Paul read and liked Michael's review of The Case for Christ:

"This book will not persuade anyone who doesn't believe in his heart already.

Strobel claims to have been a serious skeptic about Jesus and to have done these interviews in the style of a serious journalist in order to decide for himself w...more This book will not persuade anyone who doesn't believe in his heart already.

Strobel claims to have been a serious skeptic about Jesus and to have done these interviews in the style of a serious journalist in order to decide for himself whether Christians are right.

I don't believe him. As an actual skeptic who is very familiar with the Bible, I find that Strobel consistently avoids the obvious problems with the arguments put forward. He interviews only Christians and blindly accepts everything they say. These are not the actions of a skeptic.

The fallacious logic at work here is shocking. At one point the reasoning goes exactly like this:

We know the New Testament is true because the early Christians who produced it were good people and so wouldn't have lied. We know the early Christians were good people because the New Testament says so.

I wish I were joking.

Christians: I am in some ways sympathetic to your cause, but you must understand that using the kind of reasoning that goes into this book or into the Intelligent Design nonsense only makes you look dumb to anyone who knows what he's talking about. Find a different angle. Alternatively, maybe you should think long and hard about the fact that people practicing apologetics for your faith consistently make errors in logic that an 8 year old could spot. Why exactly would that be?

[Now that I think about it, maybe this stuff isn't really meant to convert people, but only to prevent apostasy. It won't persuade anyone, but maybe it will reassure someone who isn't really questioning very hard but wants to make sure there's some reasoning behind his religion.](less) "

Paul read and liked Brooke's review of The Case for Christ:

"My review for this book and The Case For Faith are the same, since I read them at the same time five years ago and can't remember which topics were in which books. I managed to forget I ever read them, and only when I saw them on this site did remem...more My review for this book and The Case For Faith are the same, since I read them at the same time five years ago and can't remember which topics were in which books. I managed to forget I ever read them, and only when I saw them on this site did remember.

These books were given to me by a guy I was dating at the time who decided I'd only be an acceptable wife if I converted to Christianity (I'm currently single, if you're wondering how well that went over). It's a shame he chose these books as his main plan of attack, because they're terrible.

Lee Strobel's first mistake is that he tries to answer everything with a pat, definitive response. The tone he uses is one that says, "AH! This is so simple, now that you've explained it! How does anyone not understand?" As most people realize, religion is complicated and often requires you to just believe in things that you take on faith, rather than because it's been proven by evidence. Trying to argue for faith makes faith a moot point.

When answering the question, "If there's a God, why does he allow such suffering in this world?" Strobel trots out the tired response, "Because God gave us free will." For a book that's supposed to help convert people, that answer isn't going to reassure someone who had strong objections in the first place. It also fails to acknowledge that we really just don't know, and that we tell ourselves this to try to make sense of things, not because we know for sure.

Strobel also tried to address deep questions with anecdotes - one that sticks out in my mind to this day was a response to a question about how people who never heard of Jesus could be saved, and isn't it a flaw of the religion if it only applied to people who happened to live in a place where Jesus was brought to their attention? Strobel somehow thought that a story about a Muslim girl in a Muslim country who one day randomly thought "I need Jesus's help" and secretly became Christian answered it sufficiently and proved that we will just know Jesus in our hearts.

Other answers required a preexisting belief in order to make sense. They reminded me of the circular argument the aforementioned ex-boyfriend would give for Jesus's divinity - Jesus is God, so since he says he's God, if I don't believe he's God, I'm calling God a liar.

The kicker for me was a chapter about the prediction of the Messiah in the Jewish bible - Strobel managed to find an ignorant Jew who must have never done even the minimal Torah study. With his help, Strobel spins a conspiracy where Rabbis hide the fact that the Jewish bible prophesied the arrival of the Messiah. The ignorant Jew tells Strobel all about how he didn't know such a thing was foretold, and it was such a revelation to him that he converted to Christianity. I want to find this guy and smack him up the side of the head with my Tanakh and suggest he look up that little thing about the descendant of King David.

Strobel would have done far better to admit that these are complicated questions for which we don't have all the answers, if we have any at all. The fact that he has an answer for everything just makes him look silly and arrogant. If religion were this easy, we wouldn't have the Talmud and Midrash.(less) "

Paul read and liked Ancient's review of The Case for Christ:

" Rated 1 star for false advertising, poor journalism, poor investigation, poor argumentation, and poor scholarship.

There's not enough room here to critique all the specifics of this book, so I'll get right to the heart of things (if yo...more Rated 1 star for false advertising, poor journalism, poor investigation, poor argumentation, and poor scholarship.

There's not enough room here to critique all the specifics of this book, so I'll get right to the heart of things (if you're interested in a more detailed critique, infidels.org has one).

At the beginning of the book, Strobel presents himself as a former atheist, skeptic, and journalist. The Case for Christ is advertised to the reader as a serious investigative search into whether or not Jesus is exactly what orthodox, fundamentalist churches teach him to be - the God Man with miraculous powers born of a virgin to die for the sins of the world, etc., etc.

But here's the problem. The contents of this book are nothing resembling serious investigative journalism. They are a collection of arguments, quotes, and information almost 100% of which are supplied by a small group of like-minded, Evangelical Christian apologists. Strobel never interviews any of the many, many other scholars with views that differ from that of this small, very conservative Evangelical group. (And there are plenty of scholars just as, if not more qualified and respected who would disagree with what the members of Stobel's little clique have to say.)

I rate TCFC at 1 star not because I disagree with the viewpoints presented in it (which I do), but because it's so dishonest. It claims to be investigative reporting when it presents only a mass of one-sided, biased apologetical material. Either, after having spent years as an "investigate journalist", Strobel is clueless as to what constitutes investigative journalism (which is possible), or he began this project already possessing a set of strong religious convictions, proceeded to gather only those arguments, interviews, and info which support these particular religious convictions, and then put this material into a book dishonestly marketed as being investigative journalism (more likely). Strobel is free to write whatever kind of books he wants, but he isn't free to make false claims without being called on it.

The true intended audience for TCFC are Christians who are looking for somebody to tell them exactly what they want to hear - that all their traditional beliefs about Jesus are exactly true. TCFC is not a book written for critical thinkers looking for an honest exploration of well-researched and well-supported scholarship and arguments concerning who Jesus was.

If you are interested in a better and more honest inquiry into opposing viewpoints about Jesus written for a popular audience (although one that's still somewhat slanted in it's presentation), check out Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up? edited by Paul Copan.(less) "