Randal Rauser's Blog, page 178

Jeff Lowder on Is the Atheist My Neighbor?

When I was writing Is the Atheist My Neighbor? I wanted to have a chapter devoted to dialogue with an atheist. After all, the best way to gain perspective and nuance regarding the views of another belief community is to invite a representative of that community into conversation.

However, not just any member of the community will do. Indeed, choosing the wrong representative could have the exact opposite effect. Can you imagine an atheist group wanting to have a genuine conversation with Christians who invited Fred Phelps, the (now deceased) pastor of the infamous Westboro Baptist, to be the Christian representative? If the goal was a more charitable and nuanced understanding of Christians, Phelps would achieve precisely the opposite of the intended effect.

You might call this common sense principle the Diplomat Dictum. Suffice it to say, when you want to pursue exploratory dialogue with another belief community, the goal should be to seek an exemplar from that community in terms of  knowledge and character to serve as a diplomat for that community.

With that in mind, it made sense to invite Jeff Lowder into the conversation. Jeff has been a leader in the online secular community for twenty years as one of the leading defenders of atheism and naturalism. He has also been a model of cool civil exchange in a field of discourse that is known for frequently generating more heat than light. (You can learn more about Jeff’s bona fides at the Secular Outpost blog.)

And so I devoted one of the chapters to a conversation with Jeff in which he provides an eloquent and concise summary of his commitment to naturalism and atheism. In addition, Jeff offers his own reaction to the Rebellion Thesis that is the subject of criticism in the book. All in all it is an outstanding and illuminating exchange which may go some modest distance toward healing the rift between these two belief communities.

Now that the book is out Jeff offers his comments at his Secular Outpost blog. You can read them here.

Randal Talks Atheism, Neighbors, and Back to the Future on The Storymen Podcast

The Storymen Podcast features three wild and crazy guys, Matt Mikalatos (I review Matt’s book Imaginary Jesus here), Clay Morgan (I interview Clay about his zombie-themed book Undead: Revived, Resuscitated, Reborn here), and JR Forasteros (I write about JR’s coolness credentials here).

I was on the Storymen Podcast once before to talk about heaven, so I knew what I was getting into this time when they invited me on to talk about my new book on atheism. From the opening strains of “Canadian Idiot” (Thanks guys! But I would have preferred Larry Norman’s “Up in Canada” as an opening song! :)) to my parting comments on Robert Zemeckis’ immortal film, it was a memorable ride.

The Storymen also have a book giveaway, so check out the interview here.

 

 

How to tell you were raised dispensational

This morning I was working out on the back deck while my wife was preparing a late breakfast for the family (including extended family that are visiting). Then I walked back into the kitchen only to discover bacon frying in a pan, waffles cooking in the waffle maker … and nobody in the kitchen to tend any of it.

Where was my wife?! Surely she wouldn’t leave the bacon and waffles!

Immediately Larry Norman’s 1969 haunting paean to dispensationalist fatalism, “I wish we’d all been ready,” came to mind.

I took in a breath at the heady thought that I’d been left behind to face seven years of tribulation.

Then my wife walked back into the kitchen from the pantry and returned to the bacon. Larry’s music faded away and I made my way back to the deck, heartened to know that I hadn’t been left behind after all.

At least for now…

The Perplexities of Privileging Particular Parents

I am not a reader of Kevin DeYoung’s blog. But I had to read it after this Preston Sprinkle tweet came through my feed:

So yeah, I had to click the link. The article is titled “40 Questions for Christians Now Waving Rainbow Flags.”

Personally, I’d be more interested in reading an article titled “40 Questions for Christians who spend more time worrying about homosexuality than global poverty.” It’s not that this topic isn’t important. It’s just that the Christian focus on it seems wholly disproportionate relative to other serious moral issues (as I argued in “Ten things that are more disturbing than gay marriage“).

But I pressed on and read through DeYoung’s article. As I did the following questions in particular caught my attention:

14. Do you think children do best with a mother and a father?

15. If not, what research would you point to in support of that conclusion?

16. If yes, does the church or the state have any role to play in promoting or privileging the arrangement that puts children with a mom and a dad?

What struck me is how so much more complicated the issues behind these questions are. (The same is true of several of the other questions.) So let’s take a closer look.

