For a long time now, I’ve been meaning to do a chapter-by-chapter book review and discussion, following in the footsteps of such illustrious bloggers as Libby Ann, Ana Mardoll, Jenny Trout, and many others. I had a couple of possible books in mind, and indeed still have them in mind, but then… I saw that J. Warner Wallace’s Cold Case Christianity For Kids was available pretty cheaply on Kindle, and had a sudden brainwave. Since I happen to have a non-Christian child with an interest in the whole idea of doing reviews of stuff, why not go through it and write a review together with her?
I wasn’t sure how Katie would feel about the idea, but in fact she jumped at it and decided we should do this as her bedtime story each night. (Which may commit me to a rather faster schedule of typing up posts than I actually have a hope of managing. Oh, well. Bridge, cross, when, etc.) “It’ll probably make me change my mind about some things,” she told me, “but probably not about the main thing.”
I decided that I’d make my notes on a file on my laptop word processor as we went through. This has the advantage of speed (my typing’s a lot faster than my writing) but the drawback that Katie leans in and types whatever random things take her fancy, so my notes on her thoughts are somewhat interspersed with random interjections such as ‘Mooo! Sorry, unexpected cow interruption’ or ‘Wednesdays are explosive’. (My daughter has a somewhat surrealist turn of mind.)
“This review,” I told her, “is going to end up sounding like that time we were at your Auntie Ruth’s wedding and the rabbi was starting to say “So, here is the explanation of why it’s a Jewish custom for the groom to smash a glass with his heel…” and you randomly shouted out “Rory the racing car!”
She giggled at that one. “What was wrong with me?”
“Well, you were two and a half at the time. So fair enough. But maybe we could aim for something a bit more serious here…”
So, I’m planning to filter out those interjections before writing up the blog posts, but, you never know, if the primary subject matter gets boring…
Anyway, since not much happens in the book’s introduction, I’ll start out by using this post to fill in some background.
Dramatis Personae (OK, that is actually meant to refer to a book’s characters so I’m totally misusing it here. Dramatis Personae for this blog series, I mean.)
J. Warner Wallace
J. Warner Wallace, the author of this book, is a detective who became famous for applying investigative principles to Christianity, deciding it was all true and he should convert, and writing several books about it why he thinks this. These are called the ‘Cold Case Christianity’ series, since he aimed to crack the what-happened-to-Jesus mystery in the same way he cracks cold cases at work. He also has a blog, in case you want to read more.
Katie
My daughter is nearly ten, an intense, imaginative live wire of a child who loves art, computer games, maths, and science, and has recently adopted a bunch of teasels and stuck eyes on them to turn them into pets.
I’ve never tried to dictate the religious beliefs of either of my children, believing that it’s something they need to decide for themselves; I tell them my beliefs when the subject comes up, but also tell them that other people have different beliefs. Katie in fact told me shortly before she turned six that she didn’t believe in God. In more recent years, she moved on to a rather interesting and complex belief system that involved God being an evil god from an alternate universe who had taken this universe over; all this praying people did, she believed, was only encouraging him and really ought to be stopped. It was an intriguing and quite well worked-out belief system, but, when I asked for an update prior to starting this review, I found out she’d moved back to atheism again.
“Just stuff,” she told me, when I inquired as to what had changed her mind. “Sometimes I might want an Oreo for pudding and then change my mind and want something else. Sometimes I just change my mind about stuff.”
I asked her again the following day, and got a more substantive response: “Science explains things better,” she told me (though without being able to specify any examples). “And God doesn’t seem very nice. For one thing, he’s anti-gay. If Christians are wrong about him being so amazing, there’s more chance they’re wrong about the rest of that malarkey. I don’t know what malarkey means, actually – what does it mean? Meh. Whatever.”
