Randal Rauser's Blog, page 93

Dear Ravi Zacharias, Dishonesty is Always a Poor Apologetic

Ravi Zacharias is one of the most influential Christian apologists in the world. So it should be a big deal that he has repeatedly misrepresented his academic credentials for years. And yet, the response from the Christian community has been an overwhelming silence. This is particularly shameful for Christian apologists who should be among those on the vanguard of calling Mr. Zacharias to account.

Steve Baughman has carefully documented Mr. Zacharias’ controversial claims and posted them at his website http://www.raviwatch.com/. And just yesterday, he posted this short YouTube video identifying a few of Mr. Zacharias’ false claims including his habit of saying erroneously that he studied at Cambridge University and lectured at Oxford University.

So let me state categorically: if you fudge your credentials, I’m not interested in hearing your arguments.

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The Top Five Problems with Contemporary Christian Apologetics

I spend a lot of time criticizing contemporary Christian apologetics. Since I am myself a Christian apologist, that might seem a bit strange. But it is, in fact, simply a practical outworking of my commitment to what I call the 50/50 Rule:

50/50 rule: devote as much time to (a) defending the beliefs of your opponents and critiquing your own beliefs as you devote to (b) critiquing the beliefs of your opponents and defending your own beliefs. (Read more here)

In short, the 50/50 rule is an attempt to embody the Golden Rule in civil discourse by debating and dialoguing with others the way you’d have them debate and dialogue with you.

With that in mind, this article is focused on a type of self-critique, though in this case not specifically critique of my beliefs, per se, but rather of some weaknesses in current Christian apologetics more generally. And so, without further ado, I will now count down the top five problems with contemporary Christian apologetics.

5. Lack of imagination

I’ve touched on this problem before in the article “Apologetics and the Problem of the William Lane Craig Clones.” The basic problem is that there is an inordinate focus on a limited set of arguments and topics. For example, while I think the Kalam cosmological argument and the argument from intelligent design are both interesting and well worth debating, they both receive excessive attention at the expense of many other worthwhile arguments.

This is not a new problem: in the above-linked article on the “Craig Clones”, I make reference to a famous paper by Alvin Plantinga from more than thirty years ago in which he challenged Christian philosophers to explore more arguments and lines of evidence for theistic and Christian belief. And I’ve certainly tried to do that in my own works as in my defense of an argument from answered prayer (in God or Godless) and an argument from the mathematical structure of reality (in An Atheist and a Christian Walk into a Bar).

One of the points I’ve often strived to emphasize is that the strength of arguments is always contextualized. I summarize the point in 59 seconds here. In that brief, 59-second treatment, I point out that good arguments must be accessible and persuasive. But both accessibility and persuasiveness are relative to individuals and that means we should be seeking to explore and develop more diverse arguments for our views. Most skeptics are already familiar with the Kalam and intelligent design arguments. So perhaps it is time to explore some other arguments that might find a more welcoming reception.

4. Excessive focus on debate

These days, so much of apologetics is focused on debates. When I first got into apologetics in the early-mid 1990s, it was primarily by way of watching VHS cassettes of William Lane Craig debates from our university library. Everybody loves a good dust up, right?

Perhaps, but on the downside, the entire debate format tends to reinforce tribalism (more on that anon), competition, and spin-doctoring/motivated reasoning to the end of winning the debate. Set against that backdrop, is it any surprise that both sides often think they “won”? For further discussion of this problem, see my article “The Problem with Debates.”

3. Lack of focus on emotional intelligence

I find that many amateur apologists focus a lot of effort studying arguments and evidence, memorizing various formal and informal logical fallacies. But they spend little time pursuing the emotional intelligence required to read a room, to identify the intended audience of an exchange, and to present oneself in a savvy and winsome manner so as to appear persuasive to that audience.

In my opinion, every apologist should put some readings on emotional intelligence and persuasion psychology on their reading list. What good is it if you win every argument but lose your audience?

2. Tribalism

Tribalism refers to heightened in-group loyalty to the point of discouraging critiques of in-group members and their arguments. Thus, time and again I encounter atheists and skeptics who are surprised that I devote significant time to critiquing various aspects of Christian apologetics. Consider, for example, my extensive and unsparing critiques of William Lane Craig’s defense of the Canaanite genocide or my critique of Andy Bannister’s claim that a recognition of human dignity requires belief in God.

