Comments on Letters From a Skeptic, 1: The Preface
I am starting a series of posts to review and share my thoughts on the Christian apologetics literature Letters from a Skeptic: A Son Wrestles With His Father’s Questions About Christianity by Gregory A. Boyd, and my views of the reasoning therein. I wanted to try out this book review format as a new way to address the arguments for various religions, hoping to demonstrate the strength of apologetics literature in their natural habitat, and give better context to the arguments as they are made rather than make an essay per claim.
My plan is to do this review for about five or six examples of what I find to be the strongest apologetics literature, write a few more essays I’ve always wanted to write that advance arguments for atheism I haven’t seen made elsewhere, then summarize why I find atheism compelling and then leave it there for philosophy of religion unless asked to respond to something or I find my work inadequate.
Why this Book?
…Anyways, the actual book at hand. Given that the book starts out with a Preface, I’d like to start out with a Preface of my own:
Why pick this book to review? It’s a long story, but I’ll tell it to you anyway. Not too many people know this, but back in November of 2010, I was nowhere close to the staunch atheist that I am today. Then, I knew very little of what I know now on philosophy, and I was on the verge of becoming a Christian. However, I was encouraged to be intellectually honest, which I felt meant that I should read the best books that both sides. (At the time, I had ignored all the other religions and mistakenly framed the debate between just Christianity and atheism.)
So, I asked for recommendations. An adult member of what was then called the Campus Crusade for Christ, now called Cru, had persuaded me to read Letters from a Skeptic, saying that it was the definitive book that convinced him to become a Christian believer after many years living as a relatively uncommitted atheist.
The book details a series of letters between the author, Gregory Boyd, and his father, Edward Boyd, in which the son convinces his father over a series of 29 back-and-forth letters spanning three years to become a born-again Christian. The book was started as a series of letters with the following goals in mind:
I had in mind a long-term dialogue in which all of our cards would be laid on the table. I would give him the opportunity to raise all his objections to the truth of Christianity, and he would give me the opportunity to answer these objections as well as give positive grounds for holding to the Christian faith.
What is this Book?
The titles of all the letters gave full detail of the questions that would be answered:
- Why has Christianity done so much harm?
- Why is the world so full of suffering?
- Is the risk of freedom worth all the suffering?
- Does God know the future?
- Why does God create earthquakes and famines?
- Why did God create Satan?
- Is your God all-powerful?
- Why believe in God in the first place?
- Couldn’t it all be by chance?
- Why didn’t God spare your mother?
- Why would an all-powerful God need prayer?
- Why would God care about us little humans?
- Why trust the Gospel accounts?
- Aren’t the Gospels full of contradictions?
- Who wrote the Gospels and when were they written?
- How can you believe that a man rose from the dead?
- How can you believe that a man was God?
- Why does God make believing in Him so difficult?
- Why do you think the Bible is inspired?
- Isn’t the Bible full of myths and God’s vengeance?
- Didn’t the Catholic Church put the Bible together?
- Why are there so many differing interpretations of the Bible?
- What about the “holy books” of other religions?
- Do all non-Christians go to hell?
- How could an all-loving God torture people in an eternal hell?
- Isn’t the Christian life impossible to live?
- How can another man’s death pardon me?
- How can I be holy and sinful at the same time?
- How can I be sure it’s all true?
Given the strong recommendation, the fact that I wondered many of these questions myself, and that I thought the “all the cards on the table from both sides” thing was pretty neat, I was immediately intrigued and bought a copy. While I may have had unknown biases at the time, I felt like I had a good shot at converting from my default position of weak atheism, and wanted to see if this book would do it.
Yet, this was not the case — while this book was definitely one of the more understandable, more readable, more civil, more thorough, more balanced pro-Christianity books I’ve read, it really didn’t persuade me when I read it. Instead, I was frustrated by even more questions that I felt like not only went completely unanswered, but weren’t even noticed by the correspondents.
Why I Appreciate Gregory Boyd
But I must say I really do appreciate Gregory Boyd’s candor. Unlike most apologists, including William Lane “No one in the final analysis really fails to become a Christian because of lack of arguments; he fails to become a Christian because he loves darkness rather than light and wants nothing to do with God” Craig — Boyd acknowledges right in the preface that non-believers have intellectual doubts and that sinners do need reasons for belief, not just preaching (14).
Of course Boyd also says there is a spiritual component to our resistance and of course constant prayer and spiritual warfare is always necessary for a successful conversion, but this is a step in the right direction. And I genuinely mean that, with no sarcasm intended — it’s refreshing to see an apologist acknowledge that atheists aren’t the scum of the earth. No part of the book makes me think Gregory Boyd is anything but a nice, sincere guy who means well.
