Reading a Christian Apologetics Book After Becoming an Atheist

I wrote my master’s thesis on religious
rhetoric with a particular focus on what I was personally familiar
with — fundamentalist Christian rhetoric — so I’ve re-read piles of Christian
apologetics books after becoming a non-believer.

I could comment at length on many of them, but the one that stood out to me was
Rick Warren’s  Purpose Driven Life.  It was
insultingly stupid not just in its ideas, but in its third-grade reading
level.  That can be contrasted to the time back in my fundamentalist
church when it was passed about like a tome full of sage wisdom.   Warren commits elementary logical fallacies on
nearly every page. 

I actually passed on using it as a source in my thesis even though it was a
great example of what I was analyzing because it was just too ridiculous.  I chose instead to focus on Al Mohler, Bill
Craig, and Alvin Plantinga as I wanted a good cross-section of low-brow and
high-brow sources (as far as those labels can be applied in this area).  Warren shouldn’t even be considered on that
lower end and his book has sold more than 30 million copies.  That tells us so much about our culture.    

My aunt sent me Case for Christ (along with an engraved KJV and CS Lewis’ Mere Christianity) when I graduated from college. I bust out CfC whenever I am bored and in need of a good chuckle. I find that reading apologetics is one of the easiest ways to get myself out of a bad mood, but also to sharpen my own rhetoric in dealing with the BS that gets slung my way whenever I talk to Christians. Reading the actual sources forces me to come up with counter arguments, and exposes me to the types of thoughts I expect to see parroted all over the internet, which makes it easier to take them apart. 

I think I appreciated the Bible more after I abandoned Catholicism.

ugh, that reminds me of the time an anonymous coworker left a copy of Case for Christ tucked between the driver’s side mirror and door of my car

HR was shut down for the day by then, but I handed it over to them, along with a formal complaint, the next day…

Reading the Bible carefully to understand my religion better was one of the things that helped me become an atheist. So when I read it now, it’s not like I’m reading it with a totally fresh perspective; I read it during my “transitional period.”

The burden of note-taking for The Case for Christ is a heavy one to bear.

I’m glad you were annoyed at Strobel’s character insertions in the book, too; I found it absolutely maddening (although it did serve to remind me that I was reading fiction).

I say publish the notes that you have (especially if your method of note-taking eventually devolves into dictating the angry, muttering “conversations” you have with Strobel while reading along) and leave the wholesale criticisms to the people that have already done so. 🙂

I’d be interested in reading this.  Do you have a link?  Did you included Chesterton?  A friend of mine in seminary now swears by Chesterton.

I especially like how their cartoons often unintentionally give the opposite message to the one they intend.

(Are the cartoons in the magazine or just on their website?)

I read one about 12 pages of one that my brother gave me. I can’t remember the title now (It might have been Geisner’s “Christian Apologetics”), but somewhere around page 10 the author states pretty plainly that he believes in God because it make him happy, and used that as the basis for the rest of his arguments. I had to read the paragraph about five times to make sure that was what he said.

I haven’t read a christian apologetic since becoming an atheist. But I did have the experience the other way round. I first read The God Delusion as a christian.

When I re-read it as an atheist it was like reading a completely different book. I just couldn’t see what had made me so angry the first time. On second reading, freed from the need to defend the indefensible, I found it a gentle good humoured thoughtful book.

Robert Price also has a rebuttle for The Purpose Driven Life (The Reason Driven Life).  Its a good read.

My mom sent me some Sylvia Brown woo when I came out.  She inscribed it “I know you don’t believe in god but god believes in YOU!!!!! LOVE YOU!!!!!!!”

I’ve never read much Christian apologetics – at least, not in the original and not in defense of Jesus – but I read plenty of Jewish apologetics in my teens and early twenties. Some I liked enough to actually buy the books (after having first read borrowed copies). I re-read a couple about a year, year-and-a-half ago. What seemed to be impressive year ago now reads as logical fallacies and retreading of long-ago refuted arguments.
 
