Atheism on Trial: Refuting the Modern Arguments Against God, by Louis Markos ★★★★★
I had this book on my shelves for a year or two before tackling it. I was mostly interested in the book due to my encounter with Louis Markos with a Teaching Company series on literary criticism/post-modernism, which is probably the best refutation of post-modernism available, that is also comprehensible to the non-philosopher layman. Indeed, Markos has a peculiar knack for making very complex ideas simple and understandable to the man on the street. After reading, I realized that this book is a gem, tackling complex issues without using the philosopher’s jargon.
Marcos counters the atheist with four approaches, by addressing the nature of the universe, epistemological concerns, the nature of God, and the nature of man. All of these approaches demonstrate the failures of the atheist mindset. Marcos tackles a number of very touchy subjects, such as the problem of pain (and evil) in the world, which he shows to prove rather than disprove God. He also used a term that I thought I had coined, but apparently not, in speaking of science-of-the-gaps, which is a more legitimate argument than the God-of-the-gaps argument used by atheists.
Marcos’s most relevant arguments entailed his ability to recount historical thinking from the ancient Greeks and since then. Indeed, his introduction to the book was titled “nothing new under the sun”, and Marcos was quite capable of showing how modern atheistic arguments have been around for well over 2000 years. What the atheist presents as new thinking is everything but that.
This book was awesome. I recommend this strongly to anybody interested in presenting the Christian faith to a faithless world. I also recently reviewed a book on witnessing the faith titled Tactics, which had interesting information, but really presented nothing more than cliché-ridden arguments for the faith. Marcos presented a vastly more insightful discussion on how to challenge those who question your faith in God. Get it and read it!
One of the basic problems of atheism is in defining what exactly it is that the existence of is being refuted. And in refuting ??? it is impermissible to rely upon anything attributable to ??? in making the denial.