John W. Loftus

It looks to me as if you read this 400+ page book very quickly, since you had 1 1/2 days to do so, including writing this review. I wish I could read and digest this amount of material thoughtfully that fast. Congrats! And thanks for the recommendation "Interesting." I'll take that.

Do you really think that this is true of my chapter on the OTF? I think it stands alone and can be read independently of what I wrote in my book WIBA. In a way though, we MUST be arguing against someone in this book. That's the nature of debate, isn't it? And we're debating Christians. So why is it a detriment to argue against what Christians have claimed in their books and articles? I don't understand your criticism here, unless you're saying you just have not read these others books and articles, something I think you should do in order to become better educated, agreed? And what better way to become better educated than to follow up on a given chapter's references. The last thing we want is for someone to say we only dealt with strawmen. To avoid this criticism we must argue against what had previously been written. How would you do it differently?

This book is different in that regard for many of the chapters. So? The title itself is confrontational, so one would have to expect that the chapters would be confrontational as well, although several are not.

Would you please explain your new suggested chapter title? I can't make sense of it, and I'm usually good at understanding what has been written.

Thank you. This is an interesting suggestion. In Ed Babinski's chapter he shows how Biblical cosmology was understood differently as science advanced.

Hmmmm. Do you really think this? Do you know a guy named JP Holding? There are many Christians who have never considered what Ed says in this chapter and there are many inerrantists who would find what he says quite problematic. Polls say that 40% of Americans think we were created 6,000-10,000 years ago because of Genesis. Surely you should know this and applaud Ed's attempt to speak to them, even if many Christians are moderate to liberal.

So, besides for recommending a few chapters you're saying the book is "Interesting" and that "It's worth at least a look." Okay, I'll take that. Such high praise is, well, "interesting."

Usually when someone reviews a book he or she should specify who would benefit from reading it and on what level of education it's geared to. So I'd be interested in knowing who would benefit from this "interesting" book.

For the record maybe you would also care to tell us which books would merit a higher recommendation from you that are geared to the Christian college student (oops, I let the cat out of the bag)? I mean, put them on a scale and let's see how many others you would recommend higher than this one. I for one, would like to understand your criteria for assessing books of this nature. Just curious.

Thanks for the review.

missblue

It seems like some of these people spend their time seeking out books they disagree with and writing up long reviews about how bad they are. I saw one example from some guy that marked down a bunch of pro atheist/agnostic books and marked up a bunch of anti atheist/agnostic ones...

I guess it's a hobby of theirs.

Edit: I just want to say it's very cool that you write books. I'd love to write one and have it published some day (not in this genre though... a novel lol)

rhutchin

What does that have to do with anything? Does Loftus want to deal with criticisms or doesn't he? If it is true that I have determined that the book is wrong about almost everything it contains before I ever even crack it open, so what? What matters is whether I could translate such presuppositions (if they actually did exist) into valid criticisms.

Sea

While it did take most of two evenings to the wee hours to read through the book, I freely admit I wasn't reading carefully and reflectively the whole way. I will likely go back over certain sections that warrant additional attention (relative to my personal interests).

Much of the chapter is a response to seven objections folks have raised against the Outsider Test For Faith. You do a good job of re-introducing the idea before addressing those objections, so I didn't intend the characterization as a negative.

I was merely drawing a loose distinction between the chapters of The Christian Delusion which are in response to specific, recent Christian statements vs. common, general Christian ideas. Eller's "Christianity Does Not Provide The Basis For Morality" is an example of the second category. However, it could have fit into the first category if it were, for example, a response specifically to Craig's article "The Indispensability Of Theological Meta-Ethical Foundations For Morality."

I was only pointing out the heterogeneity of the book in this regard. All essays could have fit into one category or the other, but The Christian Delusion has a mix. This is a description of what sort of book potential readers can expect, not a value judgment.

Again, a description not a pejorative. Books aimed at persuading Christians and books aimed at educating fellow skeptics both have their place. I do have a problem with books like The God Delusion which claim to be in one category but are really in the other, but only because I want the Christian community to engage with books — such as Why I Became An Atheist — which are more likely affect them. Or at least not put them off immediately like the first page of "The Cultures of Christianities."

