About the author

C. Boyd Pfeiffer

C. Boyd Pfeiffer is an internationally-known award-winning journalist who has written for the Baltimore Sun, Washington Post, Washington Times and Baltimore Examiner and 80 magazines, and he wrote for many years a regular column on the Internet entitled “Religious Skepticism Examiner.” Boyd has received dozens of awards for his writing. He has authored 30 books.His interest in religion stems from his childhood background in a Protestant faith and continued as skepticism when he reached his teens. At Gettysburg College he was taught the “official” history of the bible; he has been self-educating ever since, reading extensively on religion, atheism, philosophy and history, and taking every opportunity to discuss, debate and argue religion of all types and flavors with anyone at all – from those of minimal faith to Bible students, Seminary students, ministers, rabbis, imams, church deacons and elders and the like. For the most part, he found that such discussions got nowhere, as most of his interlocutors could provide no answers (or at best highly questionable information) to his question and the concerns at hand.

Pounding on Bible-Thumpers

Do You Believe Everything You Read in the Bible?

Price range: $19.95 through $29.95

In this series of short essays, the author questions various aspects of the Bible and asks how reliable, realistic and relevant they are.

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Sound Bite

If the Bible is the infallible word of God, why is it full of stories that strain credulity, not to say fly in the face of reality? While standing up for morality and responsibility, the author pokes fun at some of the tales we were told in Sunday School in this series of short essays questioning various aspects of the Old and New Testament, the beliefs of Christianity and religion in general, morality, and ethics. The author points out inconsistencies and logical flaws, and asks whether believers really get to pick and choose which details to keep while disregarding all the rest.

About the Book

In this series of short essays, the author questions various aspects of the Bible and asks how reliable, realistic and relevant they are. He looks at Christian preaching and basic morality (which we innately understand based on what works for humanity's greater good) and points out countless exemplary stories in the Scripture that illustrate cruelty, abuse and crime.

The book is an attempt through Socratic teaching and questioning to evaluate the concepts and strongly held beliefs of religions and specifically Christianity. The arguments are grounded in common sense and expose religious stories as the kind of magical thinking that appeals to children.

This book will be helpful to three types of readers: 1. Fence-straddlers who are questioning their religion or beliefs, those who are untaught about religion and wonder what they;¢re missing, and those who are concerned about the beliefs in which they were indoctrinated in as a child, 2. Believers who want to learn more about what atheists think, so as to counter it in future arguments with atheists, and 3. Atheists who want solid arguments in dealing with the Religionists.

About the Book

C. Boyd Pfeiffer's collection of short, punchy essays takes aim at one of the most widely read but least critically examined books in human history. Rather than launching a dense philosophical treatise, Pfeiffer works through specific biblical stories and Christian doctrines one by one, asking straightforward questions that religious instruction tends to discourage. Why does God harden the Pharaoh's heart and then punish Egyptians for following it? How righteous was Lot, exactly, if he offered his daughters to a mob and later committed incest with them? If the Gospels were written decades after the crucifixion, how reliable are the accounts of who was actually standing at the tomb?

The book draws on Socratic questioning rather than angry atheist ranting, making it accessible to readers who are genuinely undecided about faith rather than already convinced one way or the other. Pfeiffer walks through contradictions in Genesis, the violence built into Passover, Martin Luther's well-documented antisemitism, the logical problems with prayer and miracles, and the selective way believers tend to apply the laws of Leviticus. He also tackles near-death experiences, holy water, Christian Science, and the question of whether children are better off being raised without religious indoctrination.

This is a book for skeptics, fence-sitters, and curious believers who sense something doesn't add up but haven't had the arguments laid out plainly in front of them. Pfeiffer, who also wrote No Proof at All: A Cure for Christianity, keeps the tone more wry than hostile, which makes the critiques land harder than a straightforward polemic might.

Additional information

Weight N/A
Book Type Ebook, ePub, Hard cover, Soft cover
Pages

178

Release Year

BISAC I

REL004000 RELIGION / Atheism

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