Steve thought Randal Rauser was a useful foil to engage with.
I don't.
Showing posts with label Randal Rauser. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Randal Rauser. Show all posts
Sunday, June 28, 2020
Thursday, May 28, 2020
That's just your interpretation!
A highly agitated performance by apostate Randal Rauser
1. Throughout the video, Rauser plays his dogeared hand about how conservative Christians collapse their interpretation of scripture into scripture itself. Yet his application of that distinction is totally one-sided inasmuch as he exempts his progressive interpretation from the distinction he urges on conservative Christians. The conservative understanding is just their interpretation whereas his progressive interpretation is true.
2. He says the OT prophets had a false understanding of God because they didn't believe in the Incarnation or the possibility of an Incarnation. But that fails to distinguish between lacking belief in something, due to ignorance, and denying something. For instance, they didn't know that Jesus would be the messiah. That doesn't mean they disaffirmed the messiahship of Jesus. They just had no idea who Jesus was. They didn't know who the messiah was going to be at that level of biographical detail. But that hardly implies that they'd be opposed to Jesus as the fulfillment of messianic prophecy.
Notice how radical Rauser's position is. The messiahship of Jesus requires OT validation. Yet Rauser says OT prophets had a false concept of the messiah. Evidently he interprets the OT in unitarian terms.
The question at issue isn't whether OT prophets were consciously Trinitarian but whether OT theism is consistent with or open to the revelation of the Trinity and Incarnation.
In addition, while the OT witness of the Trinity is oblique, the OT contains many passages that dovetail with the more explicit witness to the Trinity. This isn't a reversal of OT theism.
A fundamental purpose of the OT is to correct false views of God. Pagan views. Not to substitute a different false view of God.
In addition, while the OT witness of the Trinity is oblique, the OT contains many passages that dovetail with the more explicit witness to the Trinity. This isn't a reversal of OT theism.
A fundamental purpose of the OT is to correct false views of God. Pagan views. Not to substitute a different false view of God.
3. He also attacks the imprecatory psalms as expressing false views of God. That's another hobby horse of his.
He says we should use Jesus as our standard of comparison to correct the OT. But that's duplicitous because, as he's expressed elsewhere, he regards Jesus as a fallible, timebound, culturally-conditioned teacher, based on Rauser's Kenotic Christology. Rauser's yardstick isn't Jesus but Rauser's moral intuitions.
Doubt is not denial
To begin with, Rauser's a bully. He attacks soft targets. He routinely picks on Christian laymen who lack his sophistication.
In addition, he's duplicitous. Rauser's problem isn't doubt. Rauser is very dogmatic. He's convinced the Bible teaches moral and factual falsehood–including Jesus. Doubt isn't the same thing as denial. Rauser is pulling a bait-switch scam. Randal Rauser openly denies biblical teaching. And he's made it his mission in life to destroy faith in Scripture so that he can replace it with his progressive substitute for Christianity.
I have little sympathy for Christian college profs. or seminary profs. who suffer from an intellectual crisis of faith. At that stage in their education and intellectual development, they should have worked through the stock intellectual objections to Christianity. I'm more sympathetic to emotional doubt if their crisis is due to personal tragedy. Even then, they need some theodicies to fall back on.
Thursday, May 21, 2020
Progressive theology
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.
Thursday, April 23, 2020
I double-dare ya!
@RandalRauserChristians often defend the offering of Isaac in Genesis 22 by noting that God never intended for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Fair enough, but the text still presents a massive moral problem. Imagine, by analogy, that you order Smith to rape his own daughter or be executed.You never intend for Smith to carry out the action. You only want to test him to see if he is willing. It turns out that he is, and you stop the act from occurring. No harm no foul? Not at all.We cannot begin to envision the unimaginable, destructive emotional impact on both Jones and his daughter as they carry the knowledge that he was preparing to rape her. Imagine the impact on Isaac of his father's willingness to sacrifice him.
1. To the extent that this poses a dilemma, the dilemma is whether to be an atheist or a Christian. Apostate Randal Rauser constantly straddles the fence, attacking the Bible like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, while pretending to be a Christian. His position isn't consistently Christian or secular, but just a willful mishmash.