I also strongly admire Boyd’s commitment to defending the Christian faith rationally. Too many professional apologists these days seem to argue that Christianity is true because we need to assume certain things to be true, and one of these things is the authority of the Bible. Likewise, I see far too many arguments that reason needs a backseat to faith. So to see someone argue from the perspective of using reason first and being committed to opening one’s reason to free-for-all objections is further refreshing.
But I still don’t think his defense stacks up. Now that I am far more trained in philosophy and it’s been more than a year since I’ve read the book, I really want to analyze his claims on my blog. But right away in the preface and introductory letter to father, I notice two problems:
Initial Problem #1: The Father is Seriously Outgunned
While Gregory Boyd certainly does a great job of talking about how “[e]xceptionally intelligent” and “intensely skeptical” his father is (13), the fact remains that his father doesn’t stand much of a chance in any theological or philosophical debate. Gregory Boyd is a professional theologian with a PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary, has spent over a decade teaching people how to defend the Christian faith …even to the point where he will be engaging in a debate with another professional scholar (17). On the other hand, his Dad is seventy years old, is “not at all firm on what [he] personally believe[s]“, is “not a trained philosopher” and asks his son to “keep it simple” (22).
So the fight definitely seems a bit slanted in favor of the Christian; definitely not the kind of fairer fight you might see in God?: A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist between William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, both of which are famous, well-credentialed philosophers of religion (a debate which now that I think about it, could be fun to also review…).
As the book progresses, we’ll see this slant get the better of the argument and leave the book a bit wanting and incomplete in several key places. Though, for his credit, the Dad doesn’t really do that bad of a job. …Even though he did give up and become a Christian.
Initial Problem #2: Too Many Rebuttals, Not Enough Positive Reasons
Secondly and lastly for now, this book is full of objections where the father tries his hardest to point out why Christianity is false. Gregory Boyd acknowledges this indirectly, noting that “[i]t’s always easier to prove a false theory false than it is to prove a true one true”. Thus this book starts on an objection from the dad and a response from the son.
While responding to objections is very important and Christianity does need to be able to survive all these objections to not be rendered false, it also needs to present positive reasons for belief. With the notable exception of the eighth correspondence and a bit of the stuff on the Bible, this book is very short in these positive reasons. Answering objections is not enough, and Christianity is not proven true even if all the objections are answered — we still need positive reasons to accept the claim.
I look forward to a further analysis of what goes on in this book.
Continued in: Comments on Letters From a Skeptic, 2: Evil
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On 8 Feb 2012 in All, Atheism, Christianity. 14 Comments.
9 Feb 2012, 1:46 am
Since I’ve heard good things about this book, I’m eager to follow your commentary series on it.
And not that you need more on your reading list, but Sinnott-Armstrong’s Moral Skepticisms is a fantastic read. Didn’t know he wrote a debate book with Craig. Now that’s on my reading list.
9 Feb 2012, 2:07 am
Thanks, Garren. It was you who I intend to model my book reviews after, so feel free to be flattered. I tried to leave a comment to that affect on your blog, but the blog wouldn’t let me do it.
I don’t actually think “God?” was that good of a debate; I felt like there was a lot of room for improvement on both sides and that both sides were really only good at rebutting the other and not so good at making their own case. I think that Sinnott-Armstrong also missed a lot of opportunities in rebutting Craig’s Moral Argument. So I still recommend that you read it, but I warn you that you might be disappointed. I do like Sinnott-Armstrong’s writing style, though.
I’d add Moral Skepticisms to the list, but it’s too expensive at $85 on Amazon. Maybe I can find it in a library somewhere, but it looks obscure.
9 Feb 2012, 12:59 pm
WorldCat Search is the best way to look around for books.
And, yeah, the Blogger comment system has always been crappy with no sign of change. Now that Google is going to start doing source-region censorship, I’m thinking about migrating to a new platform. I have the technical ability to set up a LAMP environment for WordPress, but I dislike that sort of administration. Any recommendations?
9 Feb 2012, 4:30 pm
I’m really looking forward to this series. It is refreshing to know that you too have personally struggled with what faith to adopt, if any at all. I don’t know if this is on the agenda, but are you going to talk about some of the “positive reasons” one should adopt atheism in this series or elsewhere on your blog? One of the biggest detracting factors of atheism may be its lack of positive support. Most atheist philosophers don’t seem to be doing anything other than responding to criticisms and arguments from theists and attacking Christian dogmas. Though the onus for the theist side is heavier since they are actually claiming something, that should not cancel out the atheist’s onus to show why one should reject belief in God.
