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Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity

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Atheists are often accused of not taking Christianity seriously. If we would only read the bible with an open mind, we would be impressed with its wonderful truths, believers often tell us. And it is a fact that many (perhaps most) atheists don't want to bother with biblical or theological studies -- why should they? -- but this is not true of John Loftus. John has taken the claims of Christianity seriously, diving in with both feet (full immersion atheism!), unflinchingly examining the exact sources that believers urge us to ponder. What more do they want? When you read Loftus's penetrating analyses, you have no choice but to discard the truth claims of Christianity. Some might try to argue, nevertheless, that Christianity is useful -- but the most important question that can be asked of any religion is, "Is it TRUE?" Finishing John's book, I am now more convinced than ever that it is not. As a former evangelical preacher myself who can identify with the agony John was forced to endure as he methodically rebuilt his world view, I agree that atheism is not only defensible, it is liberating.

I have read hundreds of Christian Apologetics books. I have read all of Lewis, all of Schaeffer, all of Peter Kreeft, all of Dr. Geisler's books, including his encyclopedia A-Z twice, and his Systematic Theology twice, I have read Plantinga, McDowell, Craig, Ravi, Moreland, Holding, Swinburne, N.T Wright, Paul Copan, R.C Sproul, Van Til, Gary Habermas, Lee Strobel, David Noebel, Francis Beckwith, Chuck Colson, Nancy Pearcy, Chesterton, Stuart C. Hacket, Martin, Richard Purtill, Stephen T. Davis, Dembski, Behe, Johnson, Collins, Paul K Moser, and many other Christian Philosophers and theologians . I have also read all the top skeptic authors, so I am pretty familiar with worldview issues, and the arguments and counter-arguments from both sides. I can't imagine why someone would say this book is not worth reading, unless they're either uninformed or have some axe to grind. I would rather take the word of both top Christian Philosophers and Skeptics that endorse this book before I would listen to some disgruntled person reviewing it on Amazon (whom I suspect has not even read the book). There must be something very admirable about a book that can be granted endorsements form both sides!

Here is what Dr. Geisler said (who is considered the DEAN of Christian apologetics, and wrote the Christian Encyclopedia of Apologetics, along with 70 other books): "[John's book] is a thoughtful and intellectually challenging work, presenting arguments that every honest theist and Christian should face."

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Dr. Mark D. Linville, Christian philosopher and contributor to the forthcoming Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology: "Of the spate of books coming from the so-called "New Atheists" that have appeared in the past few years--Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, et al--John W. Loftus's critique of Christian theism is by far the most sophisticated. Where, say, Dawkins might be found attacking a man of straw, Loftus understands and assesses the arguments of today's premier Christian apologists and philosophers. Evangelicals cannot afford to ignore Why I Became an Atheist."

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Dr. James F. Sennett, Christian philosopher and author of Modality, Probability, and Rationality: A Critical Examination of Alvin Plantinga's Philosophy: "Scholarly unbelief is far more sophisticated, far more defensible than any of us would like to believe. John W. Loftus is a scholar and a former Christian who was overwhelmed by that sophistication. His story is a wake up call to the church: it's time for us to start living in, and speaking to, the real world."

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Below are some endorsements from skeptics:

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Christopher Hallquist, president of Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison: "The Outsider Test for Faith chapter should earn Loftus a permanent place in the history of critiques of religion."

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Dr. Richard Carrier, author of Sense and Goodness Without God: "[John's book addresses] almost every conceivable argument for Evangelical Christianity in extraordinary and sobering detail. Every important aspect of intellectual Evangelical Christian belief comes in for critique, and often in more depth than you'll find in any other pro-atheism tome. Indeed, unlike, say, Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins, Loftus is a fully-informed insider who knows what he's talking about. He was fully immersed in making the very case for Christianity that he now tears down. He was trained by the best, is well-read in the field, and gets all the nuances that apologists accuse pop atheists (like Harris and Dawkins) of missing."

"[O]ne of the best things that Loftus contributes to the field of atheist philosophy, which I think is required reading for everyone, on both sides of the debate, is his Outsider Test. Given that, and his thorough scope and erudition, I doubt any honest, rational, informed Evangelical can remain in the fold after reading this book. Even though any Christian could pick at bits, the overall force of his case is, IMO, invincibly fatal."

