Richard Dawkins coined the word "meme," which is an idea or behavior that spreads from person to person within a society. Daniel Dennett popularized the word "deepity," which is a statement that seems profound but actually asserts a triviality on one level and something meaningless on another. Generally, a deepity has (at least) two meanings: one that is true but trivial, and another that sounds profound, but is essentially false or meaningless and would be "earth-shattering" if true. [From RationalWiki].
Boghossian is changing how we see faith. He defines faith as "pretending to know things you don't know." He says that when we hear the word "faith" we should think of that definition. Why? Because that's exactly what believers are doing. They're playing a childish pretend game. Faith stunts one's intellectual growth. So he talks in terms of the medical and/or psychological professions. Believers are infected with a faith virus. The believer is the host of this virus. And we are in the midst of a faith virus pandemic. Boghossian says, "The pretending-to-know-things-you-don't-know pandemic hurts us all. Believing things on the basis of something other than evidence and reason causes people to misconstrue what's good for them and for their communities." (pp. 31-32).
So he's calling on a potential legion of people who are willing to help cure believers of their faith virus. He calls them "Street Epistemologists" who are equipped with the tactics he presents in his manual.
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.
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