You can read the review here. Counter Apologist provides a balanced review and has great things to say about both Loftus and me and the book itself. However, as you can guess, CA was more critical of me. Indeed, he states this rather baldly as follows:
“That all said, I’m an atheist, of course I think Loftus won!“
I’m not sure if this is tongue-at-least-partially-in-cheek. I hope it is, because interpreting it literally does not paint a charitable picture. An objective reviewer must be able to separate their own assent to p from their assessment of whether a defender of p bested a defender of not-p. CA’s statement here would imply he is unable to make that distinction.
Fortunately, for the most part I don’t think this is a problem in CA’s review. Indeed, as I said it is quite balanced. However, CA’s own atheistic commitments do color his assessment of my arguments. For example, he writes: “Randal is forced to provide rationalizations to square some basic version of Christianity with the problematic areas of the bible….”
The term “rationalization” can be used neutrally to refer to the attempt to establish the rationality of a position. But CA’s description of me being “forced” to rationalize reveals that he intends a negative meaning, i.e. an appeal to superficially rational explanations which are in fact irrational, question-begging or otherwise illegitimate. But this objection assumes that Christianity is false because if Christianity is true then the defenses I offer are wholly reasonable attempts to reconcile the inspired, revelatory status of the text with moral objections to the text. In that case it is in fact CA’s description of my efforts as rationalizations which is, in fact, begging the question.
But in the grand scheme that’s a relatively minor quibble. Read Counter Apologist’s review the same way you have your popcorn: with a pinch of salt.
