"How is (every Christian) guilty of defending genocide or the killing of infants?"

 ​Today, someone named @chad969  asked, " How is Randal (Rauser) guilty of defending genocide or the killing of infants?"

My reply: In the most direct sense, he's not. When I said Randal is guilty of the same thing he is accusing others of, I was only referring to the title of the video "You Can Lead an Apologist to a Question, But You Can't Make Him Answer". -- However, now that you raise those more specific issues, ... He also *is* doing that other stuff too, but not so directly. Before I explain what I mean by that, know this: I think Randal is a pretty good guy. His personal ethics are, for the most part, impressive. I also agree with most of what he says. Even when we disagree, I can tell he speaks from a place of compassion and hope. And I think that's very admirable. However, ... As Sam Harris correctly observed, once you dignify "The Bible" as being the essential source of information and wisdom, from a perfect "God", you become hostage to its content. -As does everyone else that you mentally maneuver into that same project. By throwing in post-hoc and *damage mitigating* disclaimers like "not all of it is what God thinks", ... All you've done is mitigate subjectively random amounts of that damage to various readers' ethics and personalities. Any reader who can be talked into the idea that they're supposed to sift through it "with discernment" to figure out which parts are true and good, ... are still doing so under the overarching idea that *some* perfect and essential truths are in there. If someone adds "just pray to God (or "the Holy Spirit") for that discernment", all that accomplishes is to give people permission to imagine their own subjective intuitions as **infallible** whenever they *feel like* God blessed them with those intuitions. In turn, every such "epihpany" becomes permanent in a person's mind, preventing them from ever discovering and maturing past those hardened pieces of ideas. Now, that works out well enough, whenever those ideas are actually ethical. But given how flawed we humans are, it's still dangerous advice. So then the question on the table is, ... Has Randal managed to entirely avoid being an apologist for atrocities? The answer is: No. He has not managed to avoid this. He just doesn't do it so blatantly as the apologists he rebukes. How is he guilty of the same? Because he still holds to the idea that some literal and infallible Super-Persons: a.) exist b.) used some of what's in the Bible to communicate essential and perfect truths to humans, c.) expect us to stumble into those texts, care, and take them seriously, d.) left absolutely zero objectively clarified cipher-key, method, or formula for how to sift through it, e.) couldn't be bothered to keep his own message clean and true, f.) let those "truths" be buried in a mountain of *toxic trash. [*prolonged exposure to which is now proven harmful] Seriously, what kind of psychopath would hide life-essential and highly encrypted clues for parents and children to find ...in radioactive mountains of toxic ideological waste? Answer: The kind who really wants to squeeze as much personal joy as he can from being a psychopath. and yet, ... g.) couldn't be bothered to make those "truths" available equally and adequately to all humans, But he's still having fun! After he: h.) personally and intentionally designed the effects of a "sin" curse. This is how any apologist KNOWS I have lied sometime in my life. The same goes for all the so-called "sins" that someone like **Ray, BananaMan, Comfort** poses *questions about. [*When he confronts college freshmen during his campus ministries]

