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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Mass Market Paperback
This 2010 revised edition is mostly the same as the 2007 except for the addition of an extra chapter placed after 'The final letter to Dawkins' of the 2007. The addition is about how one person got fed up with hateful language used by 'atheists' on RD.Net and came to believe in a loving God. In the preceding chapters the page numbers are -2 compared with the original
It is often an advantage to know the whole argument, this involves reading all the reasons for and all the reasons against.That is why I recommend reading this book. DR p143 writes,'We can sometimes learn a lot from people we disagree with'. I agree, so why does DR not recommend reading Dawkins 'The God delusion'? I think Dawkins makes a lot of good points and challenges people to read the whole Bible, the whole history of religion, the history of western philosophy and comparative religion. In fact Dawkins is encouraging people to be upto date with the current state of play in the battle between orthodox and skeptical Bible scholarship. I find it fabulously interesting although you can at times feel like you are infront of Alice in wonderlands warped mirrors.
I think a good rule of thumb is to start a reply by acknowledging the points you agreed with. I agree with DR that there are some good moral points in the Bible, whether there exists a cosmic God or not. I agree with the points in the Bible law which intersect with the superior U.K law 2011. I think that Matt 7v12;The golden rule is a good guideline. Wisdomcommons & psychologist Valerie Tarico points out in her excellent 'Trusting doubt' p247 "The ethics of reciprocity", humanity has a shared moral code. Jesus was not the first or only person to put this concept into words, Socrates said it in 430BCE. I agree with 'love your neighbour & enemy' if it means having a caring attitude which aims for their wellbeing, have a non exaggerated/generalised opinion of them, try to see any good points in them, points of agreement.
One of the main problems is that language is so vague that it is all too easy to generalise. "I love that song"- well I love the tune but hate the lyrics. Jesus said, 'Do not judge/condemn others, don't call people nasty names like fool' Paul said, 'A spiritual man judges all things'. Maybe Jesus meant that you should be specific and judge the individual action/concept in terms of your feelings/ emotions instead of trying to sum up the whole person. e.g "I'm annoyed that you did that, I think it would have been better this way..., I'm upset by how you spoke to me, I think you should try to be more emotionally literate",
instead of, 'Stupid boy','Fool,it's broken'. Pity that neither Jesus nor the Bible authors stuck to this rule. Or was it the translators fault? See Bart Ehrman's book, 'Jesus interrupted'
It is possible to make a hypothesis that there exists a perfectly good, loving God and imagine what would be the best things that being could have done or said. I think that with such a God there would be nothing to fear,people would either go to a nice afterlife or cease to exist. Pull the plug out & how can a thing exist? But you would have to ask, 'If there is such a god then how come so many suffer so much?' A God who knew how to cure illness but let people suffer in ignorance until science discovered the answers in the last 200 years ? Mark ch 7 Jesus never knew the value of hand washing
Then you read through the guesses that the Bible authors made.John W. Loftus asks in his good book 'The Christian delusion', do any of the ideas in the Bible seem like they might be divinely inspired? What if there was a divine voice speaking down through the ages saying, be caring, don't hurt others, cooperate and work for a sustainable future, spread this message only by reason/logic, not by war/GBH.
If Genesis 22 had been inspired by a divine voice then you would have the angel say to Abraham, 'Stop, you are entirely mistaken, God has never desired human or animal sacrifice and would never ask for it". Later prophets like Jeremiah & Ezekiel hint that they are moving toward the idea that all the divine voice wanted was for people to behave in a caring way/ not hurt anyone.
How come the angels don't appear when needed and tell the attacker to "Stop, don't murder" or how come if God could shout down in Mark 1v11 that he can't shout "Stop" to Hitler or use lightning to zap the likes of him or just switch of their electrics.
Genesis 20 claims God made Abimelech's family infertile, how come he didn't just make all Canaanites & later unbelievers infertile thus avoiding wars. Genesis 21 has God preserve Ishmael who allegedly fathered the 23% of the world hostile to Christ.
What if the divine voice spoke through Jesus saying, 'love your neighbour' etc and infact the crucifiction was just as meaningless as any other murder. The point is that you can't silence the divine voice: the greatest of these is love.
I personally aim to make goodness, love and truth my god, though you might not think it from my behaviour.
