I used to have a hobby of reading Christian apologetics to get a better understanding of how the other side lives. I got some useful insights from this, e.g. Donald Miler’s Blue Like Jazz was eye-opening for me in that it helped me understand better the psychology of religious faith. However, most books were a slog and I eventually found more entertaining uses for my time.
Today I saw that a workmate of mine was reading Lee Strobel’s The Case For Faith earlier. My policy is to not discuss politics or religion at work, so I didn’t bring it up there.
I hadn’t read that particular book before, so I was curious about its arguments. Reading over the summary, I remembered again why I quit reading Christian apologetics—they are really boring.
The subtitle of The Case Against Faith is A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity, and is quite untrue. I can almost dismiss each chapter in the time it takes to yawn. Even if Strobel had good answers to the Problem of Evil, or proved that religious people historically have been less violent than non-religious people, or somehow found a gap in current understanding of evolution, he would still be leagues away from providing evidence for a god, let alone his particular god.
I remember being similarly bored by a Christian-turned-Atheist’s book John Loftus’ Why I Became an Atheist. A common criticism of atheist writers is that they don’t engage the more sophisticated arguments of theists. This book illustrates why—the sophisticated arguments are stupid. Loftus accepts Christian scholars’ ideas, arguing within spaces previously occupied by dancing angels (e.g. he says on p.371 “In a well-argued chapter… Lowder has defended the idea that Jesus’ body was hastily buried before the Sabbath day… but that it was relocated on the Sabbath Day to the public graveyard of the condemned...”).
Most of us here would probably lose a live debate in front of an audience against someone like Lee Strobel. Even so, it’s a little disappointing to me that even the most skilled theist debater’s signature attack relies on bits like “This first cause must also be personal because there are only two accepted types of explanations, personal and scientific, and this can’t be a scientific explanation.” Because winning the debate by refuting that would be a waste of intellect.
tl, dr (and be warned, the piece is highly political): Joan of Arc is the patron saint of disaffected Catholics—not only does the rant give a vivid picture of what it’s like to love Catholicism, it’s so large and so old that there’s a reasonable chance that it will have something to suit a very wide range of people.
I used to have a hobby of reading Christian apologetics to get a better understanding of how the other side lives. I got some useful insights from this, e.g. Donald Miler’s Blue Like Jazz was eye-opening for me in that it helped me understand better the psychology of religious faith. However, most books were a slog and I eventually found more entertaining uses for my time.
Today I saw that a workmate of mine was reading Lee Strobel’s The Case For Faith earlier. My policy is to not discuss politics or religion at work, so I didn’t bring it up there.
I hadn’t read that particular book before, so I was curious about its arguments. Reading over the summary, I remembered again why I quit reading Christian apologetics—they are really boring.
The subtitle of The Case Against Faith is A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity, and is quite untrue. I can almost dismiss each chapter in the time it takes to yawn. Even if Strobel had good answers to the Problem of Evil, or proved that religious people historically have been less violent than non-religious people, or somehow found a gap in current understanding of evolution, he would still be leagues away from providing evidence for a god, let alone his particular god.
I remember being similarly bored by a Christian-turned-Atheist’s book John Loftus’ Why I Became an Atheist. A common criticism of atheist writers is that they don’t engage the more sophisticated arguments of theists. This book illustrates why—the sophisticated arguments are stupid. Loftus accepts Christian scholars’ ideas, arguing within spaces previously occupied by dancing angels (e.g. he says on p.371 “In a well-argued chapter… Lowder has defended the idea that Jesus’ body was hastily buried before the Sabbath day… but that it was relocated on the Sabbath Day to the public graveyard of the condemned...”).
Most of us here would probably lose a live debate in front of an audience against someone like Lee Strobel. Even so, it’s a little disappointing to me that even the most skilled theist debater’s signature attack relies on bits like “This first cause must also be personal because there are only two accepted types of explanations, personal and scientific, and this can’t be a scientific explanation.” Because winning the debate by refuting that would be a waste of intellect.
Running Towards the Gunshots: A Few Words about Joan of Arc was the first thing which gave me a feeling of why anyone would want to be Catholic. However, that’s the emotional side, not the arguments.
tl, dr (and be warned, the piece is highly political): Joan of Arc is the patron saint of disaffected Catholics—not only does the rant give a vivid picture of what it’s like to love Catholicism, it’s so large and so old that there’s a reasonable chance that it will have something to suit a very wide range of people.