Even if I deny it, they know I've lied. How? Because it's literally not possible that I haven't. Why? Because the thing they call "sin" (the religious magical explanation for common human failings) can't be avoided, due to our inherited nature. [to continue] That "God": I.) designed those effects to include literally every form of human dysfunction, j.) That means he literally decided to sabotage all humans with random and severely consequential failings, k.) preplanned to pose as a victim. A victim of what? The inevitable results of: The very failings he cursed us with. L.) sat back in silence for eons, as he watched the inevitable consequences of God's own life choices (burdened upon all humans and other animals), m.) This means "God" literally "intelligently designed" every form of the behaviors being discussed here, by orchestrating the detailed forms human dysfunctions would take in "sin state", while also preplanning to burden that state upon every single one of the descendants of the fictional "first two humans". Nobody chooses to have a Major Personality Disorder, like clinical Narcissism, sociopathy, psychopathy, etc. Those are caused entirely by physics. Certain kinds of monsters honestly need to be discovered and (humanely) euthanized, or otherwise (humanely) studied by science (but still kept in humane captivity). However, those monsters did not choose to have irresistible impulses to do horrific things to others (including children). Nor do those monsters choose to be absent the mental failsafes needed to resist (nor even to want to resist) those impulses. "Libertarian Free Will" is not a coherent concept. But even if we pretend it is, we know for a fact the humans "at issue" don't have it. Instead, if Randal's "God" = real, then we're actually observing a system of dysfunctions which emerge naturally from complex systems of physics ... "intelligently designed" by a "God" who himself *IS A SERIAL GRAPIST*, because it means "He" is the root and willful architect of that system. It's actually worse than Charles Manson saying, "Don't blame me, I didn't kill Sharon Tate", after Charles willfully orchestrated a system of social physics (cause-and-effect) that manifested those actions, and then sat back "with clean hands" as it played out. Besides actually designing those systems, Randal's theoretical (and not even remotely plausible) "God" co-commits every single act of evil that he has the POWER to prevent ... but instead just watches (while ever present, at every crime scene).

If someone you love MOST in this world had something unspeakable happen to them, and if *I* were there when it happened but chose not to interfere, and if my best excuse was "I didn't want to interfere with the 'Freedom of will' of the monsters committing that crime (even though it meant they were interfering with the freedom of will of the victim), and my best secondary excuse was "I work in mysterious ways", and if my ultimate goal is to prove how much people need me to protect them (from the things I both CAUSED and also don't protect them from) but I'm writing unsigned rumors of I.O.Us for later rescues, so that I'd have horrors I can show up "better late than never" to "rescue" victims from, so that I can ultimately be "glorified" as their hero, and then I boasted of my "perfection", and then demanded you endorse that perfection, ... I think we'd both find out how quickly you could rearrange my face with the nearest blunt object. And you'd be fully justified. Moral culpability scales UP with a person's ability to prevent injustice. It doesn't scale downwards. But this is the key moral misunderstanding of Trent Horn, Gavin Ortland, and every other Christian apologist. Randal has called certain apologists out, for this highly consequential misunderstanding. But the REASONS those apologists don't "get it" are because: a.) Their minds were seeded with Trojan-horse lines of ideological coding that literally rewired their neuronets. [Link] b.) They can't FEEL compassion. But this is ALSO the manifestation of physics. Their needs were not met when they were children. Granted, neither were mine. But "the devil is in the details". Due to detailed differences (much of which cannot be tracked) in the cause-and-effect of our respective formative experiences, my mind narrowly avoided ending up hardwired with their same limits. For those men, there's simply not much activity in the right side of their brains' supramarginal gyrus. And nothing can change that. But those men's misunderstanding of the issues at

a.) an ideological level and at b.) the social-psychology level ... are things Randal also misunderstands. - Just for (partially) different reasons. Randal DOES feel compassion and personal accountability. But he's still laboring a perceived moral duty to act as a flying monkey for an (imaginary) clinically/psychologically dangerous hoverparent. This, in turn, keeps Randal rooted in a state of gross moral contradiction. Those other guys are making excuses for the MEN who committed (and advocated) for crimes against humanity. Whereas, Randal just goes right to the source of those evils (no matter if that "God" exists in reality or not). And then does exactly the same thing for "Him".

Granted, he says, "God" never wanted or commanded those things. But then he negates that by justifying that "God's" choice as "our choice"; to ensure, permit, and enable those very same atrocities. Last time I checked, I am not the designer of the physics that generates humanity's many dysfunctions; not even the things we call "evils'. I don't think anyone designed these systems. But Randal thinks his "God" did. -And all for "a greater good"; a mysterious "good" that cannot be ethically justified, but which Randal (just like those other apologists) wants us to "take on faith" as being justified.