Customer Reviews

The Case Against Christianity

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

In this book, Michael Martin does an excellent job of dissecting the Christian religion with a tone of objectivity. The reader knows the author's conclusions from the title of the book, but it does not weaken his intellectual style. Though his position as philospher instead of theologian has brought his credibility in doubt, I was at least insured he would not jump to conclusions and keep them with stubborness. He states the problems with each Christian doctrine, reviews rebuttals to his arguments, and goes on to show the fallacy of the rebuttals. Some Christians, especially evangelicals, will quickly be unimpressed with his arguments when he doubts the probability of miracles. I personally thought his conclusions on miracles were rational and reasonable, but it takes an unbiased mind to appreciate his logic. Overall, I recommend this book to any person interested in religion because the book is based upon facts and philosophy, and I find it a devastating blow to Christianity's reasonableness. In conclusion, I find it to be a rational belief to accept Michael Martin's conclusions on Christianity and its doctrines.

I was reluctant to read this as I thought I had read all of the arguments against religious belief that existed. I expected a rehash of the old arguments from David Hume and Thomas Paine. It turns out that Martin has much to add that is new. If you value rationality, and want to make your mind superstition proof, you can strengthen yourself with this book. If you are an atheist, this will only make you more self-confident about the nonsense of believing in the christian god. If you are a believer, watch out! This will plant more doubts in your mind than you may wish. But that's okay! As a former christian, I can tell you that I am much happier as an atheist than I ever was when I wasted my time on believing in god.

Martin is a reasonably well known free thinker who has a background as a academic philosopher. This book is an attempt to suggest that Christian doctrine is not true. The methodology of the book is to suggest that a Christian is someone who accepts the doctrines outlined in the three major Christian Creeds. That is that Jesus existed as a historical figure and was God incarnated, he died and was resurrected, he was born of a virgin and will come again.

As a text some of it is a bit plodding. The reason for this is that unlike other books rather than just outlining his position, he advances his argument by contrasting it to other arguments against his position. Thus in the chapter about the resurrection he discusses at some length the position o Habermas a thinker who suggests that the resurrection is a historic event. He then responds to those arguments at some length but the narrative flow is rather poor.

The arguments around the resurrection and the historical nature of Jesus are the same arguments which have been running around free thought circles for years and have been outlined by such people as Remsberg (The Christ) and Cutner (Jesus God, Man or Myth). That is that the biblical accounts of Jesus life are contradictory and the Gospels appear to have been written years after the event. The structure of the Gospels suggest stories which are mythical or elaborated and there is a complete absence outside Christian sources to verify what is meant to have gone on. Martin tends to labour these points a bit and in my view Remsberg is by far the strongest exponent of these arguments.

The rest of the book is however reasonably original. The argument against the incarnation is in short that the biblical account of the temptation of Jesus is inconsistent with his divine nature. How could the supreme God of the world be tempted by Satan and entity who had in reality no power? How could a God, who does not have human appetites and is a perfect moral being suffer from temptation? This then leads to a discussion about how it would be impossible for the natures of God and man to co-exist. The discussion of Christian Ethics and their general incoherence is well done as is the problems around the notion of salvation.

The problem with the book is that it is very much a work that is written by an academic philosopher. It discusses the topic by the use of a series of abstract theoretical arguments which have force but take a bit of getting through. Other free thought writers such as Remsberg and Ingersoll write with much greater clarity passion and sense of the absurd aspects of Christian belief.

The part of the book that I enjoyed most was the second appendix which discussed the diverse theories of the Atonement. The main advantage of the book is that is presents in a reasonably accessible form a series of arguments which otherwise are contained in a number of volumes. The main difficulty with the book is probably the first chapter which tries to set up a basis for suggesting that Christians should adopt a rational approach to belief instead of relying on faith alone.

This book should be examined by anyone who wants an unbiased perspective of christianity. The arguments are as objective as any and the author doesn't go out of his way to scandalise the religion. Instead he makes the all important point that ultimately, christianity is a religion of blind faith more than anything that could possibly germinate in human logic or reason. Highly recommended to anyone contemplating a christian conversion and for christians who dare examine the arguments. Anti-missionary groups will want to order copies for their members and the Jews will rejoice for having stuck to their faith. Truly a book for all!

