Book Reviews

In the last year, I've devoured numerous books on religion. My ranking are based on their relevance to the question “but is it true?” In order of best to worst:

1. Why I Became An Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity – John Loftus

Head. And. Shoulders. Above. All. Others. If your book shopping is based on my recommendations, stop reading my blog and go buy it right now.

2. C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion – John Beversluis
3. Beyond Born Again, chapters 5-7 – Robert Price
4. The History of God – Karen Armstrong
5. Incarnation and Inspiration – Peter Enns

Two through five were all excellent, and highly recommended if you are interested in the particular topic.

6. The End of Faith – Sam Harris

I'm not filling stockings with this one, but it was worth my time.

7. The Problem of Pain – C. S. Lewis
8. Letter to a Christian Nation – Sam Harris

These last two were complete lemons.

In more detail:

1. Why I Became An Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity – John Loftus

“Why I'm not Evangelical” would be a more appropriate title, as the focus is not a rejection of any concept of a god, but rather a rejection of the Bible and Evangelical theology. Its target audience is theologically and biblically informed evangelical laypeople/college students.

Rather than bashing the reader over the head with how ridiculous the whole thing is, Loftus patiently covers Christianity from start to finish. He begins with explaining why people should believe things based on actual reasons, and why Christianity must pass the outsider test to be a defensible belief. The rest of the book shows that not only is Christianity not required or suggested by reason, but it doesn't even come close to possessing the slightest shred of reasonableness.

Most of his arguments are a one-two punch of philosophy and biblical analysis. The first hit shows how (insert doctrine of choice) is meaningless/contradictory/impossible and the second hit undercuts the support for the idea actually being true. His philosophical analysis is consistently stellar – he dismantles all the little things in theology that you are supposed to learn but not think about. His biblical arguments switch between the rifle and shotgun approach – he spends the better part of a chapter on a few individual problems, and with others issues his gives a long lists of problems with little elaboration. The contents of the book could probably be divided into 50-100 articles, each of which addresses enough problems in the Bible/theology to justify deconversion or a least a major theological shift.

I don't think the book offers any new arguments that scholars haven't seen before, but that's not its goal. The goal is to communicate to evangelicals ideas that are already out there but are not usually phrased in ways that have a good chance of penetrating through their intellectual defense mechanisms. Pure-bred atheists, or unbelievers coming out of nominal religious backgrounds simply can't do this because it takes a former preacher to really understand the evangelical mind, and not just evangelical beliefs.

60% philosophical/theological, 40% biblical

2. C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion – John Beversluis

This book is meant to be a complete rebuttal to all of Lewis' primary arguments for faith. After reading this book, I feel the intellectual pull of none of his reasons. The main targets are the argument from desire (If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world), the Trilemma, the moral argument, the argument from reason (without God why think our thinking leads to truth?), and a series of rebuttals to Lewis' changing answers to the problem of pain/evil.

The book is heavy philosophically – I didn't make it through a couple of the chapters with understanding. However, Beversluis does an excellent job writing to the more philosophically inclined while allowing more left-brained people like me to listen in profitably. For instance, in one chapter he discusses how Lewis' life and books fit into the discussions of the philosophy of religion that were raging in his generation. Beversluis doesn't assume the reader is up on the philosophical developments of the '50s, but manages to transform what sounds like an extremely esoteric tangent into a highly informative lesson on the modern history of thought.

This book played a major role in pushing me from deist to atheist, but I imagine that many other books would have been better at accomplishing this particular goal, especially one that's a bit easier.

50% philosophical, 50% rebuttal

3. Beyond Born Again, chapters 5-7 – Robert Price

The topic here is rebuttals to the standard historical arguments for the claim that Jesus rose from the dead. It's written at an extremely accessible level and online for free. My top two books take 50-100 pages to fully get started – this one takes about 3. If you aren't sufficiently convinced by the possibility that Christianity might be false to think skeptics' arguments are even worth taking seriously, this is a great place to start because the time investment is low. This book is my first recommendation to Christians.

However, I do have a couple criticisms. Price takes apologists seriously in that he accurately represents their arguments and provides serious rebuttals. However, he doesn't take them seriously rhetorically. While he doesn't cross the line out of civil discussion, I'd bet it takes a bit away from it's persuasiveness to those who don't agree with him. However, it's not more insulting than, say, a typical partisan editorial or the way C. S. Lewis talks about skeptics.

