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True, Right, Better

by John M, Oakes, Illumination Publishers, ©2023
$16.99 paperback, 151 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1-958723-94-4

One of the bright lights in the battle against atheism and naturalism is Dr. John M. Oakes, president of the Apologetics Research Society and graduate of the University of Colorado with a Ph.D. in chemical physics. John's scholarship is evident in his many books and booklets designed to answer the challenges of skeptics and atheists while building the faith of Christians. This book defends the Christian worldview.

Many of us are puzzled by how the religious leaders in Jesus' day could see him raise Lazarus from the dead and do other incredible miracles and not understand that he was not merely human but God's Son. The answer to that question is that they held a worldview that prevented them from logically and rationally dealing with the evidence that was right in front of them.

Oakes defines “worldview” as a “lens through which information passes into our rational minds for us to interpret that data.” He points out three different levels of knowledge — theory, paradigm, and worldview. This book deals with worldview as a set of presuppositions we hold about our world's basic makeup. Oakes presents the Christian worldview as superior to all other options. He uses past scholars like Newton, Kuhn, Popper, Lyell, and Kurka to show different worldviews and then discusses how scholars evaluate worldviews — are they true, are they right, and are they better than other choices? That is where the book gets its title.

With that foundation, Oakes shows that the Christian worldview is superior to every other option in all three of these criteria. This includes theism (biblical, existentialism, and Islamic), pantheism (Hinduism, Buddhism, Occult, New Age, and polytheism), and naturalism (secular humanism, Marxism, nihilism, atheism, and postmodernism). Oakes' scholarship shows brightly in this book. He uses valid sources and accurately and briefly explains their views and then shows why they fail to measure up to the Christian worldview.

This book is great reading for a college student challenged in a philosophy class, but for those of us who are ignorant of philosophical teaching, it is a gold mine of useful rebuttals of the “gods of this age.”