In this video, I offer a critical response to three points of advice William Lane Craig gives to Christians who face doubts.
defeater
Do 33,000 Christian denominations present a reason to think Christianity is not true?
If Christians are not, on average, better than non-Christians, is that a problem for Christianity?
The stage for the question before us is set in the second of these two Twitter surveys that I recently posted: If Christians are not, on average, more honest than non-Christians, then that fact would constitute at least some degree of evidence against the truth of Christianity. — Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) April 24, 2019 The […]
67. Justin Schieber on rationality and religious disagreement
On March 7th and 8th of 2015, I had the privilege of taking the stage with atheist debater and broadcaster Justin Schieber for two events, a debate at the University of Alberta and a dialogue at Taylor Seminary. The following morning, March 9th, I drove Justin to the airport in Calgary. The three hour drive provided the rich opportunity for us […]
In defense of rational disagreement
In the discussion thread to “66. Reformed Epistemology: A Conversation with Myron Penner” Mike D objected to Myron Penner’s description of Reformed epistemology because it supported the conclusion that “people who hold starkly antithetical beliefs can both claim to have formed them according to the criteria laid out by Penner.” In other words, two different […]
The Evidential Problem of Evil (Part 2)
Preamble This is part 2 of my response to Reasonable Doubts “Episode 121: Divine Deception with guest Erik Wielenberg“. As you may know, Part 1 was an episode in The Tentative Apologist Podcast and my intention was that Part 2 would be as well. Indeed, my original intention was to release part 2 at the […]
God, the Bible, and the Skeptics: A Wrap Up and Debrief
Okay, I recognize some folks are getting antsy, and I agree. I think we’ve done enough on the Bible for now. But I’m going to conclude the discussion (from my end, anyways) with a final response to some of the comments in response to my article “Attacking the Bible by endorsing the absurd?” (For those […]
God and Gus Van Sant: Two morally irresponsible artists?
My initial intention in this article was to offer a response to several of the comments written in response to my article “The Bible, the Americana Omnibus, and the brilliantly subtle classic“. Unfortunately, time simply precludes me from doing this. Instead, I’m going to offer a brief response to a couple comments before focusing on one comment […]
The Bible, the Americana Omnibus, and the brilliantly subtle classic
In “Trash the text? The Bible and its critics” I sought to address the widespread cavalier dismissal of the Bible, a collection of writings that (among other things) tell the story of the Jewish people. I did so by drawing an analogy with a collection of writings, the “Americana Omnibus”, that collectively tell the story of the American people. […]
Thoughts on universalism and hope (a response to Nate)
Back in early February I wrote a response to Nate — one of our resident academic philosophers — and his critique of greater goods theodicy. (See “Is God a user? A response to Nate’s Principle“.) Nate offered a reply a few days later but with the flurry of activity it was never properly responded to. […]
Why would a perfect God create? Justin Schieber’s argument revisited
About six months ago I wrote a critique of an argument forwarded by Justin Schieber which aimed to show that a perfect God would never create a world like ours. I offered a two-pronged rebuttal to Schieber’s argument. (Read the article at the link provided to get the summary.) Justin replied in the comment thread: […]
Knowledge, scientific and otherwise
Robert presents a scenario which he seems to believe presents a problem for an account of religious beliefs as being properly basic. It goes like this: “imagine a biologist is confronted with new evidence that common descent is wrong, and replies, ‘That can’t be right. I have an inner witness that confirms common descent!’” Now […]
Great movies and an Inspired Book
Walter asked: “I am curious as to what would a defeater for divine inspiration look like to you?” And I replied: “Provide some reason to think that the problem of miscommunication arising from the sublety of the text could not plausibly be offset by the benefits gained from the subtlety of the text.” It would […]
Cheesemakers, Canaanite dogs and the problem of biblical interpretation
As you may recall, I spent this past weekend attempting to help John Loftus articulate the argument he seemed to hold, but with premises that remained stubbornly hidden from view. When he finally articulated a three-step argument, it seemed to me that the first proposition of the argument was actually conflating two distinct ideas. I […]