Price was some sort of liberal Christian when I wrote it, but it's not at all surprising that he's now an atheist. His left-handed concessions to apologists that Jesus might still have been raised even if it's not historically defensible are distracting at times, but that's where Price was at at the time – thinking it might be true, but that apologists use bad arguments.

100% rebuttal

4. The History of God – Karen Armstrong

This is the history of man's concept of God as it has changed from paganism to Judaism to Christianity to Islam. I'm only 1/5 the way through, but this alone is an eye-opener. As the book is chronological, I don't think finishing it will be important to my evaluation of the beginning.

Armstrong explains with great clarity how Judaism developed out of paganism. The opening points come from some pre-biblical archaeological finds of pagan religious writings. This includes a creation story that is suspiciously similar to the Genesis creation story. The name of the Canaanite high god was El. Abraham begins by worshiping El Shaddi (El of the Mountain). It's not until Exodus 6:3 that Yahwah is reveled to be the same God as El Shaddi, the God of Abraham.

The Bible is chock full of stories and theology that doesn't quite add up. Armstrong goes through the Bible's history and explains what is really going on. At numerous points, I had noticed the discrepancy she was talking about (has anyone seen God's face, for instance?) Rather than just leave it as a contradiction and walk away in biblical debunking victory, she does something with the discrepancies. They are clues for learning the history of the writing of the Bible and the changing of man's concept of God along the way. In the end, you see that the God of the Bible does not appear paradoxical because he actually is paradoxical, but because of the jamming together of different concepts of God that were not meant to go together.

This book is informative rather than persuasive. In many places I have questions about how we know something that Armstrong claims. When how we know is not important to understanding what her position is, the reasons are usually a reference in a footnote. Seldom are dissenting views given a hearing or rebuttal. So while the book is excellent background on what secular/liberal scholars think is really going on in the OT, it's not a great source for arguments that these secular/liberal scholars are correct.

Had my criteria been best-written book in a literary sense, this would probably be number one.

The part I have read is 50% historical, 50% biblical.

5. Incarnation and Inspiration – Peter Enns

Surprisingly enough, a book by an evangelical scores highly on my list. Enns professes acceptance of “inerrancy”, but IMO, the way in which he describes this term is sufficiently different from traditional definitions that he should use a new word.

The premise of the book is an analogy between Jesus and the Bible. Just as the incarnation resulted in a fully human person the inspiration of the Bible involves a book that was fully written by human but is also more. Enns three primary topics are the influence of the surrounding cultures on the OT, the theological differences within the OT, and the NT's use of the OT. In each case, he first argues that the problems are not just surface misinterpretations, but real issues. Next he argues why this doesn't undermine God's role in inspiring the Bible.

Anecdotal evidence supports my opinion that this book could easily shake the faith of a conservative Christian, and could easily cause a conservative losing their faith to settle on a more moderate theology. This book unofficially led to his peaceful removal from Westminster Theological Seminary.

90% biblical, 10% historical

6. The End of Faith – Sam Harris

Harris picks up the political side of the case against faith. It's extremely quotable, but not all that relevant to my questions of if religion is actually true. He is trying to shake up moderate and liberal believers and to answer the question “So religion is false – what now? To what degree should it be tolerated and to what degree should it be actively opposed?” While I slowly liberaled out a number of opinions before deconverting, I was always theologically conservative at heart, so most of his criticisms miss my prior positions.

His primary target of criticism is Islam. His secondary targets are liberals with an unhealthy respect for Islam, Christians, and religious moderates because any concept of faith that isn't based on evidence serves to perpetuate a culture that empowers the extremists. Ironically enough, I agreed with more of his criticism of liberals than of Christians – he rarely (never?) expresses awareness of the concept of people believing because they think the evidence supports their belief. I often thought his case for just how bad religion is was overstated by means of going after all the worth instances of religion rather than after a representative sample, but it was well-worth reading while keeping in mind that there is another side.

