Reviewing A Lopsided Bar Room Book Discussion About a Belief System No One Holds, Complete With Annoying Corny Cheesy Humor, Part 3

I'm reviewing Randal Rauser and Justin Schieber's conversational style book, An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar: Talking about God, the Universe, and Everything.

I've previously mentioned the lopsidedness between Rauser and Schieber's academic credentials. Schieber has a fair understanding of the material in this book, and he does have a fair understanding of it, not an expert understanding. I've also criticized the co-authors for discussing the classical concept of god because no one, or practically no one, holds to it in today's world.

As I write this review I wrestle with who might want to buy a copy. Not me. I haven't learned anything significant from reading it, but then experts cannot be the target audience either. I would rather read what Schieber said without having to read Rauser's take downs of what he said. This would've been more interesting to me, especially because it was annoying to wade through the muddy waters resulting from Rauser's dredged up obfuscations of Schieber's arguments (none original with him). Rauser's got nothing here. For his part Schieber seems happy to be invited to co-write the book. So he never presses his arguments to the end, and even bends over backwards in the face of Rauser's ignorance to be too polite and respectful to Rauser, his superior (after all, the book looks better on his resume than on Rauser's). 

What about typical bar room people, the Joe Six-Pack's of the English speaking world? Would they want to buy and read this book? Maybe. In too many cases the co-authors treat readers as if they're ignorant. The stories they tell in it are long and simplistic and take up too much space that would better be served getting to the point and arguing that point. This is standard Rauser. It's what he does, and he does it well if you find that type of writing useful. I don't. Many of his stories are analogies I find unhelpful because they don't clarify but rather obfuscate. What's interesting is that Schieber does the same thing, having learned from Rauser, a bad role model in my opinion, and so he's equally annoying. The stories they tell dumb down the discussion. Yet at times, the co-authors turn right around and forget about these readers by using language they probably cannot understand.

Reviewing A Lopsided Bar Room Book Discussion About a Belief System No One Holds, Complete With Annoying Corny Cheesy Humor, Part 2

I'm reviewing Randal Rauser and Justin Schieber's conversational style book, An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar: Talking about God, the Universe, and Everything.

I've previously mentioned the lopsidedness between Rauser and Schieber's academic credentials. 

Let's turn a bit to its content. Rauser chose to make three chapter long arguments as did Schieber. Rauser's arguments focused on: 1) God, faith and testimony, 2) God and moral obligation, and 3) God, mathematics and reason. Schieber focused on: 1) the problem of massive theological disagreement; 2) the problem of the hostility of the universe, and 3) the evolution of the biological role of pain. These are all good interesting topics as far as they go.

Before they begin they talk about why god matters in chapter one. Now if I were Schieber and I were asked why God or gods mattered, I would say because people matter. God matters because there have been, and continues to be, a massive amount of suffering caused by the belief in God, or gods. That would be my focus, and I've edited a book on that topic with regard to Christianity, titled Christianity is Not Great: Why Faith Fails. Schieber doesn't feel the pain that belief in God or gods has caused. So does he lack the motivation to care? What he's doing is having an interesting dialogue for the sake of dialogue, and that's simply not good enough. Schieber says:

Ultimately, it matters little to me that readers are unlikely to have been swayed in either direction. I did not begin this dialogue with a primary goal of acquiring new notches on my atheistic belt. I began this project because I love the dialogue, the concepts involved, and the joy I get with exploring the mechanics of how arguments interact. (p. 206).

He needs to get some fire in his belly for all of the people who have been burned because of god beliefs. For him this is merely an interesting discussion and that's it. Treating god-belief as an interesting topic simply does not cut it. People have died and are dying because Rauser's god-belief is held by broadly two thirds of the world. I recommend him reading the book by Elicka Peterson Sparks, The Devil You Know: The Surprising Link between Conservative Christianity and Crime.

Instead, Rauser and Schieber focus on why the existence of God is the intellectually responsible thing to discuss for intellectually responsive people, and that we should take classical theistic beliefs seriously. Get that? Neither do I. There ought to be over-riding reasons to take God beliefs seriously. Those reasons should be because there is good evidence to do so, or in Schieber's case, because belief in God has produced, and still produces, harm. But they choose to focus on a set of beliefs that conceptualize the classical theistic God. For them this god "is a necessarily existent nonphysical agent who is omniscient omnipotent, and perfectly good." (p. 27) There are three things wrong about choosing to focus on this classical view of god.

First off, why does the classical belief in god have more going for it, such that we should take it seriously? They give no good reasons to think so over the other god-concepts and religions in the world. They do so because they live in the Christian western world and that's it. It's something I hammered home in my newly released book, Unapologetic: Why Philosophy of Religion Must End.

Second, practically no one holds to the classical view of God in today's world. All of these divine attributes have been dissected into oblivion by theologians and by a-theologians. No intellectually aware person in today's world can use the words omniscience or omnipotence and assume people know what's believed by the use of those words. More importantly, after divine attribute definitions are provided, no one, or practically no one, believes just this minimal amount about their god. Believers always believe MORE than this about their God, that's because they are monotheists, not deists or polytheists. This is a significant point Schieber fails to realize. By failing to realize this Schieber fails to go for the jugular of Rauser's evangelical Christian faith, the one that has caused, and is causing, so much harm. Rauser does not believe in the classical god, that's why. He believes in a full-blooded evangelical faith. He did not first believe in the classical god either. Rauser first believed in the evangelical faith of his parents, then he came to believe and defend the classical god concepts. So Schieber will not cause any attitude change in Rauser, or his fellow believers, by dialoguing about this classical god-concept because it isn't why he believes! To see how to dismantle Rauser's faith correctly I have done so in our co-authored book, God or Godless?.

The third reason why discussing the classical god concept is wrong is because this god is most emphatically not the kind of god we see in the Bible. The only part that's correct is that god is an agent in the Bible. All other descriptions of theirs fail to describe the biblical god. In fact, there are biblical statements to the contrary about that god, where Yahweh is not all-knowing, or all-powerful, or non-physical, or perfectly good. Shall I quote them?

Reviewing A Lopsided Bar Room Book Discussion About a Belief System No One Holds, Complete With Annoying Corny Cheesy Humor, Part 1

Randal Rauser has teamed up with Justin Schieber to write a conversational style book, published by atheist publisher Prometheus Books, titled An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar: Talking about God, the Universe, and Everything. Academically speaking Dr. Rauser earned a PhD from King's College, London, and is a professor of historical theology at Taylor Seminary in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He also has written nine books, including one he co-authored with me, titled God or Godless?: One Atheist. One Christian. Twenty Controversial Questions. Schieber, the co-author of this book, is a second year student at Grand Rapids Community College. How is it, you ask, that these two teamed up? Well, let me tell you. I don't know. Schieber is knowledgeable on these issues and intelligent. But intelligent buyers who wonder about a book they're about to buy look for academic credentials. I was asked by an atheist publisher who was considering publishing this book, whether or not it would be worth publishing. I said no, and they didn't publish it. My main reason for saying so is because of the lopsidedness of the participants, and it shows in this book. Readers want equal representation. But Prometheus Books disagreed. Okay then. I was wrong. [See parts 2 and 3 Tag below.]