DR mentions the following authors
P 118 former fundamentalist preacher, now co president of freedom from religion org. Dan Barker who said in his good book, 'Godless', if we consider ourselves to be ethical we ought not to refrain from denouncing religious teachings and practices that cause harm. & Basic day to day morality is a simple matter of kindness, respect and reason
p 89 Bertrand Russell who on p14 of 'Why I am not a Christian' ,mentions the many people who can't see themselves on the right side of the Bible god and so live their lives in fear and worry. This is mainly caused by what Charles Darwin & Keith Parsons & David Mills & Loftus & Robert Ingersol & Thomas Paine call the damnable doctrine of hell. Russell thought a person with a reasonable degree of kindness would not place such fears in people.
p79 Nietzsche wrote through Zarathustra, 'There is no devil, there is no hell'. Many people have been left in fear of these non existant fantasies. Check the NHS check in sheet, demon possession isn't on there. It is a worthless superstition. A guess like phlogiston before science discovers virus, bacteria, fungi etc
p58 Dan Brown's Da vinci code, well I recommend Robert M Price's 'Da vinci fraud'. Price is a master of the Bibleverse and writes in 'The reason driven life' p231 that "Careful study shows that it is not so simple a matter to decide what the bible says, sometimes it says more than one thing per topic. The bible is not a supernatural answer book, we are all stuck using our best wits to decide tough ethical and theological questions"
p 87 C.S. Lewis. Well I recommend his 1940 book, 'The problem of pain' in which he lists the following valid reasons against the doctrine of hell.
1 THe punishments of hell are purely retributive...expressions of spite and vindictiveness and so are wicked
2 Eternal punishment for transitory sin is unjust
3 The punishments of hell are too severe to be just
5 God who desires the salvation of all is defeated when a soul is lost to eternity.
Prevention is preferable to punishment, restoration of health or property is what is desired. God could have prevented or restored life and health but does neither. There is no God just above the clouds. A God who can't inform police to go and arrest a terrorist before he attacks ? A God who can't warn people a day before the tsunami?
How come Jesus prays, 'forgive them for they know not what they do' if it is necessary to know and believe stuff to be forgiven? Robert Price says, 'That is a form of Gnosticism, salvation by knowledge'. The Osiris priests thought they had magic powers by knowing and reciting stuff like the names of the gods and praying the negative confession-it's Nicky Gumbel catch phrase- 'Justasifi'd never sinned'
Still the Bible can be an interesting start point for discussion on morality. I don't have all the answers so read widely
It is often an advantage to know the whole argument, this involves reading all the reasons for and all the reasons against.That is why I recommend reading this book. DR p143 writes,'We can sometimes learn a lot from people we disagree with'. I agree, so why does DR not recommend reading Dawkins 'The God delusion'? I think Dawkins makes a lot of good points and challenges people to read the whole Bible, the whole history of religion, the history of western philosophy and comparative religion. In fact Dawkins is encouraging people to be upto date with the current state of play in the battle between orthodox and skeptical Bible scholarship. I find it fabulously interesting although you can at times feel like you are infront of Alice in wonderlands warped mirrors.
I think a good rule of thumb is to start a reply by acknowledging the points you agreed with. I agree with DR that there are some good moral points in the Bible, whether there exists a cosmic God or not. I agree with the points in the Bible law which intersect with the superior U.K law 2011. I think that Matt 7v12;The golden rule is a good guideline. Wisdomcommons & psychologist Valerie Tarico points out in her excellent 'Trusting doubt' p247 "The ethics of reciprocity", humanity has a shared moral code. Jesus was not the first or only person to put this concept into words, Socrates said it in 430BCE. I agree with 'love your neighbour & enemy' if it means having a caring attitude which aims for their wellbeing, have a non exaggerated/generalised opinion of them, try to see any good points in them, points of agreement.
One of the main problems is that language is so vague that it is all too easy to generalise. "I love that song"- well I love the tune but hate the lyrics. Jesus said, 'Do not judge/condemn others, don't call people nasty names like fool' Paul said, 'A spiritual man judges all things'. Maybe Jesus meant that you should be specific and judge the individual action/concept in terms of your feelings/ emotions instead of trying to sum up the whole person. e.g "I'm annoyed that you did that, I think it would have been better this way..., I'm upset by how you spoke to me, I think you should try to be more emotionally literate",
instead of, 'Stupid boy','Fool,it's broken'. Pity that neither Jesus nor the Bible authors stuck to this rule. Or was it the translators fault? See Bart Ehrman's book, 'Jesus interrupted'
It is possible to make a hypothesis that there exists a perfectly good, loving God and imagine what would be the best things that being could have done or said. I think that with such a God there would be nothing to fear,people would either go to a nice afterlife or cease to exist. Pull the plug out & how can a thing exist? But you would have to ask, 'If there is such a god then how come so many suffer so much?' A God who knew how to cure illness but let people suffer in ignorance until science discovered the answers in the last 200 years ? Mark ch 7 Jesus never knew the value of hand washing
Then you read through the guesses that the Bible authors made.John W. Loftus asks in his good book 'The Christian delusion', do any of the ideas in the Bible seem like they might be divinely inspired? What if there was a divine voice speaking down through the ages saying, be caring, don't hurt others, cooperate and work for a sustainable future, spread this message only by reason/logic, not by war/GBH.
