Name: A Manual for Creating Atheists
ISBN: 9781939578099

A Manual for Creating Atheists

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. [][1]

What Hacker News says

edwardbernaysJun 2025

It's cool that you saw it less as hyperbole and "more of a pedestrian inability to make a real case." I suppose it does take one to recognize one, your game is pretty similar to this description.

It is not passive aggression. It is active aggression. We are seeing the plague of intellectual dishonesty spread in our civilization. It is making things materially worse for people who are currently alive. We should be actively hostile against it. Anybody who's reading this, I encourage you to take up polemics against the Christian faith. Read Peter Boghossian's "A Manual For Creating Atheists."

I have arguments against the complete legalization of drugs. I think there are many valid, good, principled arguments against it. Absolutely nowhere did I raise the idea "that no one can possibly make a credible argument against complete legalization of drugs." Nowhere did I even advocate for the "complete legalization of drugs."

I did not advocate for these things because I do not believe in them as policy positions. I have not, in fact, positively claimed what policies I would like to see enacted. I have criticized the current state of affairs and stated the principles by which I'd like to see them reformed.

You are jumping to conclusions that are not substantively supported by the text you read, probably as a form of prejudice or emotional response to seeing a "reasonable religion" maligned.

I outright reject every moralistic argument from the basis of Yahweh, a deity whose holy book contains self-contradicting inconsistencies, historical inaccuracies, scientific inaccuracies, and moral tragedies. Cry about it. Absolutely no deity which has commanded the sexual assault of innocent women, nor condoned chattel slavery, should ever be considered a source of moral truth. The Yahweh of the old testament is a vindictive, cruel, evil old spirit. The Yahweh of the new testament is, at best, a literary invention of Greek novelists and the charlatan Jesus of Nazareth. Did Jesus say some cool things and have some wisdom? I'd say so. Was he a scholar of the Bible? Probably. Was he the Messiah? Factually, by the messianic prophecies laid out in the old testament, the answer is a resounding "no." Any religion which both claims a text of messianic prophecy and a Messiah which fulfilled zero of those prophecies can not be considered a coherent religion, let alone a reasonable one.

Furthermore, Yahweh is 100% a Sky Daddy. His believers literally call him the holy father. The only way it even makes sense to object to the term "Sky Daddy" is because of the obvious infantilization. However, the infantilization is not my invention; merely my emphasis.

Doesn't this site say you should assume good faith? Maybe you don't know what kind of site it is, "adult."

EDIT: actually, the fact you thought calling Protestants "Bronze Age" was passive instead of active aggression does make me legitimately concerned for your social comprehension skills.

Another thing that makes me worried about your social comprehension skills is that you saw me say "your ability to believe in Sky Daddy ends where it impinges on my freedoms" and immediately jumped to "so you think all drugs should be legal??" I'm pretty sure, at this point, I'm speaking to a dyed-in-the-wool, drank-the-kool-aid, brain-is-fully-rotted theist.

So let me say this really plainly, in easy words, to make sure you can grasp it without ambiguity: you can make arguments against drugs without invoking spirits. You can make moral arguments without invoking spirits.

I do it quite often.

EDIT2: I am fine with people who call themselves Christians. I am not ok with Christian nationalism. I do not want the Christian faith eradicated, but I do want them to stop meddling in politics.

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wilgertvelingaMay 2018

Peter Boghossian - A Manual for Creating Atheists.

While the title suggests it is only about religion the first few chapters are actually very general. The book also sparked a movement called Street Epistemology that has an interesting way of "critical communicaging".

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abathurAug 2017

For the curious, the "Street Epistemology" movement, which employs the Socratic method, was coined/outlined by Peter Boghossian in his book "A Manual for Creating Atheists" (https://www.amazon.com/Manual-Creating-Atheists-Peter-Boghos...). You can find more about it's goals and methods by searching around for street epistemology, or by reading the book. It's a relatively quick read.

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kaiwen1Dec 2013

A Manual for Creating Atheists by Peter Boghossian. This book has completely changed the way I approach interactions with people of faith. It's an incredibly important, useful and practical book.

http://www.amazon.com/Manual-Creating-Atheists-Peter-Boghoss...

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asplakeJun 2022

I’m very interested in the discipline of respectful enquiry but this passage rang some alarm bells:

> Street Epistemology started life as a method to discuss religious belief in the 2013 book A Manual for Creating Atheists.

Is it just me, or is there (or was there) an agenda here that’s in conflict with its claims about creating understanding? With apologies for the pun, were they “good faith” conversations?

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after_careFeb 2021

I think Trent Horn is not the target audience of the book “A Manual for Creating Atheists”. Trent Horn’s expertise and level of knowledge both religion and specifically the debate about the existence of a monotheistic deity are clearly very advanced. The purpose of the book he is reviewing is to introduce new atheists, and help others introduce new atheists, to a survey of ideas and positions that the average person has not been introduced to.

Very often this review attacks the author for not including an argument, or including an incomplete argument. That is an editorial decision based on the target audience. Even if Trent Horn was more well read and articulate then Peter Boghossian, that itself is no proof that Trent Horn’s view is correct. Smart people hold incorrect beliefs, opinions and conclusions often.

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