Lets see… so far the suggestions I’ve seen that I can relate to are Lee Strobel’s: A case for a Creator, Aquinas’s theology, Peter Kreeft, and Dinesh D’Souza.
Like some have said before, it matters how smart your agnostic friend is. If he says he’s agnostic because he knows he hasn’t really looked into any theological/anti-theological arguments, then any of these might be effective. I suggest you bombard him right away. But if he knows logic and has some backround in philosophy and science, I don’t see much chance in any of these persuading him, especially if he’s seen some of it before.
Some of my own experience:
Tim Staples gave me A Case for a Creator to read (as well as Darwin’s Black Box by Michael Behe, but you don’t want to go into that…). My reaction throughout the whole book while reading was that it was simply a creationist propeganda book. It makes VERY many erroneous claims about the weakness of evolutionary theory, and tries to pretend there is good evidence for intelligent design, while it puts none forward. If you give him this book to read and he knows something about biology and evolution, he’ll just laugh at you and never take you seriously.
Aquinas’s theology is probably the best suggestion, but again, if your friend knows his logic, it likely won’t persuade him. Of Aquinas’s 5 arguments for a first cause or God, 3 of them are basically arguments that there must be something which everything is derived from. 2 of them are for more specific attributes of God. The problem with the three first arguments is that it makes huge (although subtle) assumptions. If your friend is not a good reader or good at logic, he may not catch them. Besides the assumptions, another reason is that in his first three arguments, either the conclusion contradicts the starting premise, or the conclusion is assumed to be true in the beginning. The last two arguments have the same problems, but on a far more noticeable scale, as well as other problems. Part of it is that Aquinas’s arguments are outdated. He was a very smart man with good arguments for his time. The logic errors he makes in the beginning were always there, but some have become more magnified as our understanding of reality has increased since his time.
Peter Kreeft basically uses the same arguments as Aquinas, except they are poorly attempted to be made more modern, are long and unnecessarily complicated, and are more easily seen through, even though he tries to hide his arguments’ weaknesses in a long drabble of rubbish. I think he was actually the first person my godfather suggested to me after I renounced Catholicism and I was very unimpressed.
And Dinesh D’Souza. If your friend has already seen any debates D’Souza has been in or if he’s seen his interview on the Colbert Report, he’ll know that D’Souza is a prick. He’s a man who talks with confidense of very surprisingly bad arguments. He’s as arrogant as they come and your friend will likely be totally turned off by him.
To save you the trouble, here’s his appearance on The Colbert Report (He did all his debates before this appearance, while many of us non-believers had utmost contempt for him, but after this interview some of us actually felt sorry for him, and he’s practically disappeared since).
crooksandliars.com/2007/01/17/colbert-nails-dinesh-dsouza/
I can only help you with what not to give him, not really what to give him because nothing has really convinced me. And by the way I loved Sideline’s first post. Remember OP, if you’re going to talk with this guy seriously, don’t be a hypocrite and think you have the ultimate truth in Catholicism. You as well have to be open to changing your mind; it’s not a one-way-street.