If Genesis 22 had been inspired by a divine voice then you would have the angel say to Abraham, 'Stop, you are entirely mistaken, God has never desired human or animal sacrifice and would never ask for it". Later prophets like Jeremiah & Ezekiel hint that they are moving toward the idea that all the divine voice wanted was for people to behave in a caring way/ not hurt anyone.
How come the angels don't appear when needed and tell the attacker to "Stop, don't murder" or how come if God could shout down in Mark 1v11 that he can't shout "Stop" to Hitler or use lightning to zap the likes of him or just switch of their electrics.
Genesis 20 claims God made Abimelech's family infertile, how come he didn't just make all Canaanites & later unbelievers infertile thus avoiding wars. Genesis 21 has God preserve Ishmael who allegedly fathered the 23% of the world hostile to Christ.
What if the divine voice spoke through Jesus saying, 'love your neighbour' etc and infact the crucifiction was just as meaningless as any other murder. The point is that you can't silence the divine voice: the greatest of these is love.
I personally aim to make goodness, love and truth my god, though you might not think it from my behaviour.
DR mentions the following authors
P 118 former fundamentalist preacher, now co president of freedom from religion org. Dan Barker who said in his good book, 'Godless', if we consider ourselves to be ethical we ought not to refrain from denouncing religious teachings and practices that cause harm. & Basic day to day morality is a simple matter of kindness, respect and reason
p 89 Bertrand Russell who on p14 of 'Why I am not a Christian' ,mentions the many people who can't see themselves on the right side of the Bible god and so live their lives in fear and worry. This is mainly caused by what Charles Darwin & Keith Parsons & David Mills & Loftus & Robert Ingersol & Thomas Paine call the damnable doctrine of hell. Russell thought a person with a reasonable degree of kindness would not place such fears in people.
p79 Nietzsche wrote through Zarathustra, 'There is no devil, there is no hell'. Many people have been left in fear of these non existant fantasies. Check the NHS check in sheet, demon possession isn't on there. It is a worthless superstition. A guess like phlogiston before science discovers virus, bacteria, fungi etc
p58 Dan Brown's Da vinci code, well I recommend Robert M Price's 'Da vinci fraud'. Price is a master of the Bibleverse and writes in 'The reason driven life' p231 that "Careful study shows that it is not so simple a matter to decide what the bible says, sometimes it says more than one thing per topic. The bible is not a supernatural answer book, we are all stuck using our best wits to decide tough ethical and theological questions"
p 87 C.S. Lewis. Well I recommend his 1940 book, 'The problem of pain' in which he lists the following valid reasons against the doctrine of hell.
1 THe punishments of hell are purely retributive...expressions of spite and vindictiveness and so are wicked
2 Eternal punishment for transitory sin is unjust
3 The punishments of hell are too severe to be just
5 God who desires the salvation of all is defeated when a soul is lost to eternity.
Prevention is preferable to punishment, restoration of health or property is what is desired. God could have prevented or restored life and health but does neither. There is no God just above the clouds. A God who can't inform police to go and arrest a terrorist before he attacks ? A God who can't warn people a day before the tsunami?
How come Jesus prays, 'forgive them for they know not what they do' if it is necessary to know and believe stuff to be forgiven? Robert Price says, 'That is a form of Gnosticism, salvation by knowledge'. The Osiris priests thought they had magic powers by knowing and reciting stuff like the names of the gods and praying the negative confession-it's Nicky Gumbel catch phrase- 'Justasifi'd never sinned'
Still the Bible can be an interesting start point for discussion on morality. I don't have all the answers so read widely
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
A great companion to read along with The God Delusion for a balanced perspective.
