Randal Rauser's Blog, page 50
August 20, 2020
August 19, 2020
Are Biblical Scholars Constrained by the Doctrinal Statements?
Today, someone who watched my debate with David Smalley emailed me to ask if I could provide a more fulsome reply to his suggestion in the debate that New Testament scholars draw positive conclusions about Jesus (e.g. his existence, resurrection, etc.) because they are constrained by the requirements of institutional doctrinal statements. Here is my reply.
Thanks for your email. First, let me point out that my new book Conversations with My Inner Atheist addresses this general topic in chapter 2 titled “How can a Christian academic have intellectual freedom?” And it’s only $4 on Kindle. So I suggest you look there for a general response to the topic.
Specifically, however, that kind of comment is problematic for multiple reasons. First, the skeptic who raises that issue needs to identify how many academic posts in the field include orthodox requirements. I suspect that most posts are at public universities which include no doctrinal requirements at all. Many more are at mainline Protestant and Catholic institutions which offer wide latitude. So really, the focus is on schools that are conservative Protestant evangelical or fundamentalist. That’s a relatively small percentage.
Second, the mere fact that these schools have requirements does not entail that the faculty who teach at them are pressured or have their scholarship altered. In cases like that, a self-selection process occurs in which faculty will apply to teaching and research posts where the doxastic expectations of the institution are consistent with what they believe.
Finally, every institution has expectations. For example, if you want to teach geology at a public university, you ain’t getting tenure if you claim the earth is 6000 years old. But that “constraint” on scholarship surely doesn’t undermine the consensus on the age of the earth.
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August 18, 2020
My New Book is Now Available on Kindle!
Yay!
My new book Conversations with My Inner Atheist is now available on Kindle!
Hurry up and get one before they’re all gone!
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Who is Irrational? Some Quick Observations on the Rauser-Smalley Debate
I’m not going to comment on the entire debate. Instead, I will limit my comments to the historical resurrection of Jesus and related issues.
In my debate on the rationality of Christian belief, David C. Smalley asked for historical evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. I provided evidence. I noted that there is no debate among scholars about the basic claims to which I appealed including that Paul the Apostle existed, that he was initially a persecutor of Christianity, that he then became a devout disciple, that the catalyst for his conversion was an experience in which he believed Jesus appeared to him, and that the Apostle Peter and the brother of Jesus (James) underwent similar experiences, that they believed that Jesus was resurrected, a belief that entailed an empty tomb, and that all this occurred within months or a few years of the death of Jesus and radiated out from Ground Zero (Jerusalem).
Additionally, this change in thinking involved a revolution in the concept of messiah that included both a shocking concept of effacement (the messiah would be crucified) and an equally shocking glorification (the messiah should be worshipped and included in the Shema). This is a truly extraordinary fact pattern which demands a sufficient historical explanation.
Smalley did not respond to that evidence. Instead, he then expressed general skepticism that we can know anything about the authors of the New Testament or their motivations. Additionally, he repeatedly strawmanned my argument by claiming that my entire argument consisted of the claim that a lot of people believed it so it must be true.
Thus, Smalley faces a dilemma: if he is to be consistent in claiming that we cannot have any reliable belief about the authorship of the Pauline epistles like Galatians or 1 Corinthians (the two texts to which I appealed) or the beliefs and intentions of that author, this would entail a radical skepticism about historical texts. The alternative is to limit his skepticism to texts that are included within the New Testament, a delimitation which, of course, is arbitrary and evinces a question-begging hyper-skepticism about a specific set of texts.
Incredibly, Smalley then went on to suggest that there is a good reason to believe Jesus never existed at all. His reason? Jesus mythicists. Keep in mind that one could count the number of mythicists who have terminal degrees in the relevant disciplines on one hand. Oh, and I also noted that the mythicists are all high profile atheist activist-apologists.
When I pointed out the absurdity of Smalley rejecting a consensus of biblical scholars in favor of a handful of vocal fringe atheist activists, he said many of those thousands of scholars who teach at public universities are forced to sign confessional statements. This is simply ignorant: research universities do not require confessional statements from their faculty. Smalley is, at this point, no different from Ken Ham who rejects the consensus of evolutionary biology by attributing nefarious and inept motivations to the consensus of scholarship.
To sum up, Smalley refused to engage my arguments, he strawmanned my arguments, he exhibited an arbitrary and inconsistent hyper-skepticism toward historical scholarship whilst embracing radical atheistic mythicists in a bald case of confirmation bias and motivated reasoning, and all this to the end of arguing that I’m the irrational one qua my Christian belief.
To watch the debate, click here.
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August 17, 2020
My Debate with David Smalley on the Rationality of Christianity
Today, I appeared on Modern Day Debate to debate David Smalley on whether a person can be rational to accept Christian belief:
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August 16, 2020
Conversations with My Inner Atheist is now Available!
I
t’s my twelfth book: a raw, honest exploration of a litany of difficult questions relating to Christianity, some familiar and others far off the beaten path. Perhaps it is not surprising that an atheist, the great physicist Richard Feynman, provides the epigram that serves as the motto of the entire book:
“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.”
If you’re ready to have a conversation with your inner atheist then this book is definitely for you.
At present, the book is only available as a softcover but Kindle will be available in a week or two. If you’d like to join in the conversation (and of course you do!) then you can pick up your own copy at Amazon. Here are the links:
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August 15, 2020
You are a believer
I just posted the following tweet:
I find it tiresome that atheists regularly call me a "believer". Everyone's a believer in something. And if you always call *other* people believers you may not get around to reflecting on what it is that *you* believe.
— Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) August 16, 2020
It is truly unfortunate how many would-be skeptics, atheists, and agnostics spend all their time criticizing the beliefs of others without ever seriously considering the fact that they, too, are “believers” and the critical microscope should equally be honed in on all the things that they accept. But of course, fundamentalists are not very adept at self-introspection, whether they are religious or secular.
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August 13, 2020
Do Atheists Hate God?
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