Yeah, I see how that was ambiguous. The subtitle of the book as a whole is "Why Faith Fails" which implies a problem with faith itself. When I suggested Long's chapter should be called "Why Skepticism Fails," I meant it as a tongue-in-check reference. Not a problem with skepticism itself, but the way good skepticism is usually ineffective beyond prompting the religious to invent yet another wacky way to avoid criticism. In other words, skepticism "fails" because religious thinking often retreats to invincible defenses such as the astonishingly anti-empirical statements by William Lane Craig and Answers In Genesis on page 75.

The problem is that inerrantists are precisely the kind of people who won't care that other cultures have some similar ideas. Since they know Genesis is accurate, any evidence of those ideas from other cultures must be garbled versions of the true events. And they're not the sort to care about timeline evidence.

And yes, I'm aware that Holding likes to claim something along the lines of, "Christianity must be true because no one in that culture could have or would have made it up." Evidence like this is a good counter because it shows how the raw "materials" were available for Jewish and Christian legend/myth making. Not that novel ideas are as impossible as Holding seems to think anyway.



Since it covers a wide range of topics related to Biblical studies and religion in general from a skeptical point of view, I expect it will mainly benefit skeptics with similarly broad interests. Any interested-amateur late teen to adult should fare just fine.

Books I would recommend to a Christian college student:

Why I Became An Atheist by John Loftus
Doubting Jesus' Resurrection by Kris Komarnitsky
Jesus, Interrupted by Bart Ehrman
Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium by Bart Ehrman
Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels by Michael Grant
The Canon of the New Testament by Bruce Metzger
The Age of the Earth by G. Brent Dalrymple (for YECs anyway)

These books are all good at approaching Christians where they are, then showing them reason to doubt their faith from the inside. In Metzger's case, this is unintentional of course.

Honorable mention for Evid3nc3's "Why I am no longer a Christian" video series.

temporalillusion

Will this book come out in an eBook or audio book format?

Just so I don't needlessly wait for those things if they're not coming.

TIA

John W. Loftus

Thanks for your clarifications Sea, although I want to stress that Jason Long's chapter is excellent! Do you agree or not, and if not I'm interested in knowing why.

So that's your criteria? Thanks for sharing it. Others seem to be, well, a bit more excited about TCD--important PhD's on both sides of the fence--and have written glowing blurbs about it. Still others are writing glowing reviews of it. You don't share their enthusiasm (to say the least). That's okay, but with your criteria on the table we can partially see why. Maybe with a better reading you might even want to revisit it, but I can only ask that you are honest about it (the "unethical" thingy, you know).

Thanks again for recommending my book WIBA. It presents a comprehensive case that respects the beliefs of Christians. I consider TCD to be an extension of that book with arguments I either didn't have the space for, or the expertise to write on.

I disagree with you about whether TCD will reach the Christian. But we'll have to see. I know that since apologists are nearly a dime a dozen they will want to get it and respond. A few college classes are using my book WIBA in their apologetic classes, and I suspect some will also choose this one. And don't think for one minute that most all Christians insulate themselves by not testing what they believe against this type of book (otherwise, you'll have to explain the success of The God Delusion). There are many honest Christians who will pick it up and read it. I'll bet on it against what you think.

I'm also very happy to hear that you think TCD can be understood even by a late-teen reader (surely you are NOT suggesting that this is the level of scholarship presented in the book, right?). Since books written over the heads of people don't have mass appeal I wanted it to be understood by as many people as possible without sacrificing depth of content. And I think we achieved this.

John W. Loftus

Eventually it will be a Kindle book on Amazon, but the wheels at PB grind very slow. I think it'll probably take at least six months, but I don't know. They don't even have a "search inside the book" going on at Amazon, and that has to take place before a Kindle version is available.

Spanish_Inquisitor

I wouldn't' mind having the eBook version, but I picked up a hard copy the other day and am looking forward to reading it, John.

I'll bet Prometheus doesn't do ebooks, because they're a small shop. But they should. John, if you retained the ebook rights, you could sell the book directly on your own website, and bypass the big online book sellers, who seem to think that ebooks should be priced the same as paper books. :devil1:

John W. Loftus

Well, I couldn't by-pass Prometheus Books who did a great deal of editorial and design work on the book, including promoting it, which, if they hadn't done so it wouldn't have gotten the attention it already has. That's why I can't send the pdf file to anyone. They deserve their rightful financial reward.

temporalillusion

Alright thanks, I appreciate the info.