This past May I posted the final installment in a series of posts interacting with various portions of James Anderson’s apologetics book Why Should I Believe Christianity? (WSIBC).
This series covers a wide spectrum of issues, devices and strategies used by presuppositionalists to hijack legitimate philosophical issues in an effort to retrofit them in service of Christian mysticism.
By exposing the fallacious nature of these devices and strategies, my interactions shall stand as a resource for thinkers who may be interested in familiarizing themselves with an alternative viewpoint to those proffered in Anderson’s book.
This series covers a wide spectrum of issues, devices and strategies used by presuppositionalists to hijack legitimate philosophical issues in an effort to retrofit them in service of Christian mysticism.
By exposing the fallacious nature of these devices and strategies, my interactions shall stand as a resource for thinkers who may be interested in familiarizing themselves with an alternative viewpoint to those proffered in Anderson’s book.
So below, I have assembled links to all the installments in my series, in the order in which I originally posted each entry, for a single point of access as a handy source, putting each within my readers’ fingertips.
Now, in case anyone is interested why specifically I have not continued to examine Anderson’s book in detail, point by point, beyond its fourth chapter, it should be plainly clear: If the arguments which Anderson has laid out in favor of theism in chapter four all fail, then the rest of Anderson’s book – which picks up from that point by arguing that the god whose existence is said to be thereby proved in chapter four is the god of Christianity – is rendered entirely pointless.
I’m reminded of historian Paul Johnson’s point that, out of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital, only two chapters are really worth examining for their import to Marx’s overall thesis, and even these are so full of contortions, selective omissions and outright falsehoods that they render the entirety “a huge and often incoherent sermon” (cf. Intellectuals, pp. 63-65).
Similarly with Anderson’s book: once one recognizes just how fallacious the foundations of the Christian worldview really are, he does not need to invest any further to understand why the structure fixed atop those foundations cannot stand.
So with what I have presented above, I rest my case.
by Dawson Bethrick
I’m reminded of historian Paul Johnson’s point that, out of all three volumes of Marx’s Capital, only two chapters are really worth examining for their import to Marx’s overall thesis, and even these are so full of contortions, selective omissions and outright falsehoods that they render the entirety “a huge and often incoherent sermon” (cf. Intellectuals, pp. 63-65).
Similarly with Anderson’s book: once one recognizes just how fallacious the foundations of the Christian worldview really are, he does not need to invest any further to understand why the structure fixed atop those foundations cannot stand.
So with what I have presented above, I rest my case.
by Dawson Bethrick
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