Identifying Barriers to Unbelief
I was
recently reading an interesting article called “How Not to Lose an Argument” and came across this:
“First, what does it mean to win or lose an argument? There is an unspoken belief in some quarters that the point of an argument is to gain social status by utterly demolishing your opponent's position, thus proving yourself the better thinker. That can be fun sometimes, and if it's really all you want, go for it. But the most important reason to argue with someone is to change his mind. If you want a world without fundamentalist religion, you're never going to get there just by making cutting and incisive critiques of fundamentalism that all your friends agree sound really smart. You've got to deconvert some actual fundamentalists. In the absence of changing someone's mind, you can at least get them to see your point of view. Getting fundamentalists to understand the real reasons people find atheism attractive is a nice consolation prize.”
This is
really what we want – right? Changing
minds when possible, and at least clearing up misconceptions about atheists.
Later in the
article, the author says:
“If you believe morality is impossible without God, you have a strong disincentive to become an atheist. Even after you've realized which way the evidence points, you'll activate every possible defense mechanism for your religious beliefs. If all the defense mechanisms fail, you'll take God on utter faith or just believe in belief, rather than surrender to the unbearable position of an immoral universe.
In a great review of it posted at Skeptic Ink Network, we read:
In an online commentary of the book, John Martin of the Montreal-based Center for Research and Globalization, points this fact out: 
I now report there is progress. The most ignorant criticisms of the OTF come from Christian scholars Matthew Flannagan and Mark Hanna. They are so bad, so delusional I only recommend them in so far as they show us how intelligent people with a delusion cannot even read with comprehension. The less ignorant criticisms of the OTF come from Victor Reppert, Randal Rauser and Thomas Talbot (all of whom were instructional to me in many ways). Maybe I'm going soft, but I think rather than taking a hard-line approach against Marshall it would be counter-productive for me to do so, since he embraces the OTF (with some caveats). I adjure my critics to read Marshall's chapter even though he is still wrong to claim Christianity passes the OTF. All I'm saying is that this is progress. I'll comment later on where he's wrong, but for now I recommend his chapter to my critics. Hopefully they will listen to him.
It's hot off the press. At least important authors and prestigious publishers are taking notice, and that is a good thing.
It looks very good if for no other reason than that the authors on the opposing side are good ones. The glaring problem however, is that the authors in this book who represent Christianity are, generally speaking, evangelicals. Evangelicals write the chapters on all the key issues defending "Christian Theism" in this book. One would expect this, since the book is edited by evangelicals. But why do they get to define "Christian Theism"? There is no such thing, as there is no such thing as "theism" or "Mere Christianity" either. These evangelicals are co-opting the term "Christian Theism" for themselves. The book title is a misnomer, even a fraud. It should be titled, "Debating Evangelicalism," or "Debating Evangelical Theism." If I were writing a chapter in this book and I had the space I would point this fraud out. There are only theisms, Christian theisms and Christianities. Below are the table of contents. See for yourself:
That's cool!
His book is quite popular, ranking in the top ten "apologetics" category of books on Amazon for several years now. However, Bryan Frances, an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, outs him as either clueless, self-deceived or a fraud, in the Introduction of his book, 
See for yourself:
