I came across Thom Stark’s excellent and exhaustive book length review of Paul Copan’s Is God a Moral Monster? Making Sense of the Old Testament God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2011) he’s titled Is God a Moral Compromiser? A Critical Review of Paul Copan’s “Is God a Moral Monster?” I uploaded it to Scribd.com and wanted to embed it on my blog, so here you go!
While reading through it, I agree with a lot of what Stark says. However, I do believe that the majority of complaints about the bible by the New Atheists are accurate. Nearly every critique I’ve seen of the New Atheists’ complaints about the bible fail to show why they’re wrong. Perhaps Stark would like to address the New Atheists’ errors about the bible himself since he feels so many other Christians have done such a poor job? Maybe this is the reason I feel the New Atheists’ critiques about the bible are mostly correct, because most apologists who attempt a counter-argument put up an incredibly poor defense?
unless God comes down from heaven to tell me personally that he doesn’t exist.
Huh? If god came down that would be confirmation of his existence, not non-existence. In fact, that’s one of the very few things that would convince me of god's existence and I wish it would happen. But I think we all know deep down the honest truth about why he doesn’t don’t we? (hint: he doesn’t exist!)
[While I love books one thing I don't like is that humor doesn't always translate well to the written word...]
Is God a Moral Compromiser?, By Thom Stark
AA,
ReplyDeleteThanks for linking. Just so you know, I was making a joke when I said "unless God comes down from heaven to tell me personally that he doesn’t exist." The paradox was meant to be humorous. :)
You're welcome...and this is when I hit the "edit" button. Thanks for the comment!
ReplyDelete:D
ReplyDeleteThom Starks an alright kind of guy ,even if his written humor gets confusing.Biggest trouble for Thom Stark, is many christians dont take so kindly to Thoms blatant sort of honesty.
ReplyDeleteHey, AA. It's up to you but if you have no objection, would you mind taking down this Scribd doc and uploading the second edition? It's found at the same url.
ReplyDeleteHi Thom,
ReplyDeleteThanks for letting me know about the 2ed edition. It's been uploaded. I also wanted to say thank you. Your book was very informative when I recently wrote a book review of my own arguing against a Christian apologist who tried to dishonestly argue that some biblical passages spoke against human sacrifice such as Deuteronomy 12:31. It likely won’t be posted until December though.
Thanks, AA. I look forward to reading your review! If you remember, send me a note when it's available.
ReplyDeleteAll the best, and thanks again.
T