I'm already unimpressed with Randal Rauser as an apologist; anyone who thinks doing a joint book with John Loftus is a good idea is clearly not thinking straight. This book is valuable for one reason, though, as a study of how emergents/postmoderns "do" apologetics -- rather badly, as it happens.
The Swedish Atheist... is presented not as a systematic apologetic, but as a coffee shop dialogue between Rasuer and an atheist named Sheridan who sometimes sounds like Loftus, but raises a lot of the other standard canards as well. The presentation probably works for touchy-feely sorts who are more concerned with relationships than truth, and such people inevitably do a subpar job on the actual apologetics. That's the case here, especially clearly on the topics I know something about. Rauser goes for a white flag on the issues related to OT "atrocity" accounts, essentially denying their historicity and providing no serious arguments for doing so; and where hell is concered, waves the white flag some more.
It is just as well Sheridan is fictional, for most real atheists who are as hostile as he is would eat Rauser for lunch after their coffee was finished -- and as it happens, having seen Loftus turn on Rauser (and Rauser in turn just blandly letting Loftus wipe his feet on him), that's true to life.
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Oh dear. Poor Randal Rauser is in quite the snit of snark over our review; so upset, indeed, that he sacrificed some part of his Saturday away from the show down at Chuck E. Cheese to reply. That’s rather a shame, as I expect he was intent on attending the apologetics conference there and had been planning to do so for weeks.
In any event, his dyspepsia is expressed concerning two broad points. The first is an objection to my comment:
"This book is valuable for one reason, though, as a study of how emergents/postmoderns "do" apologetics -- rather badly, as it happens."
In response, Rauser demurs, thumb in cheek, that he is not, is not either, so there too, a postmodernist, “by any conventional definition.”
Um, yes. That’s why the exact descriptor range I used was “emergent/postmoderns” – not “postmoderns” in isolation. Rather tellingly, Rauser doesn’t bother to engage the first half of that designation-slash-designation, the format of which is a clue to most readers of the English language of an either/or proposition, of which either designation might be intended to apply to the designee as part of a much broader continuum of persons. I gather such nuances escape Rauser, perhaps due to some past mental engagement with fundamentalism. Or, maybe he got too much snark in his soup to pay attention carefully.
Then we have the second bout, in which we are treated to a Rauser Ramble about how he found the “warfare model of apologetics…wholly inadequate.” I do not doubt this; given Rauser’s manifest lack of competence in that arena, it is no surprise he finds it so readily dispensable. One may as well hand a caveman an iPhone, if not an insurance application. Indeed, his very distaste for the “warfare model” is a sign that we don’t have someone academically prepared to confront the reality at hand.
As it happens, one of his commenters conveniently sets the table for us:
That's one of the reasons I find the gospel portrayals of Jesus' interaction with the Pharisees odd, a few quick words by Jesus and the Pharisees just seem to melt away. Doesn't work that way in real life.
Ah yes, of course. “Real life.” As Hume showed, that was the measure of all things, was it not? Allow me, though, to introduce Rauser and his readers to “real life” in the first century, in an agonistic (honor-shame) society. (Regular readers of my material will be asked to forebear as we return to these most basic explanations.)
Jesus’ interactions with the Pharisees were, in fact, small ideological wars – competitions for public honor. On one side stood Jesus, defending his own public honor, at least as most would read it; but also defending the honor of the Father and where He really stood. On the other side stood the Pharisees, defending their own honor, and their public reputation as spiritual guides and leaders.
Despite Rauser’s personal problems with the warfare model, these interactions were mini-RPG contests in and of themselves. The whole idea was to publicly shame and disgrace your opponent, so that no one would respect them.
Now in terms of the commenter’s problem with this as a “real life” scenario, here’s where their realization fails. In the eyes of the Pharisees, they were not confronting the incarnate hypostasis Wisdom; they were confronting a dumb, rural hick from the back country of Galilee, someone who was likely to know more about changing the goat’s oil than about the rigors of Torah scholarship. The Pharisees, in contrast, slept in pyjamas with Torah passages all over them.
Now surely, their thinking would be, it would be little difficulty to shame this rural hick by asking him one of our first level questions; once that RPG is launched, he’ll melt back into Rednecksville where he belongs. Right?
Ah, no. Jesus not only answered, he answered well. Not what they expected. And worse, it makes THEM look like the idiots for failing to roust him. In that scenario, the silence-response is quite true to life – in fact, their best option for not giving themselves another self-inflicted pwning.
So, sorry, but – “real life” is rather more diverse than your backyard clubhouse and an episode of Seinfeld, kiddies. Might want to try some serious social science scholarship before you pull up the Radio Flyer for another round.
