A Nontheist Assesses the "Does God Exist?" Section of Loftus's Book: Finds it Lacking

What follows is part of a review "Darrin" (nontheist, DC blogger) wrote on John Loftus's book, which seems to have angered John a great deal. (Edit*: please be sure to read the updates at the bottom of this entry, as this review caused quite a stir) :

John, by his own admission, is a theologian and not a philosopher; his home library, which looks like it would belong in the home of an apologist rather than an atheist, speaks to his preference for challenging himself with theology over academic philosophy. As a result, we do not have as strong of a case against general arguments for God in comparison to John's case against Christianity or presentation of the Outsider Test; we have an overview, but nothing along the lines of a Quentin Smith or a Michael Martin. John will need to flesh these out a bit in future editions, since God's fundamental existence is in my assessment one of the most important questions men can consider, even more so than the specific Christian claim.

I also noticed how flimsy John's section on the existence of God was; and the same goes for his sections on Christianity in particular. Readers: if you're interested in more of the same superficial atheism we've been bombarded with since 2001, buy John's book. If you're tired of the same, and you want to actually educate yourself, start here.

Here are more criticisms from Darrin's review:

Additionally, the Outsider Test... suffers a logical issue - if one considers his beliefs silly looking in from the outside, that does not make those beliefs any more or less objectively true or false. In conversation, John countered that the main logical thrust would be that otherwise ignored logical contradictions in e.g. religious texts ought to be more readily apparent to the believer via his method, but as Bill Craig says in the case for contradictions in the Bible, this only proves that inerrancy is false. It does not render Christianity false. In light of this, I would like to see what John thinks of this criticism.

Another minor faultline within the Outsider Test in its specific application to Christianity is that it literally will do nothing for Calvinist Presuppositionalists; their own argument is that the Bible itself teaches that any outsider (i.e. the reprobate) will view the religion as silly. So the Calvinist, faced with the Outsider Test, would happily agree with the method and might even claim that it in fact further *proves* their belief that God's grace is the only way one can seek God.

The book is also plagued by numerous grammar and punctuation errors, and reads like a freshly submitted, unedited and raw manuscript that the editor sent to the presses unchecked to collect an easy paycheck. .... The chapter on unanswered prayer comes to mind as an example of this effect. I don't know what happened with this exactly - perhaps John didn't bother with correcting his own draft in anticipation of his editor's work - but I would recommend John at the very least triple-check his book himself for these errors.

UPDATE 10:49 AM (PST): Loftus furiously explodes the comment section of his own blog! Of the 13 comments left for this review so far, 11 of them are John's complaints. Settle the eff down, John!

UPDATE 12:19 PM (PST): The review and comments have now been taken down from DC! Whether John himself censored it or whether Darrin felt pressured into removing it is unknown. Either way, good thing we documented most of it above.