book review: against all gods

What’s right and wrong about the new #atheism.

I’ve gotta be honest… I was a little surprised by this title (and subtitle) on a Christian book. But Against All Gods presented a refreshingly honest look at what’s important in the debate between the secular atheist and the Biblical Christian world views.

Focused on the controversy around a proposed course at Harvard about ‘faith and reason’, Johnson and Reynolds applaud the New Atheists for bringing discussion about faith in any religion back into the spotlight. While this book is less about the actual apologetic for the Christian faith, it is about how we talk with each other.

Johnson and Reynolds challenge Atheists (and Christians alike) to ask the right questions about what faith in a God really means. They argue that faith is not the opposite of reason, but it’s what allows us to act when we cannot be absolutely certain about what we believe to be true. Ironically, this is the very thing that keeps science moving forward, especially in areas were there is little (or no) actual evidence to immediately prove a hypothesis. In addition, they show how reason is just as important to Christian belief as it is to science. Essentially, the worlds of science and religion are much closer than many choose to realize.

Phillip E. Johnson is often referred to as the father of the intelligent design movement, and has been at the forefront of the public debate over evolution and creation for many years. John Mark Reynolds is the founder and director of the Torrey Honors Institute and professor of philosophy at Biola University. Together these men make a great one-two punch in the discussion between atheism and religion.

Personally, I’m not a fan of the Christian mentality of, “Bible good – atheist bad”. I need a good book like this every once in a while to help me better understand the discussion between these two conflicting world views. Against All Gods not only leveled the playing field, but it also outlined the rules of engagement that both sides of the argument should play by. This book sharpened, encouraged, and outraged me all at the same time. But most of all, I’m more prepared to talk… and ask the right questions.

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Note: This book was part of my summer reading list.

o me of little faith [the vlog project]

Have you ever doubted God?

I know. That’s a loaded question, right? I know that I can say that I’ve struggled from time to time with my doubts. And if you’re completely honest about it, then you probably have at some point in your walk with Christ too. Most of us have our doubts, but few of us are willing to actually talk about them.

Why is that?

Do we feel like that if we doubt God that we’re somehow walking away from our salvation in Him? Or maybe we feel like we’re supposed to be strong and suck it up and put on this show like we have it all together.

I sometimes wonder if guys like Abraham, the father of faith, ever doubted. I imagine that when he got the instruction to go sacrifice his son Issac that he must’ve doubted God, even if just for a moment. Wouldn’t you?

I wonder if it’s not as important that we doubt God (because we most likely will), but what we do with that doubt. Doubt can be an important part of having faith. Do you agree?

The book

Writer/speaker Jason Boyett recently released a book about this topic called O me of little faith: True Confessions of a Spiritual Weakling. In this book Boyett shares the stories about his doubts, and explores things like how we doubt, why we doubt, and what to do about it.

The project

Are you interested in getting a free autographed copy of this book? I’m giving away a copy, but you’ll have to work for this one! You can enter this drawing the following ways…

1. Submit a video about your own struggles with the following criteria (5 entries)
   - No more than 3 minutes in length
   - Share about how/why you struggled with doubt
   - Share how that experience has been important to your faith
   - Add your video link (YouTube, blog, etc.) to this post using the Mr. Linky widget below (before June 11th)
2. Comment on this post (1 entry)
3. Tweet this post (must include @bibledude and #littlefaith, 1 entry per tweet)

The videos

the elevator pitch: bibledude[dot]net

First and foremost, BibleDude.net is intentionally a .NET. We strive to provide a place of Christian fellowship and community (a network) where people can express themselves in three ways:

(1) To be REAL. Our interactions and discussions aim to be honest and authentic in nature. This is a place where people can express what they really feel about living out their faith.

(2) To be RELEVANT. What we do should be focused on real-life application of the Word of God to our families, job, ministries, or any other aspect of our lives.

(3) To be FAITH-centered. God is at the center of everything that we do and discuss. Without Him, what we do would be meaningless.

What do you think? Is this something that you would want to be a part of? Does it sum up your experience with BibleDude.net? Is there anything that I should change about this statement?

As the Social Media Editor for HighCallingBlogs.com, I’m taking the lead in a partnership with Christian Web Trends at OurChurch.com in a project called ’31 Days to Build a Better Blog’. I’m pretty excited about this project, because I think that it’ll give me the opportunity to take BibleDude.net to the next level.

I’m also hoping that we’ll be able to apply some of what we learn to the HighCallingBlogs.com site, and I think that many of our member bloggers will benefit a great deal from the discussions.

Day 1 of the project focuses on ‘The Elevator Pitch‘. Wikipedia defines the elevator pitch this way…

An elevator pitch is an overview of an idea for a product, service, or project. The name reflects the fact that an elevator pitch can be delivered in the time span of an elevator ride (for example, thirty seconds or 100–150 words).

For quite some time now I’ve used the tagline of ‘real. relevant. faith.’ for this site. I use it because I believe that it sums up what the site is all about. The 116-word elevator pitch that I started this post with provides the deeper definition of what that three-word tagline means to me.

I’d love to hear what you think about my elevator pitch. If you’ve been visiting here for a while, does this fit your experience? If not, then what is missing?

If you’re new here, does this sound like something that you’d want to be a part of? Why or why not?

Please feel free to be honest, and not worry about hurting my feelings. I’m really trying to grow through this process, and want to know what you really think (that’s the REAL part of my elevator pitch).

So let me have it! Ready, set, go…

[highcallingblogs.com] the moment of impact

Note: This is an excerpt of the featured Faith post (written by yours truly!) at HighCallingBlogs.com.

I met this guy (we’ll call him Joshua) on the street in a popular downtown area one night while he was waiting for a taxi. The first question that I asked him was, “How many brand names of beers can you name?” First there were the easy ones… Budweiser, Miller, Coors, Heineken. Then it got a little tougher, but he was able to pull out some names of a few others… Red Stripe, Samuel Adams, Rolling Rock. In the end, he was able to rattle off about 16 brand names before he decided to stop. He had a great sense of pride after being able to pull off such an impressive list.

Then he was ready for my second question.

My heart started racing, because somehow I knew that this question was going to make him think in a way that I wasn’t sure that he was expecting. In fact I almost didn’t want to ask it, but I mustered up the strength to force the words out of my mouth…

Read the entire article at the HighCallingBlogs.com website.

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