A Manual for Creating Atheists

by Peter Boghossian

STAGES The Socratic method has five stages: (1) wonder; (2) hypothesis; (3) elenchus, (4) accepting or revising the hypothesis; (5) acting accordingly (Dye, 1996). I’ll now briefly explain these stages and then show how they inform actual faith interventions. Stage 1: Wonder The Socratic method begins in wonder. Someone wonders something: “What is justice?” or “Is there intelligent life on other planets?” or “Does karma govern the cycle of cause and effect?” etc. Wondering takes propositional format—words are used to capture one’s thoughts—and are thus expressed as questions. Simply put: from wonder a hypothesis emerges. (See appendix B for the Socratic questions used in my study to increase prison inmates’ critical thinking and reasoning ability.) Stage 2: Hypothesis Hypotheses are speculative responses to questions posed in stage 1. They’re tentative answers to the object of wonder. For example, one possible response to the question, “Is there intelligent life on other planets?” would be, “Yes, there must be. The universe is just too large for there not to be.” Another response could be a simple, “No.”2 Stage 3: Elenchus (Q&A) The elenchus, or question and answer, is the heart of the Socratic method. In the elenchus, which is essentially a logical refutation, Socrates uses counterexamples to challenge the hypothesis. The purpose of the counterexample is to call the hypothesis into question and ultimately show that it’s false. Continuing with our previous example: Person ...