2. It's revealing that Rauser is unable to attack the binding of Isaac directly. While there's nothing necessarily wrong with drawing analogies, it betrays a weakness of his position that he can't show what's wrong with the binding of Isaac on its own grounds, so he must swap it out for a supposedly comparable situation. But why should we shift focus on his bait-n-switch? It's just a diversionary tactic. The onus lies on him to show that that his comparison is relevantly analogous. Why take the bait?
3. He got the names confused, but presumably Smith/Jones are the same individual (father) in the illustration.
4. In Gen 22, Isaac has no advance knowledge that he's the designated sacrificial victims. He only finds out at the very last minute. So there's no brooding emotional buildup or escalating psychological tension on his part.
5. As as often been noted, Abraham is an old man while Isaac is a teenager. So Isaac voluntarily submits to the sacrifice even though it's within his ability to overpower his elderly father and flee the scene. He's a willing victim.
6. Unless Rauser is an open theist, the point of the ordeal is not for Yahweh to find out the limits of Abraham's faith. If anything, it's Abraham who learns something about Yahweh when Yahweh calls it off at the last minute. And it's ultimately for the benefit of the unseen reader.
7. One problem with Rauser's comparison is his failure to appreciate stereotypical differences between male and female psychology. As a feminist, Rauser can't make allowance for the fact that in some crucial respects, male and female are wired differently. What is unbearably traumatic for a female may not be for a male. This issue crops up in debates over women in combat, where many women wash out because they can't cope with the inhuman stress.
To take another example, consider a sleepover where the 5th-grade boys watch Aliens. The boys take it in stride:
Imagine showing Aliens to a group of 5th-grade girls. Boys and girls naturally have a different psychological makeup for scary things. There are exceptions on both sides, but that's the norm. Many boys go out of their way to seek out scary things to see and do. They double-dare each other.
Monday, April 13, 2020
Eschatological genocide
@RandalRauserSome Christians seem to view the relationship between heaven & hell as being like a luxury resort beside a slum of misery. All the people holidaying at the resort have a wonderful time because a massive wall blocks out the misery just on the other side. That's a terrible picture.
i) That's pretty rich coming from the likes of Rauser. After all, Rauser's an annihilationist. In Rauser's celestial resort, all the people holidaying have an even better time. Their view isn't blocked by an ugly wall. Rather, they enjoy an unobstructed view of the scenic countryside because God zapped the slum-dwellers out of existence.
ii) It's ironic that Rauser constantly defames the OT as endorsing "genocide". What is annihilationism if not eschatological genocide?
iii) BTW, notice that Rauser can never bring himself to discuss damnation in moral categories.
Sunday, April 12, 2020
Midianite virgins
@RandalRauserKing David didn't have an affair with Bathsheba. He raped her. There is no willing consent when the king orders that a civilian wife be brought into his presence.
True. Of course, that's a narrative description, not a divine command.
Numbers 31 describes God commanding that all Midianite men, boys, and nonvirgin women be killed. That's genocide.
i) In context, I assume this wasn't a campaign to eradicate the Midianites as a people-group from the face of the earth, but at most the Midianite adults who are captured at this particular locality. Indeed, the virgins were exempted and there are further historical references to the Midianites in the OT. As one OT scholar has noted (in private email):
ii) There is some ambiguity as to who the Midianites were, and it has been suggested that they might not have been so much a distinct ethnicity as people who could either be associated or intermingled with various peoples, such as the Moabites, Amalekites, etc. It may be that they should be regarded as a confederation of different peoples as opposed to a single ethnicity.
iii) It is particularly directed against the Midianites on account of their attempt to corrupt the Israelites, as recounted in Numbers 25. Notice the association with the Moabites in this episode. Indeed, we can might well understand that this was not a matter of “ethnics,” but a matter of “ethics.”
iv) Because the concern in Numbers 31 is particularly against those Midianites who were involved in the Midianite/Moabite incident in Numbers 25, we cannot say the action was directed against all Midianites.
v) As well, we have to take into account what is certainly to be understood as the hyperbolic character of both the language and the narrative. Indeed, after this account, there are still Midianites who have to be contended with, as evidenced by the books of Joshua, Judges, Kings, and Isaiah.
