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.
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