I appreciate that. Best wishes on your path to sound critical thought, sincerely.

So, I wrote this almost a year ago, and have to tell you that I’m quite embarrassed about what I said. I knew that I wrote this somewhere, but until now, forgot exactly where. Anyway, I think your response was well deserved, even though I don’t agree with your ultimate conclusions regarding Jesus. But, you’re right. I didn’t do my homework nearly as much as I should have. I’m sorry for calling you a fool. I was upset at the time, and rather insecure. I appreciate you not stopping to my level, and being the bigger man by not doing name calling. My apologies Dr. Carrier.

Um. Here’s what’s wrong with your irrational tit-for-tat policy that results in your not reading the article you are attempting to critique: my article fully discusses Habermas. You might want to go read that part. It’s a bit devastating to your naivety. Because, you evidently are foolishly unaware of not only how Habermas conned you on that claim about Jesus and sources, but his co-author of it has since admitted it’s false. And you don’t even know this. Yikes.

Be aware that I did not critique the rest of the movie. Just the part about this subject. And I watched that part all the way through. So you aren’t even behaving commensurately, much less rationally. You had better start reading articles on this subject all the way through before trying to critique them. And start fact-checking the grifters who are lying to you.

Since you’re not going to watch the movie all the way through, I’m not going to read your article all the way through, and still feel comfortable telling you that you are a profound fool! You said that Lee Strobel and James Wallace are not credible witnesses, because, they would not be considered experts in the field of history. If you had chosen to be open minded to the idea that your philosophical presuppositions just might be wrong concerning the data that was presented in these scenes with Mr. Srobel and Detective Wallace, you would have heard Lee reference Gary Habermas who meets all the qualifications of a historian. If you deny this sir, you would innevitably beg the question of what are genuine qualifications for a historian, which I am confident that you would have an answer. However, I am also confident that your reasons for disqualifying Dr. Habermas as a genuine historian is due to your anti-supernatural bias. If you or anyone else is going to disqualify (or say they are disqualified) as a historian because of their belief in God, keep in mind that if the sword cuts, it cuts both ways! I personally don’t believe you are a qualified historian, because you are part of a minority that believes that Jesus, who is called Christ never existed in the first place, even though he is mentioned outside the Bible by 10 non-Christian sources within 150 years of his life! By contrast, that’s one more non-Christian source that mentions Tiberious Ceaser during the same 150 years. If you look at all these nin-Christian sources about what they say about Jesus, you get so many things mentioned about him that agree with the New Testament.

I also clicked on your link on what a qualified wittness would be. You would lose huge in court regarding your theory that Jesus was a myth!!! Thus, you say these men are unqualified as legitimate witnesses, even though if you want a fair trial about the historicity of the Jesus mentioned in the New Testament, the opposing party would have a heck of a lot more experts who would testify that there is more than enough evidence for the historicity if Jesus! Even those who DO NOT believe in the supernatural at all.

Some family and friends even.

Just out of curiosity is anyone in your family Christian?

Just for fun:

Who do you ‘debunk’/’disprove’/’expose’ Christian movies and books for and why?

People who want to know the truth. Because they want to know the truth. And fund my researching it for them.

Don’t you have more important things to do with your Ph.D.?

Certainly. Including my new series on ancient science. And my work in naturalist philosophy. And historical logic.

Although, people who want to know the truth, paid me tens of thousands of dollars to apply my Ph.D. in ancient histiry to the historicity question. That’s essentially a postdoctoral research grant. One of the main functions of getting a Ph.D.

Does it concern you that movies and books like God’s Not Dead 2 are converting people or strengthening their faith in God and Jesus?

Are they? I haven’t seen any data suggesting that. If people are persuaded to believe in Jesus by such crappy and illogical propaganda, that’s not a sign of anything good for the human race.

Totally unrelated but have you heard about or studied the supposed gospel of Judas?

Yes. It’s an example of how most literature Christians produced was fake. Including countless fake Gospels.

Last question, have you read the bible?

Yes. Every word. Cover to cover. And the New Testament, even in the original Greek.

P.S. For those who want to know what, for example, the qualifications are of persons like Lüdemann or Bart Ehrman, Google them. They will have Wikipedia pages or personal or university pages that tell you their educational background (you can also look for their “cv” or “curriculum vitae” online). Degrees in divinity or theology are not history degrees, certainly not in the sense of training a historian. Degrees in Early Christianity or New Testament Studies and the like, are. Those do often have certain deficiencies, with respect to straight up history degrees, but you can’t tell just from the name of the degree. It depends on the school and the student’s chosen concentrations. Ehrman has, so far as I can tell, no graduate degrees in history, only a masters in divinity and a Ph.D. in theology. But he concentrated in paleography and textual criticism, which is a branch of history. So one might say that’s 50/50.

The lifespan of writers is relevant because they could have met witnesses much earlier than when they wrote down the stories.

I agree the genre is not useful for determining reliability, but it is useful for determining the intent of the author and the expected reaction. Specifically, when the gospel authors frequently change ‘historical’ claims found in earlier gospels, without explaining why their version is true or the previously known version is in error, that is strange if the genre is history. Because the author would expect sophisticated readers to wonder why they don’t agree with the previous works. But if the genre is religious fable, this is just what we would expect.