The  strangest thing is constantly coming across versions of Pascal’s Wager used in defense of Judaism, despite the argument having been first articulated by a Catholic arguing in favor of Catholicism.
 
I went through about a third of an apologetics book that I got as a gift and posted my analysis: http://2nd-son.blogspot.com/2009/12/search-judaism-critique-introduction.html
 
I don’t know if anyone here is interested in apologetics for Orthodox Judaism, though the truth is that most of the arguments in the book apply to religion in general, and much of it is standard creationism.

The only reason Lee Strobel wrote that shit is to sound convincing to his jesus-junkie wife so that she would not divorce him

This wasn’t an apologetics book, but I do remember a book called the Bondage Breaker having an effect on me when I was a Christian in high school.  The basic premise is that by doing un-Christian things, you actually invite demons into your life, who then can exercise control over you.  Most of the demon-baiting activities are the ones you’d expect (witchcraft, Ouija boards, etc), but non-Christian music, Dungeons and Dragons and even martial arts made the list.  I took it seriously, too, throwing out a couple hundred dollars worth of D&D sourcebooks and most of my secular music.

Now, I keep the book on my shelf and crack it open occasionally just to remind myself of the sheer lunacy a faith-based worldview can lead you into if there’s no anchor in reality.   There was no real argument in the book, it was all scripture quotes and bad analogies.  It’s embarrassing that I took it so seriously (and that I had to re-buy NIN’s Downward Spiral), but it also provides a good motivation for wanting to engage the world in a skeptical manner. 

I’ve always been an atheist so I’ve only really got one perspective on these kinds of books.  I think that it is important to be informed on a subject that I reject so thoroughly so I read a few CS Lewis books which are just full of fallacious arguments that require that each stage be accepted before moving on to the next argument.  Having not accepted the very first argument in Mere Christianity (absolute moral law) I wasn’t able to accept anything that was built on it and I came away feeling like I’d watched a magician fumble through a trick.  He was a good writer despite the poor subject though.

I’ve read The Shack.  Now that is one piece of utter shite.  I’d been told by various Christians that it was some kind of revelatory explanation as to why Christians believe in their god but when I read it all I wondered was why the lead character didn’t question the god he was talking to.  Where was his anger?  Where was his curiosity?  Where was his honesty?

I was going to read Strobel but after Hemant’s series of questions a couple of years ago I decided that I’d rather pluck out my own eyes than read one word of this dishonest individual.

That said I did enjoy Jim Henderson’s book “Jim and Casper go to church”.  It is well written and balanced and the author isn’t trying to sell a belief system.  He’s more about looking at how the system is broken so he can work to fix it and make Christians better people.  “Make them atheists” I hear you cry but make them good Christians is a close second.

One of the books that led me to become a Christian was C. S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”. His “thinking man’s” approach made a lot of sense to me.  But after a decade or so of living and breathing evangelical faith, the more I read the Bible, the more I tried to apply the Bible to real life, the more I taught Bible classes, the more I prayed and the more God was silent, I began to lose my faith.  It was pretty scary.  I prayed more, “waited on the Lord”, read the Bible, meditated on the Bible, consulted pastors.  As the specter of losing my faith grew, I went back to Lewis’ “Mere Christianity” looking for that clarity that was missing.

I got clarity alright.  As I read his book again, Lewis’ words fell apart like wet tissue paper.  He was just making stuff up.  His argument from morality was plainly errant.  As I made my way through the book the second time, I recall being angry at myself for having been so easily swayed by fluff in the first place.  

That was the tipping point where it became possible for me to consider that my faith was simply wrong.  So in a manner of speaking, I have to thank C. S. Lewis for helping me *out* of my Christian faith and into a confident, mature real life without theism.

“His softball questions and totally clued in and prepared “experts” convinced me that his “search” was completely phony.”