"but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." (v. 18) A terrified 13-year-old who saw her family killed doesn't consent. That's rape.
i) The statement in Num 31:18 is notably terse. Probably because it takes for granted the more detailed war bride context of Deut 21:10-14. In other words, they're not sex slaves. Rather, it was meant to be understood within the kind of framework envisioned in Deut 21:10-14.
ii) Likewise, isn't the tacit implication that Midianite virgins can be distinguished from Midianite wives because the virgins haven't reached sexual maturity, and so they're not yet eligible for marriage, but will be married off when they hit the age at which Jewish females usually got married?
iii) Is that an enviable situation for females to be in? Certainly not. But as I've mentioned before, these were warrior cultures. If the men are killed, the females are totally vulnerable. They can starve or turn to prostitution. Rauser fails to consider the plight of unattached females in the ancient Near East.
The commands doesn't represent an ideal. Rather, they address a situation in which some things have already gone terribly wrong. So this is damage control. I've discussed the dilemma in more detail elsewhere:
http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2020/02/when-bible-rubs-us-wrong-way.html
iv) What does Rauser think it was like to be a woman in a heathen culture like the Midianites? They were much better off becoming Jewish wives.
For a modern comparison, consider the forcible taking of young Chibok schoolgirls by Boko Haram in 2014. They didn't consent either.
Which piggybacks on his dubious interpretation of Num 31:18.
Christians need an honest conversation about biblical atrocities.
Rauser needs to have an honest conversion about why he pretends to be a Christian when he repudiates biblical revelation. He suffers from a makeshift position that isn't consistently Christian or secular. He abodes fanatical confidence in his moral intuitions, even though the Bible writers don't share his intuitions. So what makes his intuitions true?
Rauser suffers from a Messiah complex. His self-appointed calling in life is to single-handedly redefine Christianity along progressive lines. That's doomed to fail. It will never replace biblical Christianity. And his alternative is just a hodgepodge of secular humanism with some residual Christian motifs and paranormal anecdotes.
Saturday, April 11, 2020
Locked on the inside
1. In this video:
apostate Randal Rauser takes issue with the view popularized by C. S. Lewis that the doors of hell are locked on the inside. Keep in mind that Rauser is an annihilationist with a soft spot for universalism, so he's attacking Lewis's position to attack everlasting punishment.
2. Lewis's idea is that hell is justifiable because it's self-imposed exile. Self-inflicted suffering/misery. The damned choose hell.
Rauser objects in part on exegetical grounds. Although there's an element of truth to the fact that God turns some sinners over to self-destructive behavior (Rom 1), the Bible also depicts God as the agent of judgment.
3. Rauser then objects to the justification of hell based on the notion that it's self-inflicted, by using two examples: solitary confinement and people who practice self-harm.
4. There are some problems with his comparison vis-a-vis solitary confinement:
i) Inmates in solitary confinement don't choose to be in solitary confinement. Indeed, they hate it.
ii) To my knowledge, the purpose of solitary confinement isn't typically punitive but to control inmates who don't play by the rules. Inmates who attack prison guards or attack other inmates. They are separated from the general population because they don't get along with anyone else. They are too disruptive to fit into the prison regime.
In addition, some high-value witnesses are put in solitary confinement for their own protection as they wait to testify at trial. So his parallel breaks down at several points.
iii) Rauser's second example concerns individuals who suffer from pathological self-loathing. They resort to self-harm to temporarily release emotional and psychological stressors.
He cites a personal anecdote about a high school girl cutting herself in the kitchen. He and others took the knife away. It would be wrong to stand by and do nothing just because it was self-inflicted harm.
Of course that's true but Rauser typically omits a key consideration. Intervention is morally mandated in the case of "cutters" because they are mentally ill. It's for their own protection.
But the comparison falls apart in the case of the damned because they aren't suffering through no fault of their own. Damnation isn't a misfortune. That's quite different from someone whose actions are self-destructive but blameless due to exculpatory or extenuating circumstances like mental illness. There are no mitigating factors in the case of the damned.
5. In addition, Rauser blurs the distinction between self-inflicted suffering or misery from self-inflicted punishment. But while suffering or misery can be punitive, suffering or misery can also be innocent or unjust. So these are not equivalent categories. Just desert is not a necessary condition of suffering or misery.