Me
Longstanding atheist/general skeptic. I do actually have one thing in common with J. Warner Wallace in that I also spent a lot of time investigating Christianity’s claims; from the fact that I’m here on this site, you can probably deduce that I came to a different conclusion from him. And, yes, I totally want to write a series of posts on that investigation at some point. Someday I will have time. Someday…
At some point I’m sure I’ll get round to figuring out how to put up my sidebar bio, but since I haven’t done that yet I’ll add here that I’m also a British GP, mother of two, and bookworm.
OK, that’s us. On to the book’s introduction, which is in two parts: ‘A Quick Hello’, and ‘Wanted: A Few Good Detectives’. All that’s happening at this point is the setting up of the story, so nothing too unmissably thrilling. If Katie did make comments on these bits, I didn’t write them down and can’t remember them, so for this bit it’s just the summary and my thoughts.
A Quick Hello
J. Warner Wallace introduces himself as a police detective specialising in ‘cold cases’, which he defines for the reader. We also learn the following pieces of information about his background:
- As a boy, wanting to become a policeman like his dad, he learned a lot from attending the Police Explorer Academy (which he doesn’t describe, but it seems fair to assume it’s some sort of programme for children interested in learning more about police work).
- As a newly-qualified police officer, he was mentored by a senior officer called Alan Jeffries, whom he came to admire and respect greatly.
- Later on, he used his detective skills to investigate the story of Jesus, and concluded that ‘the evidence was overwhelming’ and that the Biblical accounts were true.
His aim here, apparently, is to combine all three of the above for this book; the readers will ‘enter the Detective Cadet Academy’, be trained by Alan Jeffries, and, as well as learning how to be good detectives, will learn ‘how to investigate the case for Jesus’. Also, the reader’s family can get involved and do this with them (so Katie and I are obviously on the right track here). Also, there’s a webpage.
Wanted – A Few Good Detectives
This is the introductory part of the story proper, which is told in second person present tense, like those ‘choose your own adventure’ books (though without all the ‘if you choose to fight the dragon, go to page 75’ bits).
We’re told that the local police department is starting a new detective training academy for student cadets (i.e. schoolchildren) which ‘you’ and ‘your friends, Daniel and Hannah’ jump at the chance of attending. At the first session, you get introduced to Alan Jeffries, who is going to be running the sessions, which apparently consist of these three and ‘some students from other schools in the area’. Jeffries gets impatient when you want to look at the exciting stuff actually going on in the police station, because apparently you’re all meant to spend the time sitting in the briefing room hearing about police work rather than getting to see any, or something. Which… I have to say doesn’t sound like a wildly successful and well-planned police academy cadet course to me, but what do I know.
So, Jeffries shows you through to the briefing room and asks what part of investigation interests the cadets most, and Daniel eagerly replies that he’s interested in gadgets/high-tech stuff he’s seen in movies, and asks if Jeffries can show them some of that stuff. Jeffries smirks at Daniel… wait, what the hell? Smirks? That is just such an unpleasant way to treat someone. Is this a ‘I do not think that word means what you think it means’ moment on Wallace’s part, or did he seriously mean to portray Jeffries as acting like a git?
Anyway, Jeffries tells Daniel that actually they solve most cases by ‘learning how to think’, because ‘[t]he brain is more reliable’ than gadgets/computers. Wait, what? Brains are actually not that reliable. Of course, they do have the huge advantage of being able to put facts together into patterns in a way that computers and gadgets can’t, but surely the data that the police get from the high-tech stuff is of crucial importance in giving their brains as many facts as possible to work on? I get that this is all a set-up for the whole ‘you’re going to use your brain to investigate Christianity’, but is it actually accurate as a description of what works for solving crimes?
Anyway, it seems the answer to Daniel’s excited request to be allowed to see high-tech police stuff is, in effect, a ‘no’. Poor Daniel. I’m not too impressed with this police cadet course so far, but nonetheless we are assured that ‘[y]ou can hardly wait for the next session!’ Maybe because almost nothing seems to have happened in this one and you feel it can only get better?
