Customer Reviews

The New Atheism and the Erosion of Freedom

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The most stunning bit of nonsense of Morey's book is his complete lack of honesty in citation. Almost every time that I checked his sources for a quotation, he completely took it out of every meaningful context and twisted it to his own needs. The most jaw droppingly bad and dishonest citation from him was on page 87-88 with his summation of "The Art of Deception" from Nicholas Capaldi. Morey states "Some atheists deliberately use deception to refute theism. Why else, apparently, would Prometheus Books, the main atheist publisher, produce The Art of Deception, which instructs its reader to use any valid or deceptive argument as long as it helps him to win his case?" He then goes on to take quotations from the second half of the book that tell people how to make fallacious arguments. Why does he take quotations only from the second half? Because if he took almost any quotation from the first half the real intent of of Capaldi's book would become obvious. Capaldi's intent of his book is to teach people how to make logical arguments only. It says so in the PREFACE and the intent is obvious on every page of the book. The reason for the title "The Art of Deception" is this. Capaldi felt that "Even after completing the standard course in informal logic, most students are as incapable of spotting a fallacy as they were before they enrolled." By teaching students how to make fallacious arguments, they are better at spotting fallacious arguments and thereby (and this is the WHOLE point in the book) being better able to NOT make fallacious arguments themselves and to spot fallacious arguments in others. Morey is counting on his gullible readers to not pick up Capaldi's book, beacuse if they do they'll realize instantly how dishonest Morey is.

Another tactic of Morey is setting up strawman positions to knock down. The most prevalent and accurate definition of atheism is one that Morey doesn't even bother to address until after Morey had found a definition of atheism that he can knock down easily. The defining of atheism as "without a belief in god" is merely shrugged off by Morey as "...one of the more eccentric definitions of atheism that pops up now and then...". One of his bad arguments against this definition is that "if a simple absence of belief constitutes atheism, then virtually everything from rocks and tree stumps to dogs and cats would have to be numbered among the atheists. When a definition is so broad as to include almost everything, it usually means nothing." By these goofy standards almost all words that begin with the prefic "a-" (meaning without) would mean nothing too. I always thought that it was rather implied that the definition meant "A PERSON without a belief in god", but to Morey's goofy logic the absence of the word "person" from the definition is somehow fatal to it.

Of course his whole reworking of the defintion of the word "atheism" is to make it an assertion rather than a denial making "atheism" a univeresal negative. And of course universal negatives are very difficult to prove. Heck, you can probably defend the existence of Santa Claus as long as you make sure that your opponents position is a universal negative. "How can you state that there is no Santa Claus in the universe if to say so you would have to see everywhere in the universe at once. To see everywhere at once you would have to be Santa Claus(that's how he knows the good kids from the bad). Thereby you would have to be Santa Claus to say that there is no Santa Claus". Any position that works well in defending the existence of Santa Claus is a pretty darn easy position to hold. Morey knows that by painting his opponents position as a universal negative that he has an easy strawman to knock down.

He also has a section on fallacious arguments. Which at face value are acurate but I can't help but wonder WHO had made these arguments. When he does give someone elses arguments as an example of that fallacy, he usually just states incorrectly someone else's position to make it fit his fallacy.

I could go on forever, but here is one last piece of Morey reasoning.(pg. 151)

(Atheist)-What do you mean that _I_ have proved the bible! I don't want to prove the bible.

(Morey)-Well, do you feel that the gospel which I have shared with you is foolishness?

(Atheist)-Of course it is!

(Morey)-Then you just proved 1 Corinthians 1:18 which says that the gospel is foolishness to those who are lost.

