Randal Rauser's Blog, page 54
June 12, 2020
Morals, God, and Other Absolutes
Part Three of my continuing conversation with Eric Murphy. This is a good one, folks!
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June 10, 2020
June 9, 2020
Why Theology is Not Simply Listing Bible Verses
Many evangelicals seem to think that systematic theology consists simply of listing the relevant Bible verses for a particular topic or doctrine. But there is much more to it than that as I explain in this video.
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June 8, 2020
Steve Hays Regularly Attacked Me. Here are My Thoughts on His Passing
This morning, I received word that Calvinist blogger Steve Hays died. For a decade, he attacked me online, called me an apostate, even trying to get me fired and disciplined by my church (!). Here are my thoughts on his passing.
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June 7, 2020
Why I Don’t Talk About the Sensus Divinitatis When I Talk About Belief in God
Alvin Plantinga famously appeals to the existence of a sensus divinitatis, a “sense of the divine”, as the cognitive faculty by which one can form justified and rational belief in God apart from evidence. In this video, I explain why I prefer to argue for properly basic belief in God by way of the more mundane cognitive process of testimony.
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June 6, 2020
Are there sufficient reasons to believe in God? A Debate
Today, I appeared in a debate on the rationality of theism on the popular YouTube channel Modern Day Debate paired up with Sam Nes against Matt Dillahunty and Tom Jump. Check it out:
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June 4, 2020
21 Points Illustrating a Pattern of Fascist Behavior in Donald Trump
Many people scoff at the idea that Donald Trump could be moving the USA toward fascism. But just add it all together and see what pattern emerges:
He calls the press the “enemy of the people”
He says “I alone can fix it”
He personalizes the military as “my military”
He repeatedly calls for the previous president (Obama) and his previous opposition candidate (Clinton) to be arrested and put in jail
He is systemically attempting to create doubt about the legitimacy of democratic elections
He “jokes” about being president for life
He “jokes” about his children being president directly after him
He praises dictators like Duterte, Putin and MBS
He congratulated President Xi Jinping upon becoming president for life
He promotes isolationism and attacks international agreements and institutions like NATO and the G7
He believes the Department of Justice and Attorney General exist to serve and protect him rather than the People and the Laws of the United States
He has a white supremacist (Stephen Miller) in the White House
He frequently promotes conspiracy theories and perpetuates fake news
He promotes the use of violence against his enemies/critics
He demands fidelity from the Republican party and seeks to destroy any critics
He solicited a foreign power (Ukraine) to intervene in the upcoming election by acquiring information on his opponent
When the Turkish secret police assaulted peaceful protesters in Washington D.C. he remained silent
When MBS had a journalist from America killed and dismembered he defended MBS
He demands fidelity from the Republican party and seeks to destroy any critics
He calls himself the greatest president since Lincoln, if not ever
He just deployed the military to attack peaceful protesters in Washington D.C. so that he could stage a propagandistic photo event
That’s just off the top of my head. Trump is a fascist. Resist him.
(Three years ago, I posted a review of Timothy Synder’s On Tyranny. It is disturbing to see how far we’ve come.)
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June 3, 2020
Alisa Childers, “Historic Christianity,” and the Atonement
In this video, I consider how Alisa Childers adopts an idiosyncratic definition of “historic Christianity” that reduces the essentials to Paul’s creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7. Next, I point out how Childers attacks progressive Christians by claiming without evidence that “most” progressive Christians reject the core doctrine of substitutionary atonement.
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May 31, 2020
Four Levels of Doubt
From the principled recognition of human fallibility to the all-embracing crisis of faith, I survey the four levels of doubt and explore their central role in the life of faith.
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May 30, 2020
Does Being a Christian Mean Giving Up on Evidence?
This is a sermon I recorded for a local church in our time of coronavirus home-church. In the sermon, I argue that Jesus was centrally concerned with evidence to support his claims and this bequeathed to the church a strong emphasis on faith that is grounded on evidence as exemplified in the Apostle Paul and generations of Christians since.
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