POST PUBLISHED INNovember, 2009
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  • Podcasting Christians and Non-Christians in Dialogue

    November 30th, 200910:37 PM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    Christians, atheists and everybody in between, we all have a tendency to end up in intellectual ghettos, spending most of our time speaking and interacting with people that we agree with. With so little interaction with others, is it any surprise that so often we are content with stereotypes and gross simplifications? Well on that somber note, I a...

  • Why does Jesus always get picked on?

    November 26th, 200907:49 PM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    How many Shakespeare scholars do you suppose believe Christopher Marlow wrote the great Bard's plays? Less than one in a hundred, I'm sure. Are Shakespeare scholars fools? That seems a little bit presumptuous I would think. Of course laypeople can always offer their own speculations on how and why they believe Christopher Marlow, or Ben Jonson...

  • Does the resurrection of Jesus stand up to historical enquiry?

    November 23rd, 200911:33 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    In an earlier post, "Were New Testament Christians reliable witnesses, or were they ignorant fools?", I offered a critique of the facile, if common, assumption that the testimony of ancient people is excessively credulous and untrustworthy. On the contrary, we need to test the credentials of ancient witnesses no less than contemporar...

  • Are answered prayers evidence for a providential God?

    November 20th, 200909:25 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    Skeptics frequently complain at the lack of evidence for miraculous divine intervention in the world today. Philosophers of religion call this the problem of divine hiddenness: if there is a God then why is there not better evidence for him? Why does he so often seem to be hidden? Petitionary prayer is one example. Christians believe in a God ...

  • Were New Testament Christians reliable witnesses, or were they ignorant fools?

    November 18th, 200903:37 PM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    The idea is frequently invoked to justify a pretty sweeping skepticism against the New Testament accounts of Jesus, including the miracles and resurrection. People back then were uneducated rubes who would believe anything. And if so then we really cannot trust what they said, leaving the status of the New Testament in doubt. Here's what Conversat...

  • Urban Legends in the Pulpit

    November 15th, 200907:59 PM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    Christians believe they worship the God who is truth. So why is it that they often play fast and loose with the truth? "Fast and loose with the truth?" you say. "What are you talking about O Tentative Apologist?" Well let me put it this way: I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard an urban legend in the pulpit. If I did, I...

  • Can there be morality without God?

    November 13th, 200909:01 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    While walking among the book tables at the American Academy of Religion conference in Montreal this year I came across Walter Sinnott-Armstrong's new book Morality Without God? (Oxford University Press, 2009). Sinnott-Armstrong is an atheist at Dartmouth College, a respected scholar (as employment at an ivy-league school surely implies!) and a vete...

  • Should we lend terrorists a sympathetic ear?

    November 05th, 200912:39 PM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    It is a pretty standard course that when a person disagrees with us on a matter of deep conviction, particularly where we believe a significant moral issue is at stake, there is a great reluctance to attempt to understand the person's views. Indeed, a sympathetic ear is often seen to be a siding with the wicked person. And we would sooner dismiss o...

  • A Tale of Two Murderers, one Christian and one Atheist

    November 01st, 200909:51 AM ET
    By Randal Rauser
    Scenario A: Alex the Christian Murderer Alex is a Christian active in his church, a deacon and Sunday school teacher. One day Alex comes to hold the belief that God wants him to kill his wife, and so he strangles her and then flees the city. Alex is picked up a few days later in a neighboring state and the media is saturated with images and storie...
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An exploration of faith, knowledge, reason and doubt (with the occasional trite pop culture reference thrown in for good measure).