Harris's opening story is so memorable that I cannot resist a lengthy quotation. Harris begins with a narrative about the last minute in the life of a suicide bomber. After describing the explosion, he then writes:

“These are the facts. This is all we know for certain about the young man. Is there anything else that we can infer about him of the basis of his behavior? Was he popular in school? Was he rich or was he poor? Was he of low or high intelligence? His actions leave no clue at all. Did he have a college education? Did he have a bright future as a mechanical engineer? His behavior is simply mute on questions of this sort, and hundreds like them. Why is it so easy, then, so trivially easy – you-could-almost-bet-your-life-on-it easy – to guess the young man's religion?”

Other brilliant quotes include,

“But faith is an impostor. This can be readily seen in the way that all the extraordinary phenomena of the religious life – a statue of the Virgin weeps, a child casts his crutches to the ground – are seized upon by the faithful as confirmation of their faith. At these moments, religious believers appear like men and women in the desert of uncertainty given a cool drink of data.”

And,

“The men who committed the atrocities of September 11 were certainly not 'cowards,' as they were repeatedly described in the Western media, nor were they lunatics in any ordinary sense. They were men of faith – perfect faith, as it turns out – and this, it must finally be acknowledged, is a terrible thing to be.”

30% political, 30% historical, 30% philosophical, 10% rant

7. The Problem of Pain – C. S. Lewis

I read this several years ago and was a bit confused by it, but I liked it. I re-read it early 2008 and realized that much of my confusion was the result of assuming the soundness of Lewis' less-than-stellar reasoning. The central thesis is this “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Given that many consider the problem of evil/pain to be the most common reason for modern Christians to lose their faith, I dare say that God's megaphone appears to be malfunctioning.

100% philosophical

8. Letter to a Christian Nation – Sam Harris

(**Update 2/4/09**: I first read this in May '08 and had a confusing mix of emotions. My December review was based on this sour memory. I have since re-read it and changed my mind. If you grit your teeth and say the truth of Christianity has nothing to do with the behavior of Christians, as I did the first time through, then Harris offers little. But on the other hand, one significant reason many believe is due to the positive effects they think Christianity is having on the world - this is an argument deserving of a rebuttal. As he's taking on Christians' illusion that their morality is helpful, rather than something like a scholarly textual argument, rhetoric with much more bite than I usually provide is both appropriate and needed. I'm not deleting my extremely negative review, but I no longer agree with what follows.)

This is a letter from an atheist telling Christians just how bad they really are. I read this one in one siting in a Border's Books. The coffee I drank while reading it was of more lasting value. The biggest reason I'm glad I didn't buy it isn't the saving of my money, but rather the knowledge that I'm not part of a system that financially supports this approach. In the introduction or foreword or somewhere not worth looking up, he admits this is a rant because more civil approaches have failed. And then he rants. At times, it was hilarious, but if you just want a simple laugh at religion's expense, watch The Life of Brian or Religulous. These are two excellent movies that fully stand up to all the academic rigor we have come to expect out of R-rated comedies. (But seriously, they are good movies. They are also comedies.) The book did help make me glad my faith was gone, but I felt this was done through appeal to baser aspects of my mind. He has plenty of real arguments – I wish his passion didn't get in the way of his expression of them.

The real problem with books like this is that no matter how ridiculous the position being defended, emotional arguments can be crafted that are every bit as compelling as these. Thus, even if he's right, the mud-slinging obscures our vision of if he has really won. Moving the battle into turf like this takes away any debate advantage the truth should have possessed due to being true. I don't want an atheist version of Ann Coulter to exist – we can be better than that. (For the record, Harris is better than Coulter, but he's far too close.)

X% rant, (100-X)% political, where X is large

The Unfinished

I started reading The Design Matrix by Mike Gene, but I lost interest in it with my faith. It's an argument for Intelligent Design that assumes evolution (you read that right.) Science isn't the turning point for me anyway, and ID alone only pushes me toward deism. I might finish it, but not soon.

I started The Case for Christ, but I was unimpressed enough that I couldn't bear to slog through. Basically Lee Strobel starts off as an agnostic journalist, and then interviews Christianity's best apologists and scholars. Through the process, Strobel becomes a Christian. Inspiring stuff, but what you're reading is a bad skeptic losing to Christianity's finest. Mixing in all sorts of narrative detail makes the book psychologically persuasive, but it's irritating when you just want to read the case for Christ. I don't care how much confidence Habermas delivers his arguments with, I want to read his arguments and see how they stack up against skeptical rebuttals and vice versa. I may finish this one, but only as a conversation piece.

