Randal Rauser

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

Archives for July 2021

Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan Don’t Want to Debate Me. But if They Did, I’d Ask Them This

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Paul Copan and Matthew Flannagan offer extensive critiques of my views in their book Did God Really Command Genocide? In turn, I devoted most of a chapter on what I called “The Just War Interpreters” to an extensive critique of their ‘kinder, gentler’ interpretation of the Canaanite genocide by demonstrating that it collapses into ethnic cleansing […]

Christian Terrorists and No True Scotsmen

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My latest podcast takes on the Capitol riots. In this podcast, I respond to American Atheist’s statement that the Capitol insurrectionists were “Christian terrorists. Full stop.” Not so fast, American Atheist, it’s a bit more complicated than that. You can listen to it here.

William Lane Craig Says He Doesn’t Support Donald Trump. Don’t Believe It

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William Lane Craig recently devoted an episode of his Reasonable Faith Podcast to one of my videos in which he offered a critical response to some of my comments on his book Reasonable Faith and his ministry more generally. One of the points I raise is the way that his close alignment with the Republican Party […]

Does Christianity Need a Historical Adam?

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Today, I posted the following poll on Twitter: Christianity requires a historical Adam and Eve. — Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) July 14, 2021 We can approach the question like this: imagine that it turns out that the following Christian doctrines are true: a triune God exists,  he created all that exists, and the second person of […]

Biblical Violence is Still Violence … and is not Appropriate for All Ages

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A parent once asked me whether The Passion of the Christ would be appropriate viewing for his ten-year-old child. I replied by asking if he thought the infamous ten-minute torture-ear amputation scene in Reservoir Dogs would be appropriate. The fact that you interpret some violent event as having religious significance doesn’t magically make it appropriate […]

An Open Letter to Lee Strobel and Sean McDowell

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To Lee Strobel and Sean McDowell, I am writing to you concerning your endorsements of Alisa Childers’ book Another Gospel?  Mr. McDowell, you referred to the book as “a timely must-read book.” And Mr. Strobel, you actually wrote the forward to the book and you claim that Childers “fearlessly confronts the distortions and outright falsehoods […]

According to Alisa Childers, People Like Me Are Going to Hell: A Review of Another Gospel?

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I just finished reading Alisa Childers’ book Another Gospel?. It is a hugely popular book that came out a year ago and has almost two thousand Amazon.com reviews. As I will note briefly below, it does have some diamonds embedded in the coal. But there is a lot of coal. Indeed, this is one of […]

On the Holy Piety of Getting Angry with God

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Some Christians think that the life of Christian discipleship is a life of victorious Christian living in which we are content in all things. But what if Christian discipleship has room for the full range of human emotional responses to God including doubt, sadness, disappointment, and even anger?