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Dr. John Beversluis, author of C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion: "No review can begin to do justice to an ambitious book of this scope or to the sustained theological, philosophical, scientific, textual, and historical critique of Christianity that it contains. Suffice it to say at the outset that I have never read a book that presents such a massive and systematic refutation of the claims of Christianity, and I have seldom read a book that marshals evidence (from such a wide variety of disciplines) and documents its claims in such painstaking detail."

"'The Problem of Evil' (chapters twelve and thirteen)...contain one of the most penetrating and no-nonsense discussions of the problem that I have ever read. Readers who have taken the outsider test and absorb the lessons to be learned from these searching chapters, pondering Loftus's excruciatingly gruesome examples of pointless and avoidable suffering, and who then return to the proposed solutions of theists like St. Augustine, C. S. Lewis, John Hick, William P. Alston, Richard Swinburne, and, yes, even Alvin Plantinga, will find them generalized, detached, and unconvincing."

"I can pay John Loftus no higher compliment than to say that his new book is reminiscent of The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine and The Life of Jesus Critically Examined by David Friedrich Strauss. He has done for the 21st Century what they did for the 18th and the 19th. It should be required reading for every Christian."

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David Mills, author of Atheist Universe: "John W. Loftus is to atheism what Tiger Woods is to golf, or what Babe Ruth was to baseball. Loftus has provided, in this superb and entertaining volume, the crown jewel of the new atheist movement. As much as I admire and enjoy Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Dennett, Loftus is, far and away, my favorite author on this riveting subject. Loftus' esteemed reputation within the freethought community is indeed richly deserved. But this book exceeded even my highest expectations."

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Dr. Hector Avalos, Biblical scholar and author of The End of Biblical Studies: "I truly enjoyed this book. Why I Became an Atheist combines a dose of Augustine's Confessions with a cauldron of unremitting rationalism to yield one of the most potent antidotes to Christianity on the market today. If there is such a thing as the New Atheism, then John W. Loftus is one of the standard bearers. Loftus is a former Christian evangelical apologist who became an atheist, and he tells us why in a detail and a depth worthy of the best atheist writers today. It is a well-written, informed, and potent critique of religion and Christianity."

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So according to top thinkers on both sides, people who say this book is not worth reading are dead wrong. You decide whom to believe.

I think this book is the best single overall refutation of Christianity written, especially at the accessible level. The book Loftus wrote before this one, was the first skeptic book I read that made me realize I could be dead wrong, and I was a very intellectually committed Christian, trust me. I was planning on becoming an Apologist myself. This new book is like his old book but on major steroids! Loftus has added an extra 240 pages of content! I think this book is superior for multiple reasons

1. Its scope and coverage is more exhaustive on issues crucial to Christianity then other books.

2. Mr. Loftus anticipate objections from Christian philosophers and theologians that most skeptics do not, due to their lack of familiarity with the other side.

3. The book packs so much in such a little space, it has amazing brevity and at the same time brilliantly dismantles many core Christian beliefs and deals with many central issues that are left out of other works.

4. The author's familiarity with Christian Theology and philosophy makes him much better at drawing fine and important distinctions that other skeptics miss, due to their lack of expertise of the other side.

5. The personal Deconversion narrative woven through out the book gives it an informal and personal touch that makes it more fascinating to read than other skeptical books. Plus he is the only skeptical author that I know of that was a highly competent Christian Apologist and Philosopher; this of course is another unique feature.

6. The author's non-abrasive style sets your book apart from many other skeptic books. He wrote the book in such a way as not to polarize the believer. The average believer would be much more likely to read this book than other similar books due to his respectful manner. This I congratulate him on.

7. The book strikes a great balance between high conceptual content and accessibility, a balance that is hard to achieve.

There are many other noble things about his book. But basically what I am saying is that I think Mr. Loftus has written by far the best single overall refutation of Christianity in print! This is the best book to give to a believer. If I could only pick one book for my Christian friends to read, this book by far wins no contest. If you're a skeptic you should buy multiple copies for your friends and family, and if you're a believer you should do yourself a favor and buy copies for yourself and your friends and start honestly examining the claims of Christianity from both sides. If you're wise you will buy and read this outstanding book! I give it my highest recommendation.

