In this video, I offer a critical response to three points of advice William Lane Craig gives to Christians who face doubts.
faith
Four Levels of Doubt
From the principled recognition of human fallibility to the all-embracing crisis of faith, I survey the four levels of doubt and explore their central role in the life of faith.
Does Being a Christian Mean Giving Up on Evidence?
This is a sermon I recorded for a local church in our time of coronavirus home-church. In the sermon, I argue that Jesus was centrally concerned with evidence to support his claims and this bequeathed to the church a strong emphasis on faith that is grounded on evidence as exemplified in the Apostle Paul and […]
Is it Okay for Pastors to Have Doubts? A Footnote
Jesus said of John the Baptist, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist…” And yet, at one point in his life, John seriously doubted Jesus. So maybe it is okay to have doubts.
On Pastors Who Doubt
Some pastors doubt. For a surprisingly raw and candid exploration of this reality, see the film First Reformed. Pastors sometimes doubt their own salvation, or the goodness of God, or perhaps even God’s very existence. These doubts may be mild and fleeting or existentially gripping and persistent. And the longer they linger and the deeper they go, the […]
Can you be a Christian if you doubt?
I grew up in a Christian tradition that greatly valued the certainty of one’s convictions: the “man of faith” was the one who fully trusted God, not the one who doubted. As a result, I came to believe that doubt is the enemy of faith. But is that really true?
The Meaning and Rationality of Faith: A Christian and Atheist Conversation
Christians and atheists often engage in heated debate over the rationality of faith. Unfortunately, those conversations tend to generate more heat than light, not least because the parties to the discussion often end up talking past one another. If we want to make real progress on debating the rationality of faith, we should begin by […]
Would you kill your child if God told you to?
If God told you to kill your child as an act of faith, would you do it? — Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) December 20, 2018
Blind Faith: All the Way Down. A Review of one Chapter in Still Unbelievable.
Over the last few days, I’ve spent some time interacting with comments on the recent episode of “Unbelievable” (for which I was one of the guests) debating Justin Brierley’s book Unbelievable and the atheist/skeptic response titled Still Unbelievable. Some of the contributors to Still Unbelievable were frustrated that I took the time to quote several passages to highlight the book’s […]
Naturalism and Faith
For those who don’t follow me on Twitter, my morning salvo against naturalism: Few things are as ironic as a naturalist chiding a Christian about having "faith". — Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) July 28, 2018 I then added: “Footnote: by “naturalist” I mean a person who believes (i) all that exists is matter or supervenes on […]
Does atheism require more faith than Christian theism?
On Christmas Eve Lee Strobel tweeted that he didn’t have enough faith to be an atheist: To continue in atheism, I would need to believe that nothing produces everything, non-life produces life, randomness produces fine-tuning, chaos produces information, unconsciousness produces consciousness, and non-reason produces reason. I simply didn't have that much faith. — Lee Strobel […]
What’s wrong with this atheist meme?
A couple people told me they found my last run at this meme too cryptic. So I decided to delete my cryptic post and take another run at the meme to explain the problem. Let’s start with the meme: pic.twitter.com/EobVBLtTPO — Atheist Republic (@AtheistRepublic) September 9, 2017 Interpreting the Meme Let’s begin with the church […]
Exercises in Missing the Point: A Response to Counter Apologist’s Scorched Earth Review
I recently preached a sermon on faith and evidence and while it received a warm reception in the comments section of my blog, apparently the feelings were not universal: an absolutely scathing review was posted just today by the generally amiable Counter Apologist (henceforth CA). How scathing? Consider his opening (f-bomb and all). CA says of my sermon: “It […]
Three Ways Atheists Try to Rise Above the Hoi Polloi
Most of us have ways that we distinguish ourselves and our in-group from the common herd. Alas, in most instances those points of distinction either (1) do not uniquely obtain in the in-group, (2) cannot be demonstrated to obtain uniquely within the in-group, or (3) are are less significant than is initially suggested. The conclusion: the […]
