Thank God for Atheists by Timothy Morgan

Thank God for Atheists by Timothy Morgan ISBN-13: 9780736966283 Paperback: 288 pages Publisher: Harvest House Publishers Released: October 1, 2015

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
After a decade of major disappointments, Timothy Morgan was ready to reject God. Atheism offered an escape--an opportunity to dismiss God permanently. But as Morgan delved into the thinking of great atheists past and present, he was stunned. In book after book, he found their reasons for rejecting God to be intellectually unfulfilling.

In Thank God for Atheists he candidly shares his journey by letting atheists speak for themselves, examining their logic to see whether it holds up or not. You'll find this a personal and thoughtful book on why the evidence for God is much more compelling than the evidence against Him.


My Review:
Thank God for Atheists is an apologetics / worldview comparison book. It's a book that I can honestly see both atheists and Christians finding interesting. The author made every effort to accurately summarize the views of the atheists that he discussed in this book (Friedrich Nietzche, Bertrand Russell, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins). He offered the living authors the chance to read his summary of their views and comment on it (which Dawkins did), and he asked atheist groups to do the same with his summaries of the dead authors.

The author started by explaining his Christian upbringing and why he started looking for convincing reasons to believe God doesn't exist. Then he discussed the long history of skeptical thought--the people throughout history and the world who questioned the religions of their area. He took four authors that he thought best expressed the arguments for atheism and who came at it from somewhat different angles. He provided a short biography for the author, summarized his views, then addressed those arguments. If several authors had the same argument, he picked the one who expressed it the best and only responded to it once.

I felt that the author did a good job of explaining why he didn't find these views logically compelling even though he wanted to be convinced. His writing was concise and his reasoning was easy to follow. I appreciated his respectful tone as people are more likely to listen when they feel like their view has been correctly heard and respectfully considered. I didn't always share his exact views, but I felt he did a good job of representing why Christians (and others) can find atheist arguments unconvincing. I'd highly recommend this book to those who want to dig deeper into the arguments for both sides.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.


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