While people are often puzzled that I would critique Christian apologists like Craig and Bannister, the fact is that Christian apologetics is not served by remaining silent when you disagree with the arguments of your fellow Christians. And when we challenge those on “our side” who offer dubious arguments, we undermine tribalism and raise our own credibility as honest and fair-minded people who really care about getting at the truth rather than merely reinforcing tribal boundaries.

1. Fundamentalism

This is the biggest problem, in my view. And it is exemplified in Josh and Sean McDowell’s recently published new edition of Evidence that Demands a Verdict. (I review the book here.) In that review, I define fundamentalism as follows:

“When I use the term, I intend to signal a position that evinces a particular set of characteristics commonly associated with the Protestant fundamentalism that arose a century ago and which has remaind [sic] a significant force among North American Protestants for the last several decades. These characteristics include biblicism, biblical literalism, rationalism, triumphalism, and binary oppositionalism.”

In my experience, most (Protestant) apologists either lack any formal theological study or their only exposure to Christian theology is through fundamentalist theologians (e.g. Wayne Grudem) and conservative institutions (e.g. Biola University).

As a result, many of these individuals end up with a narrow understanding of the Christian tradition which is manifested in a tendentious understanding of “biblical inerrancy”, a skepticism of evolution and contemporary science, a simplistic soteriological exclusivism, a single theory of atonement (penal substitution) and posthumous judgment (eternal conscious torment), and so on.

And the next step is that these apologists often confuse and conflate their own Protestant fundamentalist tradition with the broader Christian tradition. (For a particularly telling example, see my review of the book An Introduction to Christian Worldview.) But the Christian tradition is far broader and more nuanced than many Christian apologists realize. In short, they have yet to understand, let alone defend, that which C.S. Lewis called mere Christianity.

 

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Can violence ever serve a redemptive purpose?

Rene Girard was a literary critic and theologian who developed a very influential non-violent reading of the atonement. According to the penal substitution model of atonement, God the Father reconciles us to himself through the violent death of his innocent son who absorbs the divine wrath properly owing to us. In direct opposition to this influential model, Girard insisted that the cross, in fact, reveals the illegitimacy of the human tendency to scapegoat innocent parties whilst perpetuating the cycle of retributive violence.

There is much that is appealing about Girard’s view, but it also comes at a very great cost, a cost that is well illustrated by this tweet I came across a few days ago:

“Sin consists in thinking that something good could come from violence”.

~René Girard

— René Girard Quotes (@Renegirard1923) August 21, 2018

This tweet prompted me to reply, “Really? So if I believe a greater goods theodicy is at least possibly true, I’m sinning?”

Let’s think about that for a moment. Perhaps the single most influential theodicy of all is that which appeals to greater goods: God allows various evils to occur because they will result, ultimately, in a surfeit of goods which outweighs the evils endured. Perhaps the simplest way to put the idea is as follows: no pain, no gain.

Girard is so opposed to the idea that violence in any form might serve a redemptive purpose that he issues this sweeping indictment which condemns a modest greatest goods theodicy as surely as it condemns penal substitutionary atonement.

While I do not accept penal substitution as a theory of atonement, it seems to me to go way too far to condemn even the modest claim that evil, suffering, or violence can be allowed for the end of producing a greater good. Needless to say, the suggestion that merely countenancing such eminently plausible ideas is a thought crime strikes me as absurd.

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Blind Faith: All the Way Down. A Review of one Chapter in Still Unbelievable.

Over the last few days, I’ve spent some time interacting with comments on the recent episode of “Unbelievable” (for which I was one of the guests) debating Justin Brierley’s book Unbelievable and the atheist/skeptic response titled Still Unbelievable. Some of the contributors to Still Unbelievable were frustrated that I took the time to quote several passages to highlight the book’s acerbic tone and tendentious claims. (See the sample list I provided in my previous article.) I was even erroneously accused of “quote-mining”. (Not true.) And I was admonished (or, perhaps, exhorted?) to spend more time critiquing the actual essays in the book.

