How NOT to review a book

I love reading, as I've written about before, and I usually review the books I read on Amazon.

Two recent events have raised the issue of how NOT to criticise or review a book. I will use these two examples to illuminate this common error.

The first occurred on facebook. John Dickson wrote an article criticising Andrew Bolt's attempt at Biblical criticism, and then this article was linked on the Public Christianity facebook page. A guy named Dave Singer responded with this gem:


I note that John offers, as usual, NO evidence whatsoever to support the claim that the Gospels are true.

He may as well call Andrew Bolt an idiot for thinking the Phantom Menace contradicts The Empire Strikes Back.

 I responded by pointing out that it's an error to judge an author by a standard that he never intended to meet. John Dickson's purpose wasn't to "provide evidence to support the claim that the Gospels are true", it was to show that the problems raised by Andrew Bolt aren't all that troubling at all. I also referred to Dickson's latest video where he talks about historical reasons to believe that the Resurrection accounts are historically plausible- 1. They're historically very early, 2. The testimony of women and 3. The conviction of knowledge (as opposed to belief) evidenced by the early followers.

A second example occurred on Amazon.com. A review of Christian Smith's The Bible Made Impossible was heavily critical of the book, on the basis that Smith's argument was "hoisted on it's own petard". The author of the review, S.D Parker, berated Smith because Smith apparently criticises the Bible for not being definitive enough, but Smith's own conclusions won't reach definitive agreement either! As I pointed out in response to Parker, Smith never intended for his own conclusions to reach definitive agreement! He clearly states that his views are merely some suggestions to get the discussion started on how to better approach the Bible, and not the final word. Further, Smith's argument was not against the Bible for not being definitive enough, it was against a particular view of the Bible (Biblicism) which implies the Bible should reach definitive agreement when it clearly doesn't! Big difference.

 

 

Smith devotes the second half of the book to arguing that the theology of the Bible does contain ambiguities (Chapter 6) and even the theological conclusions that we can reach are not entirely based on the Bible but are developed with later reflection and discussion (Chapter 7).

 

 

Parker was welcome to argue that Smith's suggestions don't work, but it was a simple error to criticise them for not being capable of reaching definitive conclusions. Smith never said they would! In fact quite the opposite. Not only did Parker misrepresent Smith's argument, but he judged Smith by a standard he never intended to meet.

 

 

It's interesting to note that Parker deleted that review the day after my response. The moral of the story here is that you can only judge a book by whether it sets out to do what it intended to achieve- NOT whether it achieved what YOU want it to achieve.

Bolt and Dickson on Biblical contradictions and Historical Errors

Conservative political journalist Andrew Bolt ventures onto writing about the Bible and John Dickson responds.

The Problem with "Universal" Values

Atheists regularly claim that they support "Universal values". This claim is often made in the context of a Christian arguing that they support "Christian values" like love, goodwill and caring for each other. The atheist will reply with something like this: "How dare you claim those as Christian values! I support those values too, and they've been around since before your ridiculous religion even got started". Sound familiar? The implication here is that those values fit just as comfortably within the atheist's way of thinking as they do within the Christian's way of thinking. I would like to challenge that implication.

Here I think we have a problem that we could call the social conditioning problem. We are all conditioned, to some degree by the time and place in which we live, and the influences of our society do impact on the lens with which we view the world. Everyone who lives in a Western Country lives in a location whose heritage has been strongly influenced by Christianity. So atheists have been socially conditioned to accept values that we take for granted in our Western way of thinking, which has historically been influenced by Christianity. In other words, a large part of the reason why the atheist claims that Christian values fit in with their way of thinking is because their way of thinking has been indirectly influenced by...you guessed it, Christianity. Even Richard Dawkins has referred to himself as a "cultural christian". Professor Edwin Judge makes the following comments in an interview entitled Christianity and the 21st Century:

"In Australia, very many of the ideals of the general culture, Australian values so-called, clearly come from that tradition (Edit note- ie: Christian tradition), and what the churches need to do, and what indeed the public needs to do is to inform itself better of the true sources of these things. The matter should be studied historically"

"We stand in this dual heritage from Greece and Israel but people have lost awareness of the sources of it".

"We must make the study of the Biblical tradition available to everybody, not just under church auspices but part of the commitment of our culture as a whole to the historical study of it not as a matter of personal belief but as a matter of explanation for why our values are such as they are. We should not accept that they can be declared, as people do, to be secular values".

He concludes:

"The true source of the value system needs to be clear. Everybody needs to know that, particularly people who have no church connection".

The atheist must account for the origin or basis of their values- do they have a consistent basis within their own worldview for exclusively supporting those values? Christians certainly do. The entire Bible has a consistent theme of putting others first and loving others, right through from the ten commandments to Jesus and through to the writings of Paul in the New Testament (for example see Romans 12: 9-21). When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, he replied with the following:

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40).

But what about the atheist? Can the atheist naturalist honestly claim a similar consistent basis for their values within their own view of the world? I'm inclined to agree with John Dickson, who says the following:

if human beings are only accidents in an unknowing universe, how can this choice be anything more than a mere preference, a product of ‘feelings’ as atheist Bertrand Russell famously acknowledged? On what grounds can the atheist speak rationally of the high and equal value of the poor or the weak or the asylum seeker?

Dickson concludes:

only one way of life is logically compatible with Christianity; any kind of life is logically compatible with atheism.

So do the values of love, compassion and goodwill really fit just as comfortably within the atheist's way of thinking as they do within the Christian's way of thinking? History and common sense would suggest otherwise.

Logos, Pathos and Ethos

Almost a year ago, I came across an idea and I was intrigued by it. The idea was from the ancient philosopher Aristotle, who claimed that people's beliefs are influenced by numerous different factors- specifically factors relating to Logos, Pathos and Ethos. This clearly has importance when looking at communication and persuasion, and that's the context in which I came across the idea: I found a book titled "How to Argue Like Jesus: Learning Persuasion from History's Greatest Communicator".

Shortly after finding this book online and becoming fascinated by Aristotle's idea about beliefs, I attended a talk by Dr John Dickson. Little did I know beforehand, that Dickson uses these ideas in his presentations on Jesus as well- although in an entirely different context to the "How to Argue" book. After hearing Dickson's presentation, I decided I had to go out and buy the "How to Argue" book, and find out more about the Logos, Pathos and Ethos idea.

Dickson's presentation was about the evidence for Jesus Resurrection, but one theme he hit on during his talk was the idea that skeptics need to be honest enough to admit that their beliefs are influenced by several factors other than the intellectual element. He recently wrote an article which neatly presents some of these thoughts on this theme which he discussed during the talk I attended last year.

Click here to read the article, titled "The Way We Believe".

(Note: as with any online article most of the comments miss the point, disagree and abuse but don't provide any reasons why they actually disagree, or discuss something entirely irrelevant to the article actually written):