http://joshmcdowellmedia.org/FreeBooks/SkepticsWhoDemandedaVerdict.pdf

page 87.

Now I AM curious about Josh McDowell! I just emailed them…

Have you heard of Dr. Simon Greenleaf, a man who held the Royal Professorship of Law at Harvard? He was a skeptic, often mocking the Christians in his classes. One day they got tired of that and challenged him to take the three volumes he had written on the laws of legal evidence and apply them to the Resurrection. After much persuasion he did that. In the process he became a Christian and went on to write a book that’s now printed by Baker Book House.

So there’s your verification.

I’m looking at McDowell’s bio http://www.josh.org/site/c.ddKDIMNtEqG/b.4169767/k.F42D/Joshs_Bio.htm
and it doesn’t go in to any detail about Greenleaf.

The only connection to Greenleaf I can find to McDowell, is that McDowell was a visiting lecturer in the 1980s at Simon Greenleaf School of Law and was also awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws.

http://www.theopedia.com/Josh_McDowell

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Josh-McDowell

And nowhere, other then on that PDF, from some goofy website, do I see a piece of writing called “A Skeptics Quest”.

All that to say, that the person who gave you this PDF lacks integrity–or rather, is just stupid for passing along something he/she didn’t check out the validity of, first.

I’m not saying McDowell didn’t say all that is in the PDF. I’m saying I can’t verify it, and therefore, personally, I wouldn’t have passed it on.

It’s not a book as far as I know, just lives on the ‘net. I gather most of it is however recounted in actual McDowell books as well.

I’m not familiar with McDowell’s “A Skeptic’s Quest”, and your link to a PDF to whatever he allegedly said isn’t working right now.

So I’ve Googled and now I’m totally confused, ’cause, from your post, I thought Josh wrote “A Skeptic’s Quest”. But now I see Joe Musser wrote it (1981), and it also called “Josh: The Excitement of the Unexpected” (1984).

Who is Joe Musser?

If I cared, which honestly I don’t, I would read Joe Musser’s book in it’s entirety, rather than an excerpt in PDF, to see what exactly was written.

And it appears that the book isn’t even in print anymore. But, supposed excerpts of it are living on in InternetLand 25 years later.

Good grief.

Trying to justify this by claiming he somehow wasn’t a “real” Christian beforehand is in my opinion really quite disingenuous and frankly helping my case more than the other side. Read Greenleafs words yourself, you can try and rationalise it all you want, but an honest appraisal clearly indicates McDowell was not telling the truth.

Just as Lee Strobel wrote “The Case for Christ” after he became a Christian, I’m pretty sure the questions he asked in the book are the same questions he had before he became one, couldn’t the same be true of Greenleaf?

Are you saying that Greenleaf was a “devout Christian” at birth?

I’m thinking, though I’m not sure, that we’ve come in to the story half-way in to it.

That, yes, after he was strong in his faith, he “put it to the test” for the world to see, in his writings, but I’ve gotta think that he asked these questions, before he became a “sold-out Christian”.

All Christians have doubts. The doubt doesn’t go away completely. Even years in to their faith. That’s part of the walk.

And, as I mentioned before, I don’t think logic is the very first step in the process of finding God. I think faith comes first. An openness to the possibility. God reveals Himself to those who want to see Him. So what appears so obvious to those who believe in God, seems utterly ridiculous to those who don’t.

Therefore, when we look at these writings, apologetic writings, I think they are called, they are starting to tell a story in mid-sentence, because they are not mentioning the very first step, which is faith, not logic.

(sidenote:I don’t really think that there are many (if any) “Paul Conversions” there are out there, where someone is a total enemy of God and then becomes His biggest servant.)

So from that perspective, if you leave out the first step of faith, then yes, it’s disingenuous to say that “I was a total unbeliever in God and though this search, I was transformed.”

Personally I do not think debating is what brings people to know God anyway. Your post reaffirms for me (though I’ve messed up in this area and probalby will again before I die) that giving someone, who completely doesn’t believe, a book or a paper to read, seems like a waste of time (and can lead to a negative reaction, like you write about). It’s called “witnessing” not “lawyering” for a reason.

None of this says their beliefs are wrong or the teachings of Jesus are wrong. What it says is that these people lack integrity. They are not the kind of people I would want to be around or have my children be around.