6. It's revealing how Rauser oscillates between moralism and amorality. Rauser is very moralistic and judgmental when it comes to things he disapproves of, like OT ethics, but when he attacks everlasting punishment, he switches to amoral illustrations which leave guilt and retributive justice out of consideration.
Wednesday, April 08, 2020
One-sided doubt
@RandalRauserChristians need to understand that the willingness to question and doubt is a sign of piety and intimacy, not the opposite.
But for apostate Randal Rauser, doubt is only a sign of piety when questioning (indeed, denying) the Bible and traditional evangelical theology. He exhibits no doubts about his own moral intuitions. When he extols the value of doubt, it's entirely one-sided on his part.
There is also a basic difference between a Christian who finds himself doubting the faith or certain tenets thereof and actively, aggressively cultivating doubt, as if doubting for the sake of doubt is a spiritual and intellectual virtue.
Tuesday, April 07, 2020
Sifting non-Christian miracle claims
In this post:
apostate Randal Rauser makes some good general points. However, I disagree with him on one or two issues:
i) I think the reported miracles of Sathya Sai Baba lack credibility, not because those claims are inconsistent with other things I believe about the world, but for the specific reason that there's evidence that he was a fraud:
ii) I don't think non-Christian miracles are inconsistent with the nature of reality. Indeed, Scripture acknowledges the power of witchcraft (e. g. Deut 13:1-5; Mt 24:24; Acts 16;16-18; 2 Thes 2:9; Rev 13:13-15).
Friday, April 03, 2020
Why are gun sales up?
@RandalRauserJust for the record, you can't kill #COVID19 with bullets:About 2 Million Guns Were Sold in the U.S. as Virus Fears SpreadA New York Times analysis shows that March was the second-busiest month ever for gun sales, fueled by worries over the coronavirus.nytimes.comhttps://twitter.com/RandalRauser/status/1246095179645202432
1. Progressive theologian Randal Rauser is such a phony. On the one had he has sanctimonious tweets about how you haven't accurately represented a position you disagree with unless your opponents recognize their position in your representation. But he never makes a good faith effort to be consistent with his own advice when respenting groups and positions he viscerally disagrees with. Rather, he reaches straight for the caricature.
2. I don't know for a fact why gun sales are up. I have't read the stories. I do know for a fact, and so does Rauser, that it's not because gun owners think you can kill a virus with bullets.
3. Having said that, you can kill the carrier with bullets, and it's not hard to imagine secular regimes gunning down COVID19 carriers if the pandemic spirtals out of control. Consider a 28 Weeks Later scenario where a quarantine area is firebombed when it becomes contaminated.
Other reasons gun sales may be up:
4. If the pandemic causes a breakdown in civil order, then it's every man for himself. You can't expect the police to be able or willing to protect you.
5. As a matter of fact, some Democrat officials have already said that police won't protect private property. They won't make arrests for property crimes. In that event, it's up to homeowners and businessman to defend themselves.
6. On the one hand, Democrat officials are putting all the law-abiding citizens in entire cities and states under house arrest. On the other hand, they are releasing convicted sex offenders into the community.
7. Democrat officials are using the crisis as a pretext and cover to shut down gun shops.
8. The police themselves become a threat to the public. Consider news footage from English of policemen and police drones harassing and fining private citizens for simply walking in the countryside.
9. Likewise, if you had an economic collapse, and law enforcement officers weren't paid, they might resort to shakedowns.
Friday, March 27, 2020
Don't sacrifice your prejudice to defend the Bible
https://randalrauser.com/2020/03/dont-sacrifice-your-conscience-to-defend-your-reading-of-the-bible/
Your visceral response is telling you that that kind of action is wrong, intrinsically wrong.
That's hardly a reliable guide. Amputating a gangrenous limb evokes a visceral response, but it's not telling me that this kind of action is intrinsically wrong. To the contrary, it's intrinsically right.
It just means an observer can imagine what it would be like to have that done to him. That's a basis for compassion.
If you agree with Pickett that capital punishment is a brutalizing practice…
There's nothing essentially brutalizing about the practice, although it can be conducted in gratuitously brutal ways.
…and if you agree with that daughter that it just gives you one more dead person
That equivalence is amoral. It obliterates the distinction between innocent death and just deserts.
Rauser then inveighs about stoning, juvenile delinquents, concluding that:
That suggestion offends me to my core. I hope it does for you as well.
