Randal Rauser's Blog, page 26

Is Jesus Loves Canaanites Guilty of Motivated Reasoning?

Over the last several months, I have often encountered the claim that my book Jesus Loves Canaanites is guilty of motivated reasoning. That’s a deeply misguided claim as I will explain in this article. Let’s start with a definition. Motivated reasoning involves the process of seeking arguments or evidence to achieve a desired outcome rather than allowing […]

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How Christians Read Biblical Violence with Confirmation Bias

In this video, I explain how Christian reading of divine violence in the biblical text is often distorted by confirmation bias to defend particular theological assumptions about God. ?

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Christmas Without Mosquitoes: Please Contribute to My Annual Fundraiser to Fight Malaria

It’s Giving Tuesday! And you know what that means? It’s time again for my annual fundraiser for the Against Malaria Foundation. The reason I continue to partner with this charitable NGO is simple: need and effectiveness. The Need Let’s talk about the need first. Believe it or not, the mosquito is far and away the […]

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What if God is Dreadful?

In his book A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis sets aside the task of theodicy that he shouldered in The Problem of Pain in favor of a searing personal account of pain and loss centered on the death of his beloved wife Joy. At one point in the book, he reflects, “Not that I am (I […]

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Does Heaven Lose Morally Significant Freedom? And is that a Problem?

@RealAtheology is a first-rate curator of engaging philosophy of religion content on Twitter. In this article, I’m going to interact with one of those tweets: ..if Heaven is as good as any place can possibly be—and if human beings have severely limited freedom of action in Heaven, then there is at least some reason to […]

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Agnosticism and Ignosticism: A Quick Word

Weak agnostics are simply without belief in God. They make no claim and thus have nothing to defend. Strong agnostics claim that nobody can have rational belief in, let alone knowledge of God’s existence or non-existence. That is a robust claim in need of supporting arguments. I meet a lot of ignostics on social media […]

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When Jesus Exorcised Demons Was He Really Healing Epilepsy?

In my latest video, I address the fact that some accounts of exorcism within the Gospels are described in a manner suggestive of epilepsy. With that in mind, I summarize three ways to think about this: first, it could be that these were simply exorcisms and that the presentation of demon possession is similar to […]

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Hellbound? Reflections on the Christian Doctrine of Damnation in Dialogue with the Korean Show

In this video, I consider the depiction of damnation in the new Korean Netflix show “Hellbound?” in which people await their fate to be dragged to hell and I bring that depiction into dialogue with the Christian doctrine of damnation. ?

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A Review of Owen Strachan’s Debate Performance on Unbelievable

My article “How Should Christians Think About White Privilege?” was inspired by the recent Unbelievable debate on Critical Race Theory and “Woke” Christianity, but it wasn’t a direct response to it. However, I cannot resist but to say something about Owen Strachan’s debate performance. In this article, I want to make just a few comments. […]

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How Should Christians Think About White Privilege?

These reflections were inspired by a recent episode of Unbelievable featuring a debate between Owen Strachan and Jermaine Marshall on CRT and Woke Christianity. I found it to be an engaging listen but also very frustrating as regards Strachan’s analysis. For example, he seemed much more interested in labeling things “Marxist” (as if the label […]

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