Fair enough, I decided to take up that last challenge. And so, I agreed to write a critical review of chapter 11 titled “Faith: All the Way Down” coauthored by David Johnson, Andrew Knight, and Michael Brady. I have also invited Knight to write a response which I will also post at my blog if he so chooses. So here goes, my response to “Faith: All the Way Down.”

Definitions

The chapter begins reasonably well as the authors point out that the word “faith” is used in the New Testament (e.g. Jude 3) to refer to “a collection of beliefs”. It can also be used to describe “a degree of confidence, and at others, it expresses a leap over a gap in knowledge.”

In short, we have two basic uses here which map onto contemporary English usage as well which I will define as follows: (1) Faith: a religion; a system of basic epistemic and volitional commitments; (2) Faith: the exercise of trust in a belief or a witness.

The authors also write:

“There is one other religious usage that we should have in mind that is a rough combining of the two ideas so far. In some conversations the idea of a leap of

faith is discussed. Here, the idea is that there is some amount of empirical confidence that a Christian can have and the remainder is covered by faith.”

Unfortunately, the authors provide no documentation with respect to the phrase “leap of faith”, choosing instead to refer vaguely to “some conversations”. This is an example of the frustrating lack of documentation or critical engagement with academic Christian sources in the book.

Even worse, the authors never once refer to the Greek word pistis, the word which is translated into English as faith. This omission is ironic given that the authors write that “we must come to some consensus on what the bible means by faith when its writers use the word” and yet they never bother to consider the actual words that the biblical authors use. This is one of the many lacunae in their analysis.

Later, in a section on faith in the Bible, the authors quote Hebrews 11:1, but again, they never interact with the Greek. Nor do they interact with any Christian scholars on the topic. And strangely, they quote the antiquated King James Version “because it uses two words that play well with secularists: substance and evidence.” Needless to say, this is not a proper basis to select a translation.

Everyone has faith

It is important to recognize that pistis is not a “religious” or “Christian” word. Rather, it is a common Greek word for the universal phenomenon of (1) having a basic set of beliefs and practices to which one is committed and/or (2) trusting in a belief or a witness. (One could also say that the first definition (in both English and Greek) represents an ongoing state of affairs — i.e. having faith — whilst the latter represents an event — i.e. exercising faith.) In all these cases, the core shared idea is twofold and involves both commitment and trust. Often, the concept also exhibits an additional quality: hope. So faith is an attitude to which one is committed, in which one trusts, and (often) in which one hopes.

Just as pistis was a word in common use in Greek which could be applied to all manner of instances of trust (including the trust exercised by a Christian in Jesus and various claims about him), so it is with faith: this, too, is a common word with all manner of application. Every time you exercise commitment and trust, you exercise faith.

Let’s consider a few examples, beginning with pop music. In 1987, George Michael topped the charts with a song called “Faith” with the following resonant chorus:

‘Cause I gotta have faith

I gotta faith

Because I gotta to have faith faith

I gotta to have faith, faith, faith

The song is somewhat ambiguous, but as I understand it, Michael is describing the resolve of the singer to leave a dysfunctional relationship whilst having faith — trust — that this is the correct course of action. He needs to remind himself of this resolution because of the coming emotional turmoil he anticipates in the separation.

You may quibble with some aspect of my reading of the song, but regardless, one thing is clear: there is nothing religious about these lyrics. Countless other examples could be provided: for example, when Joe Cocker sang “Have a little faith in me” he was saying, “Trust in me.”

Second example: the insurance industry commonly uses the terms “good faith” and “bad faith” to describe actions which either conform or fail to conform to the insurer’s duty of honesty and fair dealing with customers. Once again, the lesson is that “faith” (as with “pistis“) is not a “religious” word/concept being appropriated into a non-religious context. Rather, it is a mundane word which describes epistemic attitudes of trust, commitment, and hope which can be employed in countless contexts, including religious ones.

Why does all this matter? It matters, because when the authors observe that “the one thing all Christian ideas have in common is faith”, what they should have said is that the one thing all people have in common is faith. Faith is something characterized by the epistemic dispositions of these authors as surely as anyone else. One cannot sustain a fallacious distinction between these “skeptical” authors who don’t exercise faith and Christians who do.

