GoThe Handbook of Christian Apologetics provides a firm basis for defending Christianity by offering a wide range of reasons for belief. Its goal is to help believers defend their faith and to help non-believers see the reasonableness of believing in Christianity. Kreeft and Tacelli write in a lively and intelligent manner. Their train of thought is fairly easy to follow, althought it wouldn't hurt if the reader has a bit of knowledge of philosophical terms under her belt. They tackle topics such as, Does God Exist? (they offer 20 arguments for the existence of God), The Problem of Evil, The Divinity of Christ, Life after Death, Objective Truth, just to name a few.
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In its own words: "We live in an age filled with seekers in their twenties and thirties who are desperately trying to find deeper meaning in their lives but whose journey has little to do with traditional religious institutions. BustedHalo.com believes that the experiences of these pilgrims and the questions they ask are inherently spiritual. Based in wisdom from the Catholic tradition, we believe that the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the people of this age are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of all God’s people. Nothing genuinely human fails to raise an echo in their hearts. BustedHalo.com strives to reveal this spiritual dimension of our lives through feature stories, reviews, interviews, faith guides, commentaries, audio clips, discussions and connections to retreat, worship and service opportunities that can’t be found anywhere else. We are committed to creating a forum that is: open, informed, unexpected, unpredictable, balanced, and thought-provoking. Every time we ask questions about what our lives mean and what keeps us alive, we are talking about something that’s relevant to BustedHalo.com."
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Luke Muehlhauser ("lukeprog") is an atheist and naturalist who arrived there via a journey as a devout pastor's kid. His story is moving. The tone and discussion here is sympathetic and friendly, and the writing almost always thought provoking. The site includes some impressive resources, like an evaluation of all of William Lane Craig's debates and a voluminous list of debates about God. Luke's site is a beacon of thoughtful and respectful dialogue. Highly Recommended. About itself: "See, believers have two ways of thinking. In most situations, they think with the same logic as most people do: this is our 'common sense.' Tell a believer that the bank stole his money, or that an ancient book says you can heal disease by dancing around a fire, and he will ask for evidence. That is common sense. ... The whole point of my website is this: If a believer applies his special thinking to any other area of life, it becomes clear how irrational that special thinking is. And if he applies common sense to his religion, it becomes clear how irrational that religion is."
David M. Holley (Wiley-Blackwell: Jan 19, 2010), 256 pages.
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Philosophers typically assume that the appropriate way to reflect on God’s existence is to consider whether God is needed as a hypothesis to explain generally accepted facts. In contrast, David Holley proposes that the question of belief should be raised within the practical context of deciding on a life-orienting story, a narrative that enables us to interpret the significance of our experiences and functions as a guide to how to live. Using insights from sociology and cognitive psychology to illuminate the nature of religious beliefs, Holley shows how removing religious questions from their larger practical context distorts our thinking about them. Meaning and Mystery makes abundant use of illustrative material, including examples drawn from television shows such as Joan of Arcadia, from films such as Stranger Than Fiction, as well as from literature such as Les Misérables, Life of Pi, Flatland, and Leo Tolstoy’s A Confession. Challenging the way philosophy has traditionally approached the question of God's existence, this book will be of interest to anyone who wants to think seriously about belief in God. ~ Product Description
A Treatise of Human Nature, original 1739 (Longmans, Green: 1909), pp. 303, 398.
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If we see a house ... we conclude, with the greatest certainty, that it had an architect or builder; because this is precisely that species of effect, which we have experienced to proceed from that species of cause. But surely
you will not affirm, that the universe bears such a resemblance to a house, that we can with the same certainty infer a similar cause, or that the analogy is here entire and perfect. The dissimilitude is so striking, that the utmost you can here pretend to is a guess, a conjecture, a presumption concerning a similar cause; and how that pretension will be received in the world, I leave you to consider.
Philippa Foot (Oxford University Press: October 2003), 136 pages.
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Philippa Foot has for many years been one of the most distinctive and influential thinkers in moral philosophy. Long dissatisfied with the moral theories of her contemporaries, she has gradually evolved a theory of her own that is radically opposed not only to emotivism and prescriptivism but also to the whole subjectivist, anti-naturalist movement deriving from David Hume. Dissatisfied with both Kantian and utilitarian ethics, she claims to have isolated a special form of evaluation that predicates goodness and defect only to living things considered as such; she finds this form of evaluation in moral judgements. Her vivid discussion covers topics such as practical rationality, erring conscience, and the relation between virtue and happiness, ending with a critique of Nietzsche's immoralism. This long-awaited book exposes a highly original approach to moral philosophy and represents a fundamental break from the assumptions of recent debates. Foot challenges many prominent philosophical arguments and attitudes; but hers is a work full of life and feeling, written for anyone intrigued by the deepest questions about goodness and human. ~ Product Description
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It's interesting reading Bart Ehrman's Jesus, Interrupted and Craig Blomberg's The Historical Reliability of the Gospels in tandem; two biblical scholars covering largely the same material with very different outcomes. The purpose of Blomberg's text is obvious, to argue for the general historical reliability of the gospels, the book of John included. Ehrman, on the other hand, talks at great length about his desire to merely educate the average layperson about the consensus on a great number of New Testament issues, of which he takes them to be largely ignorant. Entirely apart from whose perspective has greater merit, it is on that score that Blomberg's contribution compares most favorably. Jesus, Interrupted reads like a laundry list of biblical difficulties with very little in the way of historical method and textual criticism to enable the reader to judge his case, perhaps because he covered some of this material in Misquoting Jesus. In his review, Ben Witherington quotes their mutual professor, Bruce Metzger, as "Ninety percent of the New Testament is in accord, with 10 percent in question, upon which very little depends. Far from a scholarly survey of the New Testament for the biblically illiterate, this is a book about that ten percent.
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As a scholar, professor, and author, Dr. Bart Ehrman has undeniable influence over students and much of the American public. Yet there are equally qualified scholars who deal with the same issues and come to very different conclusions than Dr. Ehrman. The Ehrman Project is a website dedicated to engaging the ideas that Dr. Ehrman is famously expounding in the complex and nuanced realm of Biblical scholarship. It is not intended to answer all of Dr. Ehrman's claims nor answer the ones it does completely. Rather it is intended to give small snapshots that will potentially motivate viewers to research more information on the particular topic. After interacting with many students over the years, Miles O’Neill, a campus minister at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, began considering an online resource in response to Dr. Ehrman’s popular claims. Dustin Smith, a Religious Studies major of UNC-CH, enrolled in Dr. Ehrman’s New Testament course in the spring of 2009. Soon after, Mr. O’Neill and Mr. Smith started collaborating together on The Ehrman Project. With the help of numerous students, colleagues, professors, and friends, EhrmanProject.com was able to launch in early 2011. ~ Site's Self Description
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Denying the existence of the soul has devastating effects on our valuation of human beings maintains Ward in this closely argued book. He examines a diversity of philosophical, anthropological and scientific attacks on God and the reality of the human soul. Taking current scientific arguments back to their essentials, he presents a convincing case. Ward is one of Britain's foremost writers on comparative religion and Christian issues.