The Case for Christ

My father in law lent the Case for Christ by Lee Strobel to me to read and I’ve finally gotten around to it in the last few days. I was very disappointed for a few reasons.
I went into it with an open mind but also with the inability to shut off my critical thinking muscle. I thought, “This will be great! I’ve looked at a lot of evidence from both sides from all different sources but it’s nice that someone put it all together in one book.” WRONG. I was open to examining all the evidence again from both sides and seeing if I perhaps came to a different conclusion (instead of atheism) based on good evidence and arguments. Unfortunately, it seems to be a very biased book: the author is already Christian WHILE he’s doing the interviews, out of 13 interviews, 13 interviewees are Christian, and any evidence from the other side is only brought up to these Christians to throw out the window. Not once does he ask someone who thinks differently and asks them why they do – he asks the Christians what other people think and why. Ugh. Truly frustrating. I understand why so many Christians find that this book has strengthened their faith – Lee found “smart” people to confirm everything he already believes and presents counter arguments as “weak” and easily torn down – never once confronting someone who stands by those counter arguments.
2. Even though I mentioned this above, I want to expound on it.  Lee Strobel is a Christian!  The whole time!  See I was under the impression and I don't quite remember why, that Lee starts out as an atheist/skeptic who goes around collecting evidence for the case for Christ and ends up converting.  I was starting to get suspicious while reading because a) Lee doesn't sound like a skeptic.  Sure he brings up points that skeptics have brought up but when the Christian apologists that he's interviewing give him an answer, good or bad, he basically says, "Huh, that sounds good.   I'll take it!", since it boosts his bias. b) at one point, an apologist says, "The odds alone say it would be impossible for anyone to fulfill the Old Testament prophecies...Yet Jesus-- and only Jesus throughout all of history---managed to do it." and Lee writes: The words of the apostle Peter popped into my head: "But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ should suffer, He has thus fulfilled" (Acts 3:18)  Seriously?  I was a Christian and I didn't have the Bible memorized but I still knew most of it's main verses and I don't know that one well enough to just have it "pop" into my head, but apparently Lee, the skeptic does? c) I cheated and looked at the back of the book and happened across the part where Lee describes his conversion. Later, while reading the book in order, I read that Lee has met the apologist he is now interviewing.  They were at a debate together: Lee was the moderator, William Lane Craig was the Christian debater and an unnamed atheist was the other debater. That right there bugged me: that they weren't naming this person.  I wanted to know if it was some random or a well known atheist debater and I don't understand why they didn't just include his or her name.  So I googled it: it's Christopher Hitchens - one of THE best atheist debaters of late.  The other thing I found out was that this debate happened in 2009.  No big deal right? At least it's fairly recent.  The problem is, Lee became a Christian in 1981.  This was my first proof that Lee wrote this book as a Christian looking to preach to the choir, not a skeptic looking for answers.  My second proof immediately followed when I took a closer look at the paragraph at the end of the book describing Lee's conversion.  Had I read it completely the first time instead of skimming I would have noticed this: "My investigation into Jesus was similar to what you've just read, except that I primarily studied books and other historical research instead of personally interacting with scholars."  He's admitting right here (at the end of the book mind you, after you've gone the whole way assuming he's a skeptic) that this book full of interviews wasn't actually his journey - that happened long before. d) the way he describes God is definitely from a Christian point of view, not a skeptics.  He's looking at whether Jesus really was God and stating that if he was, he'd have to be LIKE God. So what is God like?  According to Lee and many Christians, "He's loving, he's holy, he's righteous, he's wise, he's just." (pg 156)  According to Richard Dawkins, an atheist: "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, meglomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." (The God Delusion) I'd think that if Lee really was a skeptic, he'd at least land somewhere in the middle - between the two descriptions, not in the middle of the Christian camp.
3. One of the issues I had with Lee was pretty much right from the start.  First, he talks about a case where the suspect shot a police officer in a scuffle.  It was an airtight case according to the evidence - even the suspect pleaded guilty.  When the case is over and the suspect is sentenced, a source calls Lee to tell him about pen guns.  This leads Lee to reconsider all the evidence that so clearly pointed in one direction and see that it also fit another scenario - one where the police officer is carrying this illegal pen gun and it actually misfired in the scuffle.  Totally different story - but the evidence fit both stories.  He applies this to the evidence for Christ.  He describes what he thought about God, Jesus, Christianity, etc. and admits that all he'd ever given was a cursory glance to the evidence surrounding all things Jesus.  He goes on to say that he'd read enough to convince himself that he didn't need to look any further into it and he did so because he had a "strong motivation" to do so: "a self-serving and immoral lifestyle that I would be compelled to abandon if I were ever to change my views and become a follower of Jesus." And so he wonders if the evidence (that he's hardly looked at) could tell a different story.  Here are my issues: 1. He didn't have a good reason for being a skeptic in the first place - he hadn't really looked at it either way and he reasoned if it WAS true, he'd have to change his life which he didn't necessarily want to do. 2. Lee unfortunately reinforces the myth that atheists don't believe in God because they want to do awful things and not be held accountable.  I'd be interested to know what sort of immoral things Lee was doing before he became a Christian.  Maybe he wasn't as generous as he felt he could be or he felt bad for not going to church. I really have my doubts that his story is the kind where Jesus saves him from crime/drugs/sex/tattoos/oujia boards/etc.  Atheist is to immoral as standing in a garage is to car. Either way, Lee was not coming from anywhere near where I am coming from. 3. Lee doesn't follow his own advice about the idea of evidence being able to tell two different stories - because in his book, he only tells one.  I was at least willing to look at both sides.

