a response

This is in response to an earlier reviewer, who stated "b) the "answers" are so convoluted and weak, nobody can remember them or make sense of them enough to repeat them." In a summary of the answer as to why God will stand by and watch a child be raped and murdered, I would say - God created the world with free choice. If a child is being raped and murdered, that is the free choice of the person who is committing the act, an act of evil, and he will ultimately pay for it. The child, who suffers, will [probably; I can't really pass judgment on this and I am a little bit unsure of concepts of heaven etc.] go to heaven and have everlasting peace, through this bit of suffering [and remember, all people suffer at some point or another. There is no one who passes in and out of this world without suffering, and there is no way to quantify or qualify suffering, and to say which kind of suffering is "better" or "worse," because it is all suffering.] ^M

Foregone Conclusion

Before I say anything else, I should explain myself. I am not a scientist. I am not a biblical scholar. Only in the broadest and most generous sense could I be called an amateur philosopher. I'm not a lawyer, judge, or DA. I don't have any PhDs. And most importantly, I was already a Christian before I read this book.^M

Manipulative, Disingenuous, Disgraceful

The faults of this book are too numerous to explore, there is only room for the most egregious. Foremost among them is that the author, and the shills for whom he provides a platform, completely miss the point of faith. Logic and faith cannot coexist any more than a square and a circle can. To be a true believer, one must take Kierkegaard's "leap of faith", a brave and beautiful act of daring and trust, sailing off into the unknown and, more importantly still, unknowable. Were there empirical evidence to support such an act, it wouldn't be faith at all. Strobel, and his long line of hilariously serious pseudo-academics, as they discuss how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, have removed the poetry, music, and sheer transcendent majesty of faith and replaced it with arguments that are deceptive and self-serving at best and often just intellectually shabby. This book will appeal to the convinced and provide them with the illusion that there is historical, archeological, scientific, and philosophical evidence to support the preposterous theories they hold so dear. To the unconvinced it will appear sad, deceptive, and desperate - emblematic of the bizarre extremes a person is capable of reaching when attempting to defend the indefensible. Though evident throughout the book, this was particularly noticeable in the section explaining the centuries of cruelty and murder dished out by the church itself, most noticeably the Inquisition. Denial, they say, isn't just a river in Egypt. The rationale behind why hell is a blessing was also priceless. The most insightful quote in the book, and there are many, comes from Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg who said, "With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and bad people doing bad things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."