What passes for Rauser's moral core isn't my arbiter for right and wrong. Rauser is oblivious to his progressive social conditioning.
Mr. Merrill is here defending honor killing. It’s the same logic by which a Muslim father will kill his daughter after she defies him by going out with her western boyfriend. In short, it’s the same twisted logic to which blood-spattered murderers appeal when they are led away in handcuffs.
That's a malicious and scurrilous misrepresentation of Merrill's position. An honor killing is where a relative is executed because, in the eyes of the community, what happened to them brought shame on the family or clan. It's not based on anything the relative did wrong. To the contrary, they may be the innocent party. They were wronged. A classic example in Islam is the treatment of rape victims.
The OT doesn't have honor killings in that sense. Rauser's antipathy towards Biblical revelation is so truculent that he can't bring himself to honestly represent what it says.
Don’t be like Mr. Merrill. Don’t sacrifice your conscience in your reading of the Bible. Instead, recognize the gift of your God-given moral intuitions and let them offer chastening guides as you wrestle with the Biblical text.
Rauser never allows biblical revelation to form or inform his conscience. Problem is, he has no criterion to distinguish his conscience from social conditioning and cultural relativism.
As I've said on more than one occasion, it's possible to be both a moral realist and a moral skeptic. We can believe in moral facts, objective moral norms, but be skeptical about our ability to isolate these from the power of social conditioning and cultural relativism. For Christians, divine revelation helps to sort them out. But Rauser doesn't have that winnowing process. It's just his seat-of-the-pants reaction, which just so happens to echo his education and peer group.
He sacrifices divine revelation to his prejudice rather than sacrificing his prejudice to divine revelation. Rauser constantly labors to strike a balance between atheism and Christianity, and his center of gravity is secular humanism. His position is an unstable compromise between secularism and residual Christianity. It isn't consistently one or the other, which is why it's so hard for him to get others to take his position seriously. He's the atheist's favorite "Christian" because he's a useful tool. His position is no threat to atheism, but he can be counted on to attack evangelical theology. The contrast between his sympathy for atheism and antipathy towards evangelicalism is striking and stark.
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
Is heaven like death?
@RandalRauserThe father I had once known and loved was now vaporized, leaving behind a few pounds of ashen remains. Resurrection means that these few pounds of ash are not the final chapter. On the contrary, they merely conclude the prologue of a never-ending story.
Does this mean Rauser denies the intermediate state? Is he a physicalist who believes we pass into oblivion at the moment of death?
@dustdevildeityThere is not much more to the story though. Perpetual bliss in Heaven, with no needs/wants/aspirations/dreams/sense of time/etc, is not much different than being dead, dead.
1. I wonder how representative that is what unbelievers think the doctrine of heaven amounts to. To begin with, it fails to distinguish between the intermediate state (heaven) and the final state (new earth).
2. But for now let's focus on heaven. Of course, what we think heaven is like is bound to be somewhat speculative, but we can piece together some things from Scripture along with analogies in human experience.
i) I have no reason to think we have no sense of time in heaven, although the sense of time's passage might be different. There's a difference between physical time and psychological time. Time seems to operate at a different rate when we dream. Likewise, when we're bored, time drags. On other occasions, time flies. Mountain climbers who've survived falling say they saw their entire life pass before their eyes in a matter of moments.
ii) I don't know if he means "dreams" in the literal sense or a metaphor for goals. If we dream because the body needs to sleep, then we won't dream in heaven. But I view heaven itself as a kind of inspired collective dream. As if God is the dreamer and we're conscious dream characters who interact with each other. And like a dream, it isn't subject to what's physically possible, so heaven might be liberating in the surreal sense that you can experience things in heaven that you can't experience in a corporeal, earthly existence.
iii) To say we have no wants in heaven is ambiguous. You can have no wants in the sense that you can have whatever you want. That doesn't mean you have no wants. It means that if you want something, it's available.
Likewise, we can still need things. The point is that our needs will be supplied. We won't go without.
To take a mundane example, an icy drink is more enjoyable if you're thirsty. A hot shower is more enjoyable if you're feeling chilly.
