The Chronological Life of Christ Book

I actually liked the first half of the book as a primer on philosophical and logical debate and rhetoric and how it applies to discussions about faith. The book recognizes that simply shouting "but the bible says so!" at people isn't going to get you anywhere, especially if those folks don't believe the bible, and it IS possible to have an objective discussion about the various understandings of different faiths. The authors do very well when talking about what they personally believe (defending Christianity), when they describe classical Deism, and when they discuss mormonism (because Mormonism claims to have so much in common with Christianity, point-counter point is very effective here).

They go crazily off course, however, when they start in on Secular Humanism and New Age beliefs, because all they can attack is straw men. I get that it's difficult to really argue against something without an orthodoxy or without an authority structure to point to, but at the same time, their comments about secular humanists were far to specific to encompass so general a movement, and their attacks on New Age beliefs seemed silly and to dramatically overstate the influence of the New Age Movement.

And, each chapter started off with a "dialogue" between two ridiculous extremes of the various belief systems, which was not witty or cute but rather condescending and trite.