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TechnoratiPOST PUBLISHED INJuly, 2011
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The day the Arminian Pride Parade came to Geneva
July 31st, 201110:33 AM ETThe Genevans were outraged to learn that the mayor had declared April 1 "Arminian Pride Day." "Political correctness run amok!" the Calvinists growled. "And right here in our fair city. Why can't those Arminians just go back in the closet?" Rumor even had it that the Home Depot and Disneyland were both sponsoring the Arminian Pride Parade. And perh... -
Do Arminians have the same problem as Calvinists?
July 29th, 201110:49 AM ETPaul Manata offers a response to my article "Calvinism preaches a God of love, and yet..." The response was a tu quoque, an argument form which functions like this: Randal and Paul were walking home from the Barry Manilow concert when Paul was surrounded by a group of growling headbangers who were focused on his powder blue concert T-shirt. Just b... -
One Word in many, many words: A Review of Thom Stark’s “Human Faces” (Part 2)
July 28th, 201102:09 AM ETThom Stark. The Human Faces of God: What Scripture reveals when it gets God wrong (and Why Inerrancy Tries To Hide It). Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011, 248 pp. ISBN: 13:978-1-60899-323-9. For Part 1 of this review click here. In the first chapter, "The Argument: In the Beginning was the words" Stark introduces us to his foundational premise: ... -
Looking up to God or down a deep well: A Review of Thom Stark’s “Human Faces” (Part 1)
July 27th, 201102:08 PM ETThom Stark. The Human Faces of God: What Scripture reveals when it gets God wrong (and Why Inerrany Tries To Hide It). Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011, 248 pp. ISBN: 13:978-1-60899-323-9. With all the recent hullabaloo regarding the Stark-Copan-Flannagan debate concerning whether Thom Stark is too stark I thought it an opportune time to begin ... -
Calvinism preaches a God of love, and yet…
July 27th, 201101:18 AM ETThe central objection to Calvinism has always been, and will always be, that God's decision to elect some people to salvation whilst leaving (or electing) others to damnation is inconsistent with the notion of divine love. But Calvinists are not without their rebuttals. One common rejoinder is to argue that our understanding of love is imperfect. ... -
Should we really interpret the Bible literally when possible?
July 26th, 201110:53 AM ETIn my previous article I focused on a common hermeneutical principle among fundamentalists. I called it the "literal when possible principle" (henceforth LPP) and I noted an example from it in the writings of John Walvoord, one of the preeminent fundamentalist scholars of the twentieth century. I then presented four arguments against it. Unfortunat... -
A Reformed voice brings clarity to free will, providence and election
July 25th, 201102:37 PM ETThere is no shortage of confusion among the recent wave of "new Calvinists" on the Reformed understanding of free will, providence and election. This became very clear to me a couple years ago when my book Finding God in the Shack was critiqued by popular Reformed blogger Tim Challies for providing a correct outline of the historic Reformed vi... -
How fundamentalists undermine the authority of scripture
July 25th, 201110:53 AM ETChristian fundamentalists like to trumpet the authority of scripture over all things. Unfortunately the way that fundamentalists read scripture tends to undermine that authority. The key problem is that fundamentalists widely subscribe to a hermeneutical (that is interpretive) principle that the text should be interpreted literally when possible. T... -
Youth pastors who wear cardigans and other obstacles to the Kingdom
July 23rd, 201112:50 PM ETA few months ago I critiqued the Christian Motorcyclists' Association in "The Problem of Uncool Christianity". My argument was straightforward: the CMA is ineffective as a missionary outreach to the biker community because of its uncool image. But I didn't simply curse the darkness, for in my next article, "Cool Christians Riding on The Wildside" I... -
What do we mean when we call something “heresy”?
July 22nd, 201110:30 AM ETYesterday Davidstarlingm made the following statement concerning open theism: Open Theism is dangerous because it is very attractive and yet wholly heretical. It is attractive because it offers an explanation for difficult questions without openly contradicting any of the surface components of easy-believism Christianity. It is heretical because i... -
The tortured attempts to avoid intelligent design continue
July 21st, 201112:07 PM ETBack to intelligent design for a bit. In my article "Intelligent Design, Unknown Intelligence, and a Ouija Board" I critiqued several of Joseph H. Axell's claims culminating in his assertion that you cannot invoke intelligence as an explanation unless you have an account of the intelligence. Axell posted a long response on July 10. Other commitment... -
Is Peter Pan satanic too?
