What Would Convince Victor Reppert to Give Up Christianity?
Vic responded to this question recently and I think it's a fair answer:
So let me offer several key books that help to do this, okay?
On the Bible as a whole:
The Secret Origins of the Bible
On the Old Testament in general:
Introduction to the Hebrew Bible
Who Wrote the Bible?
Ancient Mesopotamian Cosmologies:
Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Mesopotamian Civilizations, 8)
On Hell:
The Formation of Hell: Death and Retribution in the Ancient and Early Christian Worlds
On Satan:
The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil's Biblical Roots
On the New Testament:
Who Wrote the New Testament?: The Making of the Christian Myth
On the Gospels:
Who Wrote the Gospels?
The Christian Faith:
Not the Impossible Faith
Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millennium
The Resurrection of Jesus:
The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond The Grave
Doubting Jesus' Resurrection: What Happened in the Black Box?
On Early Christianities:
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
Early History of Church Doctrine:
When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity during the Last Days of Rome
Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 years
There are other books, many others. Just look at the many SBL publications, or Fortress Press, SCM Press, Cambridge Press, Anchor Press.
Readers of DC will probably make some other key suggestions.
What bothers me is that Vic is a specialist. He's a Christian philosopher, and as such he probably rarely steps out of his specialty. He's not a Biblical scholar so the likelihood he's read any of these books is very very slim. And I doubt he'll read them even though I just I pointed them out.
Loftus asked me for something that would make me give up Christianity. Because the case for and against Christianity is incurably cumulative, I couldn't say "THIS would be a decisive deal-breaker." But I did want to point out something the skeptic, in my opinion, has not provided, nor has come close to providing, namely, a plausible naturalistic story about the founding of Christianity. If one were to emerge, that could lower the probability of Christianity for me, and, to a far lesser extent, the probability of theism.I think this is the challenge for the skeptical community, a challenge that deserves a book length response. Something on the lines of what I wrote here, expanded.
Link
So let me offer several key books that help to do this, okay?
On the Bible as a whole:
The Secret Origins of the Bible
On the Old Testament in general:
Introduction to the Hebrew Bible
Who Wrote the Bible?
Ancient Mesopotamian Cosmologies:
Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Mesopotamian Civilizations, 8)
On Hell:
The Formation of Hell: Death and Retribution in the Ancient and Early Christian Worlds
On Satan:
The Birth of Satan: Tracing the Devil's Biblical Roots
On the New Testament:
Who Wrote the New Testament?: The Making of the Christian Myth
On the Gospels:
Who Wrote the Gospels?
The Christian Faith:
Not the Impossible Faith
Honest to Jesus: Jesus for a New Millennium
The Resurrection of Jesus:
The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond The Grave
Doubting Jesus' Resurrection: What Happened in the Black Box?
On Early Christianities:
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
Early History of Church Doctrine:
When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity during the Last Days of Rome
Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 years
There are other books, many others. Just look at the many SBL publications, or Fortress Press, SCM Press, Cambridge Press, Anchor Press.
Readers of DC will probably make some other key suggestions.
What bothers me is that Vic is a specialist. He's a Christian philosopher, and as such he probably rarely steps out of his specialty. He's not a Biblical scholar so the likelihood he's read any of these books is very very slim. And I doubt he'll read them even though I just I pointed them out.