John W. Loftus has written an important book that should be read by every Christian who cares about truth and reality. This is not the angry rant of some disgruntled former believer with an axe to grind. Loftus is thorough, fair and convincing. As a former Christian minister and apologist who became an atheist, he knows both sides of the belief question very well.

The insights and detailed information contained in this book make for enlightening reading. There is much for everyone, from believers who are courageous enough to think more deeply about their faith to nonbelievers who want to better understand the arguments Christians make in defense of their religion. I highly recommend this book.



--Guy P. Harrison, author of

Race and Reality: What Everyone Should Know About Our Biological Diversity

and

50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God

I was a Christian for 26 years, two of which I was on staff with Young Life Ministries, after reading this book I willfully set my "faith" down. This book helped me realize that my God was a myth and that the Bible was indeed a product of man and not God. When doubting Christians ask me what one book they should read, I say without hesitation, Why I'm an Atheist by John Loftus. I currently have two of my Christian friends reading his book and they are stumpped.

I've just finished reading three books on a common theme: losing one's (Christian) religion and becoming an atheist. All three are excellent, but each approaches the topic from a very different perspective. I thought I might review them all together, and post the combined review on each book at Amazon. I don't know if this is consistent with the Amazon review policy, but never mind.

The first book is Godless: How an Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists by Dan Barker. I was slightly put off by the subtitle: "How an evangelical preacher became one of America's leading atheists." After all, one of the key points about atheism - and one that we have to keep reminding theists about - is that atheism is not an organized body of belief, it's no more a religion than "bald" is a hair colour. So how can anyone be a "leading atheist"? Who's being led? However if one substitutes "prominent" or "influential" for "leading", we can let that pass. And Barker is certainly influential: he's co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which is one of the most active groups working to uphold the Constitutional prohibition on church-state entanglement, and seeking to counteract the negative image of atheism in this country.

The second book that I considered was William Lobdell's Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America-and Found Unexpected Peace. Lobdell is an award-winning journalist who covered religion for the Los Angeles Times. After writing about many aspects of religion for many years, he finally decided to write about his own journey.

The last volume in this trilogy was Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity, by John Loftus. Like Barker, Loftus was also an evangelical preacher, but although the arc of his experience was similar to Barker's, the result is a very different kind of book.

Let me begin by saying that each of these books is really good, and deserves a place in the library of anyone who is interested in the contemporary debate between religion and atheism. I hesitate to rank them, or recommend one over another; nevertheless I find myself compelled to do so. Of the three, Lobdell's "Losing My Religion" is the most essential, for two reasons. First, he is an excellent writer, and his prose is simply a delight to read. Secondly, he concentrates on his personal experience in a way that I haven't encountered before in books by atheists. Both Loftus and Barker set out to tell their story and argue their case, albeit in different ways, and each draws on writers as diverse as Dennett, Wells, Price, Martin, Shermer, Carrier and Nielsen in setting forth their arguments. Lobdell just wants to recount his own story, and what he has learned from it. He's not interested in converting anyone, or scoring debating points. As he writes, "To borrow Buddha's analogy, I've just spent eight years crossing a river in a raft of my own construction, and now I'm standing on a new shore. My raft was made not of dharma, like Buddhism's, but of things I gathered along the way: knowledge, maturity, humility, critical thinking and the willingness to face the world as it is, and not how I wish it to be. I don't knopw what the future holds in this new land. I don't see myself crossing the river back to Christianity... [or] adopting a new religion. My disbelief in a personal God now seems cemented to my soul. Other kinds of spirituality seem equally improbable. Besides, I like my life on this unexplored shore."

For Lobdell, the thing which provoked his crisis of faith was people: the yawning gulf between the ideals of a religion and the lives of those who practice and - especially - lead it. The horrific abuse of young people by Catholic priests, and the way it was covered up, refutes the claims of religion in many different ways. In particular, it challenges believers to justify theodicy (the "problem of evil"), as well as the Dostoievskian idea of religion as a bastion against the chaos of amorality. In contrast, for Barker and Loftus, the unravelling of their fundamentalist faiths was due to ideas: to the incoherence of religious dogma, and its incompatibility with science and reason.

