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Randal Rauser

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

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agnosticism

Getting to the bedrock of naturalism

May 25, 2011 by Randal

This is the final installment in my dressing down of The Atheist Missionary’s slapdash approach to the pedagogy of his children. We saw him dismiss the resurrection because New Testament historians are supposedly constrained by religion and institutional affiliation to affirm the things they do. (This bizarrely contentious series of asertions demosntrates that the discrimination against “religion” […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: agnosticism, atheism, indoctrination, naturalism, pedagogy, skepticism, The atheist missionary

Why no professional philosopher would use Dawkins’ argument

April 18, 2011 by Randal

I have been accused of being unfair to Dick Dawkins. Well let’s look at what Dawkins calls “the central argument of my book” (The God Delusion, 187). He summarizes it in six steps. Steps 4-6 are not directly relevant to the core of the argument against God, so I’ve only reproduced steps 1-3 (see The […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: agnosticism, atheism, design, evolution, Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

A great “godless” book

April 15, 2011 by Randal

Pete Hautman. godless. Simon Pulse, 2004. 198 pp. ISBN: 10: 1416908161  It is summer in St. Andrew Valley and Jason Bock is fifteen, awkward, disenfranchised and bored. Needless to say the Catholic Church he is forced to attend by his parents doesn’t add much in terms of excitement. Father Haynes is “a thousand years old at […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: agnosticism, atheism, Catholicism, doubt, faith, Godless, Pete Hautman, rationality

Does extraordinary uncleanliness require extraordinary soap?

March 30, 2011 by Randal

Once again the claim has surfaced: “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” And once again I have had to shoot it down. Now what could be the problem with a principle so symmetrically reasonable? Grey days produce grey moods. Cold weather requires a cold weather jacket. Why wouldn’t extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence? The problem starts […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: agnosticism, atheism, defeaters, epistemology, evidence, naturalism, rationality, skepticism

Russell’s Teapot: An analogy worthy of a first year undergraduate

March 26, 2011 by Randal

I have been asked to explain what is wrong with Bertrand Russell’s Teapot Analogy. Unfortunately, I can’t respond by reproducing the argument of Peter van Inwagen’s paper given at the Society of Christian Philosophers conference since (a) I daydreamed through part of the talk and (b) I recycled the handout. (Don’t get me wrong. It was definitely […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: agnosticism, atheism, Bertrand Russell, materialism, Russell's Teapot, skepticism, theism

The Apostate Atheist

March 8, 2011 by Randal

Tory Ninja raised the problem of self-described Christians who do not believe any person like God exists. That’s a problem. That is, it is a problem that some self-described Christians deny p where p is “God exists.”  But the same thing goes in the other direction. Last week in one of the blog threads so-called “Atheist […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: agnosticism, apostasy, atheism, Christianity, The atheist missionary, theism

Being completely objective about your worldview (as if that were possible)

February 5, 2011 by Randal

In the past I have had my great frustrations with John Loftus and his Outsider Test of Faith. Shall I count the reasons? For starters, it is arbitrarily imposed upon people who hold a set of claims that are “religious” as a means to test those claims when a more consistent application would present it as […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: agnosticism, John Loftus, justification, outsider test of faith, rationality, worldview

Dr. Z meets Dustin

January 14, 2011 by Randal

Dustin responded to the case of Dr. Z becoming an agnostic by writing “Yes, there are people who lose their faith in God due to evil. This just shows that their faith was no true faith, but only temporary (cf. Matt. 13:21). God has varying means by which He exposes spurious faith, and rancid evil […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: agnosticism, atheism, problem of evil, theism

Dr. Z: A Brief Addendum

January 13, 2011 by Randal

So we have Dr. Z, weeping into his glass of brandy, no longer able to affirm the proposition God exists, a proposition which on the reading of Romans 1 that has been presented to us, a person can only deny if they are in some sense in sinful rebellion against the knowledge of God that is […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: agnosticism, atheism, doubt, faith, problem of evil, Romans 1, theism

The night Dr. Z became an agnostic

January 13, 2011 by Randal

Dr. Z, an OBGYN, was working with Doctors Without Borders in the Congo. Dr. Z had decided he simply had to go because he felt it was his calling as a Christian to help alleviate some of the enormous suffering in the world. For months Dr. Z labored tirelessly in a makeshift camp, desperately attempting […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: agnosticism, atheism, general revelation, natural theology, Romans 1, theism

Naturalism and the ole’ swimming hole

October 26, 2010 by Randal

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 […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: agnosticism, atheism, Christianity, evidence, naturalism

Carl Sagan’s old time religion

September 30, 2010 by Randal

I would like to say some more about Sagan’s Pale blue dot fallacy but before doing so let’s say something about Sagan’s (ir)religiosity. It is often assumed that Sagan was an atheist. (Here I am assuming the standard definition of atheist as one who believes there is no God where “God” is defined broadly as […]

Filed Under: The Tentative Apologist Tagged With: agnosticism, atheism, Carl Sagan, deism, God, meaning, religion, SETI

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