I feel the same way whenever I see an Alpha Course poster that says something like “Explore the meaning of life” – as if to imply that the direction and destination of the course is unknown. It isn’t exploring to be led by a guide down a path of half truths, lies, aqnd empty promises.

Another of their posters: “Does God Exist? – Yes, No, Probably” – how generous of them to include two yes answers!

I just picked up a free copy of “The Case for Faith” (garage sale leftover) and plan to give it a go.  Years back my mother gave me a heavily annotated copy of “More than a Carpenter”.  I started out counter-annotating, but soon gave up.  It was too much work, and as likely to change her as her notes (didn’t) change me.

I actually never read apologetics as a Christian, except CS Lewis Screwtape letters if that counts. But I’ve read parts of a few since and they are pretty bad.  I felt particularly masochistic and I watched Lee Strobel’s movies on netflix.  In the same week I watched Expelled.  I think my brain shriveled from it.  

We had a creationist book written for teens and I read it before and after learning about evolution. I was really mad at how it frames the discussion in a way that encourages kids to stop looking, questioning, thinking.  Its very heavy handed and hedges creationism as necessary for your immortal soul.  So kids learn it the wrong way, and then are essentially brainwashed into not ever question anything about it.  At least, that’s the hope.  I grew out of it pretty fast.

To me it was a whole book dedicated to pointing out the obvious. I really don’t understand why people are so exercised over it (well, maybe I do, in the case of people who suspect its arguments are correct but would rather not admit it).

For this reason, I found Dawkins’ other books much more interesting.

A lot of the apologetics arguments I see, indeed most of them, are arguments for the existence of some sort of nebulous god-like concept. How you go from that to Christianity (or whatever) is rarely explained. The rest of the arguments are of this sort:

Believer: The Bible says such-and-such right here!
Unbeliever: How do you know that Bible is correct in the first place?
Believer: [does not compute; brain resets] The Bible says it right here!

That is so frustrating – I can relate. I’ve been “out” for about three weeks now, and I have since been trying to gently reopen the topic for discussion. I’ve sent emails, youtube videos, lots of text messages and phone calls, and even a family counseling session, to no avail.

I’ve been nearly overwhelmed with a sea of “reading suggestions” since coming out,  and since the act doesn’t seem to be reciprocated frequently (I have a sneaking suspicion that, deep down inside, they have the same doubts that I did but are afraid to explore them), I think I will politely opt out the next time a Christian recommends that I read an apologist text.

Wow, what a good Christian you were, getting rid of the “secular influence” in your life. The church I grew up in preached a similar “garbage in, garbage out” philosophy, but by the time I got to high school I was more attached to my music collection (in CD format!) than I was pandering to the congregation. I somehow rationalized that, despite the messages to the contrary, that I could be a good Christian regardless of the music I listened to (or movies or whatever).

However, in the process I also carried a whole bunch of guilt – that my stubbornness to purge my music and book collection represented me treating them as “false idols” (has anyone else heard or been taught this stuff?). But I wondered where it all stopped – after I get rid of my music, then what? Corduroy skirts? Wearing doilies on my head? “Modest” swimsuits? Courtship instead of dating? The carrot religion holds out is a pretty impossible one to grab, that’s for sure.

Glad we both got out, though. 🙂

As an atheist myself I tried reading Strobel’s book one time, as my then fiance (now wife) who is a liberal theist said I should give it a go. I only made it to Ch. 3 before giving up, it was so bad. I wish I had that quote from Billy Madison where the moderator for the contest at the end goes on that long rant about how stupid everyone now is for having heard Billy’s answer, I would say those words to Mr. Strobel.

I get emails like that from my mom all the time!  After I came out as atheist to her, she was convinced that I would come back to Christianity if I would just read Case for Christ.  

