Tristan Vick's New Book Exposes Randal Rauser As a Rhetorician Without Much Substance

Tristan Vick is the Advocatus Atheist and has interacted with Randal Rauser for a few years. This past weekend Vick released a new book dealing with the rhetoric of Rauser, titled The Swedish Fish, Deflating the Scuba Diver and Working the Rabbit's Foot, which Edward Babinski and Robert M. Price helped him on.I've seen an advanced copy and I recommended it in these words:
Randal Rauser prides himself on reaching out to atheists. But if Tristan Vick’s book is any indication, he’s failing. He’s failing precisely because he’s not really interested in searching for truth but in defending what he already believes is truth. Although Vick doesn’t have the credentials Rauser has, it doesn’t take much to find fault with the rhetoric that Rauser substitutes in place of good arguments. Tristan Vick effectively demonstrates he will say just about anything in defense of his faith. Well done Tristan!


I'm going recap how Rauser has done so far, and give my predictions of upcoming projects.

Rauser was beaten by me in our co-written book, God or Godless?: One Atheist. One Christian. Twenty Controversial Questions., by most accounts. Especially interesting were the comments of Robert Price, Russell Blackford, and Dustin Lawson.

Chris Hallquist debated Rauser and lost to him, as I wrote about here. Hallquist started out claiming more than he needed to claim. The larger the claim is the harder it is to defend, and that's it.

Jonathan Pearce debated Rauser on the historicity of the birth narratives in the gospels as I wrote about here. Pearce won. The evidence is solid on that score.

On March 7th Justin Schieber will publicly debate Rauser on the existence of God at the University of Alberta, Canada. Based on a previous debate of Schieber's against Max Andrews, I think Justin will do well, and that's all I can say until I hear the debate. I don't expect very many people to say Rauser lost this debate though.

Then sometime in the future, I don't know when, I heard that Randal Rauser and Jeffery Lowder are co-writing a book on the existence of God. In this case I expect Lowder will do very well. He's a good public debater. I expect it will translate well into paper. I predict this debate will probably be a wash, and that's a compliment to Lowder, since he doesn't have the educational background Rauser has. I don't expect many readers on opposite sides to say the other side won. I think this is the nature of the philosophy of religion discipline itself. It simply does not change many minds.

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