Christian Apologetics
BASIC SYNOPSIS
This is a book aimed at Christians and regards arguments that sceptics tend to raise,
MY THOUGHTS
This is a book I chose to read during the editing phase of my own book 'Answering The Atheist', I'm glad I did as I ended up including a quote from it in myst andth chapters, This was a great book, It wasnt an easy read, or particularly well ordered, but it had a lot of meat and a few amazing nuggets, This was a fun effort that responds to the many objections of Atheists and others,
Personally, I love objections and attacks doubts are entertaining as well, Nobody should blindly believe something, But searching for truth is not as obvious as some people assume, AS this book shows: most folks are only critical of OTHER PEOPLE'S BELIEFS they seldom test their own,
Often I ask atheists how skeptical they are of Atheism, I ask them how many questions and challenges they applied to their Atheism All I get back are blank stares and the occasional, "Why would I do that"
Which proves my point: I have thousands of questions for the "worldview" and assumed default position of Atheism.
Years ago I decided that I really needed to challenge my Christianity and Biblical beliefs, So I did. I came up with tons of questions that needed answering, I answered them. Nothing new really lots of scholars over the lastcenturies have dealt with most of these issues, Then I went about collecting questions from Atheists, Muslims, Witches, Cults, Scientists, I found the answers to their Christian objections to be pretty widespread, I no longer care who has the best Answers, All I want are the questions,
This book basically does the same thing, Takes questions and attacks and gives possible answers, Some people assume that if they don't like OR ACCEPT an answer then that removes it, NO, some people are stubborn and clueless, Similar to flat Earther's and those who dismiss the Moon Landing, And as i've experienced with numerous atheists: Some questions take longer thanseconds to respond to, like explaining calculus to ayear old,
Here's some insightful objections from this book,
Objection: God Does Not Exist,
Fair enough but how does an atheist arrive at that assumption Because they haven't seen Him, Smelled Him Felt Him Sensed Him
There are many ways to look for a God or His behavior: What are His claims Has He successfully interrupted our world and reality Has He left something behind Do we see His logic or philosophy Does He have a best selling book throughout history Has He
achieved something beyond human intelligence or comprehension Does He have a church on every corner Does His disciples and followers behave exactly the way He said they would "years ago"
Just because something isn't stupidly obvious doesn't mean it isn't clearly observed to be mucking about and leaving footprints in our history and future.
If a God makes claims and throws out common sense and wisdom: That counts as data to be looked into,
As Ron Rhodes says "Its almost impossible to prove that God doesn't exist, hasn't existed, and can never exist, " so we need to be cautious,
Similar to comparing this to the Tooth Fairy: There is no Tooth Fairy church, NO bestsellers, No Tooth Fairy hospitals or Soup Kitchens, No crossreferences with known Empires, or even future prophecies or a meaning and purpose of a Toot Fairy deity.
We got nothing. Whereas we know a great deal about the Christian God, . . and cults and other religions can't stop from borrowing or warping any bit of info about This Christian God, People can't even stop hating this Christian God,
Oh well, here's some more objections:
Objection: Belief in God ought to be rejected because it is based on faith, not reason,
I wish life was that simple, The Bible gives us thousands of REASONS to think there might be a Christian God, I don't believe in monkey gods stealing other gods wives, . . I have to sort through thousands of years of Christian history, and morality, and philosophy, and cultures, . . There's a reason i'm not a Lutheran, or Anglican, or Catholic, or Pentecostal, Lots of REASONING. My Mom and I are both Christians yet believe a few different things, Lots of Reasons indeed.
Objection: If there really is a God, why isn't His existence more overtly clear to people
Ron Rhodes gives added detail and quotes to thicken the argument often quotes an atheist or academic to hit the objection home.
But then Ron attempts to deal with the objection from a few different angles and scholars,
I apologize to any atheists that actually attempt to read this book: but you actually have to THINK, It's easy to stick your emotional biased head in the sand and cry "NO, No, no!", But these are adult questions that involve some serious study and Cosmic values, Yes, even lots of Good science and philosophy,
Atheists keep demanding that God be less of a god and more like a human Emperor isn't that what some Romans did as well, But God is a God, Step back and allow Him to function on His own terms, The Bible explains these in great detail A thousand pages even, Reducing a deity to a human earthling AND ITS LIMITATIONS is not very rational, Judge a god on its own terms,
Here's some chapters:
Why isn't the evidence overtly clear
Naturalism Versus the Possibility of Miracles
Evolution: A flawed Theory
The Intelligent Design of the Universe
Morality and the Absolutely Moral Lawgiver
The Reliability of the Bible
The evidence for Jesus
God and the Problem of Evil
The Character Assassination Of God
So why did I give this book only three Honestly, I didn't like all of Ron Rhodes answers.
Some are very. I've seen a lot change in the lastyears, The questions have evolved and require we get to the heart of atheistic attacks, There is no even playing field, We aren't even using the same deck of cards,
Some people demand academic answers to their Street questions, They also demand moral answers to their worldview that has no objective morality, They also demand somewhat logical answers to their emotional outbreaks,
The Times They are a Changing, Certain liberal Christian views can't even begin to answer some of these questions, The same goes for Charismatic views, and don't get me started on NonCalvinistic Biblical doctrine,
Arguing with smart atheists made me the Calvinistic Reformed mostly Biblically literal Christian that I am, Yes, the poetic parts of the Bible are still poetic, The prophetic parts are still prophetic
It's a great book for Christians to begin their apologetic longings with.
I read this book as a nominal Christian, thinking that I could use arguments to win people to Christ before I knew what the Gospel was, unfortunately the book didn't give a thorough definition of the Gospel and assumed the reader already knew it, but it would have been better if the author would have given a more thorough definition of the Gospel.
This book represents a classical approach to apologetics, so it answers unbelievers on an alleged common ground, but this doesn't get to the root of the issue, the unbeliever's moral suppression of the truth Romans:.
Read Bahnsen's Always Ready and some books from James White for a better and biblical approach to apologetics that stands on the authority of God's word and follows the apostolic method for apologetics rather than Aristotle.
It has been many years since picking up an apologetics book, It is good to broach these subjects every once in a while to be familiar with objections to our faith and some reasonable defences, I felt some subjects were dealt with very adequately and others were just okay, I did like how he sourced when bringing up objections to the faith, These sources were from atheistic sites and authors and I liked checking out his notes and bibliography, In some areas I had doctrinal differences from the author and one particular area from Chaptersounded close to a salvation by works though I know the author wouldn't acknowledge this personally.
These kinds of books are hard for me because I think a discussion with someone is much better, A book is more like a monologue and is not diverse or will broaden out to another person's objections, For an apologetics book I would rate this as ok or average but didn't necessarily feel better equipped now or like I had a breakthrough in better defending myself.
But it is a tool I may refer to for future conversations when the opportunity arises, .