Randal Rauser's Blog, page 46

Skeptics, Seekers, and My Inner Atheist

Here is my interview with Skeptics and Seekers Podcast. This one got spicy. Indeed, David Johnson punched me in the nose a couple of times (figuratively speaking) but it was all for a good cause.

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7 Steps to Build Christian Communities that Don’t Lose the Young

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Transgender Children and the Ethics of Therapeutic Treatment

Two recent studies in the journal Pediatrics provide evidence that gender-dysphoric children generally have improved mental health outcomes when therapeutic measures such as hormone blockers are employed early on. Of course, this data is consistent with a subset of children having worsened mental health outcomes (e.g. gender dysphoria dissipating naturally thereby leading to regret over earlier therapeutic choices). The real question that interests me is the extent to which Christians are willing to consider the weight of clinical evidence in favor of proactive therapeutic treatment or whether they are closed, a priori to such evidence. And if the latter, on what basis?

Consider a hypothetical scenario in which a child named David is suffering from severe clinical depression and threatening self-mutilation. Desperate, her parents agree to use her preferred name and pronouns and to allow her to begin therapeutic treatments that will lead to her body conforming with her self-understanding of gender. Fast-forward fifteen years and Daisy is flourishing as a young woman, at least by all external measures of mental health treatment. Does that positive outcome provide evidence that the therapeutic decisions to treat her gender dysphoria were correct? And if not, why not?

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How Christians engage in special pleading when they try to justify bad biblical behavior

Many conservative Christians believe that men should follow the Billy Graham Rule to never be alone with a woman who is not your life. Unless you’re a king like David: then you can climb into bed with a young virgin girl. In this video, I criticize that kind of painful special pleading.

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Does God command genocide in the Bible?

In this video, I offer a response to a short clip from an interview between Sean McDowell and Charlie Trimm. For the full McDowell interview, see here.

 

 

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Why do some agnostics call themselves atheists? And should we care?

Over the years, I’ve written several articles on this unfortunate semantic innovation. Now here is my definitive video statement on why agnostics shouldn’t call themselves atheists.

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Should Apologists Get Rich Defending the Christian Faith, or is that a bad Apologetic?

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A Wide-Ranging Interview with the Non-Alchemist

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If Ravi Zacharias engaged in immoral conduct, does that invalidate his ministry?

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Why does theology adapt to science but science doesn’t adapt to theology?

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