Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Book Review


I just completed D’Souza’s book, “What’s So Great About Christianity.” Overall it was a good read. I appreciate his scholarly response to the popular new atheism books. To get a feel for the book from a skeptic’s view point one of the endorsements, Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine reads, “As an unbeliever I passionately disagree with Dinesh D’Souza on some of his positions. But he is a first-rate scholar whom I feel absolutely compelled to read. His thorough research and elegant prose have elevated him to the top ranks of those who champion liberty and individual responsibility. . .”


I must say D’Souza tackled very scholarly subjects and presented them in a readable fashion. I would say his book is by far intellectual enough for those who want to think deeply and basic enough for those who are trying to get a hold of some of these issues for the first time.


I did not agree with all of his positions, but I enjoyed the book immensely. He dived deep into historical, philosophical, and scientific territory to give a viable answer to skeptics. Some of the common questions I hear from atheists were regrettably not addressed or were not addressed as well as I would have liked in his book. But other matters were thoroughly addressed that still have me contemplating his research.

I think his book is certainly worth reading for Christians, theists, skeptics, and atheists alike who want to keep up with the popular debates of culture in our times.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm reading "I don't have enought fiath to be an athiest" by Norman Giesler and Frank Turek. It's pretty good so far.

I gotta give you credit girl, I couldn't do this. I go to apolygetics forums and do what you're doing -- but to do it on my own blog...wow. God bless you.

Anonymous said...

yea, yea, my spelling is all messed up. I type to fast. Just though I'd acknowledge that myself before other anonymous comes and rips me for being an illiterate Xian.

Anonymous said...

"I'm reading "I don't have enought fiath to be an athiest" by Norman Giesler and Frank Turek. It's pretty good so far."

I've read parts of that myself and found it dismal. Don't think that they are actually addressing real atheist arguments or providing evidence or non-fallacious arguments of their own. I know that they aren't.

"yea, yea, my spelling is all messed up. I type to fast. Just though I'd acknowledge that myself before other anonymous comes and rips me for being an illiterate Xian."

Everyone makes typos and spelling mistakes, including me. If I criticized people for that, it would be rather hypocritical. I'm not concerned with those errors (unless it's so bad that I can't figure out what words you are trying to use). That's not something I'm going to rip someone for. What I'm concerned about is fallacious/bad argumentation. If you use bad arguments, you'll be told about it.

Karla said...

I have read the Giesler/Turek book. The information was good. I wasn't too happy with the tone in some places.

Anonymous said...

"The information was good."

No it's not. Their treatment of the big bang, for instance is full of faulty nonsense. They create numerous strawmen and then try to knock them down and don't even do a good job with that sometimes. For instance, back to the big bang, they claim that atheists must believe that something came from nothing, which is a flat out falsehood. We don't know what happened and I'm not required to believe anything. To make matters worse, they claim that believing that something came from nothing is more absurd than that some god out there decided to make something out of nothing. Something is still coming from nothing! Further, where did this god come from? What evidence do they have for it? And, finally, have they never heard of Occam's Razor, which they explicitly violate right there?

Bottom line is this, it does not take faith to be an atheist. Atheism is the rejection of unevidenced faith, not the proposition of a different faith. Until you all can understand that, you'll be behind the eight ball in just about every discussion you engage in.

Karla said...

It takes faith to believe anything even scientific evidence. For scientist must exercise faith that what they observe corresponds to what is.