This is a review of the book "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist," by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek. The book was provided to me by Stacy Harp of Blog for Books, and the book was provided to her by the good folks at Crossway Books. I receive no remuneration for this review.
As the title shows, this book contends that it takes faith to be a theist or an atheist. In fact, contrary to popular opinion, atheism is not a condition of having no faith, rather it is a condition of having great faith, even greater faith than the theist. The authors contend that it takes greater faith to ignore all the evidence for God's existence and remain an atheist than to believe in God.
This book is an apologetics book, a book devoted to the defense of the Christian faith. I would further classify it as a book in the category of eviential apologetics, which appeals to human reason through a variety of evidences, be they scientific, historical, or philosophical. I personally gravitate toward a more presuppositional approach to apologetics, as is seen in the school of thought of Cornelius Van Til and his more recent and more readable popularizers like Richard Pratt, John Frame and Greg Bahnsen. The presuppositionalist doesn't begin the apologetic task with evidences, rather, he understands that the atheist is not an atheist for lack of evidence but because of his presuppositional commitments to individual autonomy. But I still believe this book has great value.
When I was a teenager I was given a copy of Josh McDowell's book Evidence that Demands a Verdict, and this book reminds me a lot of that book. Geisler and Turek offer a kind of twelve step recovery program from atheism. They begin with the proposition that truth about reality is knowable, then proceed logically and methodically, step by step, to the twelth and concluding proposition that "it is true that the Bible is the Word of God (and anything opposed to it is false).
Along the way they touch on all of the standard elements that evidential apologists deal with. They deal with philosophical matters as they touch on some of the theistic proofs for God's existence like the cosmological and teleological arguments for the existence of God. They deal with science, focusing on the intelligent design movement. They touch on history, showing the reliability of the bible and gospel accounts and they address common arguments against the resurrection.
In each of these areas - philosophy, science, and history, you can find many individual book length treatments of these topics, and for that matter you can find plenty of book length treatments of sub-topics of those topics. But the value of this book is that it gives you a good overview of philosophical, scientific and historical issues in one volume.
Even though I am a presuppositionalist, I do believe that there is a place for the use of evidence in apologetics and as such, everyone needs a book like this in their library. I particularly appreciate the author's writing style - the book is easy to read and makes some heavy duty concepts accessible to those who aren't highly trained in technical fields. In my opinion, this book is easily accessible for the college student and even the mature and serious high school student. My 13 year old daughter was asking me some questions a few weeks ago that are answered in this book and I plan to show those portions to her, and I think she'll be able to understand them.
But don't get me wrong. In saying this book is accessible to the mature high school student, I also want to point out that it is of value to older, maturing Christians also. I think it will have the greatest value for college students who may be facing these issues in their classes at college.
I would also point out that, though I keep harping on presuppositionalism here, the book in fact dovetails nicely with the concerns of presuppositionalists. At many points in the book, after going through evidences for this or that, and showing the responses of atheists to the evidences, Geisler and Turek show that a lack of evience is not the problem for the atheist, it is his presuppositional anti-theistic commitments that cause him to skew or ignore the evidence for the existence of God.
Overall, I can recommend the book. I would recommend that you read this book in tandem with one of the standard presuppositional introductions like Every Thought Captive by Richard Pratt, Apologetics to the Glory of God by John Frame, or Always Ready by Greg Bahnsen.
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