A Manual for Creating Atheists (7 page)

There are five reasons why otherwise reasonable people embrace absurd propositions: (1) they have a history of not formulating their beliefs on the basis of evidence; (2) they formulate their beliefs on what they thought was reliable evidence but wasn’t (e.g., the perception of the testament of the Holy Spirit); (3) they have never been exposed to competing epistemologies and beliefs; (4) they yield to social pressures; and (5) they devalue truth or are relativists.

Most people like to think that in their epistemic lives they accord beliefs to reason and evidence. That is, the less reason and evidence they have, the less confident they are about their conclusions and what they believe. But sometimes reason and evidence are not closely connected to belief. That is, individuals formulate their beliefs on the basis of other influences like parochial education, peer pressure, or community expectations—all potent forces not subjective to the pressure of evidence.

In some cases, individuals have damaged their thinking not only because they’ve habituated themselves to not proportioning their beliefs to the evidence, but also because they actually celebrate the fact that they don’t do so. For example, in matters relating to religion, God, and faith, believers are often told ignorance is a mark of closeness to God, spiritual enlightenment, and true faith. (The Street Epistemologist should spend considerable time working within these contexts. This is where you’re needed most. These interventions will be challenging but can be profoundly rewarding.)

Over time, you’ll develop diagnostic tools that will enable you to quickly place someone in one of the above five categories. You’ll then be able to tailor the intervention accordingly.

DOXASTIC CLOSURE

The word “doxastic” derives from the Greek
doxa
, which means “belief.” I use the phrase “doxastic closure,” which is esoteric even among seasoned epistemologists and logicians, in a different and less technical way than it’s used in philosophical literature. I use the term to mean that either a specific belief one holds, or that one’s entire belief system, is resistant to revision.
⁴
Belief revision means changing one’s mind about whether a belief is true or false.

There are degrees of doxastic closure. At the most extreme degree of closure, one has a belief and/or a belief system that is fixed, frozen, and immutable, and therefore is less open to revision. The less one is doxastically closed, the more one is willing and capable of changing one’s belief.

One can become doxastically closed with regard to any belief, regardless of the content of the belief. One can be closed about a moral belief (“We shouldn’t torture small children for fun”), an economic belief (“Markets don’t need regulation”), a metaphysical belief (“I am not a brain in a vat”), a relational belief (“My boyfriend loves me”), a scientific belief (“Global climate change is anthropogenic”), a faith-based belief (“A woman without a husband is like a dead body,”
r
mad Bh
gavatam 9.9.32), etc.

A Recipe for Closure

In
The Big Sort
, American sociologist Bill Bishop argues that we cluster in politically like-minded communities (Bishop, 2008). That is, we seek out people and groups with ideologies similar to own—we like to be around people who value what we value. One consequence of clustering is to further cement the process of doxastic closure; when surrounded by “ideological likes,” even far-fetched beliefs become normalized. It is assumed, for example, “It’s normal to believe what I believe about polygamy. Everyone believes this about polygamy, and those who don’t are just wackos.” Clustering thus increases the confidence value that we implicitly assign to a belief—we become more certain our beliefs are true. Further complicating this clustering phenomenon is what American online organizer Eli Pariser terms “filter bubbles” (Pariser, 2012). A “filter bubble” describes the phenomena of online portals—like Google and Facebook—predicting and delivering customized information users want based upon algorithms that take preexisting data into account (e.g., previous searches, type of computer one owns, and geographical location).

Consequently, and unbeknownst to the user, the information users see is in ideological conformity with their beliefs. For example, if you’ve been researching new atheism by reading or watching Horsemen Hitchens and Dawkins, and you Google “Creationism,” the search algorithm takes into account your previous searches, then gives you very different search results from someone who’s previously visited Creationist Web pages, researched Christian apologist videos, or lives in an area of the country with high rates of church attendance (e.g., Mississippi).

This puts users in a type of bubble that filters out ideologically disagreeable data and opinions. The result is exclusive exposure to skewed information that reinforces preexisting beliefs. This is doxastic entrenchment. “It’s all over the Internet,” or “I’m sure it’s true, I just Googled it this morning and saw for myself,” gains new meaning as one is unwittingly subject to selective information that lends credence to one’s beliefs as confirming “evidence” appears at the top of one’s Google search.