A Word on Evidence

Not surprisingly, the authors also describe a fallacious relationship between Christianity and the role of evidence. They write:

“At bottom [in Christianity], there is a story or claim that cannot be justified with classical evidence or scientific scrutiny. It doesn’t take long before every Christian vs. atheist debate comes down to a faith-based proposition. You simply cannot construct a religion that does not require some amount of faith. By their very nature, religious claims are beyond the realm of classical proofs.”

I have two comments here. First, it is true that the “classical proofs” do not succeed in the sense of being logically valid arguments which have premises that are compelling to every rational person. But as with faith, this is a universal human phenomenon. And so, the atheist likewise lacks a proof for their beliefs, including their beliefs that Christianity is false and irrational. The fact is that precisely nobody has a proof for their belief system in the lofty sense of the classical proofs: i.e. a universally compelling logically valid argument.

It follows that every person exercises some degree of faith in assenting to a belief system which other people can rationally deny. We all stake our claim on a set of truth claims even as others reasonably disagree with us. And the deluded people are those individuals who choose to deny this fact whilst insisting that their view is the only reasonable position to hold.

Needless to say, it is frustrating to see a total lack of awareness from the authors of Still Unbelievable that they themselves lack the very standard of a proof to justify their skepticism of Christianity. Talk about having a plank in one’s own eye…

Two General Problems with Still Unbelievable … and this essay

In my opinion, setting aside the acerbic tone, there are two main problems with Still Unbelievable. First, several of the essays ramble and are in need of some incisive editorial work to avoid repetition and tighten up the logical progression of the argument. Second, the book is almost entirely lacking in interaction with Christian scholarship. Instead, the authors periodically refer to Brierley’s book and then post their own ruminations on various biblical passages and their personal understanding of Christianity, apparently based on their own personal experiences. Needless to say, that is not an adequate basis on which to ground a categorical critique of an entire religion.

Both of those problems are on display in this essay. After introducing the concept of faith (as understood by the authors), the chapter cycles back repeatedly, offering different qualifications, nuances, and caveats, until the authors finally settle on a very different concept: blind faith. (More on that anon.)

Furthermore, there isn’t any interaction with Christian biblical scholars, historians, theologians, or philosophers on the topic of faith. As noted above, the authors cite the KJV and ignore the Greek word pistis. They refer vaguely to “conversations” about a leap of faith, but strangely never mention Kierkegaard’s pivotal definition of the concept in books like Philosophical Fragments, Concluding Unscientific Postscript, and Fear and Trembling. In short, opinion takes the place of research. (Nor are they apparently familiar with the origin of the concept in Lessing’s ditch, and just how tendentious Lessing’s presentation of the problem is.)

With that method, it is not surprising that the essay includes many tendentious and flatly false claims. Rather than bore everyone by enumerating examples, I’ll provide one sample based on Jesus’ words to “doubting” Thomas:

“Jesus was not fond of evidence. He preferred faith from his followers: the kind that did not involve seeing convincing evidence.”

This is absolutely false and a gross misrepresentation. As Douglas Groothuis demonstrates in his book On Jesus (Wadsworth, 2002), Jesus employed sophisticated philosophical arguments in his interactions with his opponents. See also Dallas Willard’s essay “Jesus the Logician”, Christian Scholar’s Review (1999) (which you can read online here). Throughout the Gospel of John, Jesus regularly appeals to the rabbinic standards on testimony (i.e. two or more witnesses) to justify his claims. He also regularly appeals to his miracles as demonstrable evidence of his messianic claims (cf. John 10:38).

If you want to hear more about the central role of reason and evidence in the life and ministry of Jesus, Paul, and the early church, you can listen to my sermon on the topic. To sum up, the authors get Jesus absolutely wrong, and I must assume it is because again, they ignored research and based their argument on a facile and errant reading of a single pericope.

Conclusion

As the chapter moves toward its inevitable conclusion, the authors finally focus in on their central claim that “blind faith” is, in fact, “the core of religious faith.” Then they cite Peter Boghossian’s outrageous claim that faith is “pretending to know things you don’t know” and based on that they enumerate all the things they believe Christians don’t know.

