Yesterday, I posted the following tweet: Numbers 31 describes Israelite soldiers slaughtering Midianite civilians and seizing Midianite virgin girls, many of whom would be 12-13 years old, for their soldiers. This is no different than Boko Haram. Don't let evangelical apologists gaslight you. — The Tentative Apologist (@RandalRauser) March 23, 2023 Among the replies the […]
rape
Why does the Catholic Church continue to protect its abusers?
The 2006 documentary “Deliver Us from Evil” tells the horrifying story of convicted pedophile (and, in my non-professional assessment, clinical psychopath) Oliver O’Grady. Father O’Grady was a priest in the Roman Catholic Church who was shuttled around various dioceses in California for decades, groping and raping children along the way. His victims are in the […]
On William Lane Craig’s defense of the Canaanite genocide (Part 2)
In my first installment in this series I argued that conservative Christian apologists like William Lane Craig and Paul Copan are at their weakest when they argue that God commanded putative moral atrocities like genocide. And I noted that the interlocutor for my critical discussion would be William Lane Craig’s defense of the Canaanite genocide in […]
How societies improve: the simple example of Morocco
In “Why do conservative Christians think everything is getting worse?” I argued that the widespread conservative belief that society is, on the whole, becoming less just and compassionate is not borne out by the facts. This doesn’t entail that things are getting better overall, though in many cases they are. Nor does it entail that […]
Is rape worse than sacrifice?
Like other people, Christians react with horror at the idea of a divinely commanded rape. “God would never command rape!” they insist. So you might expect that they would be equally incredulous to the prospect of God commanding the killing and mutilation of a child as a sacrifice. But no. On this point many believe […]
Rape, moral perception, and biblicism
Jerry Shepherd offered an extended rebuttal to my article “Christian moral schizophrenia and psychopathy.” Reading through his comments I recognized that a single question could help us focus the issue of debate significantly and so I focused on the moral status of acts of rape: “It seems quite clear that on your view it is […]
Does God ‘rape the will’ to save people from hell?
“Irresistible force used by God on his free creatures would be a violation of both the charity of God and the dignity of humans. God is love. True love never forces itself on anyone. Forced love is rape, and God is not a divine rapist!” (Norman Geisler, “God knows all Things,” Predestination and Free Will, […]
An update in the wake of Atlanta (plus a bit on rape and child killing)
Well I’m back (as if anybody cares). Wait a minute. I care, so I’ll keep talking to myself if nobody else. It was a good time at the annual ETS conference (with a day at SBL thrown in). Let me say the weather was fine. It has been seven or eight years since I was in […]
On being skeptical of the skeptics
In “Surely you can’t be serious” I wrote that “The evil of the cannibal seeking to eat Jim is, to put it bluntly, a metaphysically necessary truth.” Brenda responded: “Well, that is a claim. One you have not proved must be true. I don’t see how you can ‘prove’ that cannibalism is necessarily wrong the […]
Rape as objectively evil
In my last post I stated that rape is objectively evil and any worldview that cannot count for this fact suffers accordingly. Alexander responded with a refreshing dose of dramatic bravado: “Not so, Randal Rauser! According to Randy Thornhill, rape is actually an evolution of a ‘genetically advantageous behavioral adaptation’ and, in that context, not inherently evil.” This […]
