New to the forums - starting a book

[TruthHammer]

Hello everyone! I'm just returning from the American Atheist national convention (Minneapolis) but have never been much of an atheist message board/blog user. I hope to become a semi-regular poster here and I'm also starting a blog for updates on the book/project I'm working on. Thanks!

[Raskolnikov]

Welcome!
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"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, underwhich weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God, for if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."
-Thomas Jefferson

"The future is not set in stone. The future is what you make it. So make it a good one!"
-Dr. Emmett Brown

[Hit_me_up024]

welcome whats your book about?
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be the pancake


Props to Enemy_of_Reality

[Nimitz]

Welcome aboard TruthHammer
A semi-regular eh? Well you'll fit right in with this irregular bunch.

[Sal1981]

Book project, eh?

You've piqued my interest ... but sadly there are only 23 hours 57 minutes in a day.

Busy. Busy.
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"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool" --- Richard P. Feynman

"Why not just make your null hypothesis be that..." - Philosophos

[TruthHammer]

Here is the concept (from a blog post):

It is Saturday, March 22, 2008, and I have just returned from the American Atheists conference in Minneapolis. Inspired by the talks and discussions, my friend and I have decided to write a book, and this is my documentation of our effort. I will not use my real name, since I wish to remain “undercover,” and this book will deal directly with my interactions with my Christian friends.

This quick introduction is meant to explain the theoretical origins of the book, and outline its purpose, as well as the methods we intend to explore to research and develop the topic.

Prior to and during this conference I made what I believe to be an important observation: no serious atheist author has addressed how to convince Christians that God doesn’t exist. In fact, in most cases, their books explicitly claim to be written for “fence sitters” or moderate folk. The fundamentalists are too far gone, and they are simply trying to win over those that already waiver. When they do talk about how to deal with the fundies, it is always how to survive their attacks – how to thwart the Bible thumpers. It is never about how to actually engage them in conversation.

This is an extremely undesirable situation. The reason is that the standard atheistic literature is completely useless to a fundamentalist Christian. Why? Is it because they have an emotional reaction when they read it, causing them to disregard whatever it says? Maybe partially. But I suggest that there is a much larger problem. They simply can’t understand what the books are saying. The Christian mind has been usurped by an ideology, and consequently it doesn’t interpret the world the same way as the rest of us. When a truly fundamentalist Christian reads the God Delusion, it has no chance to convince them, because they don’t even comprehend it.

I say this with confidence, because 4 years ago I was a fundamentalist Christian, and I remember what it was like. When I would read a piece of atheistic philosophy, my mind would meticulously translate each sentence into some vulgar misrepresentation of the original. It was as if I construction ridiculous straw men on the fly. And this is an almost universal practice. The world itself is understood through the lens of Christianity, so why should an atheist’s misguided arguments be any different?

Additionally, and I borrow the words of one of the conference speakers, Christians didn’t accept Christianity because of an intellectual argument, so they’re not going to reject it because of one. Christians believe in their religion for emotional, social and cultural reasons. So it is virtually immaterial that atheists have invented multitudes of sound reasons for rejecting the God hypothesis. That simply doesn’t matter to the fundamentalist. They are more willing to trust their faith and their upbringing than their own rational mind. If the two conflict, they let their emotions and their society dictate their decision making. The rational mind is circumvented. So appealing to their reason is pathetically useless.

This leaves us in an incredibly frustrating position. We are powerless, unarmed to the teeth, when we talk to the fundamentalist. The best we can hope is to look good in front of the bystanders. For those of us surrounded by Christian family and friends, this is not enough.

I come from a family of preachers. My father and grandfather are preachers. My uncle is a preacher. My aunt is in women’s ministry. My brother attends Liberty University. I was a youth pastor. Had I stayed in the faith, I’d be finishing seminary right about now and looking for a church of my own. I attended Christian grade school up until the 8th grade. And through high school I generally socialized with other Christians. So, the vast majority of my longtime friends are also Christian. I am around them every single day. And I don’t think anybody is more intimately aware of the frustration of debating a Christian than I am.

Fortunately, I feel like I’m in a unique position to try and do something about all this. I was so devoted to the faith for so long, and I left it so recently, that I still feel like I can identify with the Christian mindset. I can conjure up memories, and simulate in my own atheist brain just what a Christian would think about a certain argument. And I want to use this perspective to attempt a feat that’s never been tried before. I want to figure out how to witness to a Christian.

This is the book we’re going to write. We want to explore how to approach a fundamentalist, not to beat him in a debate, but to open his mind. Along those lines, this will not be a book about arguments against the existence of God. Those arguments have already been made – most beautifully by the four horsemen: Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens. This is another reason I see this work as so important. I feel like, if one were to read a random sampling of 10 books by those authors, one would almost completely understand the atheist position and its defense. Our philosophy is not very complex. And additionally I feel that each new atheist book that comes out, while generally interesting, and sometimes valuable for its fresh perspective, does not typically add anything new to the cause. I like to say we have a “well formed” position. And our leaders are simply undertaking the task of translating our perspective into formats that everyone can understand. Unfortunately, as I’ve pointed out, this simply won’t help the infected Christian. (infected in the memetic-virus sense)

Instead, we must use an entirely different approach. Since these fundamentalists embrace their religion for emotional, social and cultural reasons, it is very likely that those are the levels on which we’ll have to connect with them. Accordingly, our goal is to uncover methods of approach that work, regardless of their intellectual merit. It is entirely possible for a conversation to be intellectually inane, but emotionally powerful. This is, in fact, true of most sermons. This is not to say that we will focus entirely on emotional appeals or intellectually dishonest strategies. Hopefully we’ll be able to avoid sullying ourselves quite so much. I am merely pointing out that disarming a Christian’s pre-built memetic defenses is almost certainly going to be a psychological battle instead of an intellectual one. Our aim is not to deceive them in any way. On the contrary, we want, ultimately, to open their eyes to reality. However, we might have to employ certain tactics along the way, at the very least to get them to consider the alternative.