Both Loftus and Barker were preachers. There are many distinct aspects to being a preacher: the performance artist, leading a collective act of worship; the scribe and teacher, explaining and interpreting the texts and practices of the faith; and the counsellor and confessor. All of these roles have roots in the shamanic and magical. As a believer, Barker was a performance artist, and he remains so in his newly found unbelief. He encourages the closeted skeptic, and fights fiercely for the rights of the non-religious. Loftus is a scribe: the apologist, the teacher. He was the defender of faith against its critics, and with the detailed knowledge that he acquired in this role, he has become the sharpest critic of religious apology.. Each of their books reflects the way that they interpreted the role of preacher.

Both Barker and Loftus seek to encourage those who seek affirmation of their skepticism or unbelief. Barker concentrates on the emotional, the social: "you are not alone", "you are not a bad person". Loftus focuses on the ideas, the dogma: the Bible is riddled with inconsistencies, the supposedly biographical accounts in the New Testament are demonstrably fictitious, the attempts by contemporary theologians to construct a coherent interpretation of the contradictory mess are failures, and so forth. If you have read some of the authorities that Loftus cites - Mackie, Martin, et al - I would still recommend his book, because he pulls all of the threads together in a compact and accessible manner. If you are unfamiliar with the literature, Loftus may be all you need. (Add Hitchens for spice, of course!)

I recommend all three books.

This is a good book that goes over a large number of arguments, in a relatively basic overview of each topic, with a large bibliography for those who wish to read more on a specific topic. I found myself disagreeing with the author on several points he made, however the book is written in such a way that I was able to understand his perspective, even if I didn't agree with it.

The book is definitely written at the level of a college textbook, so it might be a difficult or less enjoyable read for some. It is, however, a book that will make you think about the subjects he writes about.

To me, the one glaring omission is the lack of an index. A book of this type and size (over 400 pages!) would be much more useful as a reference if it was easier to refer back to the topics throughout the book. However, this omission should not preclude any person, atheist or theist, from reading this book.

As hard as it is to write an objective review of a religious work, I must do so now; this is a hugely important work, and one I feel that all people--not just Christians--need to see.

John Loftus is an atheist who rejected Christianity. Often, those who walk away from that faith are regarded as "not real Christians." They didn't do SOMETHING right. These deniers couldn't possibly have left because of some flaw in the message, so therefore they had to have left due to some flaw in themselves. It's an irritating ego defense that non-Christians hear often nowadays. Loftus puts the lie to the "No True Scotsman" fallacy here by demonstrating that he was indeed a very dedicated and real Christian--and still made the painful decision to walk away from it. Then he walks the reader through his reasoning. The message is very flawed, it turns out.

Loftus, unlike many apologists, cites his sources as he discusses the history of the faith, extensively tracks down the Bible's sources and how it was created, and relentlessly drives home point after point. I could spot no crack in his arguments. One very small example out of thousands: his discussion of the zombie uprising that supposedly occurred during Jesus' resurrection; why did nobody contemporaneous write a single word about it? Another: he speaks often of how people of other faiths are equally as convinced of their faith's superiority; this fact resonated with me.

He writes to a college-age reading level, but doesn't get into the real intricacies of logic. I hold a B.A. and am very well-read, and even so I had to re-read a few sections to understand what he was saying. But those who aren't educated in formal logic or rhetoric need not fear that this book will be way over their heads.

It's important to also note his "Outsider Test of Faith" holds up for just about everything, not just faith. I think Loftus could have gone further to apply the test to non-religious subjects. I also think it's worth noting that for Loftus, the choice appears to be either "Christian fundamentalism" or "atheism," forgetting that there are hundreds of other religions. It's a dichotomy that most people fall into, and it's not totally necessary.

I can't imagine someone being able to hold onto a faith of "milk" when this much "meat" is being presented. I think that what will emerge, for Christians, is a far more nuanced and balanced look at their religion, not necessarily their turning away completely as he did. This is a challenging book to read, but I really think that it's one that will spark discussion and inquiry, which are not bad things at all.