23 May 2011
Format:Mass Market Paperback
If you engage the people around you in conversation about spiritual things, you will quickly find that skepticism seems to be ruling the day. As with any movement, there are an elite few influential leaders who are leading the charge, especially through books and other media. One such influential leader amongst the skeptics is Oxford professor Richard Dawkins. His well-known book The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006) is still wildly popular several years after its publication with some 1693 reviews on Amazon. A non-fiction book with this many reviews five years after its publication clearly has a following. As we consider the level of influence garnered by books like The God Delusion that oppose a Christian worldview, an important question Christians need to ask themselves is, "How should a Christian respond?"
One person who decided to respond to Richad Dawkins is David Robertson. During the winter of 2006-2007, he wrote a series of open letters responding to concerns raised by Dawkins in The God Delusion. The first of these letters made its way to Dawkins' web site and received numerous responses. The chord that his letter seemed to have struck, encouraged David to write more letters in response to Dr. Dawkins, which ultimately led to the creation of this book. Robertson's aim is "to challenge some of the basic myths Dawkins uses and encourages in his book, in order that you may think and consider these things for yourself." (p. 9). With the exception of the introductory letter to the reader and the final letter to Dawkins (new to the revised edition), there are ten letters in the book, each of which correspond to a chapter in Dawkins' book and responds to one or more of the atheist myths that are discussed in that chapter.
The writing style of these letters feels very conversational, coming across as humorous, friendly, and deeply pastoral. If you happen to be reading The God Delusion or have a friend or acquaintance who is reading it, I would suggest picking up a copy of The Dawkins Letters to read in conjunction with Dawkins' book in order to get a balanced perspective. The Dawkins Letters is widely available from Amazon, Westminster Books and elsewhere.
Author Information:
David Robertson is a columnist, author and pastor of St. Peter's Free Church of Scotland in Dundee.
Disclaimer:
This book was provided by the Christian Focus Publications for review. The reviewer was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.
One person who decided to respond to Richad Dawkins is David Robertson. During the winter of 2006-2007, he wrote a series of open letters responding to concerns raised by Dawkins in The God Delusion. The first of these letters made its way to Dawkins' web site and received numerous responses. The chord that his letter seemed to have struck, encouraged David to write more letters in response to Dr. Dawkins, which ultimately led to the creation of this book. Robertson's aim is "to challenge some of the basic myths Dawkins uses and encourages in his book, in order that you may think and consider these things for yourself." (p. 9). With the exception of the introductory letter to the reader and the final letter to Dawkins (new to the revised edition), there are ten letters in the book, each of which correspond to a chapter in Dawkins' book and responds to one or more of the atheist myths that are discussed in that chapter.
The writing style of these letters feels very conversational, coming across as humorous, friendly, and deeply pastoral. If you happen to be reading The God Delusion or have a friend or acquaintance who is reading it, I would suggest picking up a copy of The Dawkins Letters to read in conjunction with Dawkins' book in order to get a balanced perspective. The Dawkins Letters is widely available from Amazon, Westminster Books and elsewhere.
Author Information:
David Robertson is a columnist, author and pastor of St. Peter's Free Church of Scotland in Dundee.
Disclaimer:
This book was provided by the Christian Focus Publications for review. The reviewer was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Hawkin the Dawkins Letters
14 May 2011
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Author David Robertson writes in the classic British (Scottish) economy of words style. He tackles atheist Richard Dawkins' writings with understated irony by challenging Dawkins to apply to his own worldview the grid that he applies to theism. Robertson shows where Dawkins fails to do just that thereby exposing the inconsistency (dare I say his hypocrisy) in how Dawkins selectively handles "truth." The chapters are letters originally posted to Dawkins website written in pastoral tone genuinely seeking to bring Dawkins to a more accommodating view of Christian theism as being intellectually consistent and not without rigor. Great little book. Possibly best book to loan to someone struggling with Dawkinsian arguments. I bought this edition because the introduction is written by a former atheist of some standing who came to faith in Christ after reading the material for this book on Dawkins' website. He was impressed intially by how Robertson handled the withering attacks of the other atheists who posted there. Robertson handled his own without responding in kind.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Concise, clear, and clever response
9 Aug 2011
Format:Mass Market Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
David Robertson has done a fine job of honing in on the most glaring weaknesses in Richard Dawkins's book THE GOD DELUSION, and subjecting them to the light of reason and logic. It's all done in a non-vitriolic, even light-hearted fashion, but it's very effective. You can tell its significance by the hate mail it has received from Dawkins's disciples.
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