Is this book any good? What are the best Christian apologetics books?

Is this book any good? What are the best Christian apologetics books?

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breitbart.com/london/2015/10/05/worlds-first-lesbian-bishop-calls-church-remove-crosses-install-muslim-prayer-space/
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Can we just stop with this christfag meme?

Books written by Journalists on the matter of religion be it atheist or theist are 99% cancer.

All of which is made worse by the fact that they are far more capable of expressing their ignorance in ways that seem truthful.

>new york times bestselling author
the book MUST be good then!!

I dunno I feel like a book written by an everyman looking for the truth could be more persuasive than a book trying to make it's argument with various philosophical methods.

>I dunno I feel like a book written by an everyman looking for the truth could be more persuasive than a book trying to make it's argument with various philosophical methods.

Would you want to take medicine or healthcare advice from someone who studied medicine or someone who was just searching for the truth?

>could be more persuasive

Thats the problem I outline in the second part of my post. Dianetics - the foundation of scientology made about 3 billion dollars in the space of 50 years because it was persuasive (+ it was also a new york times best seller).

Just because something is persuasive doesn't mean it is true.

Pensées by Blaise Pascal.
Seriously, the guy was a serious intellectual and he gives a lot of reasonnable arguments for christiniaty.

Well looking for truth is pointless because you'll never find it. Entire lifetimes have come and gone with no-one being any wiser to what the ultimate truth of existence is so you might as well believe whatever you find most compelling.

>Well looking for truth is pointless because you'll never find it.

Even if you will never have perfect knowledge it doesnt mean all paths to knowledge are equal.

You will never live forever however that doesnt mean homeopathy is equal pharmacy.

>you might as well believe whatever you find most compelling.

Why would the OP make this thread in the first place then instead of simply staying with their current views.

If you want books that will trick you with flowery language then just ask for that.

>You will never live forever however that doesnt mean homeopathy is equal pharmacy.
False equivalence. Pharmacy can demonstrably be proven to be more effective than Homeopathy, there is no empirical evidence that any way of life or religion is superior to any other. Clearly I'm not talking about things about the physical universe we can identify, I'm talking about what a person believes that is outside the scope of materialism. Is there a soul? An afterlife? A God? Which way of living is most effective at creating happiness? None of these questions can be answered definitively, persuasive arguments are all you can make.

I enjoyed the book, yes

>False equivalence. Pharmacy can demonstrably be proven to be more effective than Homeopathy

Just as some arguments for Jesus can be demonstrably be proven to be more sound than others.

For instance the historicity of the Apostle Paul and the fullfillment of prophecies in the Tanakh is a more sound argument for Jesus who he said he was than Joseph Smith's Golden Plates.

>None of these questions can be answered definitively, persuasive arguments are all you can make.

Persuasive doesnt = sound.

>meme
there have always been Christian people in Veeky Forums

prove it.

That's simply untrue. If I could put you in my time machine and take you back to /b/ in '05 you would see how flatly ignorant you are. The influx of christslaves started with the growth of /pol/ around '10-'11

This is actually incorrect from my experience - the first board that I record seeing unironic christian shills in is /a/, even before /pol/.

I've never enjoyed anime very much (what the fuck am I doing on Veeky Forums, right?), so I never spent any time on /a/. You may be right, it makes sense, but the first place I noticed people genuinely proselytizing was /pol/. It seemed to grow exponentially from there due to the popularity of the board. People also forget it was originally intended as a containment board for /int/: a place for sincerely shitposting retards to vent their degenerate worldview without bother to people who wanted to have a serious discussion.

You need to get out more

It's been a while, but if memory serves, this book discusses manuscript evidence for the NT in a helpful way, namely how the sources are closer in time, more numerous, and in greater agreement than the next comparable work, Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars account.
I generally don't have much room for the writings of those of a right-wing Evangelical persuasion, but that part is pretty good

Here's what I have on my shelf:

Scripture Matters
Hard Sayings
Answering Atheism
The Fullness of Truth: A Handbook for Understanding and Explaining the Catholic Faith Biblically
Reasons to Believe
Answering the New Atheism
A Pocket Guide to the Bible
Mere Christianity
Catholic Bible Dictionary
Theology and Sanity
Heretics
Orthodoxy
The Last Superstition
Aquinas: A Beginner's Guide
The History of the Catholic Church
The Desert Fathers
The Confessions of Saint Augustine
The Everlasting Man

No it wasn't, it was a containment board for /new/ refugees who were shitting up other boards. Then the containment board became so popular it started leaking into other boards anyway.

With stormfags, you lose

Oh shit, I forgot they deleted /new/, it was such a throw-away board; I'm glad of the reminder. They (the refugees) still directed most of their stormfaggotry at /int/ (being the next "news-related" board after the deletion), the way I remember.

Are you actually seeing people do stormfag shit IRL now? I thought the "I am euphoric" type shit (be it christian or atheist euphoria) was a meme, now I feel like I'm living in a mock WWII espionage-comedy film where all the spies out themselves by wearing fedoras and black, leather trench coats.

it is a statistic impossibility that everyone shitposting on Veeky Forums 7 years ago was a non believer and that not one church going fag went there to talk about cars

>People pretending like people weren't asking Veeky Forums what the best translation of the Bible was since day 1
???

Why do atheists get so indignant when religious people post? Stop being a fag.

That has nothing to do with being a christian. The bible can be read as literature (for the text itself) and detached from worship.

You don't think people who were aesthetic Catholics we eventually come around to becoming actual Catholics? You can only absorb so much Russian literature can not become religious.

