A while back, I looked at a video by Andy Bannister where he recommended a book called Confronting Christianity by Rebecca McLaughlin. At the time I responded, the book hadn’t been released and I said that I might take a look at it once it was out.
Now it’s out and wow, if Andy is at all impressed by this, he’s got something severely wrong with him. Yes, we all know that’s true, but let’s take a look anyhow.
I was thinking of doing this as a series of videos over on the YouTube channel, but it’s really too much in-depth for that and I have a feeling I’d just bore people. Therefore, it wound up here on the blog where I could write for as long as I wanted and people could jump around.
Really though, the problem with this book is singular. It’s written for people who already take all of these crazy beliefs seriously, not for people who are looking for a reason to believe it. It does absolutely nothing for the latter group, as I’ve heard from several atheists who heard Andy’s plea and wanted to take a look. If you’re not a dyed-in-the-wool theist, you’re just going to roll your eyes because this book presents nothing of any substance for the skeptic.
So the first chapter is “Aren’t We Better Off Without Religion”, where McLaughlin argues that there are a lot of atheists out there and then she cherry picks some medical data, saying that believers get some health benefits from believing, which is both questionable and entirely irrelevant. I don’t care if feeling good is good for you. It doesn’t make your beliefs true. This really sets the standard for everything in the book. All she does is argue that there are social benefits to religion and therefore, religion is good. Except none of that actually matters, does it? I’m not concerned whether or not your beliefs make you feel good, I care if they are demonstrably true and they simply are not. It’s pure cherry picking nonsense. It’s like saying “heroin makes you feel good, therefore it’s a good thing to do” while ignoring all of the terrible side effects that making you feel good causes. This chapter is a complete loss.
Chapter 2 is “Doesn’t Christianity Crush Diversity”, which yes, it clearly does. The Bible is very clear that Christians aren’t supposed to be connected to non-Christians. It’s the whole “unequally yoked” thing, which is why so many theists reject any contact with non-theists. Again, the whole chapter is just subjective claims, ad-hoc rationalizations, stories about flights she took and the like. It tries to show that because Christianity exists in countries across the world, it’s actually very diverse, but that’s only diversity of race, not of thought. It becomes painfully obvious that this book is only intended for people who already believe, not for anyone looking into Christianity. At least not anyone who has the slightest clue.
Off to chapter 3, which is “How Can You Say There’s Only One True Faith?” Well, I don’t. I don’t think there are any true faiths. Truth is in the evidence, not in the believer’s head. There’s one section called “The Elephant in the Room” where it tries to argue that all religions are equal paths to truth is fallacious, but that’s not what I’m saying. I don’t think any religion is a demonstrable path to truth. You’d have to be able to objectively demonstrate that any of them are factually correct first and good luck doing that. It goes on to assert that because Christians are convinced that their beliefs are true, that makes their beliefs true and therefore, all other beliefs are wrong. Again, this cannot be demonstrated in any way. Absolutely all of it comes from a position of blind faith and not demonstrable fact. If they had to rely on fact, they’d never get anywhere, right?
I think by now you’re seeing that this book isn’t really proving a thing, but this is hardly a surprise. Most of these popular-level Christian books are designed to comfort existing Christians, not to convince skeptics. They have nothing to convince skeptics because the religious don’t have any evidence with which to do so. Remember, Andy Bannister was really impressed with this book. Granted, all of his videos on YouTube are aimed at the already-delusional, not at convincing anyone that what he’s saying is true, so that’s hardly a surprise.
Chapter 4 gets into “Doesn’t Religion Hinder Morality?” by simply denying it. It starts with the unjustified claim that all morality comes from God, making the ridiculous claim that atheism cannot ground morality without God, yet that’s utter bullshit. They don’t understand what morals are or where they demonstrably come from. This is just made up, feel-good nonsense writ large. They really like these ideas, therefore they have to be true. I don’t know how they can not see their extreme failures like this.
Honestly, the book never gets any better. It goes through “How Can You Take the Bible Literally?” and “Hasn’t Science Disproven Christianity?” by talking about people who believe uncritically and not actually caring about providing evidence that any of it is true. It goes on to ignore half of the Bible in “Doesn’t Christianity Denigrate Women?” Of course it does! Everything from Leviticus 27: 1-7 where it places the value of women slaves at 3/5 that of male slaves. Women are to be silent in church (1 Corinthians 14:34), women must be subservient to their husbands (Ephesians 5:22-23), the whole chapter is about rationalizing why it’s perfectly okay for women to be less valuable than men. This is pure Stockholm Syndrome, but that’s hardly a surprise. It does the same thing in the next chapter, “Isn’t Christianity Homophobic?” by simply ignoring the fact that yes, it is. It’s all okay though because God says so!
This is why all of these books are such a ridiculous cluster-fuck. They assume the correctness of Christianity and then say “See? We were right all along!” Except you can’t get to that conclusion unless you start off with faith that it’s all true. I trust I don’t have to explain just how dumb that all is.
The majority of Christian books, especially at the popular level, are a complete waste of time. If you don’t start with the preconceived notion that it’s all Gospel truth, you’re going to be rolling your eyes, which is exactly why the religious aren’t writing these books for the skeptics, they’re doing it to keep the already-faithful in line. After all, it’s the people who already believe that are filling the collection plates every weekend, right? Those are the ones they have to keep pushing into the pews. That’s all religion is about, after all. Follow the money. It’s not that hard to see.