Review of Guy Harrison's "50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God"

Following is a slightly revised copy of a review I recently posted on Amazon.com for Guy P. Harrison's 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God.

I eventually intend to read and review Loftus' book also, but I've had a backlog of books in my queue and haven't yet gotten around to John's. I see value in both Loftus' and Harrison's approaches, the former being directed at a more sophisticated, apologetics-oriented audience and the latter at more of a popular, uninitiated audience.

Without further ado, here's my review of Harrison's book:

Reading Harrison's book was like a breath of fresh air--courteous and accessible yet effective and to the point. I appreciate his ability to level the playing field of all religions by referring to the "gods" of each using the same terms: Jesus, Allah, Shiva and Zeus are all "gods" worshipped by people in various cultures. Though apologists and sophisticated believers would likely look down on his non-scholarly style, it's a book I could give to my Christian friends and family without having to worry about their ability to process the theological jargon common to many works of this nature.

That's the upside. The downside of treating all religions as equals in the same book is that for certain believers (I think of my Christian friends who are well-versed in apologetics), the meager attention given to biblical prophecies and the Resurrection of Jesus will give them reason to dismiss the book as uninformed about a number of important reasons for believing. For example, Harrison discounts fulfilled biblical prophecies by saying the fulfillments are found in the same book (i.e., the Bible) as the prophecies, implying that same authors wrote both. Now, like Harrison, I do not accept the supernatural nature of biblical prophecies. However, it should be acknowledged that the Bible is not one but many books written over a period of many centuries. All scholars recognize that the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament were written centuries before Jesus' birth, so these prophecies cannot be dismissed using Harrison's approach. It's more likely that the New Testament authors invented details (or passed on details that developed through oral tradition) that made the events of Jesus' life appear to fulfill certain prophecies of the Old Testament.

Left out altogether was any mention of the events surrounding Jesus' Resurrection that convince millions of faithful Christians that something supernatural happened on Easter Sunday morning. This is a cornerstone of Christian apologetics for authors like William Lane Craig, N. T. Wright, and Frank Morrison. I understand it was probably left out because the book attempts to address all religions equally, but this omission will be perceived as a major oversight by many Christian readers.

One of the most powerful of Guy's arguments is his exposition of the well-documented inverse relationship between religiosity and societal health (measured by homicide rates, number of abortions, quality of healthcare, and prosperity) throughout the world. This revelation must be profoundly unsettling for believers who are convinced that the god of their religion is the wellspring of virtue. On the basis of my discussion with believers, the moral argument is appealed to perhaps more than any other to support religion. If this is taken away, it represents a major setback to the legitimacy of religious belief. Unfortunately many believers will respond, "Well, if you look at people who believe and practice their faith just like I do (e.g., those who read the Bible and pray daily with their family), you will find that divorce and crime rates are much lower than average for the population at large. Others may say they're Christians, but their failure to practice it like I do means they cannot be thrown into the same statistical pot as true believers." Much could be said to counter this sort of special pleading, but it's simply hard to pin down anyone with arguments like these. We can always hope that some proportion of Harrison's thoughtful religious readers will take his engaging arguments to heart without persistently exempting themselves from their force.

Don't let my small criticisms of the book discourage you from reading it. It deserves to be read by every believer of every stripe. It will serve as a gentle "jolt" to everyone who believes their religion is special.  

9 comments:

Daniel said...

Ken, I'm afraid you may have missed the point of Mr. Harrison's critique mentioning that the prophecy and fulfillment appear in the same book. I don't think Mr. Harrison is naive enough to think that they were actually written by the same author! It seems insulting to just assume he is that dull. At any rate, the problem with the fact that the prophecy and fulfillment appear in the same book is that whatever author wrote the fulfillment would have a vested interest in the fulfillment and therefore could not provide objective, verification of the supposed fulfillment. Not to mention that the biblical prophecies are so vague that just about any one of thousands of events could be seen by fulfillments by any interested person.

Ken Daniels said...

Daniel,

Thanks for your feedback. I'm at work at the moment and don't have access to the book, but I'll look up the section in question this evening to see whether I misinterpreted Harrison's intent. You're right--I ought to give him the benefit of the doubt when more charitable interpretations are available, though I did have the distinct impression when I read it that he was using the single-book argument in the way I described. In any case, as I mentioned, I'll look it up and see whether the interpretation you've suggested fits with what he's written and will post an update at that point.

Thanks,

Ken

Charlie said...

t any rate, the problem with the fact that the prophecy and fulfillment appear in the same book is

The bible is a collection of books and the so-called prophecies appear in different books than their "fulfillments".

Ken Daniels said...

Daniel, I'll include the portion from page 260 of Harrison's book that led me to conclude what I wrote. Perhaps I'm missing something; if so, I would be glad to be corrected and in turn to correct my review.

