Book Review: The Making of an Atheist by James Spiegel

Pages: 130
Pub­lisher: Moody Pub­lish­ers
Year: 2010
Author: James S. Spiegel

I first heard of James Spiegel’s book while brows­ing the EPS blog (Evan­gel­i­cal Philo­soph­i­cal Soci­ety) and com­ing across an inter­view he had done with them. The con­cept of the book is fairly unique amidst the recent spat of new athe­ist books (and the­ist replies). Where those books tend to focus on the intel­lec­tual and ratio­nal rea­sons for dis­be­lief, Spiegel’s book pro­poses that this is more or less a smoke-screen; the real rea­sons for athe­ism are moral and psy­cho­log­i­cal, rather than intel­lec­tual and ratio­nal. This ques­tion, “why do peo­ple choose athe­ism / why are there athe­ists?” is what Spiegel sets out to answer (and, I think successfully).

The book itself is fairly short at only 130 pages (I spent a lit­tle over an hour read­ing it through). It’s stan­dard paper­back con­struc­tion and has a good feel to it. The pre­sen­ta­tion is such that it would have caught my eye had I come across it in a book­store, pur­chas­ing it as a result (very seri­ously, if a book catches my eye I usu­ally end up buy­ing it right away).

Spiegel uses the intro­duc­tion and first cou­ple chap­ters of the book to prop­erly define his terms and show some com­mon errors of athe­is­tic think­ing, as well as some com­mon insights that Chris­tians would do best to acknowl­edge and hon­estly address. His main the­sis is that peo­ple become athe­ists for moral rea­sons (in the case of this book, immoral indul­gences) and psy­cho­log­i­cal rea­sons (such as a bro­ken rela­tion­ship with ones father). This ‘descent into athe­ism’ (p. 110) is strength­ened, he sug­gests, by a cog­ni­tive mal­func­tion, which has two causes: a spe­cific world­view par­a­digm (Thomas Kuhn), and dam­age to the sen­sus divini­tatis (John Calvin). If you think the core of this argu­ment is famil­iar, it’s because it is; you can find it in the writ­ings of the Apos­tle Paul (cf. Romans, Eph­esians). I take this as a very good sign–an argu­ment based in and from Scripture.

The bulk of the book (chap­ters 3 to 5) expand on the ideas pre­sented above. For instance, Spiegel presents a com­par­i­son of sorts between famous (or, at least, well known) athe­ists and the­ists, out­lin­ing what role their fathers had in their lives. As exam­ples Spiegel men­tions athe­ists such as George Car­lin, David Hume, Friedrich Niet­zsche; and the­ists such as Blaise Pas­cal, G.K. Chester­ton and Diet­rich Bon­ho­ef­fer. Spiegel then goes on to dis­cuss the role sex­u­al­ity plays in one’s choos­ing of athe­ism, using illus­tra­tions from Hux­ley, the Kin­sey reports and the Blooms­bury group to illu­mi­nate this point. This point is one of the more sig­nif­i­cant points as it shows, from athe­ists own tes­ti­mony, the real (foun­da­tion) rea­sons for their unbe­lief. Sup­port­ing his last argu­ment (cog­ni­tive mal­func­tion) Spiegel draws from a num­ber of sources, such as Thomas Kuhn’s idea of “par­a­digm shifts,” Michael Polanyi and Alvin Plantinga’s Evo­lu­tion­ary Argu­ment Against Nat­u­ral­ism. In his con­clu­sion, Spiegel briefly out­lines some of the ben­e­fits of the­is­tic belief (such as the “right to com­plain”), giv­ing a very brief account of his own ‘par­a­digm shift’ from athe­ist to Christian.

(As a brief aside, I wanted to men­tion that Spiegel refers to Plato, Aquinas, C.S. Lewis and Peter Kreeft and they work they’ve done in expos­ing the log­i­cal flaws of athe­ist argu­ments (p. 56). This is the first time I’ve come across a Protes­tant writer men­tion Peter Kreeft, least of all nam­ing him with (some of) the ‘giants’ of the faith. I find this very sig­nif­i­cant, actu­ally, as I believe much of the Chris­t­ian world (at least, the Protes­tant world) will miss out on the bril­liance of Peter Kreeft sim­ply because he’s Catholic. As much as this is a review of Spiegel, I highly, highly rec­om­mend Peter Kreeft to any­one who admires C.S. Lewis.)

In the end Spiegel is a nice change of pace, cut­ting through a lot of the issues we tend to get hung up on and get­ting to the heart of the mat­ter (sin). It’s not a book to be taken lightly and should demand reflec­tion and an exam­i­na­tion of the way we approach oth­ers. In other words, this should cause us to recon­sider (if nec­es­sary) our evan­ge­lis­tic prac­tices. I get the feel­ing that this isn’t the sort of book most athe­ists would want to read (in fact, I think they might view it as some­thing of an ad hominem attack), so Spiegel is preach­ing to the choir, as it were (which I believe is his intended audi­ence); though I believe it will do some impor­tant work in advanc­ing the cur­rent athe­ist / the­ist dia­logue. In a way it’s an expan­sion of what Chris­tians have known all along (cf. Paul in Romans and Eph­esians, where Spiegel him­self finds his argu­ment), though it does a very good job at dri­ving the point home.  It’s a def­i­nite read for any­one inter­ested in this par­tic­u­lar dia­logue, one that won’t take up too much time and might show you a new thing or two. Just a word of cau­tion to “gung-ho” apol­o­gists; as per my last post on 1 Peter 3:15, don’t abuse this book, it’s not meant to be a put-down towards athe­ists, so don’t use it that way.

Related posts:

1. Book Review: Mak­ing Sense of Suf­fer­ing by Peter Kreeft
2. Book Review: Get­ting the Ref­or­ma­tion Wrong by James Payton
3. Book Review: A Mil­lion Ways to Die by Rick James
4. Book Review: God is Great, God is Good
5. Book Review: On Guard by William Lane Craig