Randal Rauser

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

testimony

Should Christians Believe Muhammad Rode on a Flying Horse?

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I often hear a version of this quip from atheists: “If you accept the Bible’s miracles, why don’t you accept that Muhammad rode a flying horse?” The assumption lying behind the question is this: if you accept one miracle claim, why don’t you accept them all? Sorry to burst your balloon, but that’s like asking “If […]

Anecdotes vs. Testimony

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Testimony forms a big part of apologetic argument. It may be the testimony of a person who says their life was personally changed by Jesus because they were delivered from an addiction. Or it could be the testimony of a person who says they were supernaturally healed of an ailment following a prayer. Or it […]

On Rejecting Expert Consensus: Don’t Blame Donald Trump

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As of this evening, Donald Trump continues to challenge the consensus of 17 security agencies that the Russians were behind the DNC hacking to the end of influencing the 2016 election. Why does Trump deny this? Here’s his latest tweet: Need it be said that this is a foolish tweet? Trump knows nothing about the […]

The Problem of Testimonial Underdetermination

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One of our commenters, Nate, is a professional philosopher. And his comments reflect the fact. In the comment thread of “Testimony, God, and, er, a glass of milk” he offered an extended quote which is worth highlighting on the main stage. Please note that I’ve changed Nate’s text to red, I’ve added boldface in a couple […]

Testimony, God, and, er, a glass of milk

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In the discussion thread to “Is atheism a default position?” Emilie_dC asked the following question: “If someone shows me two glasses of milk, and tells me that they are identical except that glass A contains an additional substance that is undetectable, what should I believe? “Should I be agnostic on the matter of whether glass A […]

RD Miksa on the evidentiary value of eye-witness testimony

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While I do most of the heavy lifting in this blog, occasionally I will have a guest poster. The following essay started off life as an email from RD Miksa in response to the threaded discussion following my articles “Craig Keener on Miracles” and “Miracles and the old ‘testimony is unreliable so we can ignore […]

The signs of ideologically driven atheism

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In my essay “Testimony as Properly Basic” I presented what is, among epistemologists, a relatively benign thesis. It is the claim that testimony can serve as a properly basic source of justification. It is not an ultima facie source of justification, but it is a defeasible, prima facie source. In short, a person’s testimony to p can […]

Why knowledge must begin in faith rather than evidence

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In “Testimony as Properly Basic” I outlined a simple way that a person could be justified in believing that “Jesus rose from the dead”. Instead of appealing to doxastic processes that are accepted only by Christians (e.g. the Internal Instigation of the Holy Spirit) I based my account on a mundane source of knowledge and rational […]

David Haitel’s testimony

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The tradition of sharing one’s testimony, of telling what God has done in one’s life, is deeply rooted in the Protestant tradition. My own apologetic interest in testimonies is found in the presence of elements like documented healings and cases of synchronicity (or what are colloquially called “God moments” or “God winks; in my own published […]