I must say that I am very sympathetic to just about everything else Harrison writes in the book, and I did give him 5 stars. I agree with both you and Harrison that biblical prophecies are for the most part vague and are not in any way supernatural. I simply find this excerpt to be puzzling as I read it:

"What about Jesus? His appearance on Earth was 'prophesized' and then he came, right? Well, not exactly. Where was it predicted and where was it fulfilled? It all happens int he Bible, one book. There are no historical records that verify the events of Jesus's life beyond the Bible. No other sources collaborate the story of his virgin birth and resurrection. The Bible is the only source we have for predictions of Jesus' life so it is not sensible that the same book can be cited as proof that the predictions it makes came true. Suppose I handed you a book and said it was obviously a true story because something is predicted in chapter 1 that later comes true in chapter 25. Based on that alone, would you be convinced that the book is factual? Of course you wouldn't. You would be more likely to conclude that the author wrote in that way in order to make the story work like he or she wanted it to."

I would like to be mistaken in how I have interpreted this. I am interested in knowing how others perceive these statements. But even if I am correct in how I have interpreted them, I am nonetheless very much impressed with the content and approach book as a whole.

Daniel said...

Ken, your responses are such a model of gracious conversation. Such a breath of fresh air!
I can see how, if one turns one's head a certain way, it could appear as though he were suggesting the bible has only one author. I still think his main point would have been that both the "prophecy" and fulfillment appear in the same corpus whose followers use it for the purpose of proselytizing. The fulfillment has no independent, secular verification.
I agree he could have been clearer on this distinction. Although, according to fundamentalism, the whole bible does have only one author- "god."
Thank you for your post! and for your willingness to be corrected with evidence!

AdamH said...

I don't see how someone trying to be even handed could give this book five stars.

The reasons he gives are treated superficially, although admittedly dealing with 50 reasons in a book of this type would make it hard to give in depth discussion.

However, the author chose to deal with the 50 reasons in this space, and it shows.

Franky, some of the discussions border on being straw man charicatures. This is a book that will be preaching to the choir, so to speak.

lee said...

I enjoyed this book. No, it is not a scholarly, in depth critique of theistic beliefs. It is what it is, the opening salvo written for theist who are beginning to question why they believe what they believe. That is the initial question that I started with. The book raises more questions than it answers which in my view is not a bad thing? Beliefs that are ingrained from childhood, delivered by those with whom we trusted the most, our parents and grandparents, are difficult to question, much less discard. This book exposes the philosophical cracks in belief systems that other books, more scholarly, can more fully exhume.

Ken Daniels said...

Daniel, thanks for the conciliatory remarks. I have revised the mid-section of my review to read as follows (it may take up to a couple of days for the update to apply to the Amazon.com review):

----------------

That's the upside. The downside of treating all religions as equals in the same book is that for certain believers (I think of my Christian friends who are well-versed in apologetics), the meager attention given to biblical prophecies and the Resurrection of Jesus will give them reason to dismiss the book as uninformed about a number of important reasons for believing. For example, on page 260 Harrison discounts fulfilled biblical prophecies by saying the fulfillments are found in the same book (i.e., the Bible) as the prophecies:

"What about Jesus? His appearance on Earth was 'prophesized' and then he came, right? Well, not exactly. Where was it predicted and where was it fulfilled? It all happens in the Bible, one book. There are no historical records that verify the events of Jesus's life beyond the Bible. No other sources corroborate the story of his virgin birth and resurrection. The Bible is the only source we have for predictions of Jesus' life so it is not sensible that the same book can be cited as proof that the predictions it makes came true. Suppose I handed you a book and said it was obviously a true story because something is predicted in chapter 1 that later comes true in chapter 25. Based on that alone, would you be convinced that the book is factual? Of course you wouldn't. You would be more likely to conclude that the author wrote in that way in order to make the story work like he or she wanted it to."

I am certain that Harrison understands the Bible was written over many centuries by various authors. That being the case, it would have been preferable to state that later biblical authors supported previous authors’ prophecies by supplying details to make it appear that the earlier writings were being fulfilled. Otherwise, some readers may think Harrison considers the Bible to have been penned by a single author. Apart from the need to be more precise about the authorship question, Harrison does a good job of presenting other reasons not to accept biblical prophecies as supernatural, particularly their Nostradamus-like vagueness.

----------------------

Adamh, I had considered giving Harrison fewer than 5 stars (I would have given 4.5 if that had been an option), but I did want to give the book a strong endorsement as it fills a niche untouched by many other fine counter-apologetics books: it speaks accessibly and congenially to laypeople who might not be inclined to read more heavy-weight material. I doubt it will convince any apologists, but that's not his target audience.

Daniel said...

Ken, great job with the revision! I do think the book lacked documentation and outside source referencing, but it does its job nicely.