John Loftus's book is heavy in the philosophy and theology of Christianity - including why he rejects it. He outlines and summarizes arguments from both sides - so comprehensively, it could be used as a reference book. A strong point: in the process, he presents superb summary quotes from dozens of important thinkers from our past and present. The book is worth reading, not only for Loftus's words, but for these jewels liberally used in every chapter. My own feeling, however, is that the logical argumentations coming from philosophers and theologians degenerate into mental gymnastics over issues I've already decided are irrelevant. I prefer biblical textual criticism.

In biblical textual criticism I have read various viewpoints stressed by different authors: that the Bible is based on myth, that it is based on midrash, that various authors wrote in order to declare or defend a certain theology, that the Bible should be discounted because different authors' works can't be reconciled with each other, that the document looks exactly like what you would expect from had no God been present, etc. Loftus offers these arguments too, but adds a new twist I haven't seen as a main thrust. He stresses the overwhelmingly superstitious nature of the people of the day and offers a comparison. Even among the least educated people in the US, our worldview is infinitely more scientific than superstitious - when compared to the days of early Christianity. Then he blends in another main thrust - the importance of the worldview a person brings to the table.

Take home point: That a person's worldview, based on his/her cultural and individual milieu, is definitive in the way any religious debate unfolds. What baggage he/she brings to the debate is far more important than the rationale of the arguments, and the single most important factor continues to be, "what is the predominant religion where one is born." This leads Loftus to believe, and I agree, that they're all wrong. Most believers are atheists about every other religion except the one of his/her country of birth. When one rejects just one more religion and his/her mind is settled on the view that God is made in man's image - as opposed to the other way around - the extreme attention Loftus gives to individual issues of theology is not as interesting as it might be otherwise. A good example is the issue of the resurrection.

Loftus gives the issue of resurrection more credence than I would. He gives equal time to theorists advocating resurrection theories varying from complete bodily resurrection (a composite of the various versions in the gospels) to a metaphoric resurrection as attributed (by some) to Paul. Then he concludes with something more reasonable to those of us who think it's all mythology: "Until I experience people bodily rising up from the dead - and why wouldn't God do that once in a while just to show that it's a possibility? - I will continue judging the past by the present...Jesus died on the cross. He did not bodily arise from the grave. His body has rotted away."

I might add that Loftus's personal conversion and de-conversion stories are presented early. It connected with me and will connect with many other readers. "Why I Became an Atheist" is an expansion of a book Loftus wrote a few years ago and a lot of the new material is undoubtedly refined from his blogsite, "Debunking Christianity." I thoroughly enjoyed it and recommend it even for believers. It would be hard to find another reference with as complete an outline of apologetics for Christianity, even though Loftus gets the last word.

This is a fairly clear-headed, well-written, and mostly even-tempered presentation of the arguments for atheism and agnosticism and against Christianity and the existence of God (the author admits the distinction between atheism and agnosticism and proclaims himself an atheist). This book is not written by someone who doesn't understand how a conservative, evangelical Christian in America experiences life socially, emotionally and intellectually. The author, David Loftus, was such a Christian himself.

In fact, this book is written with the conservative Christian believer in mind. In an early chapter, discussing his past Christian beliefs, Loftus mentions by title the early persuasive influence of books by Hal Lindsey, C. S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, and Josh McDowell. He also talks briefly about his studies at a Christian college and in seminary, and about his time as a minister and teacher. For his current foils as an atheist, he engages contemporary Christian authors and texts that would be familiar to intellectual Christians of an evangelical turn. In his chapter "Does God Exist?" he confronts the arguments of William Lane Craig (under whom he studied), referencing such books as Criag's "Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview", written with J. P. Moreland, and his "Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology", written with Quentin Smith. Alvin Plantinga is another prominent Christian philosopher against whom Loftus argues.

He doesn't say much at all about the content of his beliefs as a Christian or how he got them. He mentions the Catholic church (when he was a child), the Pentecostal church (during his early conversion years), the Restoration Movement Churches of Christ church (during his fourteen-year ministry, when he also visited Israel with nine other ministers from Indiana), the Baptist church (later), and his schooling (prior to his ministry) at Great Lakes Christian College, Lincoln Christian Seminary, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and Marquette University, with a short period teaching philosophy and apologetics at Great Lakes Christian College.

