Review of J.L. Schellenberg's The Will to Imagine: A Justification of Skeptical Religion

James A. Keller (Wofford College) reviews the book for NDPR here.

2 comments:

exapologist said...

(whoops: I accidentally deleted someone's comment -- Sorry about that! In any case, here's the content of the comment, cut-n-pasted from the copy in my gmail inbox. I'll reply in the post that follows it)

Steve Schuler said...

"I have come upon your blog via some comments you have made at Sarah Schoonmaker's blog in the past. Thanks for providing the link in this post. While I probably will not be buying the book the review was very good and provided a very nice introduction to Schellenberg's thinking. At various moments I have sometimes thought of myself as a "religious skeptic" and it's kind of nice to see someone has developed a substantial body of thought involving an approach to religion that seems somewhat consistent with my own amorphous notions about religion and spirituallity.

Thanks for maintaining your blog. I previously listened to the BBC segment on Spinoza that you provided a link to, but failed to leave a thank you note at that time. I am sure I will continue to check in with you.


I presume by your screen name that you were formerly a Christain apologist. Have you written about the process of your transition from "apologist" to "ex-apologist"? If so, can you direct me to where I might be able to read about that transition?

Thanks Again!

Steve"

exapologist said...

Hi, Steve.

Thanks for the kind words!

Well, I was never a professional apologist (such as an employee of Campus Crusade for Christ, like William Lane Craig). Rather, I was among the current horde of Christians who got into philosophy via Christian apologetics, and then went on to a PhD program with the aim of gaining employment as a philosophy professor to be a "light in the darkness" on campus, and to "change the world of ideas" for the cause of Christ by publishing in philosophy of religion (and then to put the ideas in "popular" form by writing *more* apologetics books). However, I lost my faith about halfway through grad school. Which brings me to your second question.

I wrote a blog post about my de-conversion shortly after it happened (in late 2006) over at Debunking Christianity. Here is the link.

Best,
EA

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