Immediately we face a problem with (14) as stated. To see why, consider the following two scenarios:

(a) Child is raised by a loving single mom.

(b) Child is raised by a loving mom and a clinically psychopathic dad.

I assume DeYoung is not committed to the view that (b) is preferable to (a). And that means that while a father and mother household is aspirational, it is not an absolute. Clearly it is preferable to be raised by a loving single mom than a loving single mom and a psychopath.

This means that 14 requires a ceteris paribus (or “all other things being equal”) clause. Thus, we have:

14′. All other things being equal, do you think children do best with a mother and a father?

On this charitable reading, DeYoung is claiming that all other things being equal, children do better when they are raised by a father and mother than by any other familial arrangement, including (i) a divorced single parent, (ii) a widowed single parent, (iii) two grandparents, (iv) an older sibling, (v) two gay parents.

DeYoung’s followup question in (16) suggests that the unique quality (all other things being equal) owing to father/mother familial relationships means that these ought to be privileged over (i)-(v).

I’m not sure what this privileging would mean. However, I think one would have to be very careful that it didn’t result in a stigmatization of children who fail to be in the optimal familial relationship.

I also don’t think it means that support and resources should be privileged to father/mother familial relationships. These other familial relationships are already at a disadvantage so if anything they should receive more support.

I suspect that in behind (14)-(16) are questions about issues like the availability of ARTs (Artificial reproductive technology) and access to adoption. That is, since a father/mother relationship is ceteris paribus the optimal relationship, families that conform to this standard should have privileged access to ARTs (e.g. IVF, surrogacy) and adoption.

This does raise an interesting question, however. Indeed, if we’re not careful, it could become a slippery slope. What if, ceteris paribus, children do better with parents of a particular socioeconomic status or educational level? Should access to ARTs and adoption likewise be privileged to those couples that have the optimal socioeconomic status and educational level? What if children statistically do better with same race parents than mixed race parents? What if they do better with parents where fathers have a set of masculine characteristics and mothers feminine characteristics? What if they do better with parents of a particular religious (or non-religious) persuasion? And so on.

I guess the lesson is this: before you invoke a ceteris paribus clause that privileges the kinds of parents that are statistically preferable, and before you propose to direct special resources toward those (potential) parents over others, you better think through all the implications of that choice of action.

 

A simple way to allay fears of religious discrimination: stop marrying for the state

The recognition of the constitutional right for homosexuals to marry has created the worry that pastors may be asked to marry a homosexual couple … or refer them to another pastor who will. There is a simple remedy for this fear: pastors should stop performing civic marriages. The continued practice of pastors performing civic duties is a leftover from a long-defunct Christendom, and the current conflict provides the perfect occasion to separate secular and religious marriage.

In short, I propose that Christians ought to go to their church to be married according to the dictates of their religious tradition. And then they can go to the courthouse to have a legally recognized marriage by way of the secular magistrate. In this way there is no confusion between roles and no conflict between the values of the religious leader and the state.

This may work fine for the religious leaders, but what about the magistrate who has a religious objection to marrying homosexuals for the state? The answer to this dilemma is simple: this person should not be a magistrate by the same reasoning that a religious pacifist should not be a soldier.

Frankly, the current debate over gay marriage seems to me to provide an excellent motivation for the church to disentangle itself from the state. Unfortunately, many Christians seem more concerned to use it as an occasion to worry about discrimination.

The Parable of the Good Atheist

The Parable of the Good Atheist

Jesus never addressed the topic of atheism. That fact is hardly surprising since there weren’t any atheists in the ancient Greco-Roman world, and certainly not in the region of Judea and Palestine in which Jesus lived his life.

Nonetheless, Jesus’ subversive teaching, so beautifully captured in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, has much to say to the church today and how we think of atheism. In the introduction to Is the Atheist My Neighbor? I offer a retelling of the parable as we discover that the teaching of Jesus remains as revolutionary as ever. In this audio version of the parable I’ve added some ambient music and a fake British accent in a modest homage to the various Bible recordings that I’ve heard through the years.

