Others have shown, as effectively as I could, how thoroughly Strobel has failed to make The Case for Faith. Readers not already aware of the problems with his arguments are invited to read reviews on the Secular Web by Kyle Gerkin at http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/kyle_gerkin/objections_sustained/index.shtml and Paul Doland at http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/paul_doland/strobel.shtml.
Rather than duplicate those efforts, I offer here some comments on an apologetic motif that Strobel plays throughout The Case for Faith and also touched on in The Case for Christ. We might call it the Argument from Skeptical Depravity.
Evangelical Christianity, as presented by Strobel and many other of its advocates, affirms that all skepticism about its teachings is ultimately due to a refusal to accept God's moral sovereignty over mankind. In the world of those evangelicals, nobody really doubts the resurrection just because it is incredible. Instead, skeptics doubt only in order to excuse their rejection of Jesus' teachings — as evangelical Christianity interprets those teachings. In that world view, nobody accepts the truth of evolution because of the scientific evidence supporting it. Instead, people accept it only in order to justify noncompliance with God's commandments — or what those evangelicals think those commandments are.
Obviously, we skeptics beg to differ. But then, Strobel is not really talking to us. Books like The Case for Faith are not written for unbelievers. They are written to assure believers that they may safely ignore anyone who tells them that their beliefs are unreasonable. Its message is that when all is said and done, only an incorrigible sinner can hold on to any doubt about the truth of evangelical dogma.
Strobel goes through the motions of extolling the virtue of questioning everything, including Christianity. He portrays himself here, as he did in The Case for Christ, as a gung-ho skeptic who won't just take anybody's word for anything. His portrayal is a sham, though. To the believer with doubts, his bottom-line message is: Ask all the questions you want, but you'd better come up with Christianity's answers if you know what's good for you.
The faith that Strobel is defending is not just belief in a god, nor belief in just any version of the Christian God. It is belief in the particular God of evangelical Christianity. No other faith matters to him. Strobel cares nothing about the faith of liberal Christians, or of Jews, or of Muslims, or of any followers of any other religion. It is not likely that he wrote the book with any intention of assuring Roman Catholics that their faith is justified. As far as evangelicals are concerned, there is no case to be made for anyone's faith but theirs.
In principle, of course, it just could be the case that of all the religions in the world, Strobel's actually is the only right one. If he could prove that, I would say more power to him. But he does not, and does not really try to. His argument ultimately boils down to the unsupported claim that anyone who is sincere about wanting to know the truth about God will somehow know that his sect, and his alone, is speaking that truth.
Christianity is a religion of great diversity, and attempts by outsiders to identify and label its various subdivisions are fraught with risk. Many Christians who identify themselves as evangelicals do not accept everything Strobel says or implies. In particular, there are many evangelicals who (a) have no problem with evolution, (b) have rejected the traditional concept of hell as a place of eternal punishment, and (c) are not wedded to the dogma of inerrancy.
Strobel presents his own beliefs, however, as definitively Christian. He says, in effect if not explicitly, that Christians reject evolution and see no errors or contradictions in the Bible. By strong implication, he is claiming that anyone who accepts evolution or who thinks there could be some inaccuracies in the Bible is not a true Christian.
If that is not in fact what he believes, he has no one but himself to blame if his readers infer that he does. He knew, or surely should have known, that no reasonable person would have construed his writing otherwise. If you want to win people to Christ, and if you honestly think that a sincere Bible-believing Christian can accept whatever science has to say about human origins, then when you write a book defending Christianity, you don't include a whole chapter devoted to an attack on evolution.
Those who do in general agree with Strobel, though, are the most vocal and confrontational of evangelicals, and so the focus of my critique is against them. I have avoided qualifiers for the sake of rhetorical economy, but the reader is advised for the sake of fairness that the next evangelical Christian he or she meets might be of the opinion that Strobel is giving evangelical Christianity a bad name.
(Further observations in my essay What do you call them?)