In all of this, I might add, Rauser is not merely wrong, he is also a hypocrite. Typical of the postmodern/emergent (oh, drat, it’s that slash again), he is also well-versed in his own form of warfare and weaponry, such as the Passive-Aggressive Popgun and the Guilt Trip Gumball Grenade. The analogies he draws of “warfare apologetics” to “Archie Comics and Hubba Bubba chewing gum,” designating them as “childish things,” reflects his own choice of warfare engagement; the fact that he is not very good at it doesn’t change that at all. An insult in the third person is still an insult, even if it is an insult reflecting inadequate courage to be direct.
Rauser’s worry was that “the warfare approach to apologetics produced almost no change in others.” Well, as I said, as bad as he was at it, that’s not surprising. If he’d done it right, he’d have seen some changes, much as I have over the past 15-20 years. As it is, his misplaced query speaks for the broader theme that ails him:
It didn’t take much of that before I started to ask myself, what good is winning arguments if I lose people? What good indeed? “What good indeed”? Well, let’s see. It does the good of shutting the mouths of those who deceive and destroy – you know, the way the Pharisees fell silent after Jesus lobbed a Shame RPG into their midst. I doubt Rauser understands this; as noted last time, he lacked the wisdom to keep away from John Loftus, and rather than help shut Loftus’ mouth, as he ought to have done, he actually will be sharing a platform with him, one due out, apparently, in April 2013.
Think on that for a moment, folks. Rauser is sharing a platform with a man who insults people with disabilities; lies unconscionably, and gives amusement park workers “the finger” for just doing their job keeping people safe. Neville Chamberlain apologetics, indeed. It didn’t work in the 1930s and 1940s. It won’t work this time, either.
I’ve seen Rauser’s pattern before, so I expect it’ll amount to this: He’ll launch 1-2 more Passive-Aggressive Popgun postings, then retire from the field claiming the moral high ground of not wanting to soil himself further with warfare that is beneath him. The postmodern/emergent (darned slash again) is, after all, quite predictable. For the record, I rate Rauser a 10 on his own Metamucil Scale, an 8 on the Hypocrisy Scale, and a 2 on the Academic Proficiency Scale.
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Update 11/20: Just before I reposted this from the Ticker blog to here, I received an email from a reader about something Rauser said about the matter of Abraham and Isaac, and an argument much like my own regarding that story:
One counter argument that I have ran into (from a comment by Randel Rauser on Matt Flannigan’s website) runs thusly:
“Yeah, what if?” I thought cynically. But that was my inside voice. With my outside (audible) voice I replied: “So what if a virgin child could be raped and then miraculously made a virgin once again? Would the rape of the child still be evil?” That didn’t go over well, I think. But I don’t see the difference.”
Here was my point. Let’s grant, for the sake of argument, that God demanded the killing of a child and then immediately resurrected that child. Would that make it all better? Well there would still be that little matter that the child was killed by dad… “Dad, it’s good to be alive again and all, but you did decapitate me, and that kinda stinks, you know?” (Talk about an awkward moment at the Thanksgiving dinner table.)
And likewise a child that was devotionally raped and then had their virginity miraculously restored (physiologically and psychologically) could still say, “Dad, it’s great to be a virgin again and all, but you did rape me, and that kinda stinks, you know?”
The Second Counter by Randel Rauser runs thusly: “If I read Matt correctly, restoration of life is sufficient to overturn the apparent badness of being slaughtered by one’s father. As a result I find reference to “for a split second” to be unnecessary. So long as Isaac’s life is restored it is okay, no?
With that in mind, how about this scenario: Abraham believes God commands him to slit Isaac’s throat, drain the blood into a basin and then bathe in it. Dismember Isaac and place his head on top of a pike in the center of the family compound, and then resurrect him next Tuesday at which point his life will be restored, everything’s okay, and they can all go out to Pizza Hut. Possible?”
Randel is arguing that devotional rape or mutilation are a fair analogous ways to demonstrate that by God simply commanding Abraham to kill his son he is still evil regardless of the circumstances or rather he would stop Abraham or resurrect Isaac. SO by using the same logic that Abraham (Hebrews 11:19) and the Christian Apologist employ the whole command by God is still morally absurd.
My answer:
Rauser still fails as always in that he presumes his first world emotional problems somehow adhered in a 1700 BC agonistic setting. They did not. Foremost on the mind of someone like Abraham was his family’s honor and his progeny. The emotional hand wringing he presumed to impose would not have occurred.
The analogy to rape is iinept as death and rape are not comparable experiences, especially in their world where rape involved matters of honor and dominance.
As usual Rauser is of those who think emotion and their personal and picayune experiences trump fact.