Off the top of my head, your “positive reasons” for atheism blogged about thus far include your critiques of the supernatural (12 Reasons Part 1 & 2, Making the Question Go Away) and your post on metaphysics (The Metaphysics Dilemma). Though not technically a positive reason, I found your refutation of p-zombies very damaging. I would love to see more philosophy of mind posts from you. And I know this isn’t the feedback post, but hey, feedback misplaced is better than no feedback, yeah?
9 Feb 2012, 10:43 pm
That’s actually pretty helpful, thanks.
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Why not create wordsideasandthings.wordpress.com? That’s what I would recommend to those who don’t want to buy a domain name and/or server space.
10 Feb 2012, 12:03 am
Good suggestion, but I found more things to be a grouch about…with the free version anyway. Maybe I’ll look at third party commenting systems again.
What I really want to know is whether I’ll be able to find out which posts are censored and from which countries. (You know, so I can try to maximize my censored count.)
10 Feb 2012, 12:05 am
What about WordPress bothers you?
10 Feb 2012, 2:49 am
Ads if I don’t pay up. Less flexibility about blog design if I don’t pay up.
Not that I blame them.
19 Feb 2012, 2:06 am
@ThinkingEmotions:
Yeah, definitely.
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I agree with you in two parts, but potentially disagree with you in a third.
First, I agree with you that responding to arguments from theists does not constitute a reason for atheism — just because you can have a meaningful and purpose-driven atheist life does not mean that atheism is true. Likewise, if a Christian were to provide a solution to the Problem of Evil, all that would mean is there is now one less specific reason to reject Christianity, not proof that Christianity exists.
Second, I agree with you that attacking Christian dogmas (such as through the Problem of Evil) also does not give you a reason to reject belief in all gods, only reason to reject belief in the specifically Christian God. Though I still think having a refutation of Christianity is a big deal.
However, third, I think that the atheist’s onus to show why one should reject belief in God is a bit different than the one I understand you suggesting. It is enough I think to show that all positive reasons to believe in a God fail, and thus there is no reason to believe in God. So positive reasons to reject belief will mostly look identical to reasons against adopting belief.
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I would view my positive reasons for atheism as falling in these two categories:
God is supernatural, and the supernatural is incoherent, therefore atheism: This would be most notably found in “Making the Question Go Away” as you suggested. Also, see Eliezer Yudkowsky’s “Semantic Stopsigns”. Lastly, I think that incompatibility arguments have some weight here, but I don’t emphasize them that much.
There is no positive reason to believe in God, therefore atheism: I haven’t specifically outlined this much yet, though I should soon. My problem is that I don’t want to reinvent the wheel since so many other people have already written on the topic. I take the “Atheism = Untheism + Antitheism” approach: Basically, if God is justified based on…
… the cosmological argument (refuted here in video, here, here, here in a pdf, here, plus see anything that argues for the B-Theory of Time like this essay);
…the design argument (refuted here, here, here, here, and here);
…the fine-tuning argument (refuted here in video, here, here, here, and here);
…the moral argument (refuted here, here, here, plus see any discussion about the Problem of Evil or how atheism can ground morality);
…the ontological argument (refuted here and here);
…the argument from reason (refuted here);
…the transcendental argument (refuted here and here);
…reformed epistemology / appeal to properly basic beliefs (refuted here, also see my theory of knowledge where his argument can’t fly);
…Holy Spirit Epistemology / appeal to “self-authenticating” witness (refuted here, here, here, and here);
…some appeal to faith or undisprovability (refuted here and here);
…or Pascal’s Wager (refuted here);
…then the refutations all add up to there being no reason left to believe in God.
Of course, this is a giant multi-faceted conversation involving the rejection of dozens of arguments (including some not mentioned), so you might disagree with me on any point. The rest are either arguments from Ockham’s Razor (which I haven’t yet found well stated anywhere) or arguments for why we should reject belief in Gods with specific characteristics, like the God of the Bible or any god that is said to be morally perfect.
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Thanks! Do you have anything more specific in mind (ha!) you’d like to see me tackle?
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Of course!
22 Mar 2012, 11:32 pm
I hope you come back to review the rest of this book. I’m curious to see what a thoughtful atheist thinks of it. I read it a couple of times, and my review isn’t nearly so generous to Boyd.
22 Mar 2012, 11:57 pm
You’re in luck, Lance, because my essay this Monday will be the second part of this series.
22 Mar 2012, 11:59 pm
Also, your review seems on the mark. I wish I found it back when I was reading the book, because I was somewhat convinced by what he was saying. Of course, back then, I knew barely a shadow of the philosophy and science I know now!
23 Mar 2012, 8:11 am
Thanks!
28 Mar 2012, 10:56 pm
Apparently I lied. I mean next Monday. Being busy sucks.