Farewell to God: My Reasons for Rejecting the Christian Faith Book

The first time I read this book it shook my faith. It seemed to raise so many devastating critiques and questions about Christianity that it was hard to imagine the mere possibility that there could be answers. So I read it again. As I read it a second time I carefully analyzed exactly what he was (and was not) saying, his precise lines of argument, what exact evidence he was drawing on, etc.

After reading it a second time my faith was far less shaken. Like so many anti-Theists these days he majors on emotional manipulation, selective appeals to evidence (ignoring evidence that does not support his conclusions), half-baked reasoning and so on. This book is only a very tiny step up from the kind of Atheist nonsense you are likely to find in the comments under YouTube videos. It barely registers as pop-philosophy; hardly worthy of serious consideration. It is frankly embarrassing that I ever let it shake my faith; a sign of the frailty of my faith at the time, not a sign of the quality of his arguments.

For the record, there are some very intelligent and very thoughtful Atheists out there. Christians need to step away from "blind faith" and take what they say seriously. Templeton was never one of them. I rate it a "2" instead of a "1" simply because he is a rather articulate writer who can really move the reader along. Where he moves them along to, however...