I'm still reading The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis. I have every intention of finishing both and may review them in the distant future.

My Upcoming Religion Reading List:

Unweaving the Rainbow – Richard Dawkins
Who Wrote the Bible? – Richard Friedman
The End of Biblical Studies – Hector Avlos
The Gods of War: Is Religion the Primary Cause of Violent Conflict? – Meic Pearse
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark – Carl Sagan

In the unlikely case that a professor of mine reads this, yes, this is one reason why mathematically speaking, I accomplished so much less this semester than normal...

The Hermeneutics of Paul: Seed and Seeds

Galatians 3:15-16 “Brethren, I speak in terms of human relations: even though it is only a man's covenant, yet when it has been ratified, no one sets it aside or adds conditions to it. Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed He does not say, 'And to seeds,' as referring to many, but rather to one, 'And to your seed,' that is, Christ.”

Paul opens the section by highlighting just how important it is to take a covenant with God seriously. He takes it so seriously that he is willing to base an argument on a precise grammatical point, namely the singularity of the word “seed.” And at a glance, the Holy Spirit is quite clever at foreshadowing. The author of Genesis somehow knew to use the singular of 'seed' so that people would one day realize that all nations will be blessed not through the Jews as a group, but through Jesus in particular.

With this in mind, it's quite deflating to look back at what Genesis says. Paul is not clearly referring to any one particular verse, so a broad view will be necessary. In most of the relevant places in Genesis, the phrase is translated in the NASB as “Abraham's descendants.” In Hebrew or other English translations, the clash isn't quite so strong. In Hebrew, the same word would have been used regardless of whether singular or plural is intended – context must be used to determine if it is singular or plural, just like the English phrases “Abraham's offspring” or “Abraham's seed.” The NASB translators thought it was plural, as would any reasonable person reading God's promise to Abraham in context. Some of the particular verses I'm referring to are:

Genesis 12:7 “The LORD appeared to Abram and said 'To your descendants I will give this land' So he built an altar there to the LORD who had appeared to him.”

Genesis 13:15-16 “for all the land which you see, I will give it to you and to your descendants forever. I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth, so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your descendants can also be numbered.”

Genesis 15:5 “And He took him outside and said, 'Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them' And He said to him, 'So shall your descendants be.'”

Genesis 15:13 “God said to Abram, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years.”

Genesis 17:5-7 “No longer shall your name be called Abram, But your name shall be Abraham; For I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings will come forth from you. I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your descendants after you.”

The contexts of “descendant” are being given land, as the dust of the earth, as the stars of heaven, enslaved for four hundred years, and multitude of nations throughout generations. This is my case for Genesis' seed being plural – I challenge those who disagree to find a verse to support the singularity of Genesis' seed.

As far as I can tell, this is completely fatal to the more conservative definitions of biblical inerrancy. Paul starts by instructing us to take the covenant seriously. He then bases an entire theological argument off a grammatical point, when the grammatical point is demonstrably false using purely biblical evidence. If this isn't an incorrect statement, just how wrong must a statement be before being considered actually wrong? The problem isn't that Abraham's promise was plural and Christ is singular – analogies are flexible things. The problem is that Paul said the promise is singular and it's not.

Premise 1. In Genesis, seed is plural.
Premise 2. Paul says that seed in Genesis is singular and not plural.
Premise 3. Singular is not plural.
Therefore, Paul was wrong.

I don't see how you can get much purer of a syllogism than this. However, much can be said in defense of more moderate views of inspiration, or at least, the competency of Paul.

My first impression after looking back at Genesis was to think Paul was a complete hack who barely knew the story of Abraham or at least didn't bother to read it again while composing his letter. But this opposite side of a pendulum swing is as poorly supported by the text as the view of full inerrancy.

Galatians 3:29 “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendants, heirs according to promise.” Here, Paul refers to the exact same promise within the exact same chapter, and this time lets “seeds” be plural to refer to the entire church! If 3:16 was a sly maneuver, he wouldn't have highlighted it by using the word “seeds” again. It couldn't have been an honest mistake due to ignorance or forgetfulness of Genesis, because he expresses his knowledge of the plurality of seeds. Whatever, Paul was doing, it looks like it was intentional and that he wanted his readers to see what he did. This is consistent with neither being a mistake nor deception.