A lot of pleasures involve a temporary gap between desire and the satisfaction of desire. Some kinds of happiness have that paradoxical aspect. Not having it initially is what makes it enjoyable.
iv) There's no reason to think we can't or won't have aspirations in heaven. Indeed, heaven is where many frustrated aspirations will finally realized. A chance to make up for lost opportunities in this life. A chance to explore things we missed out on in this life. Endless adventure. A chance to revisit favorite moments from the past.
Of course, these will be holy aspirations. In heaven we'll realize that some of our aspirations in life were unworthy. In heaven we will want what we ought to want. And that will be more fulfilling.
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
"Biblical violence and moral/cultural relativism
@RandalRauserMany Christian apologists are strident defenders of objective moral knowledge. And yet, they defend readings of biblical violence that suggest moral relativism. For example, genocide is objectively evil today but it was not objectively wrong in ancient Israel. That's a problem.
1. Rauser says Christians should steelman the opposing position. Improve on the argument for the position you oppose, then knock it down. But Rauser routinely does the opposite when attacking evangelical theology. He picks the weakest arguments. He resorts to caricatures.
2. One tactic is to manipulate definitions. He tries to use a rubbery definition of genocide that covers both OT holy war and modern examples. Of course, if you invent a definition that's sufficiently indiscriminate, that makes the comparison easier. But that's just verbal sleight-of-hand.
3. The argument is not that "genocide is objectively evil today but it was not objectively wrong in ancient Israel." Sure, he quote some Christian layman somewhere who will say that, but that's the tactic of an intellectual bully.
4. The consistent, defensible argument is what God commanded ("biblical violence") ancient Israel to do wasn't objectively wrong, and if he commanded an analogous action under analogous circumstances today, that wouldn't be objectively wrong, either.
5. Finally, these aren't just particular "readings" of sacred text. Rather, that's what it says and what it means. Rauser understands that, which is why thinks the texts are false when they attribute such commands to God. In reality, he interprets the texts on "biblical violence" the same way his opponents do. He doesn't think the interpretation is wrong; instead, he thinks the message is wrong. If he were more honest and forthcoming, he'd admit from his perspective that the original text is morally relativistic.
Saturday, March 21, 2020
"The problem of biblical violence"
I'll comment on a hobbyhorse by apostate Randal Rauser:
Rauser is an articulate spokesman for progressive theology. That makes him a useful foil. As I've remarked before, it's striking how little he stands for. He has a menu of biblical teachings he constantly attacks, but he spends little time defending his alternative because his own theology is so thin.
Friday, March 20, 2020
Quisling for Islam
A predicable and typical example of virtue-signaling by apostate Randal Rauser:
I’m guessing you have no Muslim friends because if you did, you’d recognize that the views you just expressed represent a selected portrait (one popular among conservative American media) which mirrors the uncharitable portrait of conservative Christians common in liberal media.Your question — when are professed “Christians ever this bad? — suggests you have some rather dark rose tinting on your glasses. Professing Christians commit violent and un-christlike actions all the time. To be sure, you can say “Those aren’t real Christians” but then you fall into the no True Scotsman fallacy.And the mirror opposite applies as well: my Muslim friends are loving and kind and thoughtful. They are like Izzeldin Abuelaish, the Muslim doctor who wrote a memoir, “I Shall Not Hate,” chronicling his journey of forgiveness for the Israelis that killed his family.Of course, as you say the true Christians aren’t violent, you can also say the true Muslims are, in which case you can exclude Abuelaish as a false Muslim. And in that way, you can stumble yet again into the no true Scotsman fallacy.A better way: you could choose to love your neighbor and treat them the way you want to be treated, to get to know some Muslims, and to set aside your stereotypes.
1. Rauser is smart enough to know that he's blurring crucial distinctions. The fundamental question isn't how professing Muslims and Christians behave, but whether their behavior is consistent with or even mandated by their authoritative religious sources.
2. Modern-day Muslims routinely commit atrocities and social pathologies on a wide scale, viz. acid attacks, beheadings, female genital mutilation, sex slaves, a rape culture, honor-killings, jihad, martyring Christians, flogging women who refuse to wear a hijab, ISIS, Boko Haram. There's nothing comparable going on in modern-day Christianity. At one point Rauser tried to draw a comparison with the Rwandan genocide.
