77 Zealous Inches

Yo! I’m back with a commitment for the 400th time to post more regularly. I’m trying something new here. I’m going to review a book. There’s a long-pondered reason for this and it’s chiefly because I’m a big fan of communication and have come to realize lately just how bad I am at it. I tried to recommend The Shack to someone and in the middle of my little treatise they asked if it was a Stephen King novel. I’m serious. It’s that bad.

So, using the principle of if you’re not failing frequently, it means you’re not trying enough new things, I’m hoping to vigorously hone my art of persuasive communication through what I anticipate will be plentiful and regular failures in the attempt. It’s a two-pronged effort involving both written and spoken attempts at persuasion. So, if I come up to you at some point and start trying to persuade you of something – anything – now you know why. It’s practice. Feel free to offer robust differing opinions. Remember that your part is to challenge me and help me grow.

So here goes with the written bit. I’m starting with a book that Mike lent me awhile back.

Why Should Anyone Believe Anything At All?

Why Should Anyone Believe Anything At All? by Christian apologist James Sire gives two main arguments; 1) truth is the only good reason for belief, and 2) there are good reasons to believe that Christianity is true. The first half of the book makes the argument for truth as the only proper justification for belief and the second half offers four arguments for Christianity as a belief system.

The book was born from a lecture by the same name that Sire used to give on college campuses. Before his lecture, he would set up surveys where college students were asked to respond to one question “why should anyone believe anything at all?” In his years of asking this question, all answers fell under one of the four categories.

Sociological reasons: My society, culture, parents etc. hold X belief.

Psychological reasons: X belief makes me feel good. X gives me peace etc.

Religious reasons: I read about it in a book (Bible, Qur’an, etc.) My religious authority told me (priest, rabbi, guru). Miracles prove the truth of X belief. I had a religious experience.

Philosophical reasons: X is true. X is reasonable, logical, and internally consistent. X best accounts for all the available evidence. X belief gives the best explanation of all the tough issues of life.

He devotes a chapter to each of the above reasons, examining the reasons and then asking the question each time “is that a good reason to hold a belief?” He works incrementally toward the proposition the only good reason for a belief is truth and gives a number of criteria for recognizing truth in a claim. These criteria would be the answers given under philosophical reasons.

Building on this premise, he argues in second half of the book that there are good reasons to believe that Christianity is true. Sire gives four arguments for Christianity; the historical reliability of the Gospels, Jesus’ resurrection, the moral argument, and the experience of Christians discovering God – although about this last reason he’s careful to note that religious or personal experience should not be considered a stand-alone reason for the Christian faith but must be incorporated into a larger context of evidence.

It’s not a comprehensive overview of Christian apologetics – there’s no argument from design or anything about cosmology or science. The main apologetic he offers is the person of Jesus; his character, his teachings and resurrection. I found the first half of the book to be much more engaging than the second, not because his arguments for Christianity are weak but because the material in the second half is covered by nearly every basic Christian apologetic book you’ll pick up.

The second half is a good condensed review of much of what’s in Case for Christ. The arguments for the reliability of the Gospels and the resurrection are boiled down to their bare bones, which is helpful as either introduction to those arguments or just as review. He also devotes a chapter to dealing with the problem of evil and uses the nature of evil and free will defense as the intellectual answer, coupled with his personal experience with deep suffering to offer a solution for what is probably the toughest objection that Christianity has to answer.

I like James Sire. He’s down to earth and has a humorous, grandfatherly way of presenting solid arguments. I’ve read three and a half of his books so far and I rank this one as one of his easier reads. The first half of the book on its own is worth reading as he makes an engaging case for examining the truthfulness of a belief and not relying on all the other “reasons” that are commonly offered. It’s a roundabout treatment on thinking critically and differentiating between a true reason for a belief versus a cause or a feeling.

He uses real answers from college students to illustrate his points and the book is peppered with other stories from Shirley MaClaine to Chuck Colson to Sire’s own experiences – keeping the book moving at an easily readable pace. My favorite part of all of Sire’s books is his bibliographies; he gives these tasty one-paragraph reviews of other apologetic books and subsequently the cup of my Amazon wish list runneth over.

You can watch or listen to the man himself give the lecture at the Veritas Forum.