Again, there is no interaction at all here with Christian biblical scholars, historians, theologians, or philosophers on the concept of faith. And while this is ostensibly an essay in epistemology, there is, in particular, no engagement whatsoever in contemporary Christian epistemological theories of knowledge, justification, warrant, evidence, or faith. For example, I have published a book with Oxford University Press defending moderate externalist foundationalism, and I later wrote a popular book with InterVarsity Press expounding the implications of this view for a wider audience. And I’m but one voice. There are many Christians who have developed powerful and sophisticated epistemological treatments of the concept of faith and knowledge which are embedded within various broader epistemological theories (e.g. William Alston, Robert Merrihew Adams, Jay W. Wood, Linda Zagzebski, C. Stephen Evans, Michael Bergmann, and of course, Alvin Plantinga with his 1000 page Warrant triology).

This brings me to my conclusion. In case you were wondering: yes, there is something deeply ironic about an essay which takes Christians to task for their alleged irrationality and “blind faith”; and yet, with its polemical manner, false and tendentious claims, and absence of supporting evidence, it appears to exemplify the very blind faith it eschews in others.

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Addressing some Unbelievable Fallout

“Fallout” may be too strong, but there definitely is some dissatisfaction being voiced from the atheist guests — David and Andrew — on our recent appearance on Unbelievable. While I heard complaints from David and Andrew after the show was recorded, a fuller picture is provided by a long comment that David posted just today at the program’s website (linked above). I’ve posted David’s comment below and then offer my own comments below that.

David’s Complaint

So you want to know what it is like to do an episode of Unbelievable? For us, it started a year ago. Both Ed and Phil went to the Unbelievable conference 2017. They both met up with Justin and did some subtle politicking and arm-twisting. The upshot was they squeezed out a verbal commitment from Justin to do a show with the response book team.

We wanted to talk about it publicly from that moment. But we couldn’t. Also, Justin was none too sure about doing this show. He was worried that he would be theologically outgunned, and that we would be too tough of an opponent for him. In his defense, he had just gone public as an apologist in his own rights. And he hadn’t yet started the heavy appearance schedule he now has.

It was something to be worked out. At that time, we hadn’t even completed the book. There were a number of internal delays with the book. I contacted Justin in the fall to plan for the show as I thought we were almost done with the book. I was wrong. But that was the first time Justin and I talked about the show as if it were a done deal. Even then, it wasn’t.

We got the book out the door in the spring of 18. We started talking to Justin about possible ways to do a show. I offered a number of options, including an option to ignore the books and talk about other topics. We assured Justin that the tone of the conversation would be, well, conversational rather than argumentative. We practiced for that.

We eventually got a tentative date for the program. That came and went without mention. Andrew and I were on edge. We kind of thought Justin was prepared to back out of the show all the way up to the last moment. We were never really on solid footing.

We learned that Justin still didn’t have a partner for the show. It was only about 10 days before the show that we learned who our opposition would be. That didn’t give us that much time to prepare. But we made it work. There is the day job to consider.

It was also about that time that Justin and I agreed on the topics of discussion. We prepped like crazy for those topics. Thanks to Ed and Phil who had sessions with us on Skype getting us ready. It was like training for a boxing match. Ed and Phil beat the stupid out of us over and over.

To get you further inside the baseball game, Andrew and I had behavioral notes, not just notes on what to say. We had reminders on tone, short replies, sharing the time, and the whole nine yards. It was silly. Those notes went out the window from the first moment. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Less than 24 hours to show time, I get an email from Justin confirming the time, but casually mentioning a change in topic. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The main topic had been tossed at the last minute, and replaced with the moral argument. I was livid. We were livid.

You should know that during practice with Phil, he told me several times to be prepared for the moral argument. He said that it didn’t matter what the topics were, Justin would turn it to the moral argument. I argued with Phil and insisted that as a radio host, Justin wouldn’t dare change the topic for which everyone had been preparing. He wouldn’t do it as a matter of professional ethics.

Phil was right.

The moral argument is a big topic. We can spitball on the topic all day. But that is different from debating a theological professor of Randal’s caliber on an international program. We were not ready. And we were furious. Justin never knew this. And we did politely object in our correspondence. But I was off my meds with anger. I don’t think Andrew was much better.

So after a sleepless night, we are finally ready to record. Justin put us both on the same Skype line. He warned us about technical problems we might encounter. And sure enough, we encountered them. Randal was on a separate phone line and didn’t have the problems Andrew and I did.

