Yes, I'm Catholic ... Not Who Randal Rauser is Adressing

Prolife? Women Matter Too
Randal Rauser - The Tentative Apologist | 17 March 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8s7Ka7fDBk

9:05 I'm sorry, but I would not agree that a woman is still a child at 12.

In principle, she's not a child if she can get pregnant, and at 12 already that's normal (c. 50 %), at 14 it's overwhelming (like 95 %).

9:45 Obstructed labour ... the pelvis at 13 isn't wide enough. The pelvis of someone at 30 isn't wide enough unless she's already had children. But the pelvis of someone at 30 is way less elastic.

My mother's gynaecology professor (I'm not from Med School myself, but I trust her memory) told me that with one thing and the other, a first childbirth at 30 is more risky than one at 13.

10:19 Mental health issues ... as per assessment of evil-doers known as shrinks.

10:29 Oh, going to school is more important than being a mother of course!

How many teachers are actually murderers, because they tell students or expect students to know that they are supposed to kill their own child so that they may be for some more time a school child ... ?

But in Canada, like in Sweden, the right choice may indeed be a hasardous one, because it's so penalised. And in some cases, to "help out" with the "difficult choice" the will to preserve the child will be painted as a "mental health issue" ...

I recall a case in the news in Sweden, probably 2002 or 2003. A girl of 13 wanted to keep her child. The boy who made her pregnant, the parents, the teachers, doctors, classmates, everyone nagged on her to abort, and after five weeks she cracked and "consented" ...

In Mussolini's Italy, the guys who did that would have risked 6 to 12 years' prison.

10:50 OK, given certain things in Canada, are the lives of old people also to be placed on a scale against other things?

Well ... no.

11:25 If we are Christians, we believe that the blastocyst has a soul and is the image of God.

12:52 Would the hundred fertilised ova be able to survive outside the lab?

Would one be saving them?

13:27 The twelve year old who is raped by her uncle is not a child.

Especially not if she's already pregnant.

And abortion is basically a guarantee of death, pregnancy at twelve is not.

13:39 The majority of mental, social and emotional stressors come from people like you.

14:07 Very obviously the life of a twelve year old mother matters.

And putting her through an abortion or even allowing it if she asks for it, is putting her at risk too.

Notably, she could the rest of her life be brooding over her killed baby.

15:00 There is a huge difference between "the girl's well being doesn't count at all" and "the girl's well being doesn't count for abortion" ...

A huge difference.

OT Violence is NOT Going Away from Debates, and We Are NOT Allowed to Say God Didn't Order It

OT Violence is NOT Going Away from Debates, and We Are NOT Allowed to Say God Didn't Order It · Innate Flaw in Jericho

Randal Rauser certainly has a bias, like we can see from other videos of his. One has the title "Why the Devil Loves Christian Fundamentalists", and one has the title "Frank Turek's Apologetics is Worse than You Imagined", the latter being a follow up to the one linked to below. The standpoint in the latter basically comes down to "you may do Apologetics in long books" (Randal Rauser has written one) "but you have no right to do quick apologetics on the spot, in a context of back-and-forth." I'll also comment on two points he made in it, and link to it.

How Not to Answer an Atheist's Question about God and the Bible
Randal Rauser - The Tentative Apologist | 12 mars 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6XVFDYjpS0

4:55 Apologist and missionary aren't the same thing.

St. Thomas says, with some people we argue, not to convert them, because in such cases we may have reasons we can't, only a miracle of God can, meaning a major one, but in order to convert and defend from apostasy, whoever is listening.

5:17 Given my experience of Turek, this is not true.*

Turek STARTS with the question why the atheist is expecting either mercy or consistency.

But he usually goes ON TO give an actual explanation of how the killing of Jerichoites was consistent with God's mercy. Here is how I would do it, and I don't think Turek would disagree very much.

A first step is to accept, unlike us, God as author of life and death, and as knowing us intimately, has a right to determine when anyone dies.

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father.
[Matthew 10:29]

Second, God as author of morality can make men executioners of a sentence which, without express divine order would be immoral. ANOTHER example is how Samson (on a prompting by the Holy Spirit) kills himself while killing Philistines. Normally killing oneself is totally illicit. But in this case, God wanted the Philistines dead, for the deliverance of Israel, and He wanted Samson freed from the disastrous love he had held for Delilah, and He took these things into account to authorise and even order Samson to do this.

Third, obviously, why did such and such deserve to die?

Jericho had basically stood since the days of Nimrod, and its haughtiness would have blocked Israelites from taking into possession a land that God had meant for them, and ultimately for Jesus. This includes the re-united Israelites (Judah and Ephraim reunited) known as Palestinians. So, without a place to worship, how would Israelites have learned the ways of God? Continuing in the desert not just would have taken miracle after miracle, but had already exasperated them. Meanwhile, Jerichoites other than the harlot Rahab were not a realistic target for God's or anyone's missionary efforts. They could not join Israel. They could not become adopted Israelites. This was no longer the case with Gabaon, as we read in Joshua 9.

Frank Turek's Apologetics is Worse than You Imagined
Randal Rauser - The Tentative Apologist | 12 March 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-AmWFZ1pxg

7:57 "We are not talking of people here dying of natural causes."

God is ending every life that ends. Whether the cause be natural or Joshua or Ted Bundy. Or a Fraternity during Hell week.

You can be God's tool for this by negligence (if you drive uncautiously), by culpable ill-will, or, as God's executioner. Joshua did God's executioner. Not executioner for essentially human justice according to God's law, but as executioner of a sentence God made. God has as much right to send Jerichoites and Hai-ites a violence without justice, as He has to get an adulterous woman NOT stoned in John 8, despite the Torahic sentence. In John 8, the Old Covenant was still in function, except Israelites has lost the sovereignty. So, if the woman was culpable, she should normally have been stoned. This mercy goes beyond human justice as it was applicable at this point. And so did the mercy killing of babies who were spared being raised by Jerichoites, a thousand times worse than what some now see as a horror, being raised by Islamists.

Note, God killed them, He didn't tell the Israelites to kill their parents and then raise them. If all the parents and older siblings had been killed but pre-puber children would have been spared, they would have died anyway, for lack of sustenance, or been killed or enslaved by other people. And the point is, it is one against CPS, God preferred Israel killing children too over Israel raising Jerichoites whom they had killed the parents of.

10:48 Dena Schlosser was not divinely authorised by a God who worked miracles.

And the actual story doesn't seem to be she tried to kill her baby, but she tried to amputate her arms, and death ensued.

And I think God was merciful when not allowing Margaret Schlosser to grow up under Dena Schlosser.

Please note, Dena's life had already been pretty ruined by years of anti-psychotic drugs.

The things done to Dena since her crime have not shown that psychiatry is a lifesaver. In and out, in and out of psychiatry. Her life is destroyed. Had she been sentenced to death or given years of prison, she might be happier than as it is now. I believe even criminals should some time have the right to happiness, in some cases like last meal and reconciliation with God before execution. For the criminal Dena, but for lots of others who are not criminals, psychiatry is ruining that.**

* Whatever Turek video Randal Rauser was showing, the clip was very short, and then it was interrupted when Turek said "secondly, I would ask the question" ...

** It would amount to religious persecution if it considered someone as psychotic for essentially agreeing theologically with Turek. As Swedish psychiatry did with my mother.