Dan Barker. God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction. New York: Sterling, 2016. At the beginning of chapter 2 of his bestselling book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins infamously describes God as “jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, […]
review
How Do You Hear God’s Voice? A Review of God Calling: Spiritual Direction for People in the Real World
Jeffrey J. Kilmartin. God Calling: Spiritual Direction for People in the Real World. Wipf and Stock, 2020. God Calling by Jeffrey Kilmartin is a spirited and somewhat iconoclastic survey of a range of topics pertaining to spiritual direction such as discerning God’s will, identifying one’s calling, praying effectively, pursuing spiritual disciplines, and engaging in spiritual […]
An Atheist Review of Conversations with My Inner Atheist
The first review for Conversations with My Inner Atheist is out. Counter Apologist got a copy yesterday and reviewed it this morning. Wowsers, that’s fast. It’s also a very positive review. This is important because the purpose of the book is to steelman objections to my beliefs, so the fact that my exercise passed muster with […]
Everyday Apologetics: A Review
Paul Chamberlain and Chris Price, eds. Everyday Apologetics: Answering common objections to the Christian faith. Lexham Press, 2020. In his foreword to Everyday Apologetics, Sean McDowell flags three virtues: accessibility, practicality, and a gentle, kind tone (xi). That’s a fair assessment. While there are many introductory books in apologetics, Everyday Apologetics strikes a fine balance in these […]
Church Doctrine & the Bible: A Review
David Instone-Brewer. Church Doctrine & the Bible. Scripture in Context. Lexham Press, 2020. The latest entry in the Lexham Press “Scripture in Context” series focuses on the relationship between Christian doctrines and the Bible. Throughout the book, David Instone-Brewer, a research fellow at Tyndale House and specialist in Judaism in the first century, takes his knowledge […]
Is Jesus Human and Not Divine? A Review
Dale Tuggy and Christopher M. Date, Is Jesus Human and Not Divine? A Debate. Essential Christian Debates. Apollo, PA: Areopagus, 2020. As the old joke goes, after the Sunday school teacher asks, “Okay children, who left the cap off the glue?” the answer comes back in unison: “Jesus!” You get it, right? Jesus is always the […]
The Questionable Comfort of Impotent Love: A Review of God Can’t
Thomas Jay Oord. God Can’t: How to Believe in God and Love after Tragedy, Abuse, and Other Evils. SacraSage Press, 2020. “Why God?” It is a question that has been asked by countless people. “Why did you allow me to get cancer?” “Why do you allow children to starve?” “Why do you allow a pandemic like […]
Inspired Imperfection: A Review
Gregory A. Boyd. Inspired Imperfection: How the Bible’s Problems Enhance Its Authority (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2020). The postscript to Gregory Boyd’s new book Inspired Imperfection tells the story of a woman whose beloved vase was broken into several pieces. Devastated, she initially sought a restorer who might bring the ceramic back to its original, pristine condition. However, even the […]
Friend of Science, Friend of Faith: A Review
Gregg Davidson, Friend of Science, Friend of Faith: Listening to God in His Works and Word. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2019. The year was 1988 when I brought my dog-eared copy of Paul Ackerman’s It’s a Young World After All to my high school science teacher: “Mr. Vogt, you need to read this! It will prove […]
My Video Review of God’s Not Dead with Capturing Christianity
If Nobody Else Remembered The Beatles, Would You Think You Were Delusional?
Yesterday, I saw Yesterday, famed British director Danny Boyle’s 2019 romantic fantasy comedy about a fellow who wakes up in a world where he is the only person who knows the music of the Beatles. Yesterday wasn’t the best film I’ve seen this week. That accolade would belong to the 2019 German film System Crasher (aka Systemsprenger) with an […]
“Unbelievable”: True Crime Redeemed
I’m not one of those people who is prone to binge-watch the latest big series on Netflix. But lo and behold, this past weekend my wife and I were mesmerized by the critically acclaimed new cop-investigation drama Unbelievable. The eight-episode show is based on an extraordinary and awful real-life case of a young woman who, after […]
My Summer Read: A review of Lake of the Ozarks
Bill Geist, Lake of the Ozarks: My Surreal Summers in a Vanishing America (New York: Grand Central, 2019). Everybody needs at least one beach read every summer. For 2019, this was mine: author and journalist Bill Geist’s new memoir of working at a summer resort in the 1960s. I picked up Lake of the Ozarks as a way […]
Why They’re Catholic: A Review of Trent Horn, Why We’re Catholic
Trent Horn, Why We’re Catholic: Our Reasons for Faith, Hope, and Love (Catholic Answers, 2017). In his 2017 book Why We’re Catholic, Catholic apologist Trent Horn aims to provide a clear, concise, and winsome introduction to the Catholic faith. The book consists of twenty-five short and punchy chapters divided into five sections: truth and God, Jesus […]
