The Christian Delusion :: The Tentative Apologist

Post tagged with The Christian Delusion

The Tentative Apologist's Christmas-in-August Variety Show

August 25th, 201011:21 AM ET

By Randal Rauser

Andy Williams has just finished singing “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” “And now,” The Tentative Apologist grins, “the most wonderful time of the show.” As he reclines in front of the fireplace wearing a bright red sweater with reindeer TA pulls out the ever present full-to-overflowing mailbag: First up TA pulls out a mi...
Properly read, the Bible should make you … an atheist?

August 23rd, 201001:13 PM ET

By Randal Rauser

So our review of The Christian Delusion continues in fits and starts (though mostly in fits). This time I set out to review John Loftus’s essay “What We’ve Got Here is a Failure to Communicate” (a phrase I first encountered not in “Cool Hand Luke” but in Guns ‘n’ Roses’ “Civil War”) but I only got as far as the second sentenc...
The Bible and Metallica seeks to win over Susan Boyle fans (but not really)

August 20th, 201001:04 PM ET

By Randal Rauser

So I was frying up a pan of bacon when some grease spilled and the stove-top caught fire. I doused it in a bucket of water and ran out the door because I was heading up to my friend's cabin for a couple days. I return last night and realize, much to my chagrin, that the whole kitchen is now alight. My bucket of water did little more than spread the...
Inspiring thoughts on biblical inspiration and skeptical arguments

August 17th, 201010:47 AM ET

By Randal Rauser

Is my view of inspiration weak? AnAtheist.Net says that I have offered “a weak view of inspiration.” Why is it weak? AAN explains: “The more potential for human error that one allows under one's definition of inspiration the more incompetent God appears to be (given that God can supposedly do anything logically consistent and therefore does ...
The Christian Delusion, Paul Tobin, reasoned faith and inspiration

August 15th, 201009:52 PM ET

By Randal Rauser

It's been awhile since I blogged with any regularity and even longer since I last reviewed an essay from John Loftus' edited volume The Christian Delusion. But I'm going to finish what I started here, although I'm going to take the pace up a notch from earlier reviews. From now on each essay gets only one blog post. Sorry folks, but that's the way ...
The burden of the critic

June 28th, 201003:16 PM ET

By Randal Rauser

I feel as overwhelmed at the moment as Justin Bieber staring at his in-box. If I try to respond to every critic then this whole dialogue is going to grind to a halt because there just ain't enough hours in the day. So instead of engaging with any specific critic at this point I'll simply provide a concise summary and partial restatement of my epis...
Is the Bible "merely" a product of its times?

June 26th, 201012:14 PM ET

By Randal Rauser

Sometimes running a blog is like working on an assembly line stamping widgets. If you go for a bathroom break the line doesn't stop and the widgets pile up and then you never catch up. Unless your blog is your life, that invariably happens. I have a bunch of widgets (i.e. comments) piled up in my absence over the last 36 hours (a long bathroom bre...
The Bible Babinski thinks God should have written: On “The Christian Delusion” (Part 9)

June 21st, 201007:44 PM ET

By Randal Rauser

Edward T. Babinski, "The Cosmology of the Bible," 109-47. Yes, we are now into Part 9 of our ongoing series reviewing John Loftus's edited volume The Christian Delusion. I survived the first part, "Why Faith Fails," with my faith still intact. Now it's time for part 2, "Why the Bible is not God's word." Here we begin with Edward Babinski's essay "...
The Tentative Apologist receives a stern reprimand

June 17th, 201012:30 AM ET

By Randal Rauser

Early in the ongoing saga of my reviews of The Christian Delusion (that is, way back a week ago) I tackled the essay "The Cultures of Christianity" by David Eller. (See here). Dr. Eller has now responded. (See here). And, well, his response feels a bit like getting shushed by an aristocrat during a horse race at the Kentucky downs: in other wo...
Outsider test for faith or truth seeker for life

June 16th, 201009:33 AM ET

By Randal Rauser

I've been having a go around, or a brouhaha, or maybe a hubbub, with atheist John Loftus concerning his "outsider test of faith" in his book The Christian Delusion. This is a challenge he poses to people who are committed to a religion and it seems to function a bit like a hazing ritual to get admitted to the frat house. It has bothered ...

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An exploration of faith, knowledge, reason and doubt (with the occasional trite pop culture reference thrown in for good measure).