I'll venture a few comments on apostate Randal Rauser's video:
BTW, I often pick on Rauser because he's a good foil. A good representative of the opposing position (progressive theology).
All Christians range somewhere along a progressive>conservative continuum
That's not a Christian continuum. There's a variety of positions among theologically conservative Christian positions. Progressive theology is out of bounds.
Sometimes liberals were on the right side of the issue while conservatives were on the wrong side (e.g. Antebellum slavery, segregation).
True, but:
i) People can be right for the wrong reasons.
ii) Deceptively equivocal. Supporters of Antebellum slavery and Jim Crow misinterpreted the Bible due to social conditioning and economic incentives. By contrast, we can see the issue with greater critical detachment because we don't have a personal stake in the issue.
Rauser might say that conservative Christians are too invested to see certain issues with clarity. That may be the case, but it cuts both ways. Progressives are subject to social conditioning, too, with blind spots that are conspicuous to conserve Christian observers.
iii) Rauser's comparison is a bait-n-switch because he doesn't think Southern white supremacists misinterpreted the Bible. Rather, he thinks the Bible condones slavery and the Bible is wrong. For him, experience and his moral intuitions override the Bible.
otherizing…marginalization…just label people so that we don't have to listen them anymore.
i) Everybody has a plausibility structure. Some are good and some are bad. Some elements of our plausibility should be revisable. But we use our plausibly to evaluate claims. Indeed, Rauser is very dogmatic about his appeal to moral intuition. To what is morally intuitive to Rauser. He treats his imagined moral intuitions as nonnegotiable.
ii) Apropos (i), not every position has two sides. Technically, conspiracy theories about the lunar landings represent one side of the issue, but my point is that there's nothing wrong with refusing to take that seriously.
iii) Apropos (ii), there's a difference between not listening in the first place and ceasing to listen. How much do you need to know about a position? It only has to have one or more disqualifying tenets.
Ironically, Rauser's own appeal to experience and moral intuition to automatically eliminate certain positions from further consideration is an example of doing what he faults in others.
Paul was open to considering evidence for the falsity of Christianity (1 Cpr 15:14).
i) A misreading of Paul. To begin with, how plausible is it to suppose Paul thought Christianity was false given his personal experience with Christian miracles? Both miracles he witnessed (e.g. the Damascus Road Christophany) as well as miracles he personally performed? It's too late for Paul to entrain the possibility that Christianity might be false. He has too much direct experience to the contrary.
ii) Rather, 1 Cor 1 15:14,17 are cases of per impossible counterfactual reasoning, which proceeds from a patently impossible premise:
In responding to the Corinthians, Paul working back from what cannot be the case.
Have you ever considered challenging Randal to a debate? I think many of your readers would take interest in that.
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