Randal Rauser

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

Christianity

Does Atheism Inspire You? A Reflection on Last Chance U

by

The first season of Last Chance U: Basketball just launched on Netflix a month ago. It is a spinoff of the familiar Last Chance U series which devotes each season to the football program of a junior college where struggling students are trying to make it. The setting is ripe for inspiration, drama, and disappointment: all the […]

Christianity Vindicated?: A Review of The Rational Faith Part 2

by

Jason A. Crook. The Rational Faith: A Review of the Evidence for Christianity. 2020, 267 pp. If you have read the first installment of my review of Jason Crook’s new book The Rational Faith (for Part 1 see here) then you know that I got sidetracked by outlining my disagreement with the way Crook sets up […]

Can Stryper be heavy metal if they are Christian?

by

Following the release of Stryper’s new album “Even the Devil Believes,” popular heavy metal website blabbermouth.net posted a review which praises the musicianship and musicality, but gives the album a poor review because of uplifting Christian lyrics that allegedly contradict the spirit of rock and roll. In this video, I offer my response.

The extraordinary claim that Christianity is irrational

by

This happens a lot: atheists online tell me that my beliefs are “absurd” or (only slightly more charitably) that I’m “irrational”. Here is an example of an exchange with a gentleman named Steven Tiger. He begins by taking the view that Christianity is ridiculous. Then he modifies it to the view that it is irrational […]

Should you be able to say when you wouldn’t be a Christian in order to be a Christian?

by

This morning, I posted the following as a tweet: Atheists often challenge me by asking the conditions under which I would reject the Bible as God’s Word, or say that God isn’t perfectly good or conclude that Christianity isn’t true. The assumption is that if I don’t provide those conditions, the faith I now have […]

Muslims and Christians Pray to the Same God

by

I’ve addressed this question before (on several occasions) but I thought this brief tweet I posted might be of interest to some to carry the conversation forward: Muslims & Christians both refer to the same being when they say “God”. If they weren’t, then they wouldn’t be disagreeing about whether that being is triune or […]

On the Pseudo-Piety of Shutting Down Questioning By Asking Who Are You, O Man?

by

This morning, I tweeted my old (2012) review of David Lamb’s book God Behaving Badly. The review includes an extensive critique of Lamb’s attempt to rationalize and baptize biblical violence. Not surprisingly, I received a pseudo-pious reply from some self-righteous fellow who actually had the temerity to begin with “Who are you, o man?”. Who are you, […]

Here’s a Thought: Why Don’t We Not Strawman Each Other?

by

In my experience, atheists and Christians commonly strawman each other. For example, the atheist criticizing Christianity assumes Christianity includes a narrow exclusivism with eternal conscious torment so that, for example, the 10-year-old Jewish girl who dies in Auschwitz goes straight to hell. Such a view has nothing, per se, to do with Christianity. To be […]