A Manual for Creating Atheists (12 page)

SHORTCUTS

Occasionally, when I’m pressed for time and can’t give my interlocutor a comprehensive Socratic treatment (for example, in line at the grocery store), I use two powerful dialectical shortcuts.

First, I’ll ask, “How could your belief [in X] be wrong?”
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I don’t make a statement about a subject’s beliefs being incorrect; instead, I ask the subject what conditions would have to be in place for her belief to be false.

When the subject is thinking about an answer it’s important to listen attentively. On occasion, simply asking this question can cause a moment of doxastic openness, particularly in people who’ve not reflected extensively on their faith. If the subject asks me to tell them what it would take for me to believe, I respond, “That’s a great question. I’d like to hear what you think first, before I tell you what conditions would have to be in place for me to believe.” This is also a reinforcing statement in which I reiterate the question. It also invites a response.

Once they’ve given their response, I thank them. If they’ve asked me what it would take for me to believe, I’ll use a variation of American physicist Lawrence Krauss’s example in his debate with William Lane Craig: if I walked outside at night and all of the stars were organized to read, “I am God communicating with you, believe in Me!” and every human being worldwide witnessed this in their native language, this would be suggestive (but far from conclusive as it’s a perception and could be a delusion).
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Second, I’ll ask, “How would you differentiate your belief from a delusion? We have unshakable testimony of countless people who feel in their heart that the Emperor of Japan is divine, or that Muhammad’s revelations in the Koran are true. How do you know you’re not delusional?”

I’ve found this quick question to be more effective with specific religious claims, and in particular if people tell me that they feel something in their hearts. Simply causing one to consider that their core beliefs could be delusions may help them recognize the delusions.

In my experience, few people directly answer the question about how they know they’re not delusional. (In the case of faith-based beliefs, I’m not sure there is an answer because they’re actually suffering from a delusion.) Instead they’ll reply, rarely with anger, more often with sincerity, “Well how do you know that your beliefs aren’t delusions? How do you know you’re not wrong?” To which I respond, “I could very well be wrong about any of my beliefs. I could also misconstrue reality. The difference between misconstruing reality and being delusional is the willingness to revise a belief. If I’m genuinely willing to revise my belief I’m much less likely to think it’s a delusion. Are you willing to revise your belief that [insert belief here]”?
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Posing this as a question is helpful because it gently reinforces the idea that they’re harboring a delusion without telling them they’re delusional.

MOTIVATIONAL INTERVIEWING

There’s an extensive corpus of literature documenting effective treatment modalities across a wide spectrum of psychological and health-related issues—diabetes, alcohol and drug addiction, gambling, etc. The purpose of these approaches is to help counselors to elicit change behavior in their clients.

One of the most effective approaches is Motivational Interviewing (MI) (Miller & Rollnick, 2002). It’s beyond the scope of this book to detail the nuances of MI, but there are some core lessons that can help the Street Epistemologist in dialectical interventions:

• Develop nonadversarial relationships
  
• Help clients think differently and understand what could be gained through change
  
• “Meet clients where they are”
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  and don’t force a change
  
• Express empathy
  
• Go with resistance
  
• Tap into internal change behavior
  

MI is designed to get around a social problem involved in treating alcoholics and other substance abusers. A problem may occur, for example, when a councilor or physician adopts a moralistic, judgmental attitude toward an individual who is in a state of despair and needs help. This kind of unhelpful posturing is almost always counterproductive and very often results in a complete lack of collaboration between councilor and patient.

The bullet points above help people to avoid this interactive problem. They also hint at much larger and more thematic treatment principles. I strongly encourage Street Epistemologists to read Motivational Interviewing and the surrounding literature with an eye toward faith interventions.

AVOID SHOWING FRUSTRATION

For the unseasoned Street Epistemologist, there’s often a tendency toward impatience resulting in frustration, “Why can’t he just see his beliefs are ridiculous?” (Szimhart, 2009). Understand from the outset that it’s unrealistic to expect a subject will stop pretending to know things she doesn’t know on, during, or immediately after her first treatment. Have patience. The fruits of the intervention may come weeks, months, or even years later.

Countless people have either not responded—or responded negatively to—my initial inter-vention, only to e-mail me, or bump into me on the streets years later and thank me. During some interventions I’ve been called “Satan” or “The Mouth of the Devil,” or told, “You’re an evil, sick fuck and I hate you.” These same people have later thanked me and even sent me gifts. Their strong reactions weren’t really directed at me personally; rather, they came about as a
consequence
of the treatment. When people begin to genuinely question their faith, or when their pathogenic hypothesis is frustrated, they may be unhappy with their interlocutor. Street Epistemologists should prepare for anger, tears, and hostility. You should also strive to deal with struggling and frustrated individuals with composure, compassion, grace, and dignity.

There is a certain degree of cognitive blamelessness and legitimate epistemic victimization in falling prey to an unreliable epistemology. Like children born into an epistemological community, adults in isolated communities are often not presented with options
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Model the behavior you want to emulate. Don’t become frustrated. Helping people to stop pretending to know things they don’t know takes time, usually occurs over multiple treatments, and involves months and months of practice before you become a full-fledged Street Epistemologist.

NOT DENIAL, PRECONTEMPLATION

The Transtheoretical Model of Change is a theoretical model of behavioral change that’s been used to inform and to guide interventions (DiClemente & Prochaska, 1998; Grimley, Prochaska, Velicer, Blais, & DiClemente, 1994). For the Street Epistemologist, the stages of change and some basic terminology may be helpful.

The Transtheoretical Model of change states that behavioral change occurs in a series of stages.

