Evidence That Demands a Verdict vs The Jury Is In

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Compassionist
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Evidence That Demands a Verdict vs The Jury Is In

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Post by Compassionist »

I have read "Evidence That Demands a Verdict" by Josh McDowell. It's an important Christian apologetic book. The Jury Is In: The Ruling on McDowell's "Evidence" is a critical examination of the book. Has anyone here read both the book and the online examination of the book? If so, I would love to hear what you thought about both. Thank you.

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Moses Yoder
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Post #2

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If "The Jury is In" is made available for Kindle for less than $5 I would be glad to read it. I don't know, I may be able to save the web pages to my kindle, will have to see. If you know of some other way to put it on a Kindle I would apreciate sharing. I read everything on my Kindle, unless I am sitting at a computer, because the Kindle is so convenient.

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Post #3

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Moses Yoder wrote:If "The Jury is In" is made available for Kindle for less than $5 I would be glad to read it. I don't know, I may be able to save the web pages to my kindle, will have to see. If you know of some other way to put it on a Kindle I would apreciate sharing. I read everything on my Kindle, unless I am sitting at a computer, because the Kindle is so convenient.
This link shows how to convert webpages into Kindle ebook. Hope this helps you.

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Re: Evidence That Demands a Verdict vs The Jury Is In

Post #4

Post by Mithrae »

Compassionist wrote:I have read "Evidence That Demands a Verdict" by Josh McDowell. It's an important Christian apologetic book. The Jury Is In: The Ruling on McDowell's "Evidence" is a critical examination of the book. Has anyone here read both the book and the online examination of the book? If so, I would love to hear what you thought about both. Thank you.
I read the follow-up, The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict when I was 17 or so - looks like it was fairly similar, but with some additional information on the Pentateuch/Documentary Hypothesis and a critique of various views on a philosophical level (scepticism, postmodernism etc). While it's not the only such work, for Christians interested in getting into religious debates it'll at least provide some basic grounding in what's being discussed, especially if they're just arguing with random friends or work-mates. Ideally to be taken with a rather large grain of salt, but then the same can be said for a lot of works by sceptics.

McDowall's biggest flaw is first and foremost that he doesn't present a nuanced and fair enough presentation of either Christianity or its critics - as many of those in your link say, he's a fundamentalist defending fundamentalism. In fact many of the Christian thinkers and scholars he quotes for his evidences would have disagreed significantly with McDowall's views - C. S. Lewis, Bernard Ramm and William Albright, to give some examples I'm aware of. Christians coming to a place like this with nothing more than the apologetics of McDowall or his ilk to work with will find they've got a great deal still to learn, and it's unfortunate that they've been lead to believe otherwise.

Lesser problems with his work include, as above, his use of quote-mining without necessarily presenting the source's full views on a subject. In the case especially of the 'uniqueness of the bible' and historicity of the resurrection, his over-use of 19th century Christians' hyperbole in praise of their religion ultimately has no evidentiary value and is really quite stomach-turning. And the considerable logical gaps in his case (which largely account for the lack of nuance mentioned above) leave a lot to be desired; even if Luke was a good historian of the early church, for example, that doesn't mean that he accurately reported the specifics of Jesus' words or the details of his death. Some of his information might be handy in countering the similarly absurd generalisations of some sceptics, but ultimately he fails to address many of the most important criticisms, such as direct contradictions between the gospels regarding the resurrection.

In other words, not a bad read for evangelicals wondering how to answer their work-mates' similarly ill-informed jibes that "Jesus never existed" or the like, but hardly the stuff of real learning.

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Post #5

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Many thanks for your interesting and insightful comments Mithrae.

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Post #6

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Moses Yoder wrote:If "The Jury is In" is made available for Kindle for less than $5 I would be glad to read it. I don't know, I may be able to save the web pages to my kindle, will have to see. If you know of some other way to put it on a Kindle I would apreciate sharing. I read everything on my Kindle, unless I am sitting at a computer, because the Kindle is so convenient.
Hello moses,

If you have access to or own Adobe Acrobat you can convert the whole thing to a pdf in one swoop. If you have a college email address you can probably buy a student edition and register it. I registered my copy a year ago with no other proof of college than my email address.
May all your naps be joyous occasions.

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Post #7

Post by Compassionist »

Compassionist wrote:
Moses Yoder wrote:If "The Jury is In" is made available for Kindle for less than $5 I would be glad to read it. I don't know, I may be able to save the web pages to my kindle, will have to see. If you know of some other way to put it on a Kindle I would apreciate sharing. I read everything on my Kindle, unless I am sitting at a computer, because the Kindle is so convenient.
This link shows how to convert webpages into Kindle ebook. Hope this helps you.
Moses Yoder, did you manage to convert the webpage into Kindle ebook? Do you need further help?

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