Randal Rauser's Blog, page 35

The Fundamentalist Atheist as Frankenstein’s Monster

I had a civil discussion with “Pinecreek” recently on my book Jesus Loves Canaanites. At least, I thought it was civil. Alas, now true to form, Pinecreek has posted a severely shortened edit which he has labeled as “bloviation free”. Oh, how delightfully cheeky that is! Because you see, I’m a pompous, long-winded idiot.

And of course, Pinecreek’s audience laps it up. They watch his YouTube channel to see him mock others. They like to be reminded how they are smart and others are stupid, and what better way to be reminded than just to point and laugh? The top insult posted below the video really summarizes the mentality:

“When Randal begins a sentence with ‘So’, that’s his bloviation warning. I wish Doug had a loud, annoying buzzer that he could press every time Randal began with ‘So’, and thereby direct Randal to get to the point.”

Haw haw! Good idea! Buzz ‘im Pinecreek! (Too bad that buzzer doesn’t include an electric jolt!)

Pinecreek is very effective at what he does, and what he does is called indoctrination. You see indoctrination as he undermines careful, critical thinking, the kind that depends on charity and an actual attention span. In its place, he presents his audience with a simple binary choice between insiders and outsiders. Outsiders are dummies of questionable moral character who believe absurd things. And they try to hide the absurdity of their views by embedding them in torturous layers of obscuring bloviation.

Enter Pinecreek who equips his audience to cut through all that bloviating BS with an edited video.

I don’t know much about Pinecreek Doug, but I do know that he comes from a conservative Christian background. And judging by his conduct toward outsiders today, I suspect it was a particularly virulent fundamentalist strain of conservative Christianity that formed him, one in which outsiders were dismissed as worldly, morally wayward people of darkness and lies while those from his Christian in-group were people of the light and truth. (The Gospel of John, selectively proof-texted, is particularly effective in buoying that kind of stark binary framework.)

If I am correct in that supposition, then the Pinecreek you see now is, ironically enough, the product of the Christian community he now disparages with such open contempt. Like Frankenstein’s monster, he has turned on those who made him, and his YouTube channel is a sad testimony to his own damage.

This brings me to an obvious question: should I have appeared on Pinecreek’s show a few weeks ago? You might think, after all, that the wiser course is not to give people like that the opportunity to edit your words and mock you as a bloviator. I definitely agree that you should only interact with people like this with your eyes open. But even if Pinecreek and most of his audience have contempt for those from various outgroups, there is a very small quiet minority who do listen and who have respect for others. I know because I’ve heard from them. Though a thousand people may laugh at me, I focus on the one life I can touch.

Just this morning, I read the following review of Jesus Loves Canaanites on Amazon. This is why I do what I do.

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Am I a Marcionite? And Other Questions with Spartan Theology

My latest “Jesus Loves Canaanites” interview, this one on the @SpartanTheology podcast/YouTube channel. It was an engaging interview, and be sure to stick around for my response to the Marcionite charge.

 

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Providence, the Problem of Evil, and the Eye of the Tiger

We all know Survivor from their iconic hit “Eye of the Tiger.” But their 1982 album of the same name (an album that I used to spin on the turntable back in the day)  also includes another really interesting track, especially from a theological point of view. The ballad “Ever Since the World Began” was written by Jim Peterik and Frankie Sullivan, about a friend facing a terminal cancer diagnosis. And the song explores some interesting terrain: the course of our life is planned by the hand of destiny; everything fits together into a puzzle and plan but we can’t understand how we fit now; however, through it all, love sustains us on the journey as we retain the flame of hope for the future.

Whoa, deep themes, indeed. “Ever Since the World Began” is, in essence, a theodicy with hints of pastoral theology sung to a 1980s ballad.

* * *

I’ll never know what brought me here,
As if somebody led my hand,
It seems I hardly had to steer,
My course was planned.
And destiny it guides us all,
And by its hand, we rise and fall,
But only for a moment,
Time enough to catch our breath again.

And we’re just another piece of the puzzle,
Just another part of the plan,
How one life touches the other,
Is so hard to understand.
Still, we walk this road together,
We travel through as far as we can,
And we have waited for this moment in time,
Ever since the world began.

Taking in the times gone by,
We wonder how it all began,
We’ll never know and still we
Try to understand.
And even though the seasons change,
The reasons shall remain the same,
It’s love that keeps us holding on
Till we can see the sun again.

And we’re just another piece of the puzzle,
Just another part of the plan,
And we have waited for this moment in time,
Ever since the world began.

And I stand alone, a man of stone,
Against the driving rain,
And the night it’s got your number,
And the wind it cries your name,
If we search for truth, win or lose,
In this, we’re all the same,
The hope still burns eternal,
We’re the keeper of the flame.

And we’re just another piece of the puzzle,
Just another part of the plan,
How one life touches the other,
Is so hard to understand.
Still, we walk this road together,
We try and go as far as we can,
And we have waited for this moment in time,
Ever since the world began.