This is just so much nonsense. He's making a case for the bible by showing simple self-fulfilling prophecies. Of course a person will be prophesized to be "lost" if they don't believe in the bible, because by the simple act of not believing in the bible the person will be considered lost by the bible. Here's another brilliant prophecy by Morey a little bit further down the page - "Do you believe in the ten commandments? If you don't, and I know that you don't, then the bible predicts that you will probably engage in immorality." Wow! What a brilliant prediction! Who would have thought that if a person doesn't believe in some rules(ten commandments) that they wouldn't follow them( engage in immorarity which is defined as not following the ten commandments). The prediction that people who don't believe in certain rules will not follow them is truly earth shattering. (or atleast to Morey it is...) Morey states -"One of the reasons that I believe in the bible is that everything in life that I see and experience conforms exactly with what the Bible says I will see and experience." With self-fulfilling predictions like above, I don't doubt it.

I could go on forever pointing out the nonsense in this book, but because of space limitations I will have to stop here.

I'm afraid that the only way that I can describe this book is that it is just christian cheerleading. To those christians who are entirely unfamiliar with the philosophy of epistemology and theology as it relates to the existence of a god, this book may seem very impressive but for people who are actually familiar with these subject matters and have studied them this book is a bit of a joke.

Morey attempts to cover many topics in this thin volume and all of them ineptly. The clownish ways he makes ad hominem attacks on straw men, knock down their straw man positions and does a victory dance on their straw corpses would be very entertaining if it wasn't so sad that people actually think that these are the actual arguments being used in real discussions by educated people on these matters. A reader of this book who is not familiar with the real debates going on in these matters would come away from this book thinking that atheists are cringing from the light of theist arguments. This is funny when in the real world belief in god/gods is inversely proportional(one goes up, the other goes down) to the amount of education that a person receives. A survey by Larson and Witham in Nature Magazine found that only 7% of prominent scientists believed in a god. Morey and many others would want christians who are disturbed by this to believe that this lack of faith is based on some kind of mental deficiency or rebelliousness and not on well reasoned arguments. All I have to say is read the actual arguments put forth by atheists and not Morey's imaginary straw man atheists.

I cringe at the idea that some people honestly believe that "his[Morey's] book effectively replaces whole shelves of other books, sections of libraries and most of modern culture..." Only people who haven't actually read those books, think they are replaceable by this one. People need to read more about different ideas, not less. I believe that this gets to the heart of the matter regarding Morey's intended audience. They need to be uneducated on the matters discussed in this book for him to come off as knowledgeable.

This is probably the reason why this book can be so irksome at times. It requires the almost total ignorance of the reader on the subjects that Morey writes about for what he writes to be accepted and praised. These arguments may seem good to the uneducated person but against people that are knowledgeable about theses subjects Morey's writing are almost intellectually worthless and just so much cheerleading- "Aren't we so smart and them so dumb."

I have nothing against a person buying this book, but anyone who purchases this book should also look into the books that Morey has attacked. The average christian reader who reads this book and doesn't investigate Morey's accusations would be doing himself a great disservice. A nice place to start is Morey's accusation about the intentions of the book "The Art of Deception" by Nicholas Capaldi. Read Morey's description of the intent of "The Art of Deception" on pages 87-88 of his book, and then read the "The Art of Deception". You won't have to read much past the preface of the "The Art of Deception" (but feel free to read the whole thing) before you realize that Morey completely lied or at the least was intentionally misleading his readers. Once you see Morey's duplicity in this accusation of his, you will feel a need to investigate more of his accusations. Morey is counting on people being ignorant of the subjects that he is writing about. If people aren't ignorant than Morey can't get away with spreading misinformation.

Dr. Moray has written a book that very accurately explains the common personalities of the average atheist you are likely to run into. I found his description quit accurate in describing the common day-to-day atheist that I meet, at least the more vocal ones.

He starts by giving a small historical analysis of how the atheist movement got started, and how it was able to reach the levels that it has. He continues by analyzing a few of the prominent atheist of our times, and showing their underlying beliefs. He then goes on to show how important it is for us to realize this, and the outcomes of what has happened in other cultures if we don't stand up against them. After this, Dr. Moray puts emphasis on the philosophical mistakes of atheism, and how they try to be a non-negating "religion". Dr Moray than goes to atheist's flaws in how they analyze the bible, and easy answers to give to such illogical attacks. Dr. Moray than concludes with several sample debates he has gotten into that involve different attacks on Christianity.

