Smackdowns of Christian Apologists (bibliography)
Below is a list of book-length1 rebuttals to the works of Christian apologists. Please suggest the ones I missed.
- Earl Doherty’s Challenging the Verdict is a smackdown of Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ
- Richard Carrier’s Not the Impossible Faith is a smackdown of J.P. Holding’s The Impossible Faith
- Paul Doland’s The Case Against Faith is a smackdown of Lee Strobel’s The Case for Faith
- Tiny Frog’s Review of… is another smackdown of Lee Strobel’s The Case for Faith
- Adam Lee’s Rebutting the Case for a Creator is a smackdown of Lee Strobel’s The Case for a Creator
- Richard Carrier’s Critical Review of… is a smackdown of Victor Reppert’s C.S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea
- Christopher Hallquist’s Review of… is a smackdown of William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith
- Deacon Duncan’s TIA series is a smackdown of Vox Day’s The Irrational Atheist
- Deacon Duncan’s XFiles series is a smackdown of Geisler & Turek’s I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist
- The Jury Is In, edited by Jeffrey Jay Lowder, is a smackdown of Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands a Verdict
- Richard Carrier’s Review of… is a smackdown of In Defense of Miracles, edited by R. Douglas Geivett and Gary Habermas
- John Beversluis’ C.S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion is a smackdown of C.S. Lewis (Mere Christianity, etc.)
- Graham Oppy’s Review of… is a smackdown of Reasons for the Hope Within
- Bob Price’s The Case Against the Case for Christ is a smackdown of Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ
- Well, I’m being a bit loose on this. If it’s more than 40 pages long when printed on 8.5″ by 11″ paper, I’m calling it “book-length.” [↩]
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The Anonymous and Pseudographic Authors Guild’s The Holy Bible is a smackdown of Random Believer’s Christianity cole
Is there any particular reason this list is restricted to critiques of single books? There’s a lot of stuff out there of the “deal with a small set of apologists” variety. Stuff like John Loftus’ book, the anthology on the resurrection Prometheus put out a few years back, books by people like Michael Martin, and the anti-ID books out there. Though a list of those things would be a lot more work! Chris Hallquist
An obvious one is the Internet Infidels takedown of Josh McDowell’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/jury/
Also, maybe, Richard Carrier’s review of In Defense of Miracles:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/indef/ John D
Chris,
Yeah, that’s just a limit for this particular list. lukeprog
How about 2 books by Robert M. Price (who has written several wonderful books on Christianity) as he takes on–
Rick Warren in The Reason Driven Life
and
The Rapture/Tribulation/Apocalypse beliefs of several apologists (such as Tim LaHaye) in Paperback Apocalypse. Edward Brock
Does God? A Debate Between A Christian and An Atheist fit on here?
Mind you Walter didn’t really smack Craig down. rhys
C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion by John Beversluis is a beautiful smackdown of Lewis. Jeffrey
Beversluis’s newest edition is a serious piece of work, surely. On the argument from reason, however, I don’t think he quite gets the structure of the argument. For example, he points out that Lewis’s argument against naturalism is an argument against a deterministic form of naturalism, but he doesn’t deal with my argument that going to an indeterministic form of naturalism doesn’t really help the naturalist escape from the problem Lewis is posing. Further, he argues that it is essential to Lewis’s argument against naturalism that our knowledge of physical objects is inferential, again ignoring my argument to the effect that even if knowledge of physical objects is non-inferential, our knowledge of mathematics is most certainly inferential, and if naturalism has the implication that we cannot perform rational inferences, then our knowledge of the natural science (the only reason anybody would ever be a naturalist) is undermined.
As usual, there is an ongoing debate on these matters. I’ve replied to Carrier in a few places, for example. I don’t like the phrase “smackdown” because I hardly think these critiques are slam dunks. (I don’t like talk like that from my side of the aisle, either). Carrier repeatedly analyzes intentionality in intentional terms and then attributes things to “the brain,” thinking that he now has a naturalistic analysis. But attributing something to the brain doesn’t mean that you have actually analyzed out the “mental” characteristics that the antinaturalist critic is saying are a problem for naturalism. I’ve actually called this the Richard Carrier fallacy.
http://dangerousidea2.blogspot.com/2008/07/richard-carrier-fallacy.html
A little concerned about the use of the term “smackdown,” here, however, because there is a lot of ongoing debate on these issues. Victor Reppert
I thought it was funny that you chose that particular picture for this post, since, SPOILER ALERT, the superficially-vigorous-but-inwardly-feeble, kinda-crazy, dim-witted deadbeat Randy the Ram DIES after delivering that flying Ram-Jam. Not the most encouraging visual metaphor for atheist philosophy, but perhaps surprisingly apt! ;-) cartesian
If you are a theist, please read this article:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18216-dear-god-please-confirm-what-i-already-believe.html rhys
Here’s a series that smacksdown on Eddy and Boyd’s “The Jesus Legend”
http://vridar.wordpress.com/2010/01/10/taking-eddy-boyd-seriously-5/
Peace. Ryan
Ryan,
Yup, that series is great. It’s not long enough yet to qualify, but I sure hope he keeps going! lukeprog