Ten things that are more disturbing than gay marriage

Over the last couple days evangelical Christians (at least the ones I’ve been hearing) have expressed a lot of outrage over the US Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage. With that in mind, I thought I’d offer a short list of ten things that seem to me to be more disturbing than gay marriage. Here they are in no particular order:

1. Presently there are between 21-36 million people enslaved around the world. 22% are sex slaves. (Source)

2. We are currently in the six mass extinction of earth history, the greatest loss of biodiversity in tens of millions of years. And it’s human caused. (Source)

3. Over the next several decades, human-induced climate change will produce hundreds of millions of climate refugees. (Source)

4. The total value of global military arms trading in 2011 was in excess of $43 billion. (Source)

5. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean (consisting of human debris like plastics, chemicals, and other garbage) could be twice as large as the continental United States. (Source)

6. North Korea is presently facing a famine that could kill tens of thousands. (Source)

7. Approximately 15,000 child slaves work in the Ivory Coast. (Source)

8. Saudi Arabia has publicly beheaded 84 people so far in 2015. (Source)

9. In their quest to privatize water supplies, corporate giant Nestlé argues that water is not a fundamental human right (Source)

10. While pigs are among the most intelligent non-human creatures on earth, millions of breeding pigs spend almost their entire lives in gestation crates which render them virtually immobilized. (Source)

Review copies of Is the Atheist My Neighbor? for Bloggers

If you are a blogger interested in a review copy of Is the Atheist My Neighbor? you can email me at the contact section for my website. Send me your name, mailing address, and blog URL and I will forward the request to the publisher. If you prefer an ebook (which should be available in a couple weeks) let me know that as well.

You can read the press sheet for the book here.

 

Many Bad Bibles … and the Worst of them All

I buy bad Bibles.

Call it a perverse fascination with consumer culture if you like. I prefer to think of it as a genuine interest in the ceaseless ways that the marketplace finds to represent the Bible to those who have the money to pay for it. The charismatics get Spirit-filled study Bibles, the tree huggers get their Green Bibles, gun-toting survivalists get the Sportsman’s Bible, scuba divers have the Waterproof Bible, preteen girls get the Bethany Hamilton Soul Surfer Bible, young and spry defenders of the faith get the Apologetics Study Bible, new English speakers get the Good News Bible, old English speakers get the KJV Bible, traditional dispensationalists get the Old Scofield Study Bible, new Calvinists get the Reformation Study Bible, women get the Women’s Devotional Bible, real men get the Manual: The Bible for Men (incidentally, if a reader of the Sportsman Bible fought a reader of Manual: The Bible for Men, who would win?!), teenagers get the Teen Life Application Study Bible, and believe it or not, porn stars get the Jesus Loves Porn Stars Bible (don’t worry, the link just takes you to Amazon.com, and the Bible is a version of Eugene Peterson’s The Message!).

Most of these Bibles strike me as bald attempts to pander to a particular market segment (or imagined market segment). Some are okay, most are of dubious value. But none, I would submit, are as mind-numbingly bad as the Bibleman edition. Yeah, you read that right. Bibleman was a little known 1990s superhero who, sadly enough, was regularly beaten up by the Power Rangers. Even worse, one of the Teletubbies — Tinky-Winky — knocked Bibleman out cold at a children’s festival. Accounts of the incident vary, but most people agree that Bibleman accused Tinky-Winky of being a homosexual. Two seconds later Bibleman was laid out: he didn’t even see what hit him! (Incidentally, Tinky-Winky never denied being gay, a fact that Bibleman would eagerly recount to anybody who inquired about the incident.)

A look inside my pristine edition of the Bibleman Bible. Note the mint condition sword bookmark and crossword puzzle. God’s word was never so cool … and fun!

This Bibleman Bible pictured here is a pristine copy that I have in my collection of bad Bibles. This Bible has been out of print for years, and I think I know the reason why. It isn’t merely that Bibleman got beat up by the Power Rangers and Tinky-Winky. It’s also that the Bible contains the entire text of the New Testament, but with a marketing theme aimed at 2-3 year old boys. And I don’t know many three year olds who are up for putting on their purple Bibleman cape and then mulling over the mystery of grace and election in Romans or the dizzying visions of Revelation.

In short, the Bibleman Bible was a marketer’s answer to a question nobody asked. Come to think of it, that’s what Bibleman himself was as well.

And that’s enough to get my vote for worst Bible ever.