There are some other points to consider about this book. One being that this book is small, so it is more intended as an introduction than as an answer all- be all analysis of the theistic atheistic debate. The second point is this book has many of the old, not as forceful arguments against atheism. While still prevailing against atheistic philosophy, there are many more forceful arguments that have been developed against atheism. Authors like, Greg Bahnson, Ravi Zacharia, J.P. Moreland, and Alvin Plantiga, have far superiorly demonstrated the fatal flaws of atheism. However, this can not be counted against Moray since his book is pretty old(1986) and was probably much more ingenious in its time. The third point is that sometimes in the book, on certain arguments, Morays arguments reduce to jumps from the premises to the conclusion. Without too much emphasis on the middle steps necessary to arrive at the conclusion. He gets ahead of himself and jumps to the conclusion without walking the reader through all the steps. Although his conclusions are valid, this would make it hard to follow for the average novice reader interested in atheistic mistakes. This would also turn off many "sincere" atheist trying to understand the arguments presented by theists. The last point I would like to make, and probably the least important, is that the book, especially at the beginning, has a "hard to follow" writing style. Sometimes Moray makes grammatical mistakes that cause you to lose track of what he is saying, and force you to reread his statements.

With all that said, this book is great for any American who sincerely loves his country, and what it was built on, and wishes to protect that from any influences that cause its downfall.

A Christian friend of mine, who I considered quite bright recommended this book to me. I'm fairly open-minded, and I thought Dr. Morey even makes a couple of good points. But he also makes many bad points. For example he is always attacking particular atheists personally, instead of their arguments. Also he seems unaware at how circular his thinking is, he points out how non-believers will not live according to scripture. He finds this significant, where I wonder, "What else would you expect?"

My friend also suggested that write to Dr. Morey. I did send some of my questions to him, however, I never received a response. If you want to be entertained, I think it likely you may enjoy this book. However, I'm sure that there must be better defenses of the Christian Faith.

this book was clearly written for theists who need reaffirmation by attacking there opposition...

no atheist thinks like this

if this is how the author truly sees atheism I doubt he ever had a discussion with an atheist over the age of 12...

no learned non believer would ever make such frivolous claims, most of which are mirrored in theist thinking
as was pointed out by a fellow reviewer (suptrans, you have no idea how much respect I have for you for such a vivid explanation for the flaws of this reasoning)

I was at a total loss when it came to showing the theist readers how rediculous these arguments are
apparently theist decided to abandon all logic and are now accusing atheists for theories which are not a part of atheist thinkin or at least twisting them into irrationality

I have yet to stumble upon a theist writer who considers the rebuttal to his arguments and actually tries to stand up to them

don't wait for that to happen

"God" will materialize before you first XD

As an atheist and graduate of a bible college, I was curious when confronted with the title "new atheism", but realized after reading the material that truly "new" only describes a reformulated definition by an apologist of atheism from his own perspective. If one wishes to use this book in debate, it will only work on the uninformed, for it only debates a creation of the author, not atheism itself.

This is a lousy book on the topic of theism vs. atheism. This book is simply not a scholarly work. If you want to do serious research on this topic I recommend getting something written by a professional philosopher. One fine book that comes to mind is Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology by Quentin Smith and William Lane Craig.

Dr. Moray has written a book that very accurately explains the common personalities of the average atheist you are likely to run into. I found his description quit accurate in describing the common day-to-day atheist that I meet, at least the more vocal ones.

He starts by giving a small historical analysis of how the atheist movement got started, and how it was able to reach the levels that it has. He continues by analyzing a few of the prominent atheist of our times, and showing their underlying beliefs. He then goes on to show how important it is for us to realize this, and the outcomes of what has happened in other cultures if we don't stand up against them. After this, Dr. Moray puts emphasis on the philosophical mistakes of atheism, and how they try to be a non-negating "religion". Dr Moray than goes to atheist's flaws in how they analyze the bible, and easy answers to give to such illogical attacks. Dr. Moray than concludes with several sample debates he has gotten into that involve different attacks on Christianity.