This is one of the main goals – to get Christians to consider alternative points of view. Christianity has strong taboos against seriously entertaining “heretical” thoughts. And this is one of the major road blocks. Circumventing these taboos will almost certainly be a large part of the psychological dance we are anticipating. And this just might characterize the core struggle.

With all that said, I want to talk a little about our methodology. We don’t want to sit in our armchairs and invent some possible strategies that we think might work. And we don’t really care about psychoanalyzing the fundamentalist Christian. Instead, we’re interested in things that produce results. As I’ve said, the Christian isn’t interested in “valid” arguments. That’s simply unimportant. So soundness is no longer a reasonable criteria to use when evaluating our methods. The only reasonable one is effectiveness. How effective are these strategies at making a Christian stop and think? How well do they show him the problems with his religion? These are the metrics we will use. And the only way to know whether our methods work is to use them, and to refine them until they do the job in the field.

I want to make another quick point. That is, we want Christians, after having talked to us, to really understand the problems with their religion. We want the arguments they remember to be truly sound arguments, so that they can’t later refute them and revert back to their original religion. So our psychological techniques will not include tricky rhetorical devices that are fundamentally flawed. We want them to doubt their faith for the right reasons. The trickery will only be used to sidestep their canned Christian answers, and to force them to engage their minds. This means being very careful not to trip any of their “danger” sensors, or make them think we’re overtly attacking their religion. So, in this sense, we will be dishonest. They will not know that we intend to dismantle their faith. They will believe, instead, that we are simply curious about their beliefs, or want to settle some questions ourselves. And we will use this unguarded mindset to lead them into treacherous waters, where they might have the chance to purge themselves of their memetic parasite.

Getting back on task – our methodology. We will be using trial and error to test theories and refine them in the field. We will study psychology of communication, and experiment with different tactics and approaches. The goal is to break down the interaction into manageable pieces. We want to be able to describe witnessing to a Christian in several phases. We want to talk about “opening” them, separated from leading them to deep topics, separated from raising serious problems for them. Essentially, we want to construct a model, one that abstracts the interaction into its basic components. We want to use this model to treat each piece separately, and, in the end, produce a guidebook for de-converting Christians.

We fully expect this system to be highly dependent on the particular beliefs and personality of each individual fundamentalist. In fact, our current hypothesis is that the beginning of the interaction will have to be used almost exclusively to discover these facts. Then the approach must be tuned to the particularities of the individual. So we will not produce a script that you can read and magically make atheists. Instead, we will produce a semi-comprehensive strategy guide that will have to be adapted and applied to each unique situation.

Furthermore, you should not expect to de-convert any Christian after one interaction session. It’s simply impossible. I like to say that God himself couldn’t do that. There is no set of words you can say to strip a person of their religion in one sitting. You must remember, it was engrained in them over a lifetime of reinforcement and programming. And they must be deprogrammed just as meticulously. I expect true de-conversion should take several months for the average Christian. This would include an initial discussion that raises questions in their mind, and makes them unsettled. And then many more discussions that reinforce those doubts, spaced out at a nice comfortable pace. Human beings cannot think too much in one sitting, or else they become mentally exhausted. And for a Christian to de-convert he must think about an entire world of new concepts. Additionally, a human can only expand his comfort zone so fast. After a point, sheer stress makes them pull back. Instead, I believe the process must be gentle and steady. It must consist of talk after talk, each maybe an hour in length, each leading their mind to a new place just outside their current comfort zone. Doubt must be sewn, and then it must be tended. If you do that, the harvest will be bountiful (see the parables of Jesus for further reinforcement of this point).

So this is what we intend to do. We will begin with theory, and then develop some strategies. Then we’ll test these conversational strategies on Christians and see how they work. We’ll refine the process, and hone in on an effective procedure. Hopefully, in the end, we’ll be able to tell you a multitude of ways not to approach a Christian, and maybe, just maybe, a couple of ways you should.

[Sal1981]

Sounds fascinating!

I would wish you good luck, but I don't believe in luck.
_________________
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool" --- Richard P. Feynman

"Why not just make your null hypothesis be that..." - Philosophos

[Moloth]

awesome, welcome!
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-=The Believer is Happy; the Skeptic is Wise=-

www.Moloth.com

Last edited by Moloth on Tue Feb 30, 2026 13:61 am; edited 426 times in total

[baddogma]

Welcome!
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Join http://www.sefora.org/


Can omnicient god who knows the future find the omnipotence to change his future mind?

I'm ashamed of what I did for a Klondike bar....

[PJS]

A book you may want to read in doing your research is A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives by Cordelia Fine. It covers much ground on the tendencies of self- delusion. It has chapters titled the Vain Brain , The Emotional Brain,The Deluded Brain, The Pigheaded Brain, The Vulnerable Brain ,etc.

You seem to realize the difficulty of the mission. One quote from the chapter titled , The Pigheaded Brain-

"The ability to kill or capture a man is a relatively simple task compared with changing his mind" -Richard Cohen

Dr. Fine is a research associate at the Center for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne.
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The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome work to undertake the alternation of old beliefs.
-John Dewey

[Sal1981]

[TruthHammer]

[FORGRANTED]

Also Check out...

How We Know What Isn't So
by:Thomas Gilovich
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"There is tranquility in ignorance, but servitude is its partner." LB Bork

"I dont want to beLIEve, I want to Know." Carl Sagan

Theists evade personal responsibility and true moral behavior by shifting the burden to delusive deities.

[bible is bs]

god bless you!

tehe
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God doesnt exist