A Manual for Creating Atheists Read Online Free PDF Page A

walked across the surface of the water. “Jesus walked on water” is a knowledge claim—an objective statement of fact.
    Much of the confusion about faith-based claims comes from mistaking objective claims with subjective claims. Knowledge claims purport to be objective because they assert a truth about the world. Subjective claims are not knowledge claims and do not assert a truth about the world; rather, they are statements about one’s own unique, situated, subjective, personal experiences or preferences.
    Think of subjective claims as matters of taste or opinion. For example, “Mustard on my hot dog tastes good,” “John Travolta is the greatest actor who’s ever lived,” and “The final season of Battlestar Galactica wasn’t as good as the first two seasons.” These are subjective statements because they relate to matters of taste. They are not statements of fact about the world. They do not apply to everyone. Contrast these statements with, “The Dalai Lama reincarnates.” This statement is a knowledge claim. It’s an assertion of truth about the world that is independent of one’s taste or liking; it’s a faith claim masquerading as a knowledge claim, a statement of fact.
    Faith claims are knowledge claims. Faith claims are statements of fact about the world.
    Faith Is an Unreliable Epistemology
“Your religious beliefs typically depend on the community in which you were raised or live. The spiritual experiences of people in ancient Greece, medieval Japan or 21st-century Saudi Arabia do not lead to belief in Christianity. It seems, therefore, that religious belief very likely tracks not truth but social conditioning.”
— Gary Gutting, “The Stone,” New York Times , September 14, 2011
    Faith is a failed epistemology. Showing why faith fails has been done before. And it’s been done well (Bering, 2011; Harris, 2004; Loftus, 2010; Loftus, 2013; McCormick, 2012; Schick & Vaughn, 2008; Shermer, 1997; Shermer, 2011; Smith, 1979; Stenger & Barker, 2012; Torres, 2012; Wade, 2009). There’s no need to recapitulate this vast body of scholarship. Instead, I’ll briefly explain what I find to be one of the principal arguments against faith.
    If a belief is based on insufficient evidence, then any further conclusions drawn from the belief will at best be of questionable value. Believing on the basis of insufficient evidence cannot point one toward the truth. For example, the following are unassailable facts everyone, faithful or not, would agree upon:
     
There are different faith traditions.
Different faith traditions make different truth claims.
The truth claims of some faith traditions contradict the truth claims of other faith traditions. For example, Muslims believe Muhammad (570–632) was the last prophet (Sura 33:40). Mormons believe Joseph Smith (1805–1844), who lived after Muhammad, was a prophet.
It cannot both be the case that Muhammad was the last prophet and someone who lived after Muhammad was also a prophet.
Therefore: At least one of these claims must be false (perhaps both).
    It is impossible to figure out which of these claims is incorrect if the tool one uses to do so is faith. As a tool, as an epistemology, as a method of reasoning, as a process for knowing the world, faith cannot adjudicate between competing claims (“Muhammad was the last prophet” versus “Joseph Smith was a prophet”). Faith cannot steer one away from falsehood and toward truth.
    This is because faith does not have a built-in corrective mechanism. That is, faith claims have no way to be corrected, altered, revised, or modified. For example, if one has faith in the claim, “The Earth is 4,000 years old,” how could this belief be revised? If one believes that the Earth is 4,000 years old on the basis of faith, then there’s no evidence, reason, or body of facts one could present to dissuade one from belief in this claim. 13
    The only way to figure out which claims about the world are likely true, and which