Every now and then, we would have to stop the recording to let the Skype issues pass. This was extremely disruptive to the flow of thought and speech. There were times when Andrew and I couldn’t hear what was being said and just soldiered on to preserve flow. At times, I was literally guessing at when it was my turn to talk, and what I was responding to. I am amazed it worked out as well as it did.

The fantasy of a less confrontative exchange went out the window with Randal’s first attack. I practiced very hard to be tamed. And I was also coached on not letting Randal get under my skin. Apologies to my coach. I felt unchained and off-balanced from the first moment. Randal is really good at his schtick.

Still, I didn’t think Randal did anything wrong. He was prepared for the battle that I wasn’t. But Andrew and I recovered well. And again, I am shocked that it turned out so well. I was in knots about the show, and was scared to listen to it when it finally came out. I really had a distorted notion of how it went. I was so angry about the last-minute topic change (and still am) that I was seeing red and not thinking clearly.

I’m glad I had Andrew on the other side to be the voice of calm and reason. We helped each other. And we absolutely needed the help.

The time went by so fast, it is hard to describe what it was like in real time.

I want to thank Justin for agreeing to do the show, and Randal for bringing the fight. He is one of the best at what he does. And it was an honor to do battle with him and come out upright.

Nothing about the making of this show went as expected. It was a long, hard road getting there. Doing the show was nothing like we expected. And being in the after show on this board I love so much is also surreal. There is no show without the people who listen and engage every week. Thank you all.

My Thoughts

First, let me say that I really like David and Andrew. To be sure, I hardly know them, but they were very polite and affable on the show and afterward. Both of them emailed me to thank me for the exchange and David invited me onto his podcast where we had an excellent conversation on the concept of progressive revelation. (You can listen to it here.)

Second, I’d like to address David’s suggestion that I made our exchange “confrontational”. As he writes: “The fantasy of a less confrontative exchange went out the window with Randal’s first attack.”

Wait. My first attack?

On the contrary, the adversarial tone of our exchange was set in Still Unbelievable, the book that David, Andrew, and their coauthors wrote as a response to Unbelievable. Here are some of the claims in their book (which, for simplicity sake, I will attribute to all authors collectively, though many/most come from David):

In one section titled “‘Turn the Other Cheek,’ and Other Stupid Sayings,” the author writes: “Do you have two eyes and two hands? Jesus might wonder why. He famously said that if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it right out of your head. And if your right hand causes you to sin, chop it off with a sharp blade. Why are there so few one-eyed, one-armed Christians who have self-mutilated? Because they are not stupid enough to follow the advice of a mad man.”
In a section on the problem of Evil they write: :”God is the parent who gives his child a sick pet so she will experience the maximum grief.” They conclude, “god is a psycho-parent.”
They refer to the theodicy from greater goods as “nauseatingly bad” and sarcastically strawman it with this observation: “Were you born spastically retarded? You don’t know how lucky you are.”
After listening to “Unbelievable” for ten years, they observe, “I have listened to these kinds of explanations for the past ten years of programming. And I have become less satisfied with them as time progressed. I can no longer drown out all the suffering by closing my eyes, sticking my fingers in my ears, and crying Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!”
They write that Christians “imagine winged creatures with cursed visage dominating the air and taking refuge within the bodies of atheists.”
They write that “The Christian view of reality is like a spiritual never-never land where no one ever grows up, …. In the Christian view of reality, the worst thing you can do is learn to think for yourself, do for yourself, and rely on yourself. The most heinous crime you can commit in Christian never-never land is to grow up.”
They insist that Christians “are incapable of thinking morally for themselves. They must consult god. Like children, they must mindlessly obey, not think for themselves.”
They say of the Christian God: “This god is a smothering, overbearing tyrant of a parent who never allows his children to grow up. Their emotional development has been retarded by this god of theirs. They have come to be afraid of everything that goes bump in the night.”
They say that having rejected Christianity they are “free from the cocaine of certainty.”

This is but a sampling of the disparaging comments about Christians and Christianity in Still Unbelievable. Set against this backdrop, it seems to me a bit rich to say that I set an adversarial tone in the exchange! I love generous, irenic conversation. But for the most part, this book did not aspire to that ideal, and I’ve never been one who was afraid to address the elephant in the room.

This brings me to my third point. It would seem that David and Andrew believe they were tricked somehow. So here’s my backstory for the show.

