WHICH GOD IS GOD?

Adams, an attorney, presents a treatise that attempts to use rules of evidence to compare and contrast different belief systems.

The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard famously used the biblical story of the destruction of Jericho (Joshua 6) to emphasize faith over rationalism, suggesting a leap is necessary to escape from an atrophied faith that calculates, equivocates, and negotiates. Adams doesn’t address this notion in his inquiry into world religions, which asserts that it’s possible to use a legal baseline to approach questions of faith: “Using the rules of courtroom evidence, we can test religious claims to determine which ones can be trusted,” he writes in a preface. “The religion that survives legal scrutiny can rightfully claim to know our purpose on earth and the pathway to our ultimate destination.” Readers may immediately note that empiricism, which is based on the concept that all knowledge is sensory experience, may not enter into any spiritual discussion as a first principle; religion and the courtroom are two separate and very different spheres of discourse and human experience, and readers may question why criteria would be applied from one to the other. As such, the author provides an apologia disguised as analysis. Adams states that Judaism and Christianity offer more at-hand evidence for their claims in the Bible, and, as a lawyer, he believes they would best hold up in a courtroom setting. He finds many faults with Islam, in particular, as well as other faiths, but he uses claims that will convince all readers of the book’s impartiality. For example, he espouses familiar intelligent-design arguments that he says provide incontrovertible proof of God’s existence and asserts that any faith that doesn’t have a Creator God must therefore have beliefs that are based on speculation.

A book of Christian apologetics whose arguments won’t convince skeptics.