The one other thing to mention about this section is that we get an insert titled ‘CSI Assignment’, apparently the first of several such repeated through the book, in which the reader has to fill in blanks in Bible verses. Unfortunately Wallace doesn’t, as far as I can see, tell us anywhere which translation he’s using, which can be kind of a problem when you’re filling in blanks. Anyway, this assignment says:
God also wants you to use your brain to investigate the truth. Read Matthew 22:37-38. God tells us to love Him with all our heart, our soul, and our _______.
Read 1 Thessalonians 5:19-21. God tells us to examine everything _________.
So, as long as you assure children that they’re supposed to investigate the truth, it’s fine to declare the things you’re supposed to be proving as though they’re proved facts. Something tells me that Wallace didn’t spot the irony in that one.
Anyway, determined to do the thing properly, I found the BibleGateway site and looked up those verses for Katie to do the fill-in-the-blank thing (for those verses, the default translations are close enough to the one Wallace was using that it was easily doable). And that’s it for the introduction. I’ll link further chapter reviews back here as I do them.
Chapter reviews – links
Chapter One: Don’t Be a “Know-It-All”: Start Every Investigation Like a Detective!
In which we start investigating the Case of the Mysterious Skateboard, the Case of Jesus, and the Case of The Illicit Evangelising.
Chapter Two: Learn How To Infer: Learn How Detectives Find The Truth! Part 1
In which there is a bit more skateboard-related stuff.
In which there is a bit of resurrection-related stuff, loosely based on Habermas’ Minimal Facts argument.
In which there is more resurrection-related discussion, I spot a suspected evangelical plant among the cadets, and my daughter spots a major apologetics flaw.
In which my daughter and I continue to be unimpressed with Wallace’s attempts to prove the resurrection story to children.
Chapter Three: Think Circumstantially: Examine an Important Kind of Evidence! Part 1
In which the insert character considers believing in God, and I raise the tricky question of what kind of God.
In which Jeffries does quite a bit of drawing and my daughter invents potato-worship.
First Cause and fine-tuning and morals, oh my!
Chapter Four: Test Your Witnesses: Don’t Get Fooled by Your Witnesses!
In which we find possible witnesses of the skateboard’s owner, and Jeffries inappropriately extrapolates dubious witness trustworthiness guidelines.
In which Jeffries ignores significant problems with Gospel reliability.
In which I spot some significant disingenuousness on Wallace’s part.
In which Wallace’s standards for verifying evidence are low, and the cadets have disturbingly creepy smiles.
Chapter Five: Respect the Chain of Custody: Make Sure No One Has Tampered with the Evidence!
In which Jeffries does a poor job of explaining chain of custody.
In which I revisit the end of Chapter Four to explain just how deep the problems with Jeffries’ assurances about gospel reliability go.
In which we get a seriously flawed argument about chain of custody for gospel stories.
In which oversimplification on Wallace’s part leads to more flawed arguments.
Chapter Six: Hang On Every Word: Spot the Truth When You Hear It!
In which Jeffries gets a witness and ignores her to do more evangelising.
Some background information; what do we really know about the authorship of the gospel according to ‘Mark’?
Several reasons why analysing the gospels as though they were forensic statements might not be as accurate a method as Wallace would like to think.
Wallace’s forensic statement analysis of Mark’s gospel; interesting, but unconvincing.
Chapter Seven: Separate Artifacts from Evidence: Clean Up Your Crime Scene!
Jeffries spends another week ignoring the witness statement on every word of which we were meant to be hanging, and I make some predictions. In between, there is some textual reliability stuff.
Chapter 8: Resist Conspiracy Theories: Discover Why Lies Are Hard to Keep!
Conspiracy theory strawman. I knew it.
Why teach your cadets to detect, when you can just hand ’em the answers?
Why bother with plot continuity, when you can focus on apologetics instead?
You came for the apologetics, now stay for the theology! No? Well, maybe the zombies, then…
Final sections and final thoughts
And, well, that’s about it, really. Thank you for reading.
