First of all, full marks for the witty title! Placing Does God Believe in Atheists? into a book review category is really rather difficult. This website has a category for ‘Creation Science’ and another for ‘Exposé’. Significant portions of this book fit these categories but Does God Believe in Atheists? covers many other topics. Does God Believe in Atheists? starts with a broad sweep of the ‘history of atheism’. That is, John Blanchard lists and summarises all of the worlds renowned philosophers and gives the main outline of their philosophies. If you don’t know your Socrates from your Aristotle and other ancient philosophers then Mr Blanchard will sum them all up for you. He also moves forward in time to educate his reader on the more modern philosophers, for example, Descartes, Kant and on to Marx and Hitler, where philosophy and politics powerfully combine.
There is a significant portion given to Darwinism and the whole ‘science’ versus ‘religion’ debate. If you have never read good Christian material on this topic then this book will certainly introduce you to the subject, helping the reader to see that there is no conflict between belief in God and true, unbiased science. Many of the fallacies of evolution are exposed.
Does God Believe in Atheists? is not a book that avoids hard questions, such as, “What about the starving millions?” Why does God allow suffering? and so on. It tackles all of these questions and all atheistic and, so-called, scientific objections to belief in God and answers them politely and thoroughly. Any spiritually enlightened person will know that you cannot ‘argue’ unbelievers into being believers. I assume that Mr Blanchard also understands this principle [?] However, there are times when our own understanding and confidence is strengthened by knowing the facts of ‘real’ science and by seeing the fragility of the arguments of the gainsayers, who in the popular media can appear to be so innumerable and strong.
This book offers a good, all-round, thorough, academic approach to understanding the atheistic world, and its thinking, around us. Its depth and breadth will not suit the casual reader but even if you do not labour through the whole thing this book can easily be used as reference to the individuals and topics mentioned therein.
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