Apparently, this kind of thing was kosher back then, or so the apologetic defense goes. The fact that the same word is used for plural and singular invited a sort of grammatical flexibility, even when the entire context shows that the grammar was not actually flexible when read by modern minds (i.e. people trying to figure out what it actually says.) Peter Enns makes a strong case for this in Inspiration and Incarnation using extra-biblical texts to support the claim that Paul's hermeneutics would have been seen as acceptable in the first century. Thus, if an orthodox Jew read this in the first century and was unconvinced, he would not call foul over Paul's grammar, but would argue against the conclusion along different lines. So viewing Galatians as its original audience would have viewed it, Paul did not make a mistake. And if you believe Paul was inspired, and the central message of the Bible is Christ, you have reason to trust his conclusions even while expressing skepticism of how he gets there.

After this point, evangelical scholars and I diverge. The irony of reading Galatians as its original audience would is that to do so requires the understanding that Paul did not read Genesis as its original audience would. That's just fine for a scholar studying a secular document, but it's quite problematic for maintaining a level of biblical trustworthiness. All biblical interpretation, and hence essentially all Christian doctrines, rest on how the Bible is to be read. The Bible doesn't tell its readers to begin the interpretation process by reading it as its original audience would – evangelicals only do so because it is so transparently obvious that when reading a book you should try to determine what the author meant.

Paul's hermeneutics undercut this assumption underlying all biblical interpretation.

If it's obvious that Christians should seek to know what the original biblical authors meant, then it's obvious that Paul's approach was wrong. If it's not obvious, then the Bible has become so relativized that it's difficult to use as a guide to anything. This would imply the consistency of “Isaiah didn't mean X” and “from Isaiah we know X is true.”

The more serious problem is that when Paul is given so much latitude, it's hard to not justify giving the same latitude to other people. (There is a grain of reality in the coming comparison. But please note that it's meant to be an analogy, not an accurate depiction of the contents of the Koran, Islam, or the seventh century. A religious studies scholar could probably find a real example – I'm making one up.) The “Koran” argues that John 14:16's predictions of sending “another Comforter” means Muhammad. Thus, the Bible foretold the coming of Muhammad. Christians reply that's not what Jesus was talking about – Jesus was talking about the Holy Spirit, as evidenced by the other things Jesus said about the Helper that are not consistent with the Helper being Muhammad. Muslims then recognizes that to argue Jesus was talking about Muhammad is grammatically indefensible through looking at John alone. However, this is what people in the seventh century really thought about John. It was common practice for people in the seventh century to take a series of vague prophecies and accept the pieces that fit while discarding the one's that didn't. The Muslim recognizes the weakness of such reasoning in the “Koran” when viewed by twenty-first century eyes, but you have to look at it in the context of its culture, when that would have been acceptable reasoning. Also, the “Koran” is inspired by Allah, so that means the conclusions are still true.

The Christian response would not be to check out if that's how they really thought in the seventh century. The Christian response would be that if the words in John don't predict Muhammad now, and the words of John didn't predict Muhammad in the first century, then the words in John didn't predict Muhammad in the seventh century either. The argument puts Christians in the exact same situation with respect to Islam that Jews are in now with respect to Christianity. Christians ask Jews to believe that Christianity is the correct strain of Judaism when the Bible clearly uses the Jewish Scriptures to say things that they don't really say when read in context. The Muslim is asking to Christian to believe Islam is the true strain of Christianity based on readings of Christians' Scriptures which make it say things that it clearly doesn't say when read in context. To reject the Muslim's argument and accept Paul's argument is a double standard.

It's possible to rationally believe without seeing the work of God in some of the following: the writing of the Bible, the influence of the Bible, the person of Jesus, evidence for the Resurrection, fulfilled prophecy, creation/science, the power of prayer, the testimony of the church, personal religious experiences, etc. But to believe without seeing the work of God in any of these is highly determined ignorance. Galatians 3 goes a long way toward removing the work of God in writing the Bible from the list of possible places to find a reason to believe and placing it on the list of reasons to disbelieve.