Randal Rauser's Blog, page 53
July 2, 2020
When atheists compare God to Santa Claus, leprechauns, and flying spaghetti monsters
In this video, I survey five rhetorical categories of comparison that village atheists/new atheists make with belief in God. And I explain why each one of them is little more than an ignorant attempt to poison the well.
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June 30, 2020
Should we believe William Lane Craig’s advice on doubt?
In this video, I offer a critical response to three points of advice William Lane Craig gives to Christians who face doubts.
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June 26, 2020
Is God a Necessary Being?
Today, I was a guest on John Petersen’s YouTube channel to talk about God as a necessary being. I parachuted into the conversation about 20 minutes in (I had another meeting before then) and then I had to leave early. But I had a great time while it lasted!
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June 20, 2020
Theology, Worldview, and the Death of My Father
In this video, I reflect on the death of my father to Alzheimer’s in theological perspective while interacting with the eulogy I delivered at his memorial service in April 2019. The lesson: A Christian worldview should equip you to view life, suffering, and death in the light of hope, grace, and the cross.
Unfortunately, the audio/video of the eulogy service doesn’t perfectly align in this video. With that in mind, I have included an audio track as well for those who don’t need video.
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June 17, 2020
Randal And Samuel Nesan Debrief Our Debate With Tom Jump and Matt Dillahunty
I recently participated in a tag-team debate on the rationality of theism. I was glad to be invited to participate with Samuel Nesan on the side of light and truth.
June 16, 2020
Hucksters, Heretics, Hypocrites … and Tim Challies
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If I Were God: Purgatory and the Online Book Reviewer
If I were God, I would set aside a special place in purgatory for every anonymous armchair critic who posts an utterly unfair book review online after giving not 2 seconds of consideration to the author, their actual work, or how that unfair review could negatively impact them. After that now-deceased critic arrives in purgatory, he/she will be ushered into a small, dark room illuminated by a single flickering light bulb, with a small wooden desk and chair, a rusty old typewriter that is missing the letter “r”, and a ream of paper. And he/she will be told:
“Now, for every book for which you posted a scathing, manifestly unfair review, you will write a better book. If you posted 39 such reviews, then write 39 better books. Oh, and don’t look too defeated. Heaven will be waiting when you are done.”
I am not God, of course. That said, I suspect he has some ideas of his own. So before you post, put yourself in the seat of the author and review their book the way you’d want your book to be reviewed.
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The US Supreme Court Decision on LGBT Civil Rights Meets Mere Christianity
Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States issued a 6-3decision that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 extends to sexual minorities including gay and transgender people. Predictably, this produced cheers from some and hand-wringing from others. As for me, it provided an occasion to post the following tweet:
Just a reminder to Christians on the frontlines of the culture wars: the Christian creeds take no stand on LGBT issues. You are free to do so, just so long as you don't add your stance to those creeds.
— Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) June 16, 2020
My tweet then attracted some replies from people who objected that many things are not in the creeds which are, nonetheless, obligatory for Christians to believe. The most fulsome reply on this score came from Jeff Lowder who replied as follows:
“While the creeds take no stands on those issues, they also do not take stands on any ethical issues, at least not explicitly. Yet the Bible clearly does take stands on many ethical issues. For example, consider adultery. It seems to me it would be very odd for a Christian to say, “The creeds say nothing about adultery. You are free to take a stand against adultery, just so long as you don’t add your stance against adultery to those creeds.” I would think Christians would say, “Correct, the creeds don’t address ethical issues, but it doesn’t follow that the Bible says nothing about those issues or that Christians are free to do whatever they want on those topics.” (Not that you are saying they are.) It just seems odd to me to issue a statement, such as yours, without at the same time clarifying that ethical duties for a Christian are to be found elsewhere (primarily, the Bible) and so the creeds are not the only thing that matters. What have I missed?”
I then replied:
“Ok, but you’re misunderstanding the tweet. It’s aphoristic and simply means that you ought not to add to *mere Christianity* what does not belong. Anyone who thinks a particular stance (yea or nay) on one’s right to discriminate against LGBT people is adding a non-essential.”
I want to conclude this article by highlighting and underscoring the point I’m making. As a Christian, you can have your basic hermeneutical, ethical, social, and political convictions about endless topics: young-earth creationism vs. evolution, the historical nature of the Exodus, the nature of the sacraments, the ethics of just war, elective abortion, or euthanasia, the legitimacy of democracy or constitutional monarchy, capitalism or socialism, and so on… But it is quite another thing to say that your view on this particular issue belongs in “the creed,” i.e. as part of mere Christianity.
The question of whether gay and transgender people should be covered in the US Civil Rights Act of 1964 is an important one. But good grief, don’t add it to the creed and don’t pretend that your view on the issue belongs in mere Christianity.
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June 15, 2020
Is it wrong to mock Trump?
It’s undignified to mock @realDonaldTrump’s health issues. That’s off limits. Let’s focus on issues. Hope you recover, Mr. President.
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) June 15, 2020
Focus on issues?
Health (mental and physical) is an issue.
As for the propriety of mockery, it is wrong all things being equal. But in this case, all things are not equal, not by a long shot.
This is a man who has been conveying a false image of himself for years. And throughout his presidency, he has actively been seeking to subvert democratic norms starting with his request for Russia to intervene in an election to get Clinton’s emails, to threatening to jail Clinton and Obama, to attempting to pressure Pres. Zelensky to produce oppo-research on Biden, to creating skepticism about mail-in voting, to praising dictators like President Xi, to repeatedly attacking the free press as the “enemy of the people”, to making false and discredited claims about election fraud. The list goes on and on.
When you point out that he’s really just a fat, illiterate, frail old man, you aren’t “being mean.” Rather, you’re showing that the image he has attempted to cultivate in order to extend his own power is a false one. Like any bully, he is a weakling inside, and it is appropriate to use tools like sarcasm and satire to point this out.
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June 13, 2020
If you’re a theist, how would you defend atheism? If you’re an atheist, how would you defend theism?
That’s the principle behind the devil’s advocate debate I participated in on Saturday, June 13: if you’re a theist, how would you defend atheism? If you’re an atheist, how would you defend theism? In this debate, I defended atheism and Ben Watkins of Real Atheology defended theism. You can be the judge.
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