God?: A Debate between a Christian and an Atheist (Point/Counterpoint) Reviews

Read this book for my Philosophy of Religion course. I will try not to judge the book by the course, which was arguably the most boring course I've ever taken, and that is including all the maths and science courses I had to suffer through in high school.

As far as the subject matter goes, I would probably never have picked this book up myself. My interests in Christianity or religion in general do not go beyond some slight intellectual curiosity. I never thought religion should have anything to do with philosophy, and the course did not change my mind. The book itself, stemmed from the public debate by the two academic philosopher Craig and Sinnott-Armstrong, offers some insights into the nature of the philosophy of religion discipline, which focuses mainly on the essence of God (however one defines it) and the question of God's existence. However, since the debate in the book is entirely about the existence of a Christian God, I found the subject matter too limiting to interest me a great deal. Not being a Christian, and more importantly, being an agnostic myself, the whole question about the existence of God isn't as fascinating to me as it might be to some. The book, in the end, only convinced me that it is indeed fruitless to try to philosophize about Christianity. The dogmatic nature of traditional Christian doctrines do not lend it self favourably to philosophy or reason, and the contradictory nature of religion makes theology mostly an exercise of hair-splitting. Craig, the Christian debater of the book, spouts scientific facts and theories in support of his design argument, but no matter how learned he is on the subject of science, he did not succeed in convincing me that God's existence can be proven by science. In fact, that part of the book really bored me. I'm a firm believer that science and religion are two complete separate matters and should remain thus, and to use science as an argument for the validity of Christianity is just simply ridiculous in my opinion. Craig's arguments might have some validity, and he is, no doubt, a really good debater, probably better than his opponent Sinnott-Armstrong, but his Christian bias undermines most of what he has to say.

Besides the fact that the subject matter doesn't interest me, the book is a bit too plainly written for my taste. I understand that most of the book originates from an oral debate, and by its nature, the writing would be less than polished. However, anyone who is seriously interested in the philosophical questions of religion would not benefit much from this debate, which is often too general to offer any significant insights. The plainness of language thus reflects the plainness of thoughts, which in turn makes the book seem rather superficial. To be fair, the book does cover some interesting topics, but while reading it, I couldn't help but think that there must be way better books out there of the same subject matter. Both Craig and Sinnott-Armstrong just didn't impress me much, neither did the book.