42 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Strongest entry yet from Loftus and company., July 28, 2011
This review is from: The End of Christianity (Paperback)
I was somewhat critical of the previous Loftus-edited collection of essays,
The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails, mainly for its unevenness. I find "End" to be a more consistently excellent work, with several clear instances of lucid, original thinking, well-presented.
Carrier continues to distinguish himself in essays on intelligent design and non-relativistic morality (though I confess that I do not have the requisite training to understand fully the formal logic he employs in the morality essay), and Robert Price extends his tradition of advancing fresh ideas in punchy, accessible prose. Hector Avalos performs something of a miracle, making nearly as strong a case in his brief essay as he does in
The End of Biblical Studies (though of course at great loss of the sort of supporting material a scholar would insist on reviewing before agreeing with his thesis).
Even Loftus, who I have not always accorded the highest respect, shines in his essays. I still think his "Outsider Test of Faith" has an "every problem looks like a nail/I have a hammer" quality to it, but I admit that he has demonstrated surprising versatility with this tool, and his prose continues to grow more acute and incisive, even as the language seems to flow better and better.
For those reasons and more, I hope that--despite this being termed the completion of a sort of "trilogy"--Loftus continues the good working of gathering interesting voices to criticize Christianity. Much of the literature coming out of New Atheism (and its relatives) comes from the sciences and philosophy), but while Carrier in particular touches on such issues, this is largely a work of theological and biblical criticism. As someone who himself deconverted mostly due to theological conflicts (my appreciation of science and atheistic philosophy came years later), I see a crucial place for this type of literature. In reading "End," I found it increasingly difficult to imagine any honest Christian engaging with the material and not coming away with serious doubts, if not outright skepticism regarding her faith.
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57 of 69 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Final Nail in Christianity's Coffin, July 10, 2011
This review is from: The End of Christianity (Paperback)
I recently received John Loftus' The End of Christianity, an anthology of some of the most profound atheist writers that delivers a variety of convincing arguments for the abandonment of the Christian faith. In lieu of new content, I decided to go ahead and write up a detailed review for his book. There are 14 chapters, and while I want to avoid summarizing each and every one of them I'd like to call attention to what I feel are some of the more noteworthy arguments.
The first chapter is written by Dr. David Eller and titled Christianity Evolving: On the Origin of the Christian Species. It is an informative and compelling piece that focuses on the evolution of Christian theology. It shows that the view that Christianity has "stood the test of time" is completely debunked in virtue of Christianity's ever-evolving body of beliefs. It includes an especially intriguing section titled The Invention of Traditions in which Eller explores the idea of building up theological tradition to deal with the acquisition of new evidence, even when the evidence conflicts with the tradition they are trying to assimilate with. Eller continues to argue that Christianity is not a singular term that refers to a stagnate and unified tradition, but instead is a multitude of targets that are constantly being realigned and reinterpreted by Christians who do not wish to see their faith inundated by newer evidence. It seems that Eller's argument resounds with a theme that many atheist authors (myself included) have been continuing to insist upon, and that is the destruction of the religious landscape. That merely accumulating new evidence will not be the final blow to Christianity, that we will have to continue to vigilantly stamp out the religious apologists' special pleading and ever-moving target for the debunking of their personal brand of religious faith.
In chapter 3, Loftus adds his own material in a chapter entitled Christianity is Wildly Improbable. He sets out a litany of claims derived from Christian creeds and argues that the more of these that Christians accept, the less tenable their faith becomes. Although it is only a minor and passing argument in the chapter, I found Loftus' analysis of a spiritual being creating a material being intriguing. Essentially, Loftus is using the arguments leveled at Cartesian dualism and re-tooling them as an argument against the creation of a material universe by a spirtual God. Loftus questions "How does something that is spirit create something material, or interact with it, unless there is some point of contact between them that they both share?" This same reasoning was the beginning of the end for Cartesian dualism, and if this argument was to be expounded upon I think it's consequences for theism could be equally devastating. Loftus also argues that scholars who are otherwise intelligent often look ridiculous when defending the faith, and analyzes arguments presented by major Christian scholars (Platinga, Craig, etc.) and points out their religious special pleading that often goes unnoticed.
