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Nov. 5th, 2012 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kd7sovWell.
Back at the beginning of the semester, there was some kind of religious club giving away books on campus. Being who I am, I picked one up. Specifically, I got The Case for Faith, mostly because none of the others interested me apart from the C.S. Lewis one I already had a copy of.
Recently, I started reading it. And was disappointed. There just doesn't appear to have been a whole lot of thought put into it. The example that brought this home to me, for a variety of reasons, is as follows.
The book looks at eight questions that someone might find objectionable on investigating Christianity. I could have grabbed three of my Lewis books and answered them all satisfactorily, but this author doesn't seem to have liked that option; he instead set up interviews with a number of highly educated people who, one supposes, may be famous for their thoughtfulness; I don't really get his reasoning. Anyway. In the first chapter, the interviewee was talking about how Christ's reputation is not simply a result of building up a legend over time, on the grounds that the apostles were martyred, and "no one knowingly and willingly dies for a lie". (I'm not certain if those are the exact words, but if not they're very close.) Then, in chapter two, the next interviewee dismisses the Book of Mormon as charlatanism, and Joseph Smith as a fraud and a con man. Thing is, he did indisputably die for his beliefs. This contradiction is not addressed, either there or anywhere later.
It may be a decent book, if you're into that sort of thing and for some reason don't like C.S. Lewis' writing style. But it doesn't seem to be right for me.
Back at the beginning of the semester, there was some kind of religious club giving away books on campus. Being who I am, I picked one up. Specifically, I got The Case for Faith, mostly because none of the others interested me apart from the C.S. Lewis one I already had a copy of.
Recently, I started reading it. And was disappointed. There just doesn't appear to have been a whole lot of thought put into it. The example that brought this home to me, for a variety of reasons, is as follows.
The book looks at eight questions that someone might find objectionable on investigating Christianity. I could have grabbed three of my Lewis books and answered them all satisfactorily, but this author doesn't seem to have liked that option; he instead set up interviews with a number of highly educated people who, one supposes, may be famous for their thoughtfulness; I don't really get his reasoning. Anyway. In the first chapter, the interviewee was talking about how Christ's reputation is not simply a result of building up a legend over time, on the grounds that the apostles were martyred, and "no one knowingly and willingly dies for a lie". (I'm not certain if those are the exact words, but if not they're very close.) Then, in chapter two, the next interviewee dismisses the Book of Mormon as charlatanism, and Joseph Smith as a fraud and a con man. Thing is, he did indisputably die for his beliefs. This contradiction is not addressed, either there or anywhere later.
It may be a decent book, if you're into that sort of thing and for some reason don't like C.S. Lewis' writing style. But it doesn't seem to be right for me.
