Responding to Randal Rauser

It’s pretty extraordinary for me to get so fired up about something in the morning that I’ll put off finishing the coffee to start a response, but that's what happened this morning when I checked out Randal Rauser's latest post.

What I'd like to point out before I start ripping into what the guy posted is that I actually think Randal has got the character of a champion, especially when you consider him in comparison to other Christian apologists.  He rejects the idea that god commanded the genocides of the Old Testament, that god actually endorsed slavery in the Old Testament, or that god will inflict eternal conscious torture on anyone in hell.

That said, I can't help but get frustrated by Randal's apologetics given that he's misrepresenting so many standard positions atheists hold.

So I posted the following as a comment reply on his blog, but I figured it wouldn't be a bad idea to publish it here as well.

Well this is encouraging

Barna does research on how "Post-Christian" America has become.

The data is really striking and I think shows a much more accurate picture of exactly how "Christian" the country actually is.

Being a former fundamentalist, one of the themes we had was that many people may claim to be Christian, but they aren't really.  There were always claims of "people damned to hell may be sitting in these very pews", which was a call for people to come up and give themselves to Jesus.

Looking at life around me verified that things weren't completely legit in terms of following the Christian doctrines.  Most people didn't know their bibles very well, they didn't read it often, or they had unsound doctrinal views compared to what the churches they were attending stated in their statements of faith/doctrine.

The main things I saw was that people would go to church, and then largely live like everyone else around them - like I live right now.  Most people don't attend church regularly either but still report themselves as Christian, probably because they show up on XMas and Easter (the two weekends that your local church probably takes in the most money).

What's nice about this is that people in my generation and younger are significantly less religious, and it's likely to keep going that way.  Which means when my daughter gets older, we hopefully won't have to even remotely worry about possibilities like President Rick Santorum, and the "Religious Right" won't have any significant political power anymore.

A Tippling Philosopher interviews Counter Apologist

So this past weekend I was interviewed by A Tippling Philosopher, which was really a lot of fun.  We spoke a bit about my deconversion and the argument from hell that convinced me to leave Christianity, as well as a bunch of other topics.  Check it out and be sure to check out his blog, there's always something great to read over there, and unlike me he updates pretty regularly!

William Lane Craig - Science Denial and Hypocrisy

Note: What follows is a transcript of the above video, but I've embedded links here since there's obviously no description box on my blog.

I wanted to make a short video pointing out some pretty amazing science denial and hypocrisy by William Lane Craig.  

The short of it is that Craig recently called Young Earth Creationists an embarrassment to Christianity on his Reasonable Faith Podcast.  Craig calls out the Young Earth Creationists because they are pretty much in explicit science denial.

Video Response to YouTube user StupidTheist

Note: What follows is a transcript of the video above.

This is going to be a video reply to YouTube user StupidTheist. Not to get all meta, but he left a video reply to my fourth video on the Countering the Kalam series and has been expecting me to respond in kind.  I’ll link both our videos in the description box, but this is kind of an “inside baseball” video; and I wouldn’t recommend continuing with it unless you’ve watched both my video and StupidTheist’s response. 

From Fundamentalist to Atheist - My Deconversion Story

This video is going to be a bit different than the other videos I’ve put out since I don’t have an actual argument that I’m putting forward or refuting. I’m going to talk about my deconversion from being a fundamentalist Christian to being an atheist.  And I really want to do this because I think it’s something that all of us who’ve deconverted want to put out there to maybe help other people who may be going through the same thing.  I’m hoping it’s also useful for life long atheists to help understand where the “faithful” are coming from. 

I’m going to give a brief overview of what my religious background was growing up, there’s a much longer and detailed post about thison my blog that I’m going to link to in the description box.  The long and short of it is that I was born a Catholic and then my family converted to being fundamentalist Christian, specifically Baptists, when I was about 9 years old.  

Countering the Modal Ontological Argument

Note: What follows below is a transcription of the video

Ahh the Ontological Argument, where philosophers try to define god into existence. 

This video is going to be about the modern, Modal Ontological Argument put forward by apologists like Alvin Plantinga and defended by William Lane Craig. 

This is because the original Ontological Argument put forward by St. Anselm and philosophers like Rene Descartes was refuted by philosophers like David Hume and Immanuel Kant since the original argument assumed that “existence” was a property.   You can Google that, but almost all modern apologists won’t attempt to defend that version of the argument.

So here’s the “Modal Ontological Argument” put forward by Plantinga: