Book and Film ReviewsThis section of the website is dedicated to giving reviews of books that I have read. The reviews may be long or short. There will be a an Amazon box linked to the reviews that I give (hopefully one for .com and one for .co.uk). Preliminary review of Reasonable Faith as submitted to AmazonOk, so I was feeling lazy. But here is what I thought in a (very small) nutshell: I read this book and had to get my pen to angrily note things in the margin at far too regular intervals. Craig should know better, he is a clever man, but his work is littered with straw men, question begging and other such fallacies. I think he treats the book, though aimed at the Christian market, as one of his debates, such as using sneaky tactics and fast moves to pull the wool over peoples eyes to detract from the erroneous or disingenuous claims. Craig often does not do enough justice to the counter arguments: he either explains them poorly, in not enough detail, or builds up straw men of them so as not to have to tackle them in their most serious of forms. He also looks at things like the Kalam Cosmological argument from a simplistic viewpoint. For example, even though he is a nominalist when it comes to numbers, he becomes a realist when approaching other abstracts. This allows him to build up the premises for the KCA without properly addressing the issues. He also continually appeals to authority and popularity when talking about New Testament studies and the historicity of Jesus. What he fails to explain is that the overwhelming majority of scholars are Christian, so of course they will have conclusions that verify Christianity! That is like saying 99% of Islamic scholars believe that the Qu'ran is the word of God, so therefore it is the word of God. You need to establish the selection biases and so on before looking at consensus conclusions amongst biased scholars. And so on and so on. I am looking to write a much longer and more critical review. It is a well-written book, and Craig has some good arguments, and he knows his onions. He is also crafty and professional when it comes to creating an argument. You must treat this book like you do his debates: it is tactical, and it requires you not to believe his points at face value. His 'facts' that he builds his cases upon are very often not facts. Beware! Craig is clever. And his arguments are not as sound as they sound... ![]() Global Warming: A Scientific and Biblical Expose' of Climate ChangeThis documentary made for some interesting viewing. Well, for interesting, I mean really dire. If time permits, a greater dissection of its copious flaws will follow. This review sums up my incredulity, though, as posted on Amazon. Oh dear me. Is this seriously what
people think is science? This is a wolf in pantomine sheep's clothing. Possibly
the worst documentary i have ever seen. The Book of EliAs posted on imdb.com: Christian propaganda, 12 March 2010 Nothing but a not even thinly veiled attempt at Christian propaganda. The bible is portrayed as the saving grace for humanity. They obviously haven't read the Old Testament with it's wondrous violence and babies getting dashed on rocks. |