Book Review: “Scrooge and the Question of God’s Existence” by Steve Luhring

Scrooge and the Question of God’s Existence is a modern day retelling of Charles Dickens’ classic, A Christmas Carol. In this version, Scrooge is a militant atheist who does his best to write works to convince people to become atheists themselves. Not only that, but he is working to pass legislation that makes certain forms of speech illegal. There will be some minor SPOILERS for the plot in this review.

There are other twists to the basic plotline of A Christmas Carol, as well. In this one, Cratchit is a pastor who has been imprisoned because of legislation Scrooge helped pass. Also, one of Cratchit’s children has been influenced by Scrooge’s writings and himself turned to atheism, much to the chagrin of his parents. When the ghosts come to visit Scrooge, they don’t merely show him the fruits of his life, they also bring up significant arguments for the existence of God, most forcefully the Leibnizian Cosmological Argument.

One aspect of the work that is perhaps a little overdone is its commitment to the idea that non-Christians automatically try to silence Christians. Though this does happen occasionally, those cases are often highlighted at the expense of the many non-Christians who do not do anything of the sort. It would have been interesting, perhaps, to see a more reasonable atheist perspective presented here, though I understand the limits of the format.

The book is well-written and in places even manages to capture the feel of the original work by Dickens. It has clever turns of phrase and an attention to detail that give it a similar feel to the original. Though I tend to be hyper-aware of grammatical and spelling errors, I didn’t notice anything particularly egregious as I went through. Overall, the story is interesting and actually feels like a fresh take rather than something that’s just aping the source material.

I enjoyed my read-through of Scrooge and the Question of God’s Existence. It’s a clever, well-written little play on the classic work, though it does feel somewhat heavy-handed at times in its presentation of a particular brand of Christianity. Recommended.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a copy of the book for review by the publisher. I was not required to give any specific kind of feedback whatsoever.

Links

Be sure to check out the page for this site on Facebook and Twitter for discussion of posts, links to other pages of interest, random talk about theology/philosophy/apologetics/movies and more!

SDG.

——

The preceding post is the property of J.W. Wartick (apart from quotations, which are the property of their respective owners, and works of art as credited; images are often freely available to the public and J.W. Wartick makes no claims of owning rights to the images unless he makes that explicit) and should not be reproduced in part or in whole without the expressed consent of the author. All content on this site is the property of J.W. Wartick and is made available for individual and personal usage. If you cite from these documents, whether for personal or professional purposes, please give appropriate citation with both the name of the author (J.W. Wartick) and a link to the original URL. If you’d like to repost a post, you may do so, provided you show less than half of the original post on your own site and link to the original post for the rest. You must also appropriately cite the post as noted above. This blog is protected by Creative Commons licensing. By viewing any part of this site, you are agreeing to this usage policy.