Reddit reviews The God Debates: A 21st Century Guide for Atheists and Believers (and Everyone in Between)

>the Bible is authenticated by many things. In a word, it is a collection of historical documents that chronicle historical events. The only reason to believe that their recordings are less than factual is if one begins from the standpoint that only things that can be explained by science are possible.

Actually, no.

It would be biased to assume naturalism over supernaturalism, which sciences such as biology and physics do assume (for good reason). But the science of history does not make that assumption. You might consider reading The God Debates by John Shook as he actually covers that exact point in great detail.

The fact is that even people who started out wanting to prove the bible as factually correct have been forced to come to the conclusion that many of its historical claims are proven wrong not just by the science of history but also by other fields of science. For example, if we all descended from the handful of people on Noahs ark (who were all closely related anyway) then we would expect to see those markers in our genes. We do not however, and the level of diversity in human genes confirms our evolutionary view that humans have a mitochondrial eve around 200,000 years ago. Sure, the religious could say that god simply inserted the extra diversity in there but then you get into omphalism and many are wary to believe in a god who sets out to deceive them. Every time you have to invoke the supernatural in order to justify your worldview inevitably involves special pleading.

>By style, cross-referencing, and archaeology, the Bible appears to be recording historical events. The authenticity of the Bible is an entire field of study, and by far the Bible is the most deeply studied text in the world.

The bible is not even internally consistent, you could do a quick Google search for contradictions in the bible and you will find this list pretty quickly. But suppose the bible was internally consistent, and it can be safe to do so without ceding any argumentative ground since internal consistency does not alone determine whether a book is true, you say that the bible can be cross referenced with other sources but you don't provide examples. So lets take a minute to examine some of the inconsistencies with other sources.

In the bible Jesus is born during a census (the census is the reason for Joseph and Mary to be in Bethlehem), the only trouble is that the census does not appear to take place in any other records. At least, not in the form or at the time the bible claims it does. The bible seems to imply that Joseph must return to his ancestral home (Joseph was of the line of David and Bethlehem is the city of David.). To put this simply, the Romans did not require that someone go to the birth city of an ancestor 20-40 generations ago (the discrepancy is due to differing accounts of David's lineage between Matthew and Luke), to require this of someone would be utter chaos.

That is just one of the problems the bible faces. As pointed out elsewhere other big thorns in the side of using the bible as a historical account are the origin of languages, the exodus (or to a larger degree Jews being slaves in Egypt at all), and the global flood. There is no evidence to support the biblical accounts of these things. I recommend reading The Bible Unearthed. It is written by two Jewish archaeologists so they certainly do not set out to disprove the bible, but given the evidence they find they simply must come to the conclusion that it cannot be used as a historical text.

The God Debates: A 21st Century Guide for Atheists and Believers

http://www.amazon.com/God-Debates-Atheists-Believers-Everyone/dp/1444336428

Actually, this is a great book for both of you.

---------------------------------------------

If he's hard into philosophy:

The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God by J. L. Mackie
http://www.amazon.com/Miracle-Theism-Arguments-Against-Existence/dp/019824682X/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1302906893&sr=1-4Mackie

The Impossibility of God / The Improbablity of God by Micheal Martin (and others)
http://www.amazon.com/Impossibility-God-Michael-Martin/dp/1591021200/ref=pd_sim_b_25
http://www.amazon.com/Improbability-God-Michael-Martin/dp/1591023815/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_b

The Six Ways of Atheism: New Logical Disproofs of the Existence of God
http://www.amazon.com/Six-Ways-Atheism-Disproofs-Existence/dp/0954395662/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1302907259&sr=1-1

---------------------------------------------

>1) How do we explain that we all seem to know what is right and wrong? Why do we believe that being a human entitles someone to rights?

Evolved Morality.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-biology/#EvoBioDebMor

 

>2) Why do we all look for and want meaning if this is a meaningless world?

Again, evolution.

We are hardwired to find meaning where there may be one because at some point it was advantageous to our survival.

 

>3) How can we know what is true? If our brains have evolved to ensure our survival and not necessarily tell us what is true... how can we be sure of anything?

The thing is that "being right" is part of the survival process. Or at least it became a part of the survival process at some stage. And since we know that we as humans are prone to making errors we have taken steps to doublecheck our beliefs to make sure that they are true (or at least that they map to reality).

 

>4) How do you as an atheist defend the fine-tuning argument? The chances of a world existing with life, even existing at all, is incredibly low. Did we really just get extremely lucky?

I personally dont defend the fine-tuning argument, I reject it for multiple reasons.

First of all, its proponents assume that the constants we see today could be different, but there is no real proof of that.

Second, even if they were indeed different that does not mean that life would be impossible. Life in the form as we know it may be impossible, but other forms could still arise.
http://web.uni-plovdiv.bg/marta/life_in_the_multiverse.pdf ignore the multiverse part, focus on the fact that even completely removing the weak nuclear force would still allow for the universe to form

 

>5) What do you think is the best argument against Christianity? Can you recommend any good literature that argues for atheism? I am not sure if Dawkins and Sam Harris books are any good or not. Looking for more honest/less biased writers.

Tough question.

For general overview of theistic arguments and why they all fail in one form or another I would recommend John Shook - The God Debates

For a bit more specific arguments against Christianity I would probably go for Loftus (although he can be a dick sometimes imo) Why I became an Atheist and The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails. Loftus is a former preacher and apologiest so he has really good insight into Christianity. Think Matt Dillahunty, but this one writes books. And has a huge ego :P

From what I've heard in the past year-anna-half, I suspect the majority of atheists here, if pushed on the matter, would call themselves secular humanists. I should do another poll, though, to get that down a little more solidly.

I do know that the vast majority are naturalists; they laugh at ideas of the supernatural.

Beyond that, you run into a whole lot of naturalist world views that have huge amounts of overlap with just a few details different. There's a chapter-long summary on these various directions in R. Shook's The God Debates, which I enjoyed; but I found the whole thing a bit confusing overall.

After reading my "favorite" atheist book, Sense and Goodness Without God - A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism, I decided that I'd like to declare myself a Metaphysical Naturalist. But while I'm a fan of science and physicalism, I also think humans are important, and "Secular Humanism" just sounds a lot more... human. So if asked, that's what I answer these days.

For anyone interested, short articles on all these flavors can be found in Wikipedia, of course.

IMNSHO that book sucks. ;-)

If you want something worth reading, go for The Existence of God by Swinburne or The Resurrection of the Son of God by N.T. Wright.

The God Debates is written by an atheist but also does a good job being fair to the theist position.

If you're open to other ways of being Christian and have even a small degree of philosophic background, Paul Tillich's The Courage to Be is a must read. If you don't have a philosophic background, get one by listening to this podcast or this one or check out the easier to read Insurrection by Peter Rollins.