July 20th, 201111:41 AM ETOlabode Ososami has continued his tirade against Harry Potter. Sadly, he has also taken to deleting the comments of those who are critical of his views, a move which tends to make dialogue rather challenging. In his first article he ominously warned against watching the HP films: spiritually, it will cost a Christian everything ... and there are i... -
On the ethics of a Christian positively blurbing a book on atheism
July 20th, 201111:07 AM ETJohn W. Loftus' new book, The End of Christianity (Prometheus, 2011), a collection of essays by atheists, was just released a few weeks ago. It serves as a companion volume to last year's The Christian Delusion. And it wears its raison-d'etre on its sleeve. I intend to provide a review of the book in the weeks to come after I finish up some other o... -
“Is J.K. Rowling a witch?” and other vile fundamentalist Christian gossip
July 19th, 201103:18 AM ETI am not as interested in defending Harry Potter as three blog posts might lead you to believe. But I am interested in critiquing the rampant fundamentalist anti-intellectualism that Mark Noll critiqued so adeptly in The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. And I am really interested in exposing the pharisaical underbelly of fundamentalist Christianity... -
The Pornographic Harry Potter? On the near impossibility of reasoning with Christian fundamentalists
July 17th, 201107:55 PM ETNote: This article was originally published at www.randalrauser.com When I was in Rio last month I found myself in the back of a cab on my way to the conference at which I was to speak. Unfortunately, when we arrived I discovered that the cabbie didn't accept credit cards and I had no Brazilian money. To complicate matters further, the poor fellow... -
An Open Letter to Harry Potter
July 15th, 201112:10 PM ETDear Mr. Potter, I wanted to thank you for your astounding achievement. No, not the beating Lord Voldemort bit. Kudos for that to be sure. But I wanted to thank you for a greater achievement: getting kids engaged in literature. We live in a culture where literacy is going down the tubes. A century ago kids wrote letters that began like this: My D... -
Amazing Grace at the Gospel Mission
July 11th, 201108:59 AM ETThis past Friday I preached down at the gospel mission. (Once a month my church puts on a service for the guys and I do my best to attend regularly.) I really enjoy visiting the gospel mission. The service is refreshingly informal and the guys applaud everything, the preaching, the music, everything. (While the congregants of suburban churches also... -
On God, leprechauns and really bad analogies
July 09th, 201111:58 AM ETMy first smile this morning occurred as I walked past a looking glass and caught a glimpse of my handsome visage peering back at me. My second smile came when I read the comment of Curt Cameron (not to be confused with Kirk Cameron) in response to my discussion of protest atheism. Let's begin by citing Curt's comment in full: Here's a hypothetica... -
Could Jesus have given the wrong theological answer?
July 08th, 201111:53 AM ETMany Christians are happy (or at least willing) to recognize that Jesus had ignorance of certain matters. For example, he couldn't have told you that London will host the 2012 Olympics or that Transformers 3 would clean up at the box office. But that willingness to embrace Jesus being ignorant suddenly seems to exaporate when it comes to theologica... -
Intelligent Design, explanation, and the laws of physics
July 07th, 201110:22 AM ETThe debate on intelligent design continues with the latest proposal coming from Mike who writes: Intelligent Design could only be a valid scientific explanation if you were proposing an intelligent entity that is bound by the laws of physics. If God is any part of the proposal, it is by definition unscientific, since no science can claim to expla... -
Intelligent Design, Unknown Intelligence, and a Ouija Board
July 06th, 201112:37 AM ETJoseph H. Axell posted a long rebuttal in the comment section of my article "Unintelligent arguments against intelligent design: A Primer". There are a number of claims I'd like to challenge in the response. For instance Axell writes: "Dembski's 'explanatory filter' for detecting design has been shown to be inadequate (false positives being but one... -
Does a really old universe show that human beings are not important?
July 05th, 201110:07 AM ETMark Twain thought so. In one of his finest rhetorical moments (in a career sparkling with them) he wrote: "Man has been here 32,000 years. That it took a hundred million years to prepare the world for him is proof that that is what it was done for. I suppose it is. I dunno. If the Eiffel Tower were now representing the world's age, the skin of pa... -
Why denying intelligent design borders on insanity
July 02nd, 201111:41 AM ETEarlier this week I challenged The Atheist Missionary's rejection of intelligent design and thus his position that it is illegitimate to make intelligent design inferences. I did so by posing the following scenario: The Atheist Missionary returns home on his birthday to see several dozen balloons taped to the side of his house forming a huge welcom... -
Sponsor an African child and save the arctic narwhal, and why I choose to do both
July 01st, 201101:28 AM ETI support two charities on a regular basis: World Vision and the World Wildlife Fund. On the few times that charitable giving practices have come up in conversation with fellow Christians, my mention of World Vision has met with a nod of knowing approval. In contrast, mention of the World Wildlife Fund has been met with an incredulous stare. Why? T...
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