There are some other points to consider about this book. One being that this book is small, so it is more intended as an introduction than as an answer all- be all analysis of the theistic atheistic debate. The second point is this book has many of the old, not as forceful arguments against atheism. While still prevailing against atheistic philosophy, there are many more forceful arguments that have been developed against atheism. Authors like, Greg Bahnson, Ravi Zacharia, J.P. Moreland, and Alvin Plantiga, have far superiorly demonstrated the fatal flaws of atheism. However, this can not be counted against Moray since his book is pretty old(1986) and was probably much more ingenious in its time. The third point is that sometimes in the book, on certain arguments, Morays arguments reduce to jumps from the premises to the conclusion. Without too much emphasis on the middle steps necessary to arrive at the conclusion. He gets ahead of himself and jumps to the conclusion without walking the reader through all the steps. Although his conclusions are valid, this would make it hard to follow for the average novice reader interested in atheistic mistakes. This would also turn off many "sincere" atheist trying to understand the arguments presented by theists. The last point I would like to make, and probably the least important, is that the book, especially at the beginning, has a "hard to follow" writing style. Sometimes Moray makes grammatical mistakes that cause you to lose track of what he is saying, and force you to reread his statements.

With all that said, this book is great for any American who sincerely loves his country, and what it was built on, and wishes to protect that from any influences that cause its downfall.

Well, it seems this silly little man Robert Morey is trying ever so hard to convert more 'sinners' into his trecherous coven. The fact that many people find the idea of a supreme being absurd is the target of his attacks in this book which seem meant to somehow scare people back into beliving.

Isn't that what organized religion has been doing for as long as humans have recorded history? Hasn't organized religion told people that they better bow down at the alter of the great big spirit lord in the sky who knows everything and sees everything yet we can't ever see and who never speaks to anyone except in private, panicky delusions. "And we high prophets shall put down the laws we think this 'God' must believe are morality's clauses (by the way, ever break one and you'll be tortured forever after death) and you must do as we say, we prophets, we chosen people and we are in charge tiny, meek and humble people, we are your leaders because this blot in the sky we just made up is everyone's creator." (so sayeth the shepard . . .)

Isn't god just an easy way out of more complex questions? Why does life exist--"uh, um, uh, um--well some all powerful superbeing must have made us. (so sayeth the flock . . .) So everything in our lives is part of the plot of a Silver Surfer comic book? (God bless Jim Starlin . . .)

Listen, believe what you will believe--in fact the moral codes set out by the ancient politicians are pretty good; nice, decent codes of conduct. But to paint every non-believer as some sniveling threat to humanity the way this petty, fanatical paranoid does, is, well . . .a mortal sin.

Dr. Morey has exposed the true agenda of anti-Theist's: TO CRUSH RELIGIOUS FREEDOM!

Dr. Morey gives a sample debate in his book with atheist Sheila Thompson from the Freedom From Religion Foundation. I've listened to that debate on audio tape and she played the same old game that all anti-theist play, such as Arguing from silence (Which she tried to make valid), arguing from ignorance and ad hominem attacks. She even grossly took verses out of context. And to make things worst, She relied on books written by 19th century German Rationalist Theologians or relies on writers that rely on those rationalist theologian's. How pathetic and unscholarly! What she didn't know is that those arguments, made by those rationalist theologians, have been throroughly refuted by many Christian theologians such as Dr. Gresham Machem, Dr. Edwin Yamauchi, Dr. James Robinson, Dr. John Warwick Montgomery, etc, etc. This book list all of them including the books they have written.

Dr. Morey shows that all of the arguments made by atheist are logically invalid, historically inaccurate and even downright fabricated.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants a good does of how illogical atheist are and learn what their agenda is: DESTROY RELIGIOUS FREEDOM.