Reviews, Interviews, News, Commentaries, Excerpts, My Top 5 Books, Wilson's Bookmarks, Book AwardsThe Quest for the Perfect Atheist
Susan Jacoby's biography of Robert Ingersoll mistakes a likeable fellow with a second-rate mind for a "freethinking" hall-of-famer.
[ posted 1/29/2013 4:18 PM ]
I am glad that Jacoby is trying to reinsert Ingersoll into the American consciousness. We Christians know about the traps of hagiography and a conspiracy-theory mentality and therefore cannot judge such faults too harshly. I am also pleased that Yale University Press is willing to try to help along a nascent intellectual community while it is still finding its way.
Timothy Larsen, McManis Professor of Christian Thought at Wheaton College, is the author, most recently, of A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians (Oxford University Press).
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Warren Throckmorton
I had to chuckle over this line in the review: "Christian historical writing has now matured to the point where it has dispensed with hagiography." Perhaps Dr. Larsen doesn't consider what David Barton does to be Christian historical writing. However, in light of the fact that many evangelicals do consider Barton to be a Christian historian, I think it might be more appropriate for CT to allow such judgments to start with the house of God.
Anne Acker
Kathleen: No, you can't prove a negative, but atheists make a lot of claims besides just the claim that God doesn't exist. Prominent atheists like Dawkins, Hitchens and others have claimed that the world would be less violent without religion, that science can offer a comprehensive worldview without recourse to faith, and that faith and science are incompatible. Surely these claims should be substantiated with historical and scientific evidence, and yet when such evidence is offered, it is always cherry-picked to showcase the worst of what has been done in the name of God without ever considering the overwhelmingly positive contribution that religion has made to all aspects of human society. Nor do atheists consider the historical evidence that Christianity continually confronts and corrects its own abuses, as in the Protestant Reformation or the Abolitionist Movement in America.
KARL TIEDEMANN
Not a *shred* of evidence?! I think Miss "Mch" protests too much. One need only look at a book like N.T. Wright's THE RESURRECTION OF THE SON OF GOD to see reasonably presented evidence for that particular event, and hence, God the Father. Win, place or show, that certainly qualifies as evidence.... No one does his case a favor by radically overstating it. Very interesting article....