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Randal Rauser, Conservative Cultural Warrior

Anybody who has read my book What’s So Confusing About Grace? knows my story. I was raised in a fundagelical church that focused on culture war issues. In the early 1990s, I was a Rush Limbaugh fan, I listened to James Dobson and the Bible Answer Man on the radio, and I was ready to fight in the war against Christians and for general “moral decency”.

If you want a great example of Randal Rauser, Conservative Culture Warrior, consider this letter to the editor I just found it in a box in the basement. It was published by The Province, a Vancouver newspaper, on October 12, 1994. And in it, I express anger — nay, outrage! — at the fact that CBC Newsworld (a cable news channel in Canada) aired a Polish documentary on the fall of communism that included scenes of graphic nudity. This was sufficient for me to label the documentary as “thinly disguised soft-core porn” and to bemoan the treatment of those who protest it as “right-wing Christian fundamentalists.” In the letter, I insist that I really do care about free speech: nonetheless, I implore CBC Newsworld, “For the sake of decency, please keep it out of my living room.” Of course, “for the sake of decency” I could just turn the TV off or cancel my cable. But no, the only solution I consider is for CBC Newsworld not to air content I might deem offensive. You can see how much I care about free speech!

Here’s the best line: “It’s time to clean up the media for the sake of our children.” Uh huh. I mean I totally get that: we must ensure that all the foreign political documentaries aired on cable news channels are appropriate viewing given the sizable children’s audience that they are sure to attract.

Randal Rauser Conservative Culture Warrior uses some big words and can definitely write with stentorian moral indignation and a brittle martyrdom complex. But wow, are his arguments unimpressive.

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Jesus, Canaanites, and a Conversation with Stephen Bedard

In this video, Canadian apologist Stephen Bedard interviews me on my new book “Jesus Loves Canaanites.” In the interview, we address some topics I haven’t touched on in other interviews including my critique of Greg Boyd’s view and the question of whether critiques of biblical violence may be anti-Semitic.

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The Damned as Freemen on the Land

Over the last while, I have encountered many atheists who object to the doctrine of annihilationism according to which God eventually withdraws life posthumously from those who refuse to submit to be in relationship with God and restored creation. I understand objections to eternal conscious torment, but objections to punishment simpliciter (and this annihilationist account in particular) in which God allows people to experience the soul-destroying consequences of their actions, strike me as misguided at best.

Consider an analogy. Most people recognize that there are laws that govern civil society and that in order to flourish within civil society, one needs to observe those laws. For example, repeatedly driving your car at 100 mph through school zones will eventually result in your car being impounded and you being imprisoned. And if you don’t like that, well, too bad. That’s what happens when you violate the law.

By the same token, the person who repeatedly flouts the laws of the Kingdom of God will eventually experience the repercussions of their actions whether they like it or not. There simply is no ground for protest.

At this point, the atheist or non-Christian objector who is indignant that they should be expected to follow the laws of the Kingdom of God strikes me as reminiscent of the movement known as Freemen on the land. These are individuals who insist that they are not subject to the laws of the country in which they abide. For example, when they are pulled over by the Michigan police while driving an unregistered vehicle without a license, they will confidently produce a piece of paper that they claim exempts them from the laws of the United States. They can produce all the paper they want. It doesn’t mean that they will be able to violate flagrantly the laws of the land in which they exist. And so, they will find the police officer rolling his eyes, stuffing the paper into his back pocket, and they placing handcuffs on them while they protest their innocence in vain.

In eternity, the only “land” in which to live is the Kingdom of God. And if you do not wish to abide by the laws of that land, if you flagrantly violate them, then it doesn’t matter which paper you wave around: you will be subject to the divine governance of that divine country no less than the so-called freeman on the land who is arrested by the Michigan police officer.

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The Early Reviews of Jesus Loves Canaanites

Jesus Loves Canaanites has now been out for 5 weeks and while a few brief reviews have been posted at Goodreads and Amazon, the first blog review was posted today by J.W. Wartick at his Reconstructing Faith blog. You can read it here:

Genocide and the Challenge of Apologetics: Randal Rauser’s “Jesus Loves the Canaanites”

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A Brief Word on Apologetics, Debate, and Mental Illness

A clinically depressed atheist who commits suicide is not an excuse to talk about the “emptiness” of an atheistic worldview. A schizophrenic Christian who harms someone else is not an excuse to talk about the “danger” of divine command ethics. Don’t exploit mental illness.

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My Conversation with a Christian Fundamentalist on Biblical Violence

My most recent interview on “Jesus Loves Canaanites” with “The Cynicogue,” a self-described fundamentalist Christian. This was interesting!

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Killing the Children of Jericho: How Paul Copan Avoids the Question

In this video, we listen to an excerpt of a debate in which Paul Copan is asked directly about the killing of children as referenced in the slaughter of all the residents of Jericho, men and women, young and old (Joshua 6:21). Rather than address directly the ethics of slaughtering children and infants, Copan deflects from the question by raising other issues pertaining to hyperbole, driving out language, and the goal of eradicating Canaanite culture.

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