This is by far the best sustained, scholarly attack on xianity I've seen. Martin's previous book, Atheism: A Philosophical Justification, dealt with theism in general, but this book shows the failings of xian theism in particular. Not only does Martin masterfully present the strong anti-xian arguments, he anticipates-- and defuses--possible objections to which theologians might resort. Convincing and well done. Atheists often read theistic material, including the bible, in order to stay informed. If only more xians were as open-minded and would read works such as this. There would be fewer xians!

Although Dr. Martin speaks with very "large terms", that never stopped me from giving his book 5 stars. After the Introduction and Chapter 1, things started to click, and the large terms started to diminish (a little bit anyway). He goes one by one through the x-ian doctrines, and refutes them.

He explains most of the historicity of the bible, which is what I liked most. Dr. Martin is also very logical about the situation. He does NOT put x-ians down in any way. When you read the "other side", it's a completely different perspective. If you're a x-ian, and you think atheism is a crazy position, then I'd read before you make that assumption.

Reading through the other reviews here, it is obvious to see where each person stands in reference to their belief (or lack thereof) in Jesus Christ. And, as one would expect, the ratings tend to follow those lines.

Don't let Christians/Atheists with agendas throw you -- This book is a must-have for anyone interested in the topics it covers.

Does it thoroughly discredit Christianity? No, it does not. But, as the author admits, that isn't the point of the book. What The Case Against Christianity is... is a great introduction to the topics-at-hand... not too bad for a book that is already almost 10 years old.

There is very little in the way of decent scholarly criticism of Christianity. This is by far the best work on the topic I have ever found. Martin's arguments are cogent and virtually every aspect of the Christian faith is addressed. After reading Martian's work I fail to see how anyone could be a convinced traditional Christian.

Greg Klebanoff

Ph.D. philosophy

The Case Against Christianity is a rather dry, but penetrating, assessment of the evidence for and against Christianity. Michael Martin not only focuses upon problems based upon lacking or conflicting historical evidence, but he also examines several doctrines that are taken as essential to Christianity, such as the virgin birth, the resurrection, the incarnation, and others, and argues that they are incoherent, improbable, and unsupporte by the evidence.

The book proceeds by relentlessly critiquing each aspect of Christian belief, offering one or two of the most plausible objections to the critique, and then defending the thesis from the objections. Even though such a style is quite effective in getting Martin's point across, it can make the book rather bland, technical reading. However, while it may not be a very entertaining book, it certainly rises to the occasion in order to establish its conclusions.

Martin starts the book with a discussion of epistemic justifications, and gives good reasons to reject pragmatic-based and "faith"-based justifications along the lines of Plantinga's religious foundationalism. He then argues that it is plausible to maintain that Jesus did not exist, essentially detailing the thesis of G. A. Wells. He argues that because the bulk of evidence is anonymous, driven by theological agendas, written years after Jesus's supposed existence, and there are no reliable outside sources, that there is thus reason to doubt Jesus's existence. However, Martin admits that his argument does not hinge upon this fact, and Jesus could be a legitimate historical person--it could just be that the facts about his life are not true.

From that point on, Martin argues against the Resurrection, the virgin birth, the second coming, the incarnation, the legitimacy of Biblical ethics, and the idea of salvation through faith. He critiques these issues by pointing to the lack of witnesses or the inconsistent and even contradictory accounts given in the Gospels. He also examines conceptual inconsistencies in regards to the incarnation (Jesus as a god who can be tempted?) and Jesus's ethics.

The Case Against Christianity is very thorough, but a bit bland. However, for anyone seriously interested in reading a compelling critique of all the essential tenets of Christianity would do well to read this book.

This books strength, in my opinion, is that the arguments presented in it aren't a watertight destruction of all things Christian, but rather collection of various arguments that ultimately lead to Christianity being a matter of faith, and not of reason. The conclusion of all arguments is that even if the Gospels are an accurate description of what happened (as opposed to how or why it happened), Jesus Christ may just be some guy with groovy supernatural powers. Perhaps he is a Vampire, a space alien, or even a demon from Hell sent to subvert the truth of Judaism.

It's an excellent guide book for when and if the reader would want to argue with Christians on matters of their faith. You can start with the more sweeping arguments, such as the existence of a historical Jesus, and then grant them to your opponent as you move into finer details, such as the virgin birth and resurrection as not being proofs that Jesus was the son of God in and of themselves. I give the book five stars because it helped me through a very difficult time in my life, when my mother was forcing me to read apologetics. She went off the handle when she discovered it, but I had already discovered the pin that could pop the balloon of Christianity.