Peter Boghossian Got Fed Up So He Quit!

Here is Dr. Boghossian's resignation letter. I don't have the time to express my thoughts on the complex issues involved. But this is sad to me. I have appreciated my friend Peter over the years. I greatly appreciate his game changing book, A Manual for Creating Atheists. His emphasis on the inadequacies of faith and the importance of the Socratic Method for seeking belief change are of the upmost importance. This focus alone creates atheists. [See tag below]

He has been a great encourager of what I do. He has invited me into his atheism class via Skype and Zoom to talk with his students. He wrote a fantastic chapter in my anthology Christianity is Not Great and some blurbs for a few of my books, most notably the one on miracles, and my last one on horrendous suffering. He is truly a gadfly just like Socrates. I wish him all the best. If he does nothing else he has changed the world. But I suspect he's not done yet.

Peter Boghossian On Changing Minds, Doubt and Mockery

In this excellent talk Dr. Boghossian endorses the Outsider Test for Faith:

Peter Boghossian is making a huge-huge-impact! His concepts and persuasive strategies are changing how atheists deal with Christians such that he could be considered to produce a sort of Copernican revolution. I recently wrote the book How to Defend the Christian Faith. If I was asked to write a book on how to deal with believers with the goal to change their minds, I would say Boghossian has already written it, titled A Manual for Creating Atheists. Taken together these two books kick ass, so say I about his book, so say several others about mine.

My Intervention With Christian Apologist John D. Ferrer

Ferrer seems young to me but he teaches at a community college, is respectful and fairly smart. He unfairly reviewed my book "The Outsider Test for Faith" though. On Facebook I wrote this teaser:

Yes, Christian apologists are lying. But no, I don't think they consciously realize it. The answer to this dilemma is in how the brain works. It lies to us. It didn't evolve to arrive at the truth in the first place. It evolved because of the value of survival. I describe this process in chapter 3 of "How To Defend The Christian Faith". What an amazing and fruitful study the brain must be!

Below you can read Ferrer's comments and my "intervention" as Peter Boghossian calls it. Or, you might be able to see it by following this link (the discussion is ongoing). I think my intervention is very effective even if it was very short. So far Ferrer has not responded.

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Why Do Tom Gilson and Tim McGrew Disagree With What Peter Boghossian Actually Does?

Here's a comment I left on Tom Gilson's blog Thinking Christian, where Tom expresses his and McGrew's disagreement with Boghossian's actual practice of using questions to get people to think deeper about what they believe. Do Tom and Tim represent the Thinking Christian or not? Do they advocate thinking? Or are thinking Christians not needed? Yes, I'm serious!

Tom, I don't think you should be disagreeing with the actual practice of what Boghossian does, regardless of his motivations. You mentioned Josh McDowell, who does this same thing. As a result Dustin Lawson, McDowell's former protege, left the faith. So? You should still do what Josh McDowell does if you think truth will win out. In my forthcoming book which you should read titled, "How To Defend the Christian Faith: Advice from an Atheist", one of the most important chapters is "Become an Honest Life-Long Seeker of Truth." You should advocate the same thing. Here's a link to info about it.

The very fact that you disagree with what Boghossian actually does leaves me wondering if you think it's wrong to start the "hapless Christian" on an intellectual journey. If you represent the "party of true reason" you should be happy he does this because truth should win the day. In fact, he might be sending Christian people to read your book(s).

You should pick up more converts from Boghossian's efforts. You should pick up better informed Christians from his efforts. What am I missing?

Christian Apologists Dishonestly Discuss Peter Boghossian's Method

In Boghossian's book A Manual for Creating Atheists,he talks about being a Street Epistemologist, which is a person who uses the Socratic method of dialectically asking a series of questions to get people to realize they are pretending to know what they don't know. Pretending. That's Boghossian's definition of faith. Believers are pretending when they claim to know with 100% certainty that what they believe is true. The antidote for this faith virus, as he calls it, is the Socratic method. Below is a video of what Tom Gilson and Timothy McGrew claim he's doing compared with what he's actually doing. What they claim is false, and the evidence that it's false is just not found in his book, but also in several video clips. More liars for Jesus. When evangelicals feel threatened why do they need to lie for Jesus? But they do. I'm hoping that by highlighting these liars for Jesus that honest Christians will look elsewhere for honest discussions of their faith, rather than paid apologists serving in creedal affirming evangelical colleges.

Correction: Boghossian is Not Addressing All Atheists

I got to thinking that since there are some atheist criticisms of Peter Boghossian's book, A Manual for Creating Atheists,that he's not writing for all of us. He's addressing atheists 1) who are convinced that religion has no epistemic warrant, 2) who think the world would be a better place without religion in it, 3) who want to change the minds of believers, and/or 4) for atheists who are not necessarily intellectuals. He's largely addressing people he calls Street Epistemologists, seeking to motivate them into action. Even as an intellectual though, I appreciate what he's doing. This should surprise no one. There are many books written by Christians instructing them how to talk atheists into faith. Here's one recently suggested to me, written by Jay Lucas, Ask Them Why: How to Help Unbelievers Find the Truth.There have been many missionary books doing the same thing, showing how to make inroads into different cultures, only they sought to change and even destroy those cultures, as David Eller shows in a chapter for my anthology Christianity Is Not Great: How Faith Fails.The title to his chapter says it all: "They Will Make Good Slaves and Christians: Christianity, Colonialism, and the Destruction of Indigenous People."

Boghossian's book is not meant to change the minds of believers but rather the approach he lays out in it should.

In his book, A Manual for Creating Atheists, Peter Boghossian is not writing to Christians. He's writing to atheists. Christians are reading and critiquing his book of course, but the atheists who implement his strategies are taught by him to be respectful of believers as persons, using the Socratic Method. So what's going on here? He uses some rhetoric to get atheists motivated but in actual practice when speaking to Christians, as his own "interventions" demonstrate in the book itself, he advocates being respectful to them and their beliefs. He first motivates then he educates.

Richard Dawkins Has Had A Change of Mind!

One of the traits of New Atheists was that in light of the 9/11 murders they expressed a measured anger at religion, especially Dawkins. In February 2002, four years before The God Delusion was released in 2006, Dawkins called atheists to "arms" in a TED talk. Seen here, which as of this date has had 2,131,473 views! (Talk about star power, wow!). His talk was first posted on TED in April of 2007. He made it clear that he wanted a campaign much like the gays used to gain acceptability in American society. His final sentence was, "let's all stop being so damned respectful." This strategy has worked. He's been pretty consistent about it too, even refusing to debate William Lane Craig, for doing so would gain his creationist views more respectability than they deserve. And even though I have produced works that treat Christianity respectfully in order to effectively critique it, so far he has not recommended them. I wished he had done so but it would be recommending works that do what he advised against. Well, there is a small change in the air.

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An Open Challenge to Dr. Keith Parsons and Other Atheist Philosophy of Religion Professors

On September 1st 2010 Keith Parsons announced he was no longer going to teach in the area of the Philosophy of Religion. He wrote:

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