IS BELIEF IN GOD GOOD, BAD, OR IRRELAVENT? Edited by Preston Jones. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press 2006. Pp. 165. Paper, $13.00, ISBN 100830833773
Preston Jones is assistant professor of history at John Brown University. Greg Graffin, the lead singer and song writer for the punk rock band Bad Religion, is an avowed atheist (as elsewhere evident from Graffin’s lyrics), and holds a doctorate in biology. As a Bad Religion fan, Jones emailed Graffin in the summer of 2003, and over several months the two doctors corresponded with each other regarding various issues related to science and theology. Unfortunately, professor Jones does not adequately represent current theistic arguments. Graffin, on the other hand, was somewhat vitriolic in his earlier exchanges with Jones (with Jones responding amicably), even as his anti-theistic arguments lack originality – being typical of what is argued in coffee shops across the world. Nonetheless Graffin posed stronger arguments for his professed naturalism than did Jones in his Christian apologetic. To his credit, Jones proffers a case for Christianity that is free of biblical proof-texting, which non-believers might find refreshing. In the end, however, while the venue and medium has shifted (appropriately so in this electronic age), this reviewer concludes that there is nothing innovative with regard the theism-antitheism and theology-sciences debates within the pages of this book.
Bradford McCall
Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA 23464