Soul Cravings - Book Review

Campus For Christ gives out a number of books free around campus. One of them is Soul Cravings, by Erwin McManus, which I took the time to read recently.

Before I get into the actual book, I want to give a warning. The book for some reason doesn't number its pages (despite having 200-300 pages), so in order to reference any part of the book, I am going to have to cite the section of the book (the sections being Intimacy, Destiny, Meaning and Seek, in that order), and then the entry number - quite a cumbersome way to cite anything, and not as accurate as a page number since the entries span 2-5 pages.

The theme of this book is that we all have "cravings of the soul", things we can't deny and which are just part of life. Of course, the only way to satisfy these cravings is to accept God and Jesus Christ. The very fact that we have these cravings is (according to the book) evidence of God's existence and that evolution doesn't work. I will quickly overview each section, then go back and look at all of the anti-intellectualism and anti-atheist bullshit that is found throughout the book.

The first section of the book is Intimacy. It argues we all crave and need love. And (here it comes), we need God in order to have love: "When we are disconnected from God, we find ourselves increasingly empty of love" (Intimacy, Entry 14). The section seems to be claiming something like this: Some people have abandonment issues which makes it hard for them to love God, God is needed to feel love, we all need love, so those poor little atheists are all just sad, loveless people that have been hurt at some point in their lives.

Second section: Destiny. This section is supposed to be an uplifting section about how we can all reach our dreams if we want. Our dreams are cravings of our soul, which of course can't be explained by evolution. Life is meaningless if there is no God (Entry 17) and our souls long for god when we are "hiding in a cave" even if we are atheists (Entry 12).

The third section is entitled Meaning. It's about the soul's craving for truth. We seek truth in different ways, for example faith or reason, which are both pretty much the same thing. Philosophy apparently tells us we can't believe in an objective reality, science tells us we must believe in nothing except the material world, and so they are opposed to one another. Atheists claim they can't believe in what they can't see, yet they believe in oxygen (Entry 9).

The final section, Seek, is really just the summary of the other sections.

Now that we have a quick summary of the book, let's look a bit more closely at it, particularly the anti-intellectualism and anti-atheist stuff. I will just be picking quotes from the books that convey the overall message.

"[B]y all theories of aerodynamics and physics, the bumblebee should not be able to fly, but it can. No scientific reason why it should; it just does" (Destiny, Entry 4) which is of course, completely false (see Wikipedia on bumblebee flight).

Randy, who suffers from a form of dwarfism and was not expected to live long past birth, is quoted approvingly as saying: "'I am living proof that Darwin was wrong - or at least had a poor definition of who was the most fit to survive'" (Destiny, Entry 4). Note that Darwin didn't coin the phrase "survival of the fittest", and the phrase refers to reproductive fitness, not necessarily physical fitness; this quote simply betrays a profound ignorance about evolution. This is one of the many, many quotes that take shots at evolution while simultaneously showing a complete lack of understanding of the theory of evolution.

"If there were no God, it would be inane for us to search for significance or to be ambitious for success" (Destiny, Entry 18). No reason is given for this, except in the previous chapter where it is claimed that if we have to die, life is meaningless for some reason.

"Somehow we know it's not supposed to be a dog-eat-dog world. If it's all evolutionary, then we should be motivated only by survival of the fittest" (Destiny, Entry 19). What would it mean to be motivated "only by survival of the fittest"? I don't even know where his thinking has gone wrong, since I don't even know what he thinks that would mean.

"If you step back and extract the emotion and look at it objectively, you begin to realize that faith and reason have a lot in common. Oh, they come to different conclusions, but they're both trying to do the same thing" (Meaning, Entry 4). He admits that faith and reason come to different conclusions. Too easy?

"We live in a time when philosophers question even the existence of reality" (Meaning, Entry 5). No names, philosophical movements, or anything is given to back up this claim. So who are these philosophers? How is this new, considering Descartes, Hume, Berkeley, etc. all questioned the existence of reality in some way or other and lived centuries ago? It certainly isn't the case that most philosophers doubt the existence of reality, if that is what he is trying to say here...

"Our philosophers went searching for truth, and when they returned, they told us that there is no truth to be known, that nothing is true, and that all we can do is create our own truth and hope for the best" (Meaning, Entry 8). See comments about the preceding quote.

"For some, to believe in God is way too much of a stretch. They consider it an insult to their intelligence. For them believing in something they cannot see is absurd. And if you talk about the effect of God on people's lives, they will insist that secondary evidence is not good enough. It has to be primary, or it's not real. So then there is love. Some people who do not believe in God are consistent and don't believe in love either" (Seek). The implication is, if you don't believe in God but believe in love, you are inconsistent, since you can't see either! There are huge disanalogies here, plus the implication is built on a straw-man (I believe in plenty of things I can't see, and not being able to see them isn't the reason I don't believe in any gods - though if I COULD see a god, it would probably cause me to believe in it).

"[M]y nonscientific research has found a direct correlation between losing faith in love and losing faith in God" (Seek). Keyword: nonscientific.

So, overall, this book is an anti-intellectual screed that, if nothing else, helps to perpetuate silly misconceptions about atheists and anti-scientific views among Christians.