Missions Resources - Bibliography
Is Belief in God Good, Bad or Irrelevant?
Authors: Preston Jones, ed.
ISBN: 0830833773
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Number of pages: 165
Type of cover: Soft Cover
Summary:
Civilized Deliberations
Reviewed by Paul Grant
Professors are real people, even history professors. Even history professors at Christian colleges. For that matter, punk rockers are real people too, even atheist punk rockers with PhDs in zoology.
In this simple and delightful book, two such people strike up an ongoing conversation about God, the Universe and Everything. It was a real conversation, extending several months over email, between Preston Jones, a professor at John Brown University; and Greg Graffin, frontman for the band Bad Religion. Is Belief in God Good, Bad, or Irrelevant? is the record of their correspondence.
Unlikely pairings such as this have a great potential to become saccharine morality tales or Christian-versus-Atheist coup-counting. There is a great risk of phoniness, and an even greater risk of quickly bypassing the uncomfortable regions of doubt inherent in faith. IVP has succeeded smashingly here, delivering instead a touching look at a correspondence between two strangers who develop an intellectual rapport.
And what a refreshing story it is! The format of the book feels very bloggish (or whatever we should call similarity to blogosphere), which is to be expected from a relatively spontaneous and intimate email exchange, including interlineal replies (replies inserted in the middle of the original text – an email standard).
Blogs can be a drearily unchallenging environment for the exchange of ideas, especially on sites that attract the like-minded. This email exchange, on the other hand, is intellectual and jovial at the same time. Book recommendations, blistering critiques of each others’ opinions, pleasantries about good films, and coy remarks about each others’ faiths follow quickly.
Much of the discussion revolves around the nature of naturalism. Jones and Graffin keep returning to questions of finding a foundation for morality in evolution, questions of human suffering, and questions of finding meaning in a doomed world. Graffin accuses theism and defends naturalism and visa versa for Jones, but occasionally both concede key points from each other.
As a debate on naturalism this would fall short, because the arguments are not fleshed out, but the sheer humanity of this dialogue is a beautiful thing and a model for our belligerent age. The contrast is great between this exchange, and the hostile burnings of straw-men and casual dismissals of serious work that pass for deliberations in our highly politicized journalistic- and academic worlds.
Would that such life-affirming exchanges as these were commonplace! Preston Jones is to be commended, because he started the exchange and kept it going at an early stage. More than the content of the ideas debated here, Jones has given all Christians in the academic world an awesome model of Christian confidence paired with Christian humility.
There is more to the Christian life than winning debates. There is more to dialogue than debate. And there is more to dialogue with unbelievers than ideas and ideologies. There is also life, and life lived well. When we learn to live in joyful dialogue with those who may be in danger for their very souls, we are beginning to taste the first fruits of heaven, and we are extending the aroma of heaven to those who are perishing.
Is Belief in God … is therefore to be recommended to all college students looking to bring their brains and faith alike to all the parties they attend.
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