More Than a Carpenter

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Summary: Results depend on the audience
Review: The book is good inspiring material on the meaning of Christ.
Unfortunately, an atheist will not be convinced by Josh's GMT(Good moral teacher) arguments.

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Summary: More Than a Carpenter review
Review: I got this book at a church youth group meeting and was told to read it and that it would answer all my questions if I had any. This book is very in-depth and i would recommend it to anyone who is questioning their religion. This book has the answer to every question you might have and it is very informative. The reason I did not give it 5 stars is because it could get very confusing at times. This book is diffidently a hard read and I would recommend it to more of the older crowd.

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Summary: Christian essential
Review: If a Christian has not read this book, then she is missing out on a great thing. Her library is not complete. Her intellectual understanding of Christianity requires betterment. This book is an essential first read on Christian apologetics.

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Summary: There is none so blind as he who will not see
Review: People can find a myriad of reasons for not believeing in God or that Jesus was the One He sent to save us from ourselves. A person who wants to justify their own sin is a long way from coming to salvation. A book never saved anyone anyway. That's the Holy Spirit's job. This is a fine book and is written on an easy to understand level. The arguments are sound if not totally analytical. If people want to die in their sins, they are free to do so. Anyone who has read this book and still dies in their sins will simply get what is coming to them, beacuse they now have no excuse.

Rating:
Summary: More than a Carpenter
Review: This book is generally a restatement of a work called "Tryal of the Witnesses of the Resurrection" written in the 18th century, and suitably refuted by great philosopher David Hume. Why this old argument about testimony of miracles has resurfaced in the 20th century is beyond me, expect maybe because modern Christians are feeling increasing pressure from "science" to "prove" their religion.

It's okay to be Christian; just don't put any pretensions of rationality behind your faith. Even if you do, there are better proofs of God's existence (I recommend the Cosmological Argument). If you're interested, read this book, but then take a Philosophy of Religion course to see how easily the book's claims can be refuted.

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Summary: One has to confront the truth.
Review: I read this book and it offered me a deeper confirmation of the truth the Jesus Christ is the Lord. I passed it on to my GF at the time and she told me she had questions for me. But she never mentioned it again! But this does not detract from the fact that the book forces us to answer the question He asked of his disciples, "Who do you think I am?"

Rating:
Summary: No, sorry, still an atheist
Review: A friend of mine introduced me to this book, which he had acquired because local religious groups were passing it out. (which may account for the '10,000,000 in print' claim) All I have to say is this: while Jesus may have been more than a carpenter, Josh McDowell is certainly less than an author.

McDowell asks us in Chapter 1 why Jesus is so influential, adding 'why don't the names of Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius offend people?' (pg. 10) I guess it really depends on who you talk too - the Muslim religion adds 'blessings and peace be upon him' when referring to Mohammed, and most Buddhists I've known held the name of Buddha in high respect. So what makes Jesus so different than any other religious leader? McDowell seems to want to answer that in Chapter 2 ('Lord, Liar, or Lunatic?') by saying 'someone who lived as Jesus lived, taught as Jesus taught, and died as Jesus died could not have been a liar.' (pg. 30) Nice faith, but unfortunately that's all it is is faith - the teachings of Buddha are very much like the teachings of Jesus, and the life of Guru Nanak, founder of the Sikh faith, is very much like the life of Jesus. (complete with disciples!) McDowell's assurance that Jesus' 'poise and composure would certainly be amazing if he were insane' (pg. 31) is even more simple faith, and relies on the stereotype that 'insane' people are drooling, lumbering lunatics tied down by a straight jacket. In actuality, ask any one familiar with psychological diseases and they'll tell you that many insane people look and act as normal as you and me. Even people suffering from Alzheimer's will have occasions where they can talk and act like the average person.

