Doubter's prison

Faith is reasonable, say authors J.P. Moreland and Klaus Issler, and Christians need not wallow in lack of confidence or lack of belief | Marvin Olasky

Handouts

Jon Krakauer wrote in his best-selling Under the Banner of Heaven, "Faith is the very antithesis of reason." Biola University professors J.P. Moreland and Klaus Issler, authors of In Search of a Confident Faith (IVP Books, 2008) take issue with that kind of thinking. They challenge "seven of the main doubt-inducing background assumptions of our culture," showing as they go that faith is not "a blind, arbitrary leap in the dark that has no basis in reason."

Since many secular professors love to accuse Christians of leaping in the dark, and some Christians also don't accord reason its proper place in bulwarking minds as God changes hearts, college students will particularly find useful the book's deconstruction of conventional campus assumptions such as "It is smarter to doubt things than to believe them. Smart people are skeptical. People who find faith easy are simplistic, gullible and poorly educated."