• Precontemplation (not ready to change)
  
• Contemplation (getting ready to change)
  
• Preparation (ready to change)
  
• Action (changing)
  
• Maintenance (sustaining change)
  
• Termination (change completed)
  

The first stage, prechange, is called “precontemplation.” Precontemplation is somewhat similar to a state of doxastic closure—the faithful don’t even imagine that they need to change because they don’t understand that they have a problem.
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Precontemplative means that one is at the stage before contemplation even begins and thus does not mean denial.

In my experience, many people who consider themselves to be “moderate” in their faith are in the precontemplation stage. I’ve found that fundamentalists, on the other hand, have given considerable thought to their faith and to their beliefs, and this change model sometimes does not directly apply to them; rather, they’re often suffering from an as yet unclassified cognitive disorder.

Contemplative means that people see a need to change their behavior but don’t think it can be done, or they’re wondering if they should change but they’re not really sure. The other stages are less important for the Street Epistemologist, as work will often focus on helping subjects transition from precontemplation to contemplation, or from contemplation to preparation.

In your interventions, one of the first things you should do is make a diagnosis by ascertaining the change stage of your subject. There’s no formula for how to do this, but you’ll likely have an idea within the first minutes of conversation. You can then, to borrow from the literature on addiction and health, “meet the patient where they are” (Blume, Schmaling, & Marlatt, 2000, pp. 379–384). Are they Precontemplative or are they Contemplative, or are they determined to do something? With experience, you’ll be able to make more accurate diagnoses and consequently tailor your treatments to the subject’s stage of change.

Finally, I find the terms “precontemplative” and “contemplative” politically correct but helpful ways of avoiding the negative term “denial,” which sounds more permanent and unhelpable. Street Epistemologists are agents of hope. Those who pretend to know things they don’t know are not hopeless cases—they are prehope cases.
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AVOID POLITICS

It’s all too easy to let political issues creep into interventions. At this particular point in U.S. history, many people who self-identify as atheists tend to be Democrats, while the faithful tend to be Republicans (Coffey, 2009; CNN, 2008; Miller, 2006). Don’t let this fact impinge upon your interventions. Avoid politics whenever possible.

Street Epistemology is best left uncorrupted by baggage that tends to accompany political issues. Bringing up politics when conducting interventions sidetracks the discussion—which should be about faith.

I’ve also found that many subjects think attacks on faith are politically motivated. For example, attacks on abortion are attacks on faith by proxy, and subjects adopt a defensive posture that undermines the effectiveness of the treatment. Don’t engage topics like abortion, gay marriage, school prayer, stem cell research, pornography, contraception, etc. Often, conclusions one comes to on these issues are consequences of a failed epistemology: faith. Undermine faith and all faith-based conclusions are simultaneously undermined.

MISCELLANEOUS

The following are some miscellaneous tips and suggestions beginning Street Epistemologists may be able to use:

• Just as evangelizing is relationship based (called “Relationship Evangelism”), so too is Street Epistemology (Anderson, 2010; Chambers, 2009). Always be mindful that your relationship with the subject will make or break the treatment.
  
• When appropriate, relate to your subject by bringing in shared personal experiences. For example, if you were the same religion as your subject, tell them that you too used to hold those beliefs.
  
• Be mindful of your goals throughout the intervention. Don’t get sidetracked by politics or metaphysics; keep the treatment focused on epistemology.
  

FINALLY

You’ll need to tailor these strategies to your personality and to your subject’s unique circumstances. Learning to effectively weave these skills into your interventions will take time. Relax. Street Epistemology isn’t a race. Over time you’ll learn what works for you and what doesn’t.

Finally, never forget that subjects don’t owe you anything for helping to liberate them of their faith. The Street Epistemologist seeks no gratitude for her efforts.

INTERVENTIONS

Intervention 1: Belief in Belief

I had the following conversation with prison inmates in 2004. This intervention demonstrates Dennett’s idea of “belief in belief” (Boghossian, 2004). I like this dialogue because it’s brief and because it causes people to adopt the idea that they should “believe in the right stuff.”

Researcher [Peter Boghossian]
: What is justice?

Inmate 6
: Standing up for what you believe in.

Researcher
: What if you believe weird stuff? Like one of those lunatics who wants to kill Americans? Or what if you’re a pedophile?s

(A twenty-second silence)

Inmate 6
: I think if you can stand on your own two feet and not care what anyone else thinks about you, and you’re willing to fight for it and die for it or whatever, that makes you a man. Whether it’s right or not.

Researcher
: So being a man would mean to be resolute in your beliefs no matter what? What if you’re in the military, like in Rwanda, and you’re told to butcher all these people, and you have this skewed idea of loyalty. And you stand up for what you believe, for your country or tribe or whatever, and you just start butchering civilians? Hutus or Tutsis or whoever. Is that just? Does that make you a man?

Inmate 5
: Yeah, good point. It happened in Nam [Vietnam].

Inmate 4
: What are you saying? That justice isn’t standing up for what you believe in?

Researcher
: I’m not saying; I’m asking. What is justice? [Inmate 6] said it’s standing up for what you believe in. But is it really standing up for what you believe in? Don’t you have to believe the right stuff, then stand up for that? No?

Inmate 6
: Yeah, maybe. Maybe.

Intervention 2: Kill All Left-handed People

I had to pick up my friend’s daughter from choir practice. While I almost never frequent places of worship, I arrived early to use this as an opportunity to deliver interventions to the faithful on their home turf. After a few failed attempts to engage people, I finally found the perfect subject: a well-groomed (WG) young man in his early twenties. He’d been attending this church for the past decade. The conversation begins in medias res.