In Chapter 6, Dr. Valerie Tarico examines the concept of emotions in relation to the Christian God. I haven't read any of Dr. Tarico's work before, but this was one of my favorite chapters in the book. In a likeable and humorous voice, Dr. Tarico examines God's various emotional reactions through out the Old Testament, using modern psychological analysis in order to demonstrate how unbelievably human God is at regulating His own emotions. She examines the idea of anthropomorphism and asks engaging questions about how we can tell the difference between which concepts of God are "something outside of us" versus "projections of our psyches". Drawing off of psychological and physiological research, Tarico argues that emotions are intricate and complex systems existing in our physical body, and then wonders how the authors of the Bible could possibly ascribe these attributes to an immaterial God.
In Chapter 8, Dr. Matt McCormick (a professor of mine, actually) argues against the historical case for the resurrection by using an analogous case of the Salem Witch Trials. After charitably summarizing the historical case for the resurrection (using Habermas, Wright, etc.), Dr. McCormick argues that we have more evidence (more quantity and better quality) of the Salem Witch Trials than we do for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. This again reiterates the fallacy of special pleading. Unless Christians want to accept that there was indeed witchcraft in Salem (as one of his debate opponents has in the past), it seems that Christians ought to reject the resurrection for the same reasons they reject the Salem Witch Trials.
In chapter 13, Dr. Victor J. Stenger analyzes the evidence for life after death and especially examines the use of NDE (Near Death Experiences) in attempts to prove the existence of an immaterial soul, or consciousness existing after death. He uncovers the lack of objective historical data and makes a compelling case to dismiss anecdotal evidence in favor of controlled, recordable experiments. He also questions the consequences for believing in `cosmic justices' and makes the case that those who do believe it in have less vested interest in seeking justice here on Earth, and turns the table on many apologists who sing the praises of everyone "getting what they deserve" (in chapter 10, Dr. Keith Parsons provides an examination of Hell, which he calls "Christianity's Most Damnable Doctrine").
This book is an absolutely fascinating read and well worth your money to pick up a copy. I didn't include many of the brilliant articles in the book written by other thinkers like Dr. Hector Avalas, Dr. Richard Carrier, and Dr. Jaco Gericke. If you are a believer, this book contains many questions that ought to give you considerable pause, and if you are an atheist or skeptic, this book is likely to put the nail in Christianity's coffin.
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69 of 86 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Take the outsider test for faith, Read the book!, July 6, 2011
This review is from: The End of Christianity (Paperback)
Loftus and his distinguished colleagues have managed to produce yet another excellent and invaluable addition to the debate over the truth of Christianity.
In the introduction John reviews his "outsider test for faith" and considers some objections. Nothing new here. People are still trying to avoid testing their worldview without there biases towards that worldview, and John rightly shows that this is nothing more than special pleading.
In chapter 1, "Christianity Evolving", Dr. David Eller treats us to a fascinating anthropological look at how Christianity, like a species that evolves and adapts to its in enviroment, has managed to blossom into a large family of peculiar sects.
In chapter 2, "Christianity's Success was not Incredible", Dr. Richard Carrier gives a capsule summary of his book
Not the Impossible Faith and then discusses some reasons that the facts about the origin of Christianity demonstrate that Christianity is not true. That may sound like "the genetic fallacy" but it isn't: he's saying that the claims Christianity makes about the nature of the universe (that there is an all powerful God who sent his son to die and that everyone must believe this in order to recieve eternal life, and that God wants all men to be saved) entails with some probability that God would make that message known to everyone all over the world, and thus Native Americans and the Chinese and everyone else ought to have been visited by God and told the truth. In past debates Carrier has had, Christians have responded that we don't know that God would actually do something like this, and maybe there are good reasons he wouldn't. But in this new chapter, Carrier sets up his argument in such a way that this objection is irrelevant. It involves Bayes' Theorem, and while I can't explain that here (Carrier himself explains it in a later chapter) more or less Bayes' theorem entails that when theory A predicts a piece of evidence with greater probability than theory B, that piece of evidence increases the probability of theory A. So, theory A (that Christianity is false) predicts with basically 100 percent certainty that Jesus would NOT have travelled all over the world after his death and explained the gospel to the Native Americans, chinese, and so forth. Theory B (Christianity is true) does not predict this information with 100 percent (or nearly 100 percent) certainty because if Christianity is true then there is a valid and non-neglible chance that God something like that would happen. Since the falsity of Christianity better predicts that piece of evidence than the truth of Christianity, then this raises the overall probability that Christianity is false to some degree.
