A Lesson From Dr. Dan Lambert on Dealing With My Book

[Written by John W. Loftus] Dr. Lambert is a professor for John Brown University; what looks like a good Evangelical college. He's using my book in a class titled: "Capstone Seminar in Christian Life." He sent me an email about the class:

The class I’m using your book for is a special May Term class. Only 4 weeks long and about 30 class hours. I have chosen to only use your book and no others since it’s such a short class. You give readers enough to digest without adding in others like Flew, McGrath, or Dawkins (yea, I chose you over them!). It’s a senior-level class and we typically have 5-8 students take it in May. I have 15 students this time due to the topic. We have met twice already and they are engaging well, so I am excited to see where we go.

He also sent me his syllabus where he offers some great advice to his students and to Christians everywhere who want to deal with the arguments in my book. I consider his advice to be a model for Christian would be apologists:

Reading Reflection Papers: Read VERY thoroughly the assigned chapters for each day. Use a highlighter or pen to mark in the book. Write one page on each chapter about what you read. Do this in a format as if you were having lunch with Loftus and discussing his book with him. You cannot use the Bible to try to refute his points or to support your own. You must use logic and critical thinking primarily. THIS WILL BE MUCH HARDER THAN YOU ANTICIPATE!

Whether it'll be much harder than they anticipate I don't know, but read again what this Christian professor said:

You cannot use the Bible to try to refute his points or to support your own. You must use logic and critical thinking primarily.

I especially like the fact that Dr. Lambert did the reasonable thing by forbidding Bible quotes to refute my points, since if they did so it will not have an effect on someone who doesn't believe the Bible. Kudos to him on that. I think this is the difference between ignorant Bible thumpers and intelligent Christians. Lambert wants to educate and train intelligent Christians for ministry, not Bible thumpers.

I appreciate his intellectual integrity and congenial spirit toward me on the issues that separate us, which is also something Christians can learn from him. We have a somewhat shared background but we have never personally met. He's sending his students here to DC to check us out. Welcome to you all.