Book review: I don't have enough faith to be an atheist

When I write my book reviews, or my more serious thoughts, I generally try to explain my reasoning as clearly as I can.  I try to understand the writers, and feel the views as charitably and accurately as I can.

This is partly for you, my readers, but honestly, it's mostly for me.  Spending time putting my thoughts in writing really helps me to get clear in my own head how I see things.  Until I write it out, I frequently have only a general and vague sense of my position on things.  And in writing it down I sometimes change my own views.

But there are exceptions to this.  And this is one.

In this post I'm not going to give my reasons.  I'm merely going to give my conclusions (with a bit of biographical background).  I'm not arguing; I'm merely stating.

It's not that I couldn't give my reasons.  It's just that I have no interest to take the time to do so.  In this particular situation, writing it down won't help me to get any clearer on how I see things.  And to be honest, it kinda bores me.

So, take what you will of what follows.

One of my nieces is in school year 13, and she is hugely busy with book work, getting up enough credits to go on to university or whatever.  Good on her!

The required reading for one of her courses is Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek's 2004 book I don't have enough faith to be an atheist.

My Big Sis, Gugu, and I chatted about this, and consequently I requested the Geisler/Turek book from the library.

The main claim of the book is that the evidence points in favour of Christianity, and so atheists are actually required to have more faith than Christians.

Gugu and I grew up in a Christian family, and since teenagers we have often had long and enjoyable conversations about religion, science and other deep matters.  A big chunk of my masters degree was on the philosophy of religion, and for a couple of years I was the tutor for the 2nd/3rd year undergraduate philosophy of religion course at Auckland Uni.

So, while my background is not enough to be considered a professional expert, I think it is enough to say that I am competent to evaluate good versus bad contributions to the subject.

And in my opinion, Geisler and Turek's contribution is in the bad category.  It is not worth reading, and should definitely not be used as the required reading for secondary school students.  It is a serious failing in New Zealand's education system that this is part of a course that gives university entrance credits.

As I was reading it, I was often finding multiple errors on each page.  There are far too many logical missteps, factual errors and misrepresentations of others' views.  Repeatedly, Geisler/Turek committed the fallacies of false alternatives and strawperson.  Repeatedly they made the mistake of being uncharitable to their opponents views, imagining that they had dismissed, in a few lines, the ideas of people who had spent decades on these complex issues; in reality all that Geisler/Turek did was dismiss cartoon versions that few take seriously anyway.  There was an overall sense of the authors not quite "getting" the ideas they were trying to present, but alongside that there was a kind of blissful, contented arrogance from them that they had got it right.  If I had to describe this book in a word, I'd say it was clumsy.

I want to be clear, this is not about religion.  It is about facts, logic and evidence.  Geisler/Turek made claims about where the evidence points, but repeatedly got the facts, logic and evidence wrong.  That they happen to be arguing against atheism, and for their version of Christianity, is irrelevant.  I have also said similar things about badly written pro-atheism books (eg, several years ago I read a bit of work by Sam Harris; in my opinion he's the atheistic scholarly equivalent of Geisler/Turek).

Unless my niece wants to go through any specific pages with me, that's all I feel the need to say.