Combine clustering in like-minded communities with filter bubbles,
then
put that on top of a cognitive architecture that predisposes one to belief (Shermer, 2012) and favors confirmation bias,
then
throw in the fact that critical thinking and reasoning require far more intellectual labor than acceptance of simple solutions and platitudes,
then
liberally sprinkle the virulence of certain belief systems,
then
infuse with the idea that holding certain beliefs and using certain processes of reasoning are moral acts, and
then
lay this entire mixture upon the difficulty of just trying to make a living and get through the day with any time for reflection, and voilà: Doxastic closure!
⁵

DOXASTIC OPENNESS AND THE SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS OF IGNORANCE

Doxastic openness, as I use the term, is a willingness and ability to revise beliefs.
⁶
Doxastic openness occurs the moment one becomes aware of one’s ignorance; it is the instant one realizes one’s beliefs may not be true. Doxastic openness is the beginning of genuine humility (Boghossian, under review).

Awareness of ignorance is by definition doxastic openness. Awareness of ignorance makes it possible to look at different alternatives, arguments, ways of viewing the world, and ideas, precisely because one understands that one does not know what one thought one previously knew. The tools and allies of faith—certainty, prejudice, pretending, confirmation bias, irrationality, and superstition—all come into question through the self-awareness of ignorance.
⁷

In your work as a Street Epistemologist you’ll literally talk people out of their faith. Your goal is to help them by engendering doxastic openness. Only very rarely will you help someone abandon their faith instantly. More commonly, by helping someone realize their own ignorance, you’ll sow seeds of doubt that will blossom into ever-expanding moments of doxastic openness.

IMMUNE TO STREET EPISTEMOLOGY?

As a Street Epistemologist, you will encounter individuals whose beliefs seem immune to reason. No matter what you say, it will appear as if you’re not breaking through—never creating moments of doxastic openness.

This section will unpack the two primary reasons for this appearance of failure: either (1) an interlocutor’s brain is neurologically damaged, or (2) you’re actually succeeding. In the latter case, an interlocutor’s verbal behavior indicates that your intervention is failing—for example, they’re getting angry or raising their voice, or they seem to become even more entrenched in their belief. Such protests may actually indicate a successful treatment. (Of course, it’s possible that the believer has an argument that she has not yet raised in the conversation, but there’s no way to address an unvoiced argument.)

1. Delusion and Doxastic Closure

Some delusions are not beliefs (Bortolotti, 2010). For example, some people who have experienced a traumatic head injury suffer from Capgras delusion—they believe that familiar people, like their husband, and sisters and brothers, are really imposters. Other individuals are afflicted by Cotard delusion—they believe they are dead (literally). It is not possible to talk people out of these delusions.

Street Epistemologists should set the realistic goal of helping the faithful become more doxastically open. Sow the seeds of doubt. Help people to become less confident in what they claim to know, and help them to stop pretending to know things they don’t know. In time, with more interventions behind you, you’ll hone your skills and increase your ambitions. Ultimately, in your wake you’ll have created not only people freed from the prison of faith, but also more Street Epistemologists
.

In instances of damage to the brain, no dialectical inter-vention will be effective in eliciting cognitive and atti-tudinal change. These and other conditions like some strokes, intracranial tumors, or Alzheimer’s disease affect the brain and are beyond the reach of nonmedical inter-ventions. In short, if someone is suffering from a brain-based faith delusion your work will be futile.

2. Primum non nocere
(“First, do no harm”)

“[Faith] causes us to distort or even ignore objective data [as such] we often ignore all evidence that contradicts what we want to believe.”

—John W. Loftus,
The Outsider Test for Faith
(2013)

When people are presented with evidence that contradicts their beliefs, or are shown that they don’t have sufficient evidence to warrant beliefs, or learn that there’s a contradiction in their beliefs (the trees could not both come before Adam, Genesis 1:11–12 and 1:26–27, and after Adam, Genesis 2:4–9), or come to understand that their reasoning is in error, they seem to cling to their beliefs more tenaciously.

Doxastic pathology is especially evident in faith-based beliefs. That is, faith-based beliefs occupy a special category of beliefs that are particularly difficult to revise. Helping people revise a faith-based belief, or to abandon faith entirely, presents a host of challenges not usually encountered in other belief domains; even with politics, which trades in competing ideologies, a belief change can be facilitated more readily. This is because many factors are working to cement doxastic closure with regard to faith-based belief systems: society treats faith as a virtue, religious organizations actively spread faith, faith has evolved mechanisms to shield it from analysis, there are cultural taboos with regard to challenging people’s faith, and faith communities actively support members’ beliefs. (Tax-exempt status has allowed faith to become big business, but unlike faith, big business is always in the spotlight and under constant criticism.)

Does this mean your intervention has backfired? Have you unintentionally made their epistemic situ-ation worse? Have you cemented doxastic closure? No.