Great Reading

I managed to finish Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ over the weekend. This is an excellent resource. For me there was not a lot new as far as arguments and information, but what took me years and years to discover through my own private reading and research, Strobel put in one concise and easy-to-read volume that can be read in a day or two. Kudos. I recommend it to anyone and everyone. What? Are you one of the only about a hundred and fifty evangelicals who still haven't read it? Go ahead! Bite the bullet. Dew it! You won't regret it. Besides, you'll want it on your shelf as a reference. I promise you my kids will read this book when they are teens.


Since finishing that one up I have begun devouring Alister McGrath's Dawkins God--Genes, Memes, and the Meaning of Life. No light reading this. However, it is not a long book, my copy being about 160 pages minus the reference sections. It is worth it. We would all be better off if we turned off the television and pop culture from time to time and spent some quality hours with a good tome--thinking and developing discernment--learning. Besides that, here you have one Oxford professor taking on (and taking out) the arguments of another--an academic free-for-all! Check out what McGrath says about Dawkins and this debate in the Introduction:

"Yes, Dawkins seems to many to be immensely provocative and aggressive, dismissing alternative positions with indecent haste, or treating criticism of his personal views as an attack on the entire scientific enterprise. Yet this kind of overheated rhetoric is found in any popular debate, whether religious, philosophical, or scientific. Indeed, it is what makes popular debates interesting, and raises them above the tedious drone of normal scholarly discussion, which seems invariably to be accompanied by endless footnotes, citing of weighty but dull authorities, and cautious understatement heavily laced with qualifications. How much more exciting to have a pugnacious, no holds barred debate, without having to worry about the stifling conventions of rigorous evidence-based scholarship! Dawkins clearly wants to provoke such a debate and discussion, and it would be churlish not to accept such an invitation."

Let's get it on!

Other Blog-related Info

Tomorrow night look for me to get that list of John Leland quotations on the separation of church and state added to this blog and also look for the first sermon to be web-published to The Spurgeon Archive Addendum.