ID.Plus

"A Christian friend lent me philosopher Peter Williams' recent book entitled "A sceptic's guide to atheism". I haven't read it yet, so I can't to do a review or specific comment on it.

But I'm familiar with some of the Peter Williams' articles and, even though I'm not a Christian, I must admit that Williams' papers, essays and review are excellent. Thus I'm confident that his book will be another good and useful reading.

As far my opinion goes, Williams' strong point in his writings is that he's very meticulous and detailed in his argumentation; he uses many references and sources, and he often confronts the best arguments of atheists. This kind of intellectual honesty is rarely seen in many "new atheists", whose debating style is mostly rhetorical and with a tendency to attack the weakest point of theism. That makes them rhetorically effective (in special, for atheists), but intellectually poor (for any other non-biased reader). So, Williams often makes a strong case for his views on controversial topics; forcing his opponents to argue or reply in a sounder way (which is an incentive to high-level intellectual debates), or to reply with straw men or irrelevances (due to the opponent's lack of rational responses to Williams' main and substantive points)."