In the end, I haven't lost any respect for my father in law - I know that he is sincere and he is doing his best to make sure he has good reasons for what he believes which I admire. I also realize that he cares about me and was only trying to share what he thought are strong arguments for Christianity. Lee, on the other hand, I am extremely disappointed in. I hope his only desire was to further convince Christians of their faith because his book will have either no effect or an adverse one on non believers. I have no respect for someone who claims to have looked at both sides of the story and promises to present them to you and then only tells one side. I'd be a lot less upset if his book was called "why you should believe Jesus was God" or "proof that Jesus was the Christ" and then he states his intentions to only talk about the evidence that helps his side. It would be honest at least. And you're allowed to write biased books - but I think you should be honest about it, not pretend to be objective.

People can surprise you

So in my last post, I explained how "coming out" to my Dad went and had a tiny little freak out just thinking about telling my mom.  I promised I would update when I came up with the guts to tell her about my lack of faith - the time has come.

I went to visit my mom two weekends ago and as I had planned, we eventually went for a walk.  I told her that I had something that I wanted to talk to her about and that I would appreciate if she just listened first and asked questions after.  I gave her the long story of how I got to where I am and I could actually see her nodding along while I talked which made me think that she had no idea where I was going with this.  I don't know, maybe she did, but the way she was reacting made me think she was expecting me to tell her that I had doubts but now my faith is stronger than ever, rather than I had doubts and now I don't believe in God.  When I finally said it, I don't think she really reacted at all, which made me keep jabbering away until she had  something to say.  Although her reaction was much more positive than I was expecting, the things she talked about were expected.  Things like "hell is real" and "there's no atheists in fox holes" and "what if you're wrong?" and "you have to experience God in order to know he's real".  After three and a half hours of talking about it, I was spent and it was time for me to go home.  I was getting frustrated with the conversation and decided to tell her that I needed to stop talking about it for now.  She brought up a few more things and unfortunately, I didn't stay as calm as I would have liked.  I think that's what I'm most disappointed about - my eventual lack of calm because it makes me seem like I'm not as settled in my new lack of faith as I really am.  She, on the other hand, stayed very calm. Hence the "people can surprise you". So it went well. Much better than I expected. And I learned something.

I've told people that if God shows himself to me, I would believe in him - my problem is just that I don't have any proof of his existence. But I think that just believing in God wouldn't be enough because according to the Bible, you have to worship him too and give him your life and obey him completely and I wouldn't be ok with that.  So even if God showed up and therefore I had to believe him to be real, I still wouldn't necessarily become a Christian.

First, I'm not ok with completely handing my life over to someone else and doing everything they say.  Then I'm just a pawn.  What's the point of my life if I'm just living it for someone else?  I enjoy making my own decisions, with input from others that I trust or from other's who are impacted by a decision I make.  I enjoy using my mind to solve a problem or think creatively.  If God is such a god that would require that I give up thinking for myself, I don't think I want him.

Second, I'm not ok with the things that he apparently requires of people or tells them to do. IF the Bible is true and an accurate depiction of what God is like, I don't like him, agree with him, or think he's worthy of any sort of praise.  I don't like that he expected Adam and Eve to blindly obey him without them knowing why or even knowing about good and evil.  I don't like that when he's unhappy with how his creation turned out down the road, he kills nearly all of it off.  I don't like that he's against humanity bettering itself and outright moves against it (Babel).  I don't agree with him that it's ok to slaughter an entire people - men, women, and children (excluding the virgin women of course) - because they are not doing things your way (multiple old testament stories).  I don't agree with him that children should be killed or almost killed because their parents screwed up, God hardened their parent's heart or because God wants to know just how devoted their parent is (David and Bathsheba, Egyptian first borns, Abraham and Isaac).  Outside of the Bible and just thinking of real life, if God is real, he is undeserving of worship or praise. His priorities are messed up: providing fancy cars for preachers in the west while starving children in third world countries, requiring blind faith and trust over critical thinking and evidence, and requiring humans to attribute everything good to him, even good things we do or things we do well, and take every failure onto ourselves.  I don't think the God described in the Bible or by Christians is a good or loving god and if he does exist, I don't think I want anything to do with him.  I'd fight him the same as I'd fight any human that would do the same things.  I've had someone else tell me that I think my morals are better than God's but that they are really just different morals.  That just because God is a god, his morals must be better but that's just another reason I don't like "God" - he has a double standard.  I don't think gods should have a lower standard than mortals, if anything, greater power demands greater accountability.

Whew!  Now that you know what I've learned, I'll tell you how I learned it while talking with my mom.  My mom wants me to experience God and at first, to prove that I don't believe in God because I hate him, I asked how I was supposed to do that.  Basically, her answer was for me to start over: to pray the sinner's prayer and be open to God. I've tried that and I'm done trying.  If God wants me to experience him, he'll have to come find me.  But our conversation ended by her telling me that the first thing I should do after I invite Jesus into my heart is to tell someone and that she'd be waiting by the phone and it was then that I realized that she really didn't get it.  I'm not wasting any more of my time with this: a) because I really don't think that I'll find God if I go looking and b) as stated before, I don't think I'd want him, even if I did find him so what's the point?

So I guess I should say that while I don't hate God (because as I said in another post, how can I hate something that doesn't exist?),  I don't like the idea of God and I don't plan on searching it out in hopes that it's real - because I'd rather it wasn't.  Now, I don't agree with believing or not believing in something because you hope or don't hope it's real.  That doesn't actually define reality.  But I feel like I've done a lot of looking at both sides and this side seems to be a more realistic picture of reality and if I'm going to be doing any searching, it's Atheism that I owe at least 10+ more years to - Christianity and God have had enough of my time to prove themselves.