Cross Examining Religious Truth Claims

Craig Parton does the world of apologetics great favors with this book. Forget that, he does the world a favor, by putting to rest all the trite meaningless pop culture statements and thoughts concerning religion. He shows that the only real reason to believe anything is that it is true, and to determine if something is true they should use their God given brains to investigate the claims, and examine the evidence for the claim.
First, he puts “Religion on Trial”. The book is short, and he spends no more time boring a person with the details of other religious beliefs than he absolutely needs too. He examines for the most part only those religious claims that happen to be the most prevalent, Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and Mormonism, but in treating these religions he gives you a road map for investigating other religions.
He relies heavily on the methods of Analytic Philosophy as developed by Karl Popper, and the Vienna Circle in investigating the religious truth claims and tearing down nonsensical statements and arguments. In the process he also deals a devastating blow to Scientific Materialism, and the religion built around evolution.
He then proceeds to build a positive argument for faith in Christ. He shows that faith can be rational, or reasonable and based on facts. He does a wonderful if concise job of making a rational case for Christianity, all the while giving one extensive notes and references if one would like to pursue the matter or individual points more fully.
The conciseness and clearness of the language is probably the biggest strength of this book. It is one that can be read easily and numerous times. The outline is very memorable. Further the notes are most enlightening. If you were to buy the books he references you would probably have all the apologetic library you ever needed, or a very good start. It would make a great confirmation gift, or graduation gift for a student heading to college.