>You can only absorb so much Russian literature and not become religious
that's interesting.
recommend me 3 books that will christianize me.

>generalizing personal experience
I guess your problem would be that you "absorb" it like a plant rather than "consume" it like a human being. Maybe if you stopped being such an autotrophic doormat books wouldn't define yourself for you.

I've read Protestant and Catholic translations of the bible, yet I remain neither.

Gogol's Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka
The Death of Ivan Ilyich
The Idiot

euphoric

Nice. Did they convince you God is real?

Honestly, OP, just read the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, read all four. They'll clue you in on what you'll be signing up for. Jesus himself is pretty moving in his own words (so to speak).

Van Til and the reformed school of presuppositionalists are about as close to solid Christians apologetics as you can get. There are a few ideas I'm not totally sold on but it's worth investigating at least

I don't think it's a matter of being convinced but if you're starting to read them it's because you have beginnings of faith in yourself. And by reading and immersing yourself in God you may make your faith stronger.

I never liked apologetics. It's usually just watered down philosophy and theology and it really feels like a waste of time in almost all cases compared to the real thing, unless the author is also an excellent writer, like Chesterton.
I'll just list some theology and philosophy I liked
Summa Contra Gentiles (do not read before at least first two volumes of Copleston's history of philosophy and Aristotle)
Confessions and City of God
Apologia Pro Vita Sua and Essay on Development of Christian Doctrine
Interior of a Castle
Dark Night of the Soul
Science of the Cross
Thoughts in Solitude
After Virtue and Whose Justice? Which Rationality?
Aquinas: Beginner's Guide and Neo-Scholastic Essays
Metaphysics of Identity over Time

...

>There are retarded people on pol
Wrf I'm an atheist now

>I never liked apologetics. It's usually just watered down philosophy and theology and it really feels like a waste of time in almost all cases compared to the real thing

That doesn't make any sense. Apologetics is just theology and philosophy with a purpose, which is to defend the faith. It's not competing with or opposed to the fields of theology of philosophy. You can't do effective apologetics without studying either.

>2015 is the oldest shit you found
try way harder.

he didn't deny any of that, user. he's talking about his opinion on Apologetics that comes from his personal experience and his impression of it.

Its more a jab at people on Veeky Forums in general.

Im not that other user who was making the 05 claims. Just showing contraianism and the immaturity you get on the chans.

>Im not that other user
okay.

Most popular apologetics comes down to weak philosophy and weak theology. Which is why I see little point in reading it at all. Most popular apologetics, especially Protestant, is closer to journalism than the two disciplines, hence for me it is a waste of time. I find it more interesting and useful to read system builders and critics of opposed schools (MacIntyre, Augustine, Aquinas) than those who write purely as a reaction against something. True, some apologetics has more merit than others, like Justin Martyr as opposed to Lewis, but I have a dislike for the defensive stance it takes.

What about this one?

Toss it.

>if you're starting to read them it's because you have beginnings of faith in yourself
your concept of faith is pretty low.
what I have is fear of reality, fear of being a piece of meat, fear of the nonsensical nature of life. THAT is what drives us to Christianity, not God's call. because God doesn't exist, does he.

everything would be so easy if it existed. but it doesn't. it's too convenient and Christianity is too specific.

Not this shitty anglo-protestant stuff
Skip straight to Dostoyevsky and read St. Augustine and Aquinas if you like, if that doesnt do it for you don't bother

Anyone who recommends skipping straight to Aquinas hasn't read Aquinas. Remember that.

A good rule of thumb is to avoid anything from a protestant. Most of the apologetic you'll see from them are ad hoc justifications for the things they believe because they have no real historical and philosophical foundation. They're very dishonest.

AGREED. Aquinas is difficult stuffing.

:_(
Are they more dishonest than Catholics? Why?
Nietzsche hated them more, that's something but not enough.

Stupid=\=dishonest

This is an exaggeration.
Protestantism is like the free market capitalism version of Christianity. There's no central control, no Church to get excommunicated from if you say something dumb. Not every protestant is dishonest or stupid or bad at philosophy, but if you see a self help book being passed off as theology, chances are it was a protestant who wrote it.
also Catholics are still assblasted about the royal BTFOing they got at Wittenberg

This is true. Protestantism is such a wide bubble, and if you look at self-seeking hacks who are just writing something or have a church to make money and don't believe anything, they're going to attach themselves to being a Protestant. That doesn't mean that there aren't very good materials to read by true believing Proestants though. C.S. Lewis, Dr. Harry Ironside or J. Vernon McGee could be some places to look.

Don't forget either that Catholics are the ones with lesbian bishops saying that Christianity should take a back seat to Islam and they need Muslim prayer rooms in churches. Apparently this is fine to them or they'd never be given those positions since there is a definitive hierarchy of power.

>and they need Muslim prayer rooms in churches
What the actual fuck. Is this a thing?

Mediocre at best.
Am I misreading you or are you claiming that Catholics have lesbian Muslim loving bishops?

Apparently there's one or more in Sweden. I think the Muslim prayer room has also been suggested by some in France as well.

Also, especially in France many old churches have been demolished, and a few of the spots have gotten approvals for mosques.

I haven't heard the Catholic church opposing any of the demolitions or mosque-building either.

>Don't forget either that Catholics are the ones with lesbian bishops saying that Christianity

Those are Anglican protestants. Women can't be priests in Catholicism.

This?

breitbart.com/london/2015/10/05/worlds-first-lesbian-bishop-calls-church-remove-crosses-install-muslim-prayer-space/

You know those are Anglicans who are Protestant right?

Proddies forever making Christianity look dumb

nice frogge.
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