This is a book worth reading. Christians will find it challenging, and atheists and agnostics will find it bolstering. It is not, however, without flaws. Atheists who believe this book is definitive would be mistaken.

Loftus may know more than he tells, but at times the book reads as if what he knows is mostly derived from handbooks and introductory texts and an armful of books from the modern atheist's bookshelf. He doesn't write as if he's independently and historically grounded in these subjects. Maybe he's just keeping things deliberately simple. He does admit he's writing "on the level of a college student, not the professional philosopher". (p.12)

At times he seems to have a "chapter and verse" mentality towards his sources. Several of his arguments could be called an "appeal to authority". His book is replete with selected snippets of quotation that recite other men's thoughts and determinations. It isn't so much that he seems to not do his own thinking as that he allows the thoughts of others to often state his case. He knows his own limitations and absence of academic authority, I suppose. But it does give the book the appearance at times of an intelligent amateur's well-written, moderately researched book, and not the rich reservoir of studied, weighty thoughts and conclusions of an established scholar; which, of course, is very nearly exactly right.

His intended audience being intelligent conservative Christians, it may be to his advantage to keep the references within the limited boundaries he has done. It certainly keeps him from going off, if he is able to, in convoluted, elaborating tangents and confusing the reader, who may then miss the point and force of the arguments. The narrow historical range of his references in some chapters is a little odd, though. Arguments against Christianity and doubts about biblical testimony are not new. Maybe he just wanted to use contemporary examples for his arguments, pro and con, so the book would come across as up-to-date and conversant with modern thinking.

He doesn't seem to anticipate sophisticated objections: he just moves along with his critique, and at times seems obtusely literal-minded, as if scoring points is more important than understanding. These, though, are arguments that, in combined force, have persuaded him. (I'm already agnostic, so he doesn't need to persuade me.)

He has a curious incomprehension of how different a god's "mind" could be from his own, which shows his philosophical naivete. His objection, for example, to the idea of a god having complete and absolute foreknowledge, from each temporal moment, of all ensuing and even possible events, is that this is "wildly implausible". He seems to believe that the limits of his understanding are the limits of the understandable. Like an overconfident undergraduate upon first discovering philosophy, he doesn't seem to realize how deep it's possible to go in thinking about some of these topics.

He doesn't appear to have given any of this much careful, independent thought. Throughout the book, as already mentioned, he often argues via the arguments of others (which doesn't imply, of course, that the arguments are invalid). Where he seems to be using his own arguments, they too often sound sophomoric, and at times like those of a spoiled child, complaining because others haven't done enough intellectual work for him. When Loftus was a Christian student, a professor (William Lane Craig) didn't respond convincingly to his questions about the coherency of the notion of God's complete, absolute foreknowledge, so he concluded the concept to be incoherent. When he later critiques the Bible and leaves behind the abstractions of philosophy he seems on surer intellectual ground, and the arguments, although still often derived from others, seem better formed.

I suspect that zealous atheists who have no experience with Christianity from the inside and thus no understanding of the Christian viewpoint will use this book like a high-grade blunt instrument in disdainful attacks against Christians, just as intelligent Christians have used Lewis, Schaeffer, McDowell, and F. F. Bruce and the more recent big-gun apologists against stiff-necked unbelievers. Zealotry from either side is often intellectually disingenuous: arguments are too often given to rationally persuade others and to support views that the zealot held unsupported by such reasons long before encountering the arguments themselves.

Loftus himself admits he lost faith through a period of personal, thus psychological, troubles. Looking for an intellectual justification for that lost faith, and not finding it, brought him to atheism. In other words, once outside, he couldn't justify heading back in; but he didn't initially leave (or initially enter, for that matter) solely based upon rational considerations. This is part of his apologia for atheism: stand outside Christianity and see if there's valid reasons to stand within it and if there are valid reasons to remain outside. Emotions, intuitions, feelings and whimsical impulse don't count. Those methods of choice could take you almost anywhere and then without rational deterrent direct you somewhere else.

Here are a few propositions extracted from the book. The language is mine.

(1) Religious beliefs are culturally and socially influenced and should be questioned.