On page 44 there is a claim that Luke is reliable because he is accurate in his details - does this mean he is reliable about Jesus because he had the right name of the Roman emperor? On page 48 McDowell tries to prove the New Testament is reliable because there are more manuscript copies of it than Caesar's 'Gallic Wars.' Huh? On page 50 there is a claim that, because the New Testament were either taken from or written by eyewitness accounts they are therefore factual, going on to page 53 to say the gospels 'were eyewitnesses and their testimony was not completely disregarded.' This makes it sound as if, because nobody at the time questioned it, it is completely true. I certainly I know I would have questioned some of the gospels the way the stories do not match up. For example, the position of the blind man Jesus heals: in Matthew Jesus encounters TWO blind men leaving Jericho; in Mark the blind man is in Bethsaida; Luke tells us there was a blind man on the way INTO Jericho; John tells us the blind man was in Galilee. Does this sound like a reliable source? How reliable a source are these four books written by four different men - four books of which only two tell us of the birth of Jesus? Not to mention that while most of the Gospels tell us Judas hung himself, Acts tells us he dropped dead in the middle of a field. If McDowell considers the Gospels 'reliable,' then it is for all the wrong reasons. It is also humorous that he is going on about the NT when he was asked how reliable THE BIBLE itself was. The Bible entire is full of contradictions - for example, the OT says that blind people are unclean and therefore should not go before God, yet in the NT that is turned around. If you still do not believe me, then go and read the NT more carefully: Jesus is continually refuting old beliefs from the OT.

In the later chapters McDowell deals with proof of Jesus and his followers...but these are often ridiculous. He says 'I can believe the apostles' testimonies because, of those men, eleven died martyrs' deaths,' (pg. 61) saying later 'Jesus' followers couldn't have faced torture and death unless they were convinced of the resurrection.' (pg. 67) I wonder what McDowell thinks of Muslims who are ready to die because they are convinced of paradise, or perhaps those Jews, Muslims, and Pagans who refused to convert during the Inquisition because they were so strong in their faith. Surely, by his logic, those men were just as right. McDowell later makes the argument that the Jesus' resurrection visit to the disciples was not an illusion or hallucination because it is 'unsupported by the psychological principles governing the appearances of hallucinations.' (pg. 93) However, hallucination (defined as 'an apparent perception of an external object when no such object is present' by 'The Psychological Dictionary') can be caused by serious emotional stress - and if the death of Christ was as serious to the disciples as McDowell proclaims it was, then that is indeed a very logical idea, and would explain their fervor for the cause (which is another affect of this condition). His argument that it 'doesn't coincide with the historical situation or with the mental state of the apostles' (pg. 94) is just absurd, considering that (besides the fact the historical situation has nothing to do with it) I have never seen a detailed account or study of the psychological states of the disciples.

McDowell's arguments are continually one of two thoughts, either 'Jesus and his people are good guys, so of course they're right' or 'I believe this so it must be true.' His later arguments generally boil down at the end of Chapter 8 to: 'Well you can't DISPROVE it, so it must be right!' By Chapter 11 the book has degenerated into a full sermon preaching us to come to Christianity because it is clearly the right course. He tells us on page 39 that 'the Christian faith is not a blind, ignorant belief but rather an intellegent faith...every time in the Bible when a person is called upon to exercise faith, it's an intellegent faith.' Read on and you realize that what McDowell means is that Jesus let's people believe in him when they choose too...in other words (whether McDowell will admit it or not) blind faith. In his own words, 'religion is humans trying to work their way to God through good works' and therefore Christianity isn't a religion because it is people going to God through Jesus. That is a very narrow minded (and Christian biased) view of things: religion is defined in the dictionary as 'belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe' - even Hindus and Taoists believe in more than one god but also believe in a universal power. So sorry, Mr. McDowell, Christianity is a religion.

In summary for the book, I seriously doubt this will convert any one except those who already have some belief in their hearts already. Right-wing Christians will like it and believe it because they WANT to believe it, while contextualists or non-Christians will scoff at its amatuerish logic. If you want a serious theological viewpoint on the Christian religion, I would suggest looking elsewhere.

Rating:
Summary: More than a Book
Review: This is a very readable, brief but good and solid explanation of the core reasons to believe in Jesus as the promised Messiah. Get this book and use it in evangelism and in church projects. Buy it to have on hand to give to prospective members.