Randal Rauser

Home of progressively evangelical, generously orthodox, rigorously analytic, revolutionary Christian thinking (that's what I'm aiming for anyway)

Archives for October 2010

Torture Porn and Human Nature: An All Hallow’s Eve Meditation

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This weekend “Saw 3-D” came out on top at the box office. No surprise. It is a well established horror film franchise. I’ve never seen any of the Saw films, but I get the general idea: line people up to be tortured and killed in a series of grisly, sadistic and extraordinarily creative ways. The Saw […]

Rape as objectively evil

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In my last post I stated that rape is objectively evil and any worldview that cannot count for this fact suffers accordingly. Alexander responded with a refreshing dose of dramatic bravado: “Not so, Randal Rauser! According to Randy Thornhill, rape is actually an evolution of a ‘genetically advantageous behavioral adaptation’ and, in that context, not inherently evil.” This […]

Can rape be objectively wrong?

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The problem of evil is often presented to Christians as the objection to the existence of God. Sometimes it is presented as a logical problem — the existence of an omnibenevolent and omnipotent God is logically inconsistent with the existence of evil — but more often these days it is presented as a matter of probabilities — […]

When the scientific method comes to town

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Randal (from an earlier post): “So what is naturalism? Is it a claim that only a particular kind of knowledge can be had (i.e. scientific)?” Brenda: “Yes. If you have another method besides the scientific method for determining objective facts about the world we’d love to heard about it.” Whoa! Now this is an interesting […]

Atheists in natural glass houses

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Atheists living in their “100 percent natural” glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. But alas, when many insist they don’t live in such a house, or when they can’t see the glass walls hemming them in on every side, I suppose it’s difficult to persuade them that they shouldn’t hurl that hunk of granite in their […]

Extraordinary cars require extraordinary acceleration

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Silverbullet sternly informs me: “We ask that you support extraordinary claims with extraordinary evidence.” This claim is so familiar, indeed, well-worn, that it is like putting on a pair of old 501 jeans. The only problem is … it doesn’t fit very well. And why is that? What’s wrong with this delicate and eminently reasonable demand for […]

Powerpoint Slides

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This section includes PDF versions of Powerpoint presentations/lectures. Lecture Notes on the Imprecatory Psalms (Click title to view/download PDF)

Naturalism and the ole’ swimming hole

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Picture yourself taking your kids to the community pool with your favorite yellow inner tube when your friend retorts: “Community pool? That’s disgusting! Do you know what they have in that water? Crap and pee and barf, all floating around in particles too small to see.” Taken aback at this rather bold affront, you ask your friend: “So […]

When atheists grow up and become naturalists

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A number of my readers are atheists, but only one is anatheist.net, and that’s James Tracy. In “What John Loftus has is a failure to communicate” James and I continued with the old faith as a starting point of thinking theme (my theme, to be more specific). When James refused to come out and affirm any form […]

The Denigration of Civil Discourse: More lessons from John Loftus

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I am grateful to John Loftus for highlighting through vivid illustration the denigration of civil discourse that I lament in my forthcoming book You’re Not as Crazy as I Think (see the books section of this site). In the book I point out that those who espouse indoctrinational modes of thinking commonly dismiss the views […]