Yeah…I’m not impressed by J. Warner Wallace. I saw him give about an hour long lecture that covered some of the chapters in his adult version book. (Would it be called “Cold Case Christianity”? I don’t recall.) One of the big things that stuck out to me was he set up that Sherlock Holmes concept of “Whatever remains, however impossible, must be the truth” by going over the possible causes of death. It was a thing of “You find a dead body in the kitchen” and a knife is somehow involved…I don’t remember the details, but he lists out the possible options and then gives us information about the crime scene so that we can begin eliminating options one-by-one until there is only one option left. I have notes somewhere listing his options, but it didn’t take me long to note that he was missing options from his list. For an apparent believer in the supernatural, his list of possible causes of death were all natural ones. Where, I thought, was the option of “Killed by a demon”, as one example? Suddenly, though, when it came to the origin of the universe, a supernatural cause made his list! Oh, and — surprise! — his list of possible natural causes was rather limited. Apparently, humans have come up with all “possible” natural causes of the universe already. Oh, and of course he gave us reasons why none of those could be the actual cause. (And, therefore, it must be a supernatural cause because that’s all that’s left on the list!)
He also did somewhat of a Lee Strobel bit where he presented himself as someone who did not grow up as a Christian (but, unlike Strobel, did not go so far as to say he was an atheist…which I found odd). Similar to Strobel, he seemed to be trying to sell us on the idea that he was a non-biased investigator. I came to three probable conclusions regarding him: 1) Either he wasn’t the non-biased investigator he claims to be. 2) His investigative skills aren’t as sharp as he advertises them to be. (I guess I forgot to mention the part where he kind of implies that he must be a good detective because of how famous he is. Perhaps his fame is overrated?) 3) He’s trying to apply a skill set where that skill should not be applied. (Or, I suppose it could also be some combination of those three.)
Anyway, I hope what I said here isn’t too incoherent. I just wanted to quickly share thoughts on Wallace. I’ll be looking forward to future posts!
Yes, the adult book is ‘Cold Case Christianity’. I haven’t read it yet, although I hope to at some point. It sounds as though Wallace probably is pretty good at his job (although not to the point of fame; as far as I can see, his fame is entirely due to his apologetics work), but I think you’re right about the skill set not necessarily applying elsewhere. I’m pretty dubious about a non-scientist ‘splaining why the universe can’t possibly be due to a natural cause. If that ever ends up being the consensus of science, I’ll be happy to go with that and believe in a god (although even then all I’d be is a deist, as I don’t believe the evidence from the natural world indicates a god who’s personally interested in us).
I did notice this inconsistency of ‘allow supernatural causes when I’m talking about God, but not in other situations’ – it comes up in Chapter 2 of this book (which is as far as I’ve read so far).
Thanks so much for stopping by and commenting. I hope you do like the future posts!
Sherlockian elimination is all very well in fiction, less so in practice.
Kaas’ Law: “When you have eliminated the impossible, what remains may be more improbable than that you made an error in one of your impossibility proofs.”
Andrew G.: Never heard that one before, but I love it!
Also, have to give a nod to Douglas Adams’ Dirk Gently “I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible’.
I can’t understand this mindset. You would have no problem teaching your children proper manners (say please and thank you), proper ways to be fair and kind (sharing is caring), proper ways to be safe (look both ways before crossing the street), and many other proper forms of behavior and thought. Yet understanding the most fundamental truths of reality is supposed to be something they’re just supposed to find themselves when set adrift with minimal landmarks.
My mom acted the same way. She’s never had a problem with me being atheist, but wanted me to not talk to my little sister about it because she wanted her to “figure things out on her own”. She never really relented when I explained to her that that deprives my sister of my viewpoint and leaves her experience more lopsided. Keep in mind my sister was in middle school at the time, well beyond the “vulnerable impressionable little child” stage. I never promised mom anything, always teller her that I would “talk about it if it came up in conversation”. And I have.