Reviews of "The Christian Delusion" Book

Apart from the reviews you can find on Amazon, several atheists are reviewing the book The Christian Delusion. I'll update this post as others write fair and substantive reviews of it, perhaps including some quotes from thoughtful and respectful Christians when I see them.


Here are six of them in the order I first saw them:

By Richard Carrier.

By No Beliefs.

By Ken Pulliam, in reverse chronological order.

By Spanish Inquisitor.

By Universal Heretic.

By Literature Connoisseur, which is written in Swedish. Just use iGoogle to translate it.

By AIGBusted.

12 comments:

Lazarus said...

Other than the odd snipe on Amazon I am not really seeing the level of opposition on Christian blogs that I expected. Is it too early?

Spanish Inquisitor said...

Maybe they are slow readers, like me. ;)

Lazarus said...

I am however expecting a full list of :

1. handwaving

2. denial

3. "that is not my God / my Christianity"

4. a few fleas

5. unadulterated abuse

Wait and see - stick the list on your fridge, they will all be there, slow readers or not. :)

Boyd said...

Hi John,

On pg 201 you say "There would be no way the historic church could biblically justify religiously motivated crusades, wars, heresy trials, witch hunts, or slavery." You put this in the context that if the Bible had been written in as clear a fashion as today, this might have been stopped.

In the New Testament Jesus boiled the ten commandments to a foundation of two--'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' These two commandments, noted in Mathew, Mark and Luke, are easily understood and the second commandment would have stopped all of the problems that you cite. It wasn't the lack of clarity that allowed this, it was people ignoring what they were taught. Envy, selfish ambition, greed etc. are the real causes behind justifying those actions. It is evidence of one's conscience that we implicitly recognize the errors and consequences that come from wars, slavery, etc., yet they still go on today.

Best to you on your book. It should create productive debates.

John said...

I thought the book was good. I gave a copy of both of your books to an A.A. atheist buddy of mine who loves them.

Bogdan said...

John,
what is your best response to someone whom says that Jesus did not preach the imminence of the end times because in Mark 13:10 He points out that the gospel has to be preached to all the nations first. This idea is repeated in the other synoptics as well.

Lazarus said...

Good stuff, my copy has arrived today, all the way to christian-saturated South Africa. I should have ordered in bulk :)

I am really looking forward to reading this. I will do a review when I am done.

Chuck said...

Boyd

Your comment amounts to little more than an accomandationist rationalization. Any exegesis of the Great Commandment would identify it's first half as a distillation of the whole Torah and Mosaic Law. Silly mega church propaganda.

Anonymous said...

Bogdan, Mark's gospel was probably written just after the destruction of Jerusalem to assure Gentile believers in the Roman world that the eschaton was to arrive shortly. According to the NT Paul was dead by this time and he had already preached to the nations. Regardless, Mark thought the eschaton was to appear in his generation so missionary efforts must have been in full swing. Many scholars think the author was one of them and that he wrote his gospel from Rome, so the preaching to all nations was nearly complete by the time he wrote.

Jesus never actually said this. The gospel authors regularly re-wrote episodes in the life of Jesus to help the church in its ongoing mission. Mark's gospel was a deliberate attempt to re-assure Gentile believers after the destruction of Jerusalem that the time was nearer than ever before.

bnono said...

Honestly, I think it's a shame that only atheists read atheism books.

Those books should be directed to uneducated people and not the educated ones.

Don't you agree?

I'm not blaming the ones who read, I'm just saying that the only christians that reads those books are the fundamentalists ones and they always find a way to backlash.

http://naughtyjesus.blogspot.com/

Bogdan said...

Wow, John, thanks. I didn't know historians attributed that saying to the author of Mark. I thought they considered it went back to the historical Jesus. This makes sense because I couldn't see how to reconcile Mark 13:10 with all the other sayings in Mark where Jesus talks about the imminent end.

Could you please mention the works you read where this is mentioned? I would greatly appreciate it.

Anonymous said...

Bogdan NT scholars can determine several things the gospel writers placed on the lips of Jesus. He surely didn't conceive of a church as we see in Matthew 16, for instance. There are several NT Introductions you might want to get but for your questions I recommend Bart Ehrman's The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, and L. Michael White's From Jesus to Christianity: How Four Generations of Visionaries & Storytellers Created the New Testament and Christian Faith. See also chapter 9 in Paula Fredriksen's From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Christ.