A Manual for Creating Atheists

by Peter Boghossian

the claim on the basis of faith. “Faith” is the word one uses when one does not have enough evidence to justify holding a belief, but when one just goes ahead and believes anyway.

“Believing something anyway” is an accurate definition of the term “faith.”

Certainty is an enemy of truth: examination and reexamination are allies of truth.

Faith taints or at worst removes our curiosity about the world, what we should value, and what type of life we should lead. Faith replaces wonder with epistemological arrogance disguised as false humility. Faith immutably alters the starting conditions for inquiry by uprooting a hunger to know and sowing a warrantless confidence.

People dig themselves into cognitive sinkholes by habituating themselves to not formulate beliefs on the basis of evidence. Hence the beliefs most people hold are not tethered to reality.

Belief in God(s) is not the problem. Belief without evidence is the problem.