(This is a reprint of a review I wrote for Goodreads a while back. I have edited it.)
Kenneth W. Daniels is a former evangelical/fundamentalist missionary to Africa
who lost his faith, convinced, he says, by reason and logic that
evangelical/fundamentalist Christianity doesn't hold water. Almost all
of the arguments he offers are the ones that any thoughtful atheist,
agnostic, or theist has encountered, considered, and acknowledged, so
there's really nothing new here for the thoughtful atheist, agnostic, or theist. But it is a welcome critique of religious faith that doesn't rely on the tropes of Hitchensite anti-religionism.
The
weaknesses of the book, such as they are weaknesses, are few. His
primary intended audience is those who are probably least likely to read
the book, that is, those evangelical/fundamentalist Christians who
believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. The arguments he offers are
devastating to that particular approach to Christianity. He does engage other, less "fundamentalist" defenders of Christianity, such as C. S. Lewis, who, although an evangelical, certainly does not
believe in the inerrancy of (most of) the Bible and who doesn't discount that humans may have evolved from "lesser" mammals. But Daniels's
argumentation is focused on addressing the possible objections that
members of his primary intended audience might raise. In other words,
he is not addressing straw man arguments--because those arguments exist
among the audience he means to write for--but he does not delve as fully
as do more self-consciously questioning theists. I'm not sure this counts
as a "weakness" (he is clear about who his intended audience is), but
the book leaves other readers where they probably were when they picked
it up.
Another "weakness," if it is right to call it a weakness,
is that Daniels does not seem to acknowledge (at least not to the extent
that I would prefer) that his naturalistic worldview is based
necessarily on unprovable assumptions. This is particularly clear when
he spends much time debunking the alleged "miracles" that appear in the
Bible. This debunking project is quite well done, but I would have
liked him to go the extra mile and point out that miracles, by their
very definition, are a-natural. In short, no one who subscribes
completely to a naturalistic worldview could acknowledge a miracle even
if it ambled up upon the water in their direction because in any such miracle "must have a
reasonable explanation and if we don't know the explanation, then it's
because we simply haven't uncovered it yet." Again, this isn't so much a
weakness as it is a quality of the position for which Mr. Daniels
argues so well.
What I liked best about this book is its humility and its tone. Daniels is not out to explain
"how religion poisons everything." Rather, he remains consistently
respectful to the persons whose worldview he challenges so well.
Indeed, my own receptiveness to his book--I usually identify as "an
agnostic who leans toward theism" or as an "apophatist"--causes me to wonder about my own
antipathy to the atheist/agnostic/naturalist arguments. Perhaps I what I
object to in these arguments is more the strident and bigoted tone of the Dawkins and Hitchens crowd than what they actually argue.
At any rate, this book is worth a read.
No comments:
Post a Comment