(2) The existence of a god cannot be proven by reason alone, nor can it be derived from an examination of the physical world.

(3) The fact of unpalliated suffering and evil is testament against the existence of a benevolent, omnipotent god.

(4) Prayer is an ineffective method of causing change.

(5) That an event is a miracle is far less likely than the much greater likelihood of misunderstanding the provenance of the event believed to be a miracle.

(6) The people of the ancient world were rampantly superstitious. Therefore they were gullible and their descriptions and explanations are untrustworthy; and therefore, too, are their claims and beliefs concerning Christianity.

(7) The writers of the New Testament interpreted the Old Testament in fanciful, self-interested ways that are unwarranted and contradictory and therefore unreliable for an understanding of the New Testament.

(8) So-called prophecy in the Old Testament is not God's or anyone else's foreknowledge of events written of in the New Testament, but rather a false understanding caused by unwarranted interpretations.

(9) It is incomprehensible that a god can foresee our future acts, unless we do not have free will. But we have free will. Therefore a god cannot foresee our future acts, nor can anyone else; and thus prophecy is impossible.

(10) It is logically impossible that the Bible is inerrant in meaning or textual form. Not only is it full of superstition, it is scientifically unsound, and it contains internal discrepancies and contradictions; and the extant original language texts differ in content.

(11) To imagine a unique, innately perfect and morally absolute god, who thus cannot sin, to be incarnated in full essence as a man, who is, qua human, fully capable of temptation and sin, yet who against human nature never yields to temptation, and thus never sins in thought nor deed, is to conjoin and blend, into one inseparable being, two natures which are mutually exclusive, morally contradictory, and intrinsically disjoint. Such a being is a logical impossibility. Therefore it is impossible that Jesus was both God fully incarnate and fully human.

(12) The Bible is not reliable as history, nor as testimony to the existence of any god or of the conception and birth, life, resurrection, or divinity of Jesus.

(13) There is no sign of a god. There is no God. Death is the end of Life.

Why I Became an Atheist by John Loftus

"Why I Became an Atheist" is one man's personal journey from being a devout evangelical Christian to an ardent atheist. What sets this book apart from other personal journeys is the information-rich content and Mr. Loftus's ability to convey compelling arguments against Christianity. This 428-page book is composed of the following three major parts: Part 1: The Basis for my Control Beliefs, Part 2: The Biblical Evidence Examined, and Part 3: What I Believe Today.

Positives:
1. An excellent, well-written, meticulously researched book that provides sound arguments against Christianity.
2. As a former evangelical minister and a PhD in the philosophy of religion, John Loftus pulls no punches on why he rejects Christianity.
3. Fascinating, insightful look at a most interesting journey written in an engaging accessible prose.
4. Outstanding philosophical arguments.
5. Reference quality book. Sound arguments throughout this book and you don't need to be a philosopher or stay at a Holiday Inn to comprehend it.
6. John Loftus uses the best tool against Christianity, the Bible. And does so thoroughly and repeatedly yet somehow it never gets old.
7. A thorough look at morality.
8. Each chapters ends with notes that are a testament to how well researched this book is.
9. Faith versus reason...I "think" I know which one is superior.
10. Pascal's wager, really?
11. Innovative outsider test for faith.
12. The main arguments for "God" debunked.
13. Sound look at the conflict between science and religion. "If science cannot answer some ultimate question, what makes anybody think that religion can?"
14. Scientific evidence against "God".
15. The truth of miracles and the problems of historical research.
16. The strength of the argument of the unanswered prayer. Hey I got this book, does that count?
17. Great quotes abound in this book.
18. The problem of evil...the rock of atheism.
19. The power of a society without "Gods".
20. A great read from cover to cover.

Negatives:
1. It requires an investment of time, but it's an investment that pays major dividends at the end.
2. No links to references.


In summary, "Why I Became an Atheist" is one of the best arguments against Christianity. It is sound, reasoned and conveyed in a lucid manner. I highly recommend this book!

Further recommendations: "Godless..." by Dan Barker, "Christian No More" by Jeffrey Mark, "50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God" by Guy P. Harrison, "Decoding the Language of God" by George C. Cunningham, and "Society without God" by Phil Zuckerman.