It’s not a term most people use every day, but street epistemology is a thing. Anthony Magnabosco is one of its more prominent ambassadors, largely because he routinely captures his efforts on video and posts them on the internet.
What is street epistemology? It’s a conversational tool which uses Socratic questioning to help people expose the underlying methods by which they arrived at their beliefs, thereby subjecting those beliefs to scrutiny. Examples of Anthony at work can be found on YouTube, and the website can be found at StreetEpistemology.com.
In this conversation, Bart Campolo talks with Anthony about his approach, what he hopes to gain from these conversations, beliefs and their rationality, how irrational beliefs can sometimes be held for understandable reasons, whether it’s fair to challenge someone’s beliefs if you can’t replace their faith-based communities afterwards, responsibilities to people after the conversation is over, and the difference between ordinary believers and professional apologists.
