Randal Rauser

A tippling-too-much philosopher? A response to Jonathan Pearce

Posted on 05/17/13 5 Comments

Jonathan Pearce offers a reply to my reply to his review (this is getting complicated) here. So let this current article be my reply to his reply to my reply to his review. Jonathan writes: “The rebuttal [of each debate] was too short. Although this sounds like a contradiction since I admire its brevity…” It’s [...]

God’s existence: where does the burden of proof lie?

Posted on 05/16/13 25 Comments

In my critique of Jonathan Pearce I noted that atheists like Pearce and Loftus: “like to try presenting debates of this sort as if the burden of proof is borne by the theist. But that’s false. If the theist is attempting to argue that we ought to be theists the atheist is attempting to argue [...]

Blogger Nathaniel Claiborne reviews “God or Godless” … and then Randal reviews Nathaniel

Posted on 05/06/13 22 Comments

You can read the review here. I think it is safe to say that Nathaniel liked the book (see the second quote below). But he didn’t like everything. In particular he took issue with my acceptance of “evolutionism” and my critique of traditional readings of the biblical holy war texts. Here’s how he puts it: [...]

God or Godless: 1, 3 or 5 stars?

Posted on 05/01/13 7 Comments

The Amazon reviews for God or Godless are continuing to come in. After being on the market for one month (2 weeks for Kindle) we now have six reviews: 2 five stars, 2 three stars and 2 one star. Rarely does one see such a wide distribution of reviews, particularly in such a small selection sample. This provides [...]

Philosopher Adam Omelianchuk reviews “God or Godless”

Posted on 04/29/13 10 Comments

I’m always happy to engage the reviews of informed critics. And this one comes from philosophy student Adam Omelianchuk. You can read Adam’s review here. Things start off on a positive note as Adam observes: “The skill of each author is on display as they both jam a lot of content into a short space, and [...]

In their heart of hearts, do atheists really believe in God?

Posted on 04/27/13 59 Comments

Salon.com has just published an overview of a new Finnish study which purports to provide some evidence for the conclusion that atheists believe in God. In the study a group of atheists and theists were hooked up to electrodes to measure emotional arousal. Then they were asked to utter several statements. Some were emotionally provocative [...]

Substance dualism as atheistic heresy

Posted on 04/12/13 30 Comments

Ray Ingles asked: “Why would substance dualism be an atheistic heresy? A minority position, to be sure, but you don’t need God for substance dualism. Nor faeries, for that matter.” There really are two questions we might address in this regard. First, is adherence to substance dualism sufficient to make one an object of ridicule [...]

Atheistic heretics

Posted on 04/10/13 51 Comments

Can there really be atheistic heretics? Cyngus thinks not. Indeed, Cyngus seems to think the idea is not far off of “married bachelor”: “In order for atheists to have “heretics”, the “heresy” would be if an atheist would say “I believe in god”, which defies the very definition of “atheist”.” Cyngus fails to recognize, however, [...]

God or Godless: The Interview

Posted on 04/01/13 4 Comments

Good news folks. God or Godless is now in stock at Amazon and rapidly arriving at other booksellers around the globe. When my last book, The Swedish Atheist, the Scuba Diver, and Other Apologetic Rabbit Trails arrived in the stores I celebrated by finally caving in to persistent requests from myself to be interviewed by [...]

God is responsible for the legally insane. Therefore, God exists

Posted on 03/28/13 42 Comments

Two years ago Richard Kachkar stole a snow plow and began driving it down the streets of suburban Toronto. In the process he struck and killed police sergeant Ryan Russell. On March 27, 2013 Kachkar was found not criminally responsible by reason of insanity. Philosophically the verdict is interesting. On the one hand, the evidence presented [...]