Traditional Faith? Reviewing Mittelberg's "Confident Faith" Part 6

I'm reviewing Mark Mittelberg's book Confident Faith: Building a Firm Foundation for Your Belief (2013)—which won the Outreach Magazine's 2014 apologetics book of the year award. So far his book has been flying under the atheist radar. I aim to rectify that with a few posts offering my thoughts and criticisms of it. [See the "Mark Mittelberg" tag below for others].

The Six Paths of Faith are as follows, of which I'll deal with the second one below:

1) The Relativistic Path: "Truth is Whatever Works for You"
2) The Traditional Faith Path: "Truth is What You've Always Been Taught"
3) The Authoritarian Faith Path: "Truth Is What You've Always Been Told You Must Believe"
4) The Intuitive Faith Path" "Truth Is What You Feel In Your Heart"
5) The Mystical Faith Path" "Truth Is What You Think God Told You"
6) The Evidential Faith Path: "Truth Is What Logic and Evidence Point To"

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An Introduction to Mark Mittelberg's Book "Confident Faith" Part 1

Mark Mittelberg

Mark Mittelberg is a bestselling author, sought-after speaker, and the Executive Director of the Center for Strategic Evangelism, in partnership with Houston Baptist University. He wrote the book Confident Faith: Building a Firm Foundation for Your Belief (2013)—which won the Outreach Magazine's 2014 apologetics book of the year award. Yet, it appears his book has been flying under the atheist radar—so far. I aim to rectify that with a few posts offering my thoughts and criticisms of it.

I found Mark’s book recently in a Goodwill store for $1. That was a lucky find. I didn’t know of his book until then. Thank Good...will. I have met him before, at a debate I had with David Wood. What I didn’t know was how similar our backgrounds are. We both studied at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and we both earned a masters degrees in the philosophy of religion there (him a M.A.; me a Th.M.). We also studied under the late Stuart Hackett while there, as did Paul Copan, as did William Lane Craig before us, who has admitted his debt to Hackett. LINK. Upon Stu’s death I wrote a post remembering him titled, Remembering and Honoring Professor Stuart C. Hackett. Hackett was Mark's "primary philosophical mentor" (Confident Faith, p. 271, note #2). William Lane Craig was mine. Perhaps Craig was gone by the time Mark attended, I don't know.

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Another One Bites the Dust

Chad Dunnam sent me a Facebook message describing his deconversion. This is encouraging news! Believers everywhere are losing their faith one at time.

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Is Faith To Be Defined As Trust?

Some Christians claim faith is something like 'trusting, holding to and acting on what one has good reason to believe is true in the face of difficulties', or 'trust or confidence in something or someone.'

This is not correct. From the New Testament down through centuries of church theology and even today, Christians have produced a multiple number of mutually discordant definitions of faith. David Eller says: “the concept of belief in Western civilization and Christianity has evolved, from a kind of “trust” in god(s) to specific propositions about God and Christ to the notion of “grace” based on the personal experience of and commitment to God…The evolutionary trajectory of belief in Christianity is, then…culturally and religiously relative.” (Quoted in Loftus, The Outsider Test for Faith, p. 33)]

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John Loftus Takes On Christian Apologists Norman Geisler, Frank Turek, William Lane Craig, Paul Copan, Gary Habermas, Dave Hunt, Ben Witherington III, Victor Reppert, Gregory Ganssel, Craig Evans, Stewart Goetz, Daniel Wallace, Plus Others for the Win, and Guess Who Won?

I did! Here's the story.

A former Christian named ToonForever described why he no longer believes:

I decided that in order to avoid prejudicing myself toward my doubts, something I always accused T of doing when she left the faith, I would find a well-recommended apologetics book and give God the first and best chance of answering my questions and calming my fears.

For the Pro side of the argument, I downloaded to my Kindle Norman Geisler’s [and Frank Turek's] I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist.

I already knew what book I would choose for the Con side of the conversation. I wanted to read the book that made me the most afraid, because that would be the greatest challenge. If I could get through that with my faith intact, I could set aside my doubts and at least approach the meditation question with the confidence that would come from overcoming what to me was the sternest challenge I could find. So I downloaded Loftus’ Why I Became an Atheist (Revised & Expanded).

I got a blank steno pad and started reading Geisler.

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A Challenge to Christian Apologists, by J.M. Green

Look, debates are all well and good, but being such fervent supporters of the Bible as the Inspired Word of God, why not settle things the good, old-fashioned biblical way?

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"The less evidence you have...the more faith you need"

I have argued that faith is a leap over the probabilities. And I have been told this is nonsense by Christian apologists from David Marshall to Randal Rauser and others. They have said this is a gross mischaracterization of their Christian faith. Really? Then maybe they can explain why Norman L. Geisler (arguably the biggest name in Christian apologetics) and co-writer Frank Turek say in their book, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist,"The less evidence you have for your position, the more faith you need to believe it (and vice versa). Faith covers a gap in knowledge." (p. 26) My question is was and always be, what does faith add to the probabilities? As far as I can tell leaping that gap is irrational. [Click on the tag "Faith" below to see other posts on faith].

Christopher Hitchens v. Frank Turek Debate the Existence of God

Frank Turek, co-author of I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist, and Christopher Hitchens debated this issue in September 2008.


Turek vs. Hitchens Debate: Does God Exist? from Andrew Ketchum on Vimeo.