Making Atheists

Meet Dr. Peter Boghossian. He is a member of the Philosophy Department at Portland State University and at Oregon Health Science University and the author of A Manual for Creating Atheists. Here's Amazon's description of the book.

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 reason and rationality, cast doubt on their religious beliefs, mistrust their faith, abandon superstition and irrationality, and ultimately embrace reason.

There you have it, folks. Since most of my readers are Christians, you must realize by now that you are part of "a world broken in large part by unquestioned faith" and that your beliefs are the product of "proselytizing strategies" and a failure to "value reason and rationality". You are in dire need to doubt your beliefs, mistrust your faith, abandon your superstition, and embrace reason because, after all, reason and rationality are directly opposed to any belief in the Divine. The weakness of your religion is your reliance on faith rather than evidence, and Dr. Boghossian is here to set you free. Whew! Don't you feel better? And how will he do that? Well, his plan is to have faith declared a mental illness and now they can force you into treatment and get rid of these delusions. Thank you, Dr. Boghossian. His plan is to make atheists by force.

On one hand his plan to "ultimately eradicate faith" is pointless. Faith is not something you can eradicate any more than sin is something that we can eradicate. Humans are, by nature, religious. Even in today's more anti-religious climate atheists and agnostics occupy only about 20% of the world population. Statistically, then, regardless of what religion they follow, 80% of humans on the planet believe in some religion and atheism is not the norm.

But that's just a statistical statement, a rational evaluation. From a Christian perspective, Dr. Boghossian is just a clanging symbol. It is not human reasoning that makes believers even though belief is reasonable. We don't have faith because of the evidence even though there is sufficient evidence to believe. Christianity doesn't exist because of a lack of logic; in fact, logic agrees with Christianity. Jesus claimed, "I will build My church" (Matt 16:18). No Boghossian or self-styled "street epistemologist" or human government (like the Soviets or the Communist Chinese government) or even the American Psychological Association with their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) can change that. Faith is reasonable, but it starts as a gift from God, and arguing, treating, or torturing it away won't make a difference.