I received an email from Justin on July 10th inviting me to participate in the debate and listing six possible topics. However, I didn’t get a final confirmation that the program would go ahead until July 26th when Justin emailed me and mentioned he was thinking of going with three of those topics: the Moral Argument, the Resurrection, and choosing to live in Christian reality. I replied that I’d be fine with whatever he chose. We all received an email on July 30th in which Justin finalized those topics. I did not know the final list of topics for the show until it was confirmed at that time.

Granted, I can understand why some guests would prefer more notice, but Justin is a busy guy and that’s the way that radio is. I am sorry if David and Andrew felt ill-prepared for our exchange, but I think it is quite unfair to suggest that Justin was acting in an untoward manner. On the contrary, I think he showed his characteristic hospitality by inviting guests onto his show who were as unremittingly critical of his book as were David and Andrew.

To sum up, I think Justin Brierley is a great host and he wrote an excellent book. I also very much like David and Andrew and hope we cross paths again. “Unbelievable” is not a perfect show and it certainly won’t satisfy everyone. But it brings people together from across deep ideological divides and it gets them talking, and I, for one, am grateful for the opportunity.

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The Ultimate Elevator Pitch Continues: Defending a Worldview in Thirty (or Ninety) Seconds

Here’s my second (and final) list of elevator pitch worldviews. This time out, we have two entries from outside the Christian worldview courtesy of John Thomas and Jerry Rivard. In addition, we have an interesting entry from Glen Scrivener which was submitted by Mark. Scrivener’s summary is much longer — 90 seconds. Unfortunately, that’s too long even for the elevator in the Burj Khalifa. But I decided to allow it anyway. If you want to see and hear Scrivener rather than simply read him, here’s a link to his video.

30 Seconds

John Thomas

I am an agnostic, but my experience tells me that there is most likely a mind behind the workings of reality; I don’t know anything more about that mind for sure. So I like Stoics just focus on seeking tangible truths grounded on that mind and leading a life of virtue (excellence) in accordance with those truths for the sake of it as best as I can without expecting anything in return. I think that mind behind the reality would most likely be okay with that. I don’t worry about anything else. My spiritual practices include daily mindfulness meditation and frequent contemplative meditation.

Jerry Rivard

From the beginning, there was matter in motion and the laws of physics.  No agent created these, matter just exists and something has to happen when particles interact.  Mindless matter behaving in a consistent manner over the course of infinite time has led, through processes we’re only beginning to understand, to some amazing constructs, including sentient beings.  Sentient beings seek explanations, but nature doesn’t come with a manual, so we sometimes make them up.  Some of these made up explanations evolved into religions.

The process of testing our explanations and rejecting those that prove untrue has enabled us to fulfill our needs and desires with increasingly less time and effort, and to extend individual human lives in terms of both quantity and quality.  Despite inevitable hiccups, these trends will continue for as long as mankind and its progeny survive.

90 Seconds

Glen Scrivener (transcribed by Mark)

In the beginning there was light and life and love. There was a Father loving his Son in the joy of the Holy Spirit. And everything has come from light and life and love. And out of this has come a world that is destined to share in light and life and love.

But you know that this world is not like that. I know this world is not like that. I look around and I see darkness and death and disconnection. Where’s that come from?

Well we’ve turned from the Light and when you turn from the light where else do you go but darkness? And when you turn from Love where else do you go but disconnection? When you turn from life where else do you go but death?

So this is the kind of world we live in. But what does Love do when Love sees the beloved in trouble? Love says, “Your pit will be my pit, your plight will be my plight, your debts will be my debts, your darkness will be my darkness, your death will be my death.”

So who is Jesus? Jesus is love come down. The son of the Father comes and becomes our brother. To be with us in the darkness. To take that darkness on himself on the cross, to take that disconnection on himself. Even to take that death that we all deserve for turning from God. Took that on himself on the cross, plunged it down into the hell that it deserves and he rose up again to light and life and love and he says, “you in the darkness do you want my light? You in death, do you want my life? You in disconnection, do you want my love?”

And anyone who simply says “yes” to Jesus, we get Jesus in our life. We get his Father as our Father, we get his Spirit as our spirit, we get his future as our future. It’s for free and it’s forever. So do you want Jesus?

