Not Enough Faith to be an Atheist?

Happy New Year everyone!


During my vacation I am currently reading several books, one of which is Norman L. Geisler's Christian apologetic book I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. 


Personally, I find that the tone is overly arrogant. The first chapter involves a few anecdotal stories about how when Geisler was a missionary he went door to door across America preaching the "Good News." Not surprisingly, the stories are always in his favor and depict him outwitting arrogant and ornery non-believers, all of whom later come to Jesus. Naturally.


So far, I have learned that Geisler is pretty much ignorant of what constitutes a genuine atheist. Although this should come as no surprise to us since he doesn't actually seem to care to find out what atheists actually believe. Instead he offers up bizarre and strange straw-men--depicting atheists as the stereotypes which religious demagogues love to ridicule for being rebellious and defiant of God (never mind this contradicts what an atheist technically is), or are secretly angry with God (never mind this is an illogical statement--since atheists can't be angry with something they don't believe in), or just ignorant of the truth of religion. Which as far as I can tell--hardly resemble actual atheists or nonbelievers. At least not like the ones I have come to know since my deconversion. Most of the atheists I have come to know, as it so happens, tend to know a lot (a lot!) about religion. 


Geisler states, in chapter one, that "Evangelical Christians believe that they ought to obey Jesus' command to "make disciples of all nations" (Matt. 28:19).


Right from the get go we learn that it's not about coming to terms with learning to understand or accept the atheist position, but rather is a full out attempt to convert atheists and, according to Geisler's beliefs, make disciples out of them.


I'll report more on the chapters as I make my way through the book. 


In related news: Evangelical Realism also tackles Geisler et al. and gives the book a more in depth criticism--if you're interested.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Discussing the Historicity of Jesus with a Christian Agnostic

Image
Steven Jake, the author of the up and coming blog  TheChristian Agnostic , [1]  wrote a rather thorough response to my lengthy comment asking him about the state of the evidence regarding the historical Jesus. I am pleased he took the time to write a thorough response. I only feel that such a thorough response deserves my own more detailed response as my initial comment was merely that—a comment. So without further ado I will address some of Steven Jake’s comments and concerns. Initially Steven Jake (henceforth SJ) posted a quote from New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman claiming that there is an abundance of evidence for a historical Jesus. I merely contested this claim asking for what evidence we have that would be considered historically reliable. As I see it there is none. That doesn’t mean, however, I don’t think there  wasn’t  a historical Jesus, just that we cannot prove if there was or wasn’t and so I remain agnostic as to the historicity of Jesus—not a mythicist
Read more

Conflating Atheism and Agnosticism is a Mistake

Image
In a discussion over at Bud's blog Dead Logic , a reader asked a question I have been hearing more and more recently. It's a good question, so I thought I would do my part to try and answer it. Doesn't admitting to being an agnostic instead of an atheist FEEL like you're being wishy-washy, or not fully committing to your "belief"? ... I understand that it's only honest to say that we CAN'T be sure, but I sure do hate to show weakness (real or perceived) in an argument. Not at all.  Agnosticism deals with knowledge.  Atheism deals with belief.  The Agnostic position cannot assume whether a thing like a God could exist or not given the lack of sheer evidence for such a things existence. Therefore knowing with any given certainty just isn't possible. The agnostic then makes the claim that a definitive answer with regard to "knowing" of God's existence cannot be given either way. Atheism, however, can state with assurance t
Read more