Do you think this describes the mindset of the majority of theistic people? “… is composed solely of currying favor with an all-powerful deity that blackmails us into bending to his will,…”

It definitely stems from a lack of understanding on our part. We’ve never had to conceive of anything lacking a before and after. Our brains aren’t wired for it. (No survival benefit. Damn you evolution!) Hopefully one day we’ll figure out a way to determine what is going on out there. I doubt it’ll be in my lifetime.

Also, what kinds of things is he leaving out? Examples would be good so I can, perhaps, recognize this in the future. I’m curious because, while On Guard is meant to be read by Christians, it is supposed to be designed to help Christians make arguments in support of their faith. He may be doing them a disservice by leaving parts out, believing them to be assumed. These parts are not apparent to me, and Christianity is something I am quite familiar with, having read my Bible from cover to cover.

Which relates to my statements about living in fear. In the Bible, Jesus curses a fig tree because it did not provide him with fruit when figs were not in season. The tree withers and by the following day is dead. This raises many questions for me (How can a man who is supposed to have walked on water and fed a crowd of thousands not make a tree bear fruit at his command? Was the tree, having no will of its own, possessed by Satan and he kept it from complying with the wishes of God-made-man?), but chief among them is this: If this is what a tree gets for not complying with the will of God, what do we get when we transgress? I recognize that the writings of C. S. Lewis and Joyce Meyer and all the others preach of, in part, a benevolent god who loves all of his creations. But for each of them there is a Jonathan Edwards among the cannon:

The bow of God’s wrath is bent, and His arrows made ready upon the string. Justice points the arrow at your heart and strings the bow. It is nothing but the mere pleasure of God (and that of an angry God without any promise or obligation at all) that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.

And Craig continuously mentions “Biblical Christianity”. That is not exactly the soft-pedaled Christianity of Osteen and Warren (and, in all honestly, they aren’t really too much better. Warren’s views on human sexuality alone…)

I recognize that far from all Christians live their lives in a state of fear. I was raised Catholic and I can’t think of any members of my family who seem particularly fearful. I myself never was, as far as I can remember, but then I also only have the vaguest feeling of ever really believing. As a child I was enamored with the rituals that surrounded Catholicism, but it didn’t extend much beyond that. What I do see, now, examining it from the outside, is that the system is a textbook example of a carrot and a stick. Hell is the stick. If you sin, there is Hell. If you do not believe, there is Hell. This is also not to say that all, or even many, Christians act morally because they fear Hell. One of the points I want to make is that a good person will act that way whether they believe in a higher power or not.

The fact that Hell exists as a form of punishment within the system, though, creates the possibility, in fact the positive assurance, that some people, good people, will live their lives in fear of eternal torment in hellfire simply because someone told them it was so. I cannot abide the fact that a system which claims to be moral not only leaves open such a possibility but explicitly encourages it.

It is true that one of the constant themes of Christianity is redemption and forgiveness. (Jesus is said to have even gone to far as to forgive people for things they did to other people, which I find, frankly, to be incredibly pompous and self-aggrandizing.) But that thread of forgiveness cuts both ways. Moral people make mistakes and it is important that minor infractions not hound us to the end of our days. But immoral people should not feel absolved of their guilty consciences simply because they said the right words to a God who, by all evidence, isn’t there to begin with. If there is a god at the other end of those words, then great. But if not, then a person can do all manner of immoral acts and do them with a song in his heart because the voice in his head said that it was okay with it. Again, I find this fact to be abhorrent.

An issue I have with your response is just that; your understanding of Christian beliefs do not seem to be straight. Namely, Christians do not live out of fear of being smitten, it’s so much deeper than that. If you’re going to be critical of Christianity, please understand it before you do so and I implore you to put some time into that before you analyze more Christian literature. Frankly, I don’t think that this book is worth reading unless one understands what Christianity is about.

Another issue I have is that some of these quotes are taken out of context, WLC does provide adequate justification when needed.

Which brings me to one last point. “On Guard” was written for believers, so please excuse WLC for using terminology and examples that may seem.. radical.. Also for omitting justification for things that may seem obvious to Christians, as you so aptly demonstrated from the atheist perspective in your response to “The Human Predicament”