The post The Ultimate Elevator Pitch Continues: Defending a Worldview in Thirty (or Ninety) Seconds appeared first on Randal Rauser.

Can we make sense of the concept of progressive revelation? A Christian/Atheist Dialogue

After a spirited debate with David Johnson and Andrew Knight on Unbelievable, David kindly invited me onto his podcast “Skeptics and Seekers” to discuss and debate the concept of progressive revelation. The interview just went live today and it includes opening written statements from David and myself. You can read our opening articles and listen to the exchange here.

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Defending Unbelievable: Brierley and Rauser vs. Johnson and Knight

Last year, Justin Brierley published his book Unbelievable? Why After Ten Years of Talking With Atheists, I’m Still a Christian.

At the time, I was invited to give the book an endorsement. I wrote the following:

“Over the last decade, I’ve come to recognize “Unbelievable” with Justin Brierley as a show of unparalleled quality. Week by week Brierley facilitates in-depth conversational debate across deep ideological divides with just the right balance between rigor and accessibility. The same may be said of Justin’s new book. Fans of “Unbelievable” will find here a treasure trove of insights and reflections mined from a decade of hosting debates on life’s biggest questions. But Justin’s book is not simply a backstage pass to his fine radio show. It stands on its own as an eloquent, accessible, and winsome apologetic in the grand tradition of C.S. Lewis.”

Not surprisingly, however, not all readers were as persuaded by Justin’s case. In particular, the book gave rise to an entire book-length rebuttal from a group of atheists who appropriately titled their work, Still Unbelievable (click here to read Still Unbelievable for free). So Justin decided to invite two of the contributors of Still Unbelievable — David Johnson and Andrew Knight — onto the show for a conversation/debate in which they could explain some of the reasons they were unpersuaded by his arguments. And to balance things out, Justin kindly invited me to appear on the show as his wingman.

This latest episode of “Unbelievable” is titled “Can Justin defend his own book?” is now available. You can Listen/Download here. And then join the debate!

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Let’s Talk About Atheism and Charitable Dialogue

Tomorrow and Sunday I’ll be a guest at the Peaceful Science Forum hosted by Dr. S. Joshua Swamidass MD PhD, a professor at Washington University in Saint Louis. We will be focusing on the topic of atheism, apologetics,  and charitable dialogue. You can post your questions and join the conversation here.

It’s going to be super-duper awesome!

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The Ultimate Elevator Pitch: Defending a Worldview in Thirty Seconds or Less

In “The Ultimate Elevator Pitch: Can you sell your worldview in thirty seconds or less?” I invited readers to share their incisive summary statements of their worldview. I received the following responses. If you want to contribute your own pitch, email it to me at my contact page and I’ll post a follow-up article. I think this is a valuable exercise to consider what is the distilled essence of what I believe and why?

The Atheist Missionary

“We know that we evolved just like every other life form on earth and are still evolving. We also know that we are related to every other life form on earth. There is much that we don’t know and may never be capable of knowing. Death seems to be a natural part of life – the withering and decomposition of a flower seems to be inseparable from its bloom. Religions (which evolve too) and the concept of evil as a metaphysical force appear to be humanity’s coping mechanism with the reality that suffering and death are part of the natural order. Does this leave us with nothing but nihilism? Not if you adopt an existential stance tempered with a strong dose of stoicism. Now we can spend the next 30,000 seconds trying to reconcile those two philosophies …”

David Gray

“I am a Christian because my experience as a software engineer convinces me firmly that there is an intelligence behind life and based on the historical evidence, I think more likely than not, Christian is true. It provides hope, meaning, and purpose in this life and eternal bliss in the next.”

Georges Quénot

“We consider that there are things, objects, persons … There are extremely good approximations of them, enabling us to use them for most practical purposes, but they do not exist as such, because of the sorites paradox. The only possible exception is mathematical structures. These can include our universe, which would appear as physical when perceived from the inside by (approximate) self-aware sub-structures.”

Bilbo

“We are morally flawed self-conscious beings living in a beautiful world filled with evil and pain. The Biblical explanation is that God created a good world, but we chose to serve Satan, who now has control of it. Jesus died and rose from the dead to rescue us from this evil being, and he will return to destroy Satan and transform us and this world into the good creation it was meant to be.”

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