3. We could go back in time to the brass-knuckle tactics of Roman Catholicism, which used to resort to torture and warfare to suppress "heretics" and "schismatics." In many cases I think their motives were sincere. They were being true to their religion. Of course, Catholic theology has undergone some drastic change since then, at the expense of internal consistency. I'm not obligated to vouch for their Christian bona fides. I'll leave that assessment to God.
4. Islam isn't a sola-Quran religion. The Islamic faith is defined by the development of authoritative traditions and interpretations.
5. Part of Rauser's duplicity on this issue is due to the fact that he's a progressive theologian who naturally sympathizes with progressive Muslims. Just has he rejects biblical authority, he deems it consistent with Muslim identity for them to reject their authoritative religious sources. He seems them making the same moves that he does. But, of course, that's hardly represents normative Islam. It just reflects the secularizing wings of Christianity and Islam alike.
6. BTW, one of Rauser's tactics is to pick on soft targets. He will quote somebody who's easy to outargue, then pat himself on the back.
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Is it wrong to want damnation to be true
I commented once before on a post by apostate Randal Rauser (defending hopeful universalism), but I'd like to make an additional observation. He quotes J. I. Packer's statement that:
“No evangelical, I think, need hesitate to admit that in his heart of hearts he would like universalism to be true. Who can take pleasure in the thought of people being eternally lost? If you want to see folk damned, there is something wrong with you!”
There are three problems with appealing to Packer's statement:
i) It's a bogus argument from authority. Packer's opinion doesn't make it true. His opinion creates no presumption that it's true.
ii) Whether or not I want to see folk damned is a red herring. The real issue isn't what I happen to think is best, but what God thinks is best.
iii) Suppose there is something wrong with me. But if universalism is true, so what? Universalism takes the sting out of Packer's disapproval, as well as Rauser's disapproval.
Is universalism the best possible news?
@RandalRauserThe second worst objection to Christian universalism: “If everybody is ultimately saved by Jesus, then why bother telling anybody?”Um, because it’s the best possible news.And God told us to.And no, I'm not a universalist. I just can't stand bad arguments.
1. It's a pity that Rauser's aversion to bad arguments never extends to his own bad arguments.
2. God didn't tell us to proclaim universalism.
3. Even if you suppose that Scripture teaches universalism, Rauser thinks Scripture is riddled with false teaching, so how does he know that God told us to evangelize?
4. God doesn't command evangelism for its own sake, but to give the lost an opportunity to be saved. If, however, universalism is true, then no one is lost, so the exercise is pointless. Rauser acts like we should mechanically obey the command after he eviscerates the purpose of the command. But God doesn't command things for the sake of commanding things.
5. Is universalism the best possible news? Suppose Rauser unwittingly hitched a ride with a psychopathic killer. Suppose the psycho subdues him and takes him back to his cabin, to torture him for the next six months until Rauser succumbs to his horrific injuries. Suppose Rauser is very eloquent. He can either convince the psycho that there's nothing the psycho can do to him which will prevent the psycho from experiencing eternal bliss, or else he can convince the psycho that if he tortures Rauser for the next 6 months, the psycho will suffer eternally in hell. What's the best possible news to tell the psycho?
Sunday, March 15, 2020
Cliché objections to Calvinism
@RandalRauserCalvinists often respond to the question "If God could've elected all to salvation, why didn't he?" by replying, "Hey, he didn't need to save any!" But that's a problematic response for two reasons. First, on the Calvinist view, God is the primary cause of the Adamic fall in the first place.
That raises a philosophical conundrum. The Calvinist response is twofold:
i) The revelatory authority of Scripture is our point of departure. If that's what Scripture teaches, then that's what we'll defend, even if it generates intellectual challenges.
ii) There are philosophical conundra on both sides of the determinist/indeterminist, compatibilist/incompatibilist debate. There are sophisticated defenses of compatibilism/determinism. It's not like one side is transparently true while the other side is transparently false.
Second, if you have a vaccine that could protect 100 people from coronavirus and you only give it to 50, people can reasonably ask "Why not all 100?" And saying "Hey, I didn't need to give it to the 50 either!" isn't a satisfactory reply.
That's a classically ill-conceived analogy because it compares innocent victims with the wicked. But not everyone is entitled to equal treatment. Through misconduct, an individual can forfeit certain prima facie rights. We should treat like cases alike and unlike cases unalike.
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