Frank R. Zindler

A collection of essays dealing with the book written by Bart Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The authors come from a variety of backgrounds, and as with any collection, some of the essays are better written than others. With the exception of the smug logorrhea of Richard Carrier, they were all highly readable and erudite. I think it helps that a lot of the essays were written by Frank Zindler, and he knows how to write, and to edit his writing. He has the proper mix of serious and lighthearted, and with his scientific mind, he cuts through illogic like butter. A highly worthwhile read, but not a short one. If you only have one night to write your essay, and this is your book of choice, I recommend you stick with the Zindler essays; you can get enough material there.… (más)

It's not difficult to see, when reading books like this, why Atheist/Christian debates rarely convince anyone that is not already convinced. This volume, part of the group of books by the author, is much weaker than his other entries. Debates with fundamentalists may seem like a fun thing, but they soon devolve into a tug of war in which the Christian dances and prances, refusing to give straight out answers to simple questions, puts the atheist in a corner by pulling out something so obscure and esoteric that even Robert Novak would never have heard of them, and then slinging a "gotcha!" (in other words, of course) at the atheist who is trying to search their memory banks for who this Frank the Sumarian might have been, or why the collapse of the great stromboli matters, and really, what topic were we on again? A lot of that shows in this book, many of the obscurities and missteps repaired by Zindler in extensive footnotes that are more interesting than the actual text, but still not quite getting to the damn point. Skip the debates, guys. Find a PR guy, pay him some good cash, and he will tell the world what you want to say in a cute little slogan, and people will remember it. Twenty seconds after people leave these debates or put down these books, they will forget whatever was there and just remember whatever they want to remember. I am a fan of Zindler's, but I do not think debate is his style (and I don't like or respect most of the people who are effective at debate). Interesting as a part of the set, but otherwise, pretty limited.… (más)

The second book in the four volume set (the promised fifth volume having not yet materialized) deals with science and pseudoscience, though that might be somewhat of a misnomer, since the only science dealt with in this work is creationism. As in the first volume, there is much repetition that could have been edited down more; it appears most of these were just reprinted straight out of the articles. In addition, there are some places where the author left a place-holder for what chapter he referred to a topic in earlier, and forgot to go remove the placeholder and put in the chapter number. This is a minor flaw, but one that is noticeable. The essays themselves are interesting, though it might have behooved him when putting these books out in 2011 to revise his prediction that we would have expanded human life spans nearly indefinitely by 2020; this is very unlikely at this time. A few places where the writing is too technical for the general reader.… (más)

A look at religions and scriptures throughout history, with the heaviest focus on Christianity. Also sections for Mormonism, Judaism, and Islam. The book is essentially a collection of articles written over the course of a twenty+-year career, and that is where it demonstrates its weaknesses. Too many things are repeated in toto, as they were covered in individual articles sometimes years apart, and these should have been edited for the book format so the reader isn't reading literally the same information several times over. In addition, there is one point toward the end of the book where the author refers the reader to an earlier article available on the website of the magazine, but this article was one of the early chapters in the book, and the reference should have been changed. Other than these slightly mild problems, the book is an erudite look at a challenging subject, and the author avoids a lot of the jargon that frequently makes books on this topic such difficult reading for people who aren't familiar with words such as "hermeneutics" (a word which never shows up in this book), and is therefore suitable for a wider audience, though some might profess to be offended by the occasional mild snark.… (más)