Randal Rauser > Quotes

“ I would like to focus on the use of the word silly for a particular people’s point of views. Everybody has what is called a plausibility structure; we all have sets of background beliefs through which we process and assess evidence. When you call something silly, you are merely saying, ‘Relative to my plausibility structure that isn’t within that structure.’ That’s merely a comment on your own psychology, there’s nothing more to it so I don’t find that very helpful,” (Randal Rauser, Unbelieveable Feb. 1, 2014).”
― Randal Rauser

“the process of cultivating reading strategies begins with the way these stories are communicated in childhood. Personally, I have long wrestled with the ethics of children’s Bibles, and in particular the practice of changing narrative content to make it more palatable or age appropriate. The truth is that the Bible itself has more than enough content to warrant the highest adult rating: it is not a children’s book.”
― Randal Rauser, Jesus Loves Canaanites: Biblical Genocide in the Light of Moral Intuition

“those heavily edited, child-friendly retellings of violent and otherwise morally problematic content raise further ethical problems. Can the bombing of Hiroshima or the liberation of Auschwitz meaningfully be edited for children”
― Randal Rauser, Jesus Loves Canaanites: Biblical Genocide in the Light of Moral Intuition