[.ca] When Skeptics Ask: A Handbook On Christian Evidence (ISBN 080107164X)

Very good overview of many topics:
This book is one of the books on the shelf that you can keep coming back to. I am a very advit reader on apologetics and I find this book to be well writen and thought out. This book could be a little hard in spots for the beginer. It's good all around and dose not get to boged down on one topic and where it out.

Part of the Essential Geisler Reference Desk:
In some ways, this book was the forerunner to his _Encyclopedia of Apologetics_. It is like a compendium of Giesler. It has tidbits from most of his best-selling books. One of the neatest things is that the book is organized into questions on different topics, well over three dozen questions in all. There are Questions on God, Other Gods (a précis of _Worlds Apart here), Evil, Miracles, Christ, the Bible, Archeology, Evolution, Afterlife, Truth, and Morals. For a handy reference book, it is surprisingly thorough (though always meant to be an introduction, not an end-in-itself). This is also where the "12 points" tape available got its start (see NormGeisler.com) as the Appendix: Reasoning to Christianity from Ground Zero. Though only an outline, they demonstrate Norm's pervasive ability to think in fundamental philosophical terms. The book also sports a nice Glossary, Topical Index, Person Index, and Scripture Index. It's a very user friendly book and, along with Kreeft's _Encyclopedia of Apologetics_ one of two best Apologetics reference works beyond a dictionary (which is more what Norm's Encyclopedia is).

Give this to your Christian freshman in college:
As a Christian who didnt know "what I believed or why I believed it" in college, had I had a resource like this to help me pick through the various messages I received from the professors, who wanted nothing more to make me question what I had been taught(the best intention) or disregard(the worst intention) For a while I "found Atheism" in college, maybe if I had more of the evidence of the validity of God and Christianity I might have been able to skipsome of the darker periods of this time. If nothing else it would have given me some ammunition for the classes and professors who spewed venom about what our parents taught us, with too few to challenge them. I now value the time I spent questioning, because now I know why I believe what I believe, but as a parent I do not want any of my kids to be unprepared when the first authority figure challenges their beliefs. I have purchased about 7 of these books, for friends and they all seem to have found it worthy of the read. It is written is an intelligent and scholarly way and does not assume the reader is an idiot. Worth the money, worth the time.

From a Skeptic:
A very devout friend of mine offered to let me borrow this book of his. This very devout friend of mine also knows that I sleep in on Sunday mornings, and that I don't technically own my own Bible. Being as that I like books, and being as that I like reason, I perused through the introduction. I found there: "Don't just argue with someone who will not listen to reason, or you will be just as foolish as he. But if you are able to show a person the error of his thinking in a way that he can understand, perhaps he will seek God's wisdom rather than relying on his own." (p. 13) And so I realize that the lending of this book isn't a favor. It's an act of witnessing. After all, reading is one of my first loves. It's how I define what I think. It is the best way that one might show me the "error" of my thinking in a fashion that I "can understand." So, granted, I open to the chapter on proving the existence of a single God, skeptic as ever, and a little spiteful as well. Don't get me wrong, I think the book is very well-written and that the points that the authors are trying to make are very well-supported, but I simply failed to buy it. Within every argument there's at least one little loophole that never seemed to be properly resolved. Or maybe it's just me. The point is, I wouldn't suggest using the book to witness. I'd suggest that if you want to administer pre-evangelism, read the book first and sit down in a setting of personal debate. It's a lot less static and a lot more fun. Oh, and one more thing, I read a page with a little explanation of the phrase "closeminded" and laughed out loud. Buy the book and you'll get the joke.

Accessible resource for arguments supporting Christianity:
The strength of this particular work of apologetics lies both in its accessibility to the layreader inexperienced with philosophy, and the potency of the arguments contained therein. Dr Geisler and Ron Brooks have outdone themselves in compiling this eminently readable resource for Christians who routinely encounter difficult questions attacking their faith, such as the problem of evil, religious pluralism, and the historicity of Christ's resurrection. The lucidity with which the cosmological argument is presented is especially impressive. The purpose of the cosmological argument is to shed light on the question of Why there is something rather than nothing. Since all limited, finite things are just that -- limited and finite -- it follows from the law of causality that they were caused by something independent of themselves. And since the law of causality dictates that whatever has a beginning must be caused by something independent of itself, Geisler and Brooks postulate that what orchestrated the transcendent cause of the universe was a timeless, necessary, uncaused supernatural being of inconceivable power. The current reigning cosmological model, the Big Bang theory, which posits that the beginning of the universe was ignited by an enormous explosion fifteen billion years ago, is perfectly consistent with this hypothesis. Geisler and Brooks point out to atheists who apply the law of causality to the Creator that they need remedial reading lessons. Theists have never claimed that "everything" needs a cause, just everything that has a beginning; and since a self-caused being is impossible, God is ergo an uncaused, necessary being. Atheists have also countered the cosmological argument by claiming that the universe is eternal (occasionally invoking the long-debunked Steady State Theory to make their case), and therefore doesn't require a first cause to account for its existence. But Geisler and Brooks explain this doesn't work for two reasons. Firstly, the second law of thermodynamics makes clear the fact that the universe is running out of usable energy; and since what is running down must have been wound up, the universe couldn't be eternal. Secondly, if time stretches infinitely into the past, then we never would have arrived at this moment today. For to reach this moment today, we would have had to pass through an infinite series, which is impossible. Most readers will find the book's treatment of the problem of evil sufficient enough to disarm non-believers who use it as evidence against the existence of an all-loving God in debate. Many Christians have been faced with this perfectly legitimate question before: how can belief in the existence of an all-loving God be reconciled with the amount of evil that goes on in the world on a daily basis? Moreover, if God is the creator of everything -- and evil surely qualifies as "something" -- then God is also responsible for evil. Geisler and Brooks respond by denying the supposed incompatibility between the existence of an all-loving God with the existence of evil by raising several points. Firstly, God created free will, enabling man with the option of chosing both good and evil. If God were to eliminate evil, free will would also have to be eliminated, itself an evil act. This is so simply because God gave human beings free will to realize their greatest good -- to love freely. Secondly, in decrying evil atheists are actually presupposing God's existence; for if God doesn't exist, then neither do objective moral values. But the fact that atheists recognize that things like genocide and rape are evil suggests they aren't mere social-conventions to the atheists. An excellent primer for Christians beleagured with questions attacking their faith.