In chapter 3, "Christianity is Wildly Improbable" John Loftus reviews a laundry list of weird and unlikely (and perhaps impossible) beliefs that Christians must defend, and concludes that the combination of all this things together results in Christianity having a negligible chance of being true.
Chapter 4, "Why Biblical Studies Must End" presents a capsule summary of Hector Avalos' book
The End of Biblical Studies which shows how the bible is irrelevant to modern life and is not really special in anyway except as a testament to what some people thought and believed in the ancient past.
In chapter 5, "Can God Exist if Yahweh Doesn't?" Dr. Jaco Gericke takes a bottom-up approach to disproving the existence of God. I call it "bottom-up" because I would describe the arguments of most other atheists as being "top-down": that is, they argue that the God of the bible can't exist because the God of the philosophers does not. Gericke, on the other hand, argues that the concept of God that Christian philosophers hold to cannot exist because not only are these two not the same thing, but more importantly because the biblical God is an absurdity. The Old Testament God is just an ancient Hebrew Superman. While any of the passages that indicate this (that God was thought of as having a body, for example) might be disputed or interpreted differently, the cumulative case brought forth by so many passages argues that the god being described by the Old Testament very probably was an ancient Hebrew superman. In chapter 6 Valerie Tarico adds further weight to this case by arguing that an all-powerful and immaterial being like God would not, and could not, have emotions like anger, which the Biblical God is said to have had. This is because emotions serve a function that is only necessary in limited creatures like humans. For example, anger is there to allow you to prepare for situations of conflict, because in a situation of conflict you need to be more aggressive and alert, lest you lose the fight. All of that is obviously advantageous in evolutionary terms. But a God wouldn't really need any emotions. After all, how could an all-powerful being need to become more alert or more aggressive to ensure that it didn't "lose the fight" against some other entity? Though many might describe those passages on God's anger as metaphorical, that is not the most obvious or plain meaning of the text. I recall reading a story in the OT (Blast that I cannot remember the passage now) in which God had to keep a distance between himself and his people because God thought that if he dwelt among the people he might lose control of himself and lash out and kill them. I must find this passage, but in the meantime, suffice to say that if such a passage exists it supports the views of Tarico and Gericke and shows that the biblical God is an absurdity.
In chapter 7, "The Absurdity of the atonement" Dr. Ken Pulliam fully demonstrates that the evangelical theory of Jesus' death (that Jesus' death occurred as a substitute for our suffering for our sins) is indefensible. The knockout comes on page 185: "If man knows right from wrong as a a result of being made in the image of God, and if one of the things man knows from his being so created is that it is wrong to punish the innocent, then how can the central doctrine of Evangelical Christianity, namely penal substitution, be maintained?"
Matt McCormick argues in chapter 8 that there is more and better quality evidence for witchcraft going on in 18th century Salem, Massachusetts than there is for the resurrection of Jesus. This means that accepting Christianity means accepting that witchcraft also occurred in Salem. But adopting that position is obviously absurd and problematic. One point that I wish Matt had brought out is that if one adopted an epistemic standard that was so low that it allowed the acceptance of the Salem witchcraft, as well as the many millions of other miracle claims, then such a position would mean that the resurrection offered only negligible support for Christianity. Think about it: if you are a Christian who accepts the claims of witchcraft and the miracle claims of other religions, you would have to adopt the position that some of these miracles were worked by demons or were worked by your God and the people witnessing the miracle did not realize. But then who's to say the miracle of the resurrection wasn't performed by a demon or by someone else's God?
In chapter 9 Bob Price offers a list of natural explanations for the gospel material on the resurrection, assuming that the gospel accounts themselves are basically correct, and he defends these as plausible. I agree, but incidentally I don't think anyone needs to concede that the material in the is that reliable.
Chapter 10 is a discussion of how the doctrine of Hell is a damnable and indefensible doctrine. Excellent material, and good food for thought: how can anyone be a Christian (or at least, an evangelical Christian) if it means defending a demonstrably immoral doctrine?
The remaining chapters I have no comment on, except for Richard Carrier's two excellent chapters. One is on whether the universe is intelligently-designed, and while I'm in agreement, I am not completely sure if his refutations of the fine-tuning aregument are totally sound.
Overall, this is an excellent book, and every open minded Christian ought to have a copy on their bookshelf right next to
The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails. I doubt that any rational person could remain a Christian after being informed of the arguments in these two books. At least, I can't imagine and have never seen a reasonable response to the points in these books. Highly recommended.
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