Reddit mentions of A Manual for Creating Atheists

Check out Anthony Magnabosco on the YouTube practicing 'street epistemology' as taught by Peter Boghossian in Manual for Creating Atheists.

I recommend watching some videos by Anthony Magnabosco. He uses "Street Epistemology" techniques originally described in Peter Boghassian's book A Manual for Creating Atheists, although there are some variations. The core idea is to use the Socratic method to examine the reasons for why someone believes what they believe and determine if those reasons are reliable.

There are several advantages to this method:

• It is not necessarily adversarial; properly done it is framed as a mutual discussion and not as a debate. The goal isn't to "win" but to examine reasons for belief, which makes it far more effective in actually changing minds (and just as important, staying friends afterwards!).
  
  
• It is not reliant on attacking any specific belief system; usually it's best to avoid discussing religion at all! Instead it focuses on epistemology and "faith," trying to encourage the person to examine if their reason for belief is really justified. In Boghassian's book he mentions his theory is that the fundamental source of most people's belief in God is based on a flawed epistemology...fix the epistemology and the God belief will evaporate. His idea is that it's not belief in God per se that causes issues with religion but poor epistemologies that cause people to believe in God.
  
  
• Similar to the above, it can be used to examine any belief, not just God...karma, alien abductions, conspiracy theories, superstitions, etc. are all good targets.
  
  
• Lastly, it tends to be the most respectful way to engage with someone on these topics. Getting bent out of shape and raging against theists helps no one, and is usually hypocritical. The Socratic method relies on emulating the behavior you'd like to see in the other person, which tends to result in everyone being much happier afterwards rather than pissed off.
  
  The disadvantage, of course, is that it takes a long time and isn't as fun of a method to use to debate with strangers online. But for face-to-face conversations, especially with people you want to keep a good relationship with, I don't think there's a better method if you want to address the topic.

I'll second A Manual for Creating Atheists! It's a great read. Here's the link for anyone interested in picking it up:

http://smile.amazon.com/Manual-Creating-Atheists-Peter-Boghossian-ebook/dp/B00LKBT0MC/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=

If you haven't already picked up [A Manual for Creating Atheists] (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LKBT0MC/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1), I'd recommend it. It covers some ways to have these discussions that aren't particularly aggressive or "preachy", if you're worried about that.

[Anthony Magnabosco] (https://www.youtube.com/user/magnabosco210) has an entire channel dedicated to videos of him using these techniques. Some of them are quite interesting.

>What's the difference between things like street epistemology and street preachers?

The difference is that the former is a reasonable, polite, discussion with their permission and the latter is screaming, ranting, bullshitting, and public disturbance with nobody's permission.

If you aren't comfortable hitting the streets and having conversations with strangers like Anthony, just familiarize yourself with the techniques and use them in your own personal discussions when people you know are willing and comfortable with it.

You can't force someone to change their mind, but there are actually some methods for helping them look at their beliefs that are better than nothing.

The book A Manual for Creating Atheists demonstrates some of those methods.

Or:


A Manual for Creating Atheists https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LKBT0MC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_V5F2DbC6SVS4K

When you get past the anger phase, check out: A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian

Check out this guy's channel. He employs methods taught by Peter Boghossian in his book A Manual for Creating Atheists. Both these guys have a gentle, thoughtful Socratic approach that seems to be relatively successful.

> I have tried to remove profanity and barbed phrases like "imaginary friend" from my conversations. I have practiced listening for much longer periods of time and I even focus on my tonality, sometimes hoping I come across as thoughtful and reassuring, but... I think I'm missing some things.

It's definitely not easy. Simply identifying yourself as an atheist is offensive to some people. It's no different than saying "Hi, I think you're deluded."

Consequences in today's world are so far reaching (e.g. financial collapses, power of military weapons and forces, environmental degradation) that if we fail to have a revolution in human cognition, we may hit a major reset button for civilization.

As /u/maga-bigly mentioned, The Closing of the American Mind describes the start of this problem 50+ years ago when moral relativism made it immoral to criticize the ideas of others, effectively shutting down discussions (i.e. closing minds) and coddling those who FELT offended.

The Righteous Mind gives great insight into just how biased all of us are (libs, conservatives, and everyone in between) and how our inability to seek out and identify our own biases can doom us.

A Manual for Creating Atheists, poorly named by the publisher (should be called "Intro to Street Epistemology"), is a great book on methods to get people to contradict themselves, in turn identify their own biases, and hopefully create the critical thinkers necessary to achieve a cognitive revolution in what we actually know, what we don't know, and reliable heuristics for finding out.

Maybe he would benefit from reading "A Manual for Creating Atheists"? The procedure described there is non-confrontational.

/r/streetepistemology

And BTW, your Amazon link can be reduced to https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LKBT0MC

Excellent, nobody has pointed it out.

https://www.amazon.com/Manual-Creating-Atheists-Peter-Boghossian-ebook/dp/B00LKBT0MC?ie=UTF8&btkr=1&redirect=true&ref_=dp-kindle-redirect

This book advocates Street Epistemology which is where you ask a believer why they believe something, and see if it comes down to faith. If it does, you ask for a definition of faith, and whether faith is a reliable epistemology to find truth. If Person A has faith in Allah and Person B has faith in Vishnu, and they're contradictory religions, then how can Person C use faith to find an objective truth?

Read this book to find out why faith is unreliable. I'm not happy with the dictionary definitions because they do not reflect the way that you're approaching faith even in this very thread.

Thus, the best way to think of faith is:

>Pretending to know things you don't know.

I'm not sure if I can commit to that. However, if you haven't already maybe check out A Manual for Creating Atheists, or watch some of the videos on Anthony Magnabosco's channel for some tips on a softer, more persuasive approach to these kinds of interactions.

https://www.youtube.com/user/magnabosco210

r/StreetEpistemology

Based on the book A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian

Peter Boghossian defined it best. Pretending to know something you don't know. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LKBT0MC/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1