Unfortunately I only got through the first chapter before I got too bored to read any more of it, and I have to agree with one of the other commenters here who mentioned the softball questions.  The way he presented his “conversion” was so transparently phony that I just didn’t feel like reading on would be a good use of my time.  I had school to worry about.

Well, you have to accept some sort of nebulous god-like concept before you can accept the beliefs of any particular God-based religion.

I’ve never been religious though I was raised going to Church; I did figure I’d give the religious side a chance and read a few Pro God books after reading Dawkins/Hitchens/Harris. I do think it… mellowed me a bit – the Horsemen left me feeling fairly anti-religious.

The closest thing I found to convincing is the “the universe is just right” argument, that I believe Antony Flew gets into, but there are plenty of cosmologists who disagree with the necessity (although there is lots we don’t know about how our universe came to be), and such a God is really only of practical interest to cosmologists and philosophers and is a long way from requiring worship, prayer, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfYJsQAhl0

 My own perspective is very different, in that I am a Christian but not an Evangelical who actually doesn’t like most Christian Books written in today’s happy clappy fashion. I cut my teeth on St. Augustine’s “City Of God” and have read since then St. Bail and Thomas Aquinas. I also fully understand the Historical context of them. I also like Rene Des Carte, and while I disagree strongly with John Locke, find his work vastly superior to Lee Stroebel from the limited exposure I have had to him.

That said, I don’t get why even an Atheist would like Richard Dawkins “The God Delusion” and have spoken to numerous Atheists who agree that his “good natured and good humoured” book was filled to the Brim with horribly skewed perspectives, bad argumentation, and chap sarcasm used to cover up the flaws.

Which brings me to why I am posting here now.

I am a Psychology Student working toward a Doctorate. Its gradual as I must work and don’t have the funds to take more than two classes at a Time.

Still, what I have been most fascinated by was this sot of topic. It seems to me that the reason you may originally find a Christian Apologetics work strong, only to later see it “as it truly is” and weak and unconvincing may be more a reflection of your own internal biases and conflicts being projected onto the pages you read, and not really the result of coming to a True Realisation based on honest examination.

I do not mean this as an insult, but the internal biases we carry in our thoughts as well as a tendency to try to read into texts our own thoughts and feelings ultimately can’t be ignored. If any of you came back to Christianity you may yet again have an opinion change.

To use an example, Politics has the same basic patterns we see in Religion.

I think that this is like Politics. A Lifelong Democrat may become disgruntled at one policy the Democrats have, say regarding their affiliation with the Unions. This disgruntlement, and exposure to political corruption within the party, may lead him gradually to the Republican Party instead. There, over Time, he may gradually be convinced of Republican Platforms that extend past his initial problems with the Democrats, and later come to identify himself as a Republican himself, thus changing.

If this man also had read a Book by a Republican that he had thought was weak and made no sense, and another book by a Democrat which he thought had all the solutions and made perfect sense, he may upon his change of parties find he no longer thinks the Democrat Written book is all that sensible, and may in fact reject it now as sheer nonsense, whilst coming to a greater appreciation, even stalwart agreement with the Republican Book he once spurned.

The same is of course True in Reverse with a Former Republican who becomes a Democrat, or a former Labourite who becomes a Tory.

What you are describing is not a growing of your minds into greater logical analysis of the books, but rather a shift in the paradigm you use to understand the world and how you must make the information now fit into that new Paradigm. So you read into the books your current perspective. In books by Atheists you now align with, you find them saying what you want to be True so are less prone to Question it, an as you have doubts, or have wholly rejected Christianity arguments for it will now seem weaker or unconvincing.

Often these reactions are just reflective of our own inner mentality and what’s happening inside our own minds.

This doesn’t mean thee can’t be valid criticism for Christian Apologetic works, but the same can be said of the Atheistic Religion you now hold. (Yes I know most of you say you have no Religion…) Its not like Atheistic Arguments are particularly stronger, and often I’ve seen very poor ones indeed.