Did the Reason for the Season even exist? Dive into that question with a new mobile app!
Reality Revolutions conceived an idea for a mobile application that would assist in quickly investigating every argument for and against the historical existence of Jesus. They then collaborated with me in developing its structure and content. The purpose? To house a complete catalog of every argument and item of evidence and make it all easy to find. And we’ve just begun building it. As such it will be continually updated to become and remain the most complete app for the purpose ever developed. Currently, it has no rival. It even includes an expandable Bayesian Calculator for users to test the consequences of their own assumptions in a valid application of probability theory. The calculator is user-programmable and can be used for anything, not just the historicity of Jesus. So that tool is valuable just by itself!
The app’s name is kind of a joke. But, to tell the truth, it’s also legitimately descriptive:
Christ’s
Historicity
Rebuttal and
Explanation
System:
Tools,
Utilities, and
Services.
For more information, see its affiliated website.
The app is available now at Google Play (for Android) and the iOS Store (for iPhone and iPad). It’s currently in a rough launch version. It has a lot of typos and needs more content and better organization, but those things are all being worked on as we speak. A wonderful update will load by the end of January. And the app will continue to expand after that. By the end of the next year it should contain every argument and item of evidence for and against the historicity of Jesus, easily located and briefed, with web links for further research. It will be the ultimate tool for exploring and debating the subject. It’s already a good way there.
So download it now! (Android | iOS) Noodle around in it, and send me suggestions for improving and expanding it (you don’t need to mention typos, though; we are already fixing those; and I will not reply to all suggestion emails sent, but I will read and act on them all the same!). And then enjoy the free perpetual updates heretofore.
The app isn’t available in my country. Is it only for US?
Which platform? (Android or iOS)
And which country?
We have it set for all nations on both platforms, so none should be excluded unless they are excluded from all apps. So if something isn’t working, we’d need to troubleshoot it. So we’d need to know which country and which OS.
Current countries for apps sold so far:
For Google:
USA
Canada
United Kingdom
South Korea
For Apple:
USA
Canada
UK
Australia
Colombia
Netherlands
Germany
Iceland
Platform: Android, country: Georgia
Thanks, Richard.
Okay. I found out Google Play does not sell apps in Georgia. Sadly. Here is the link listing all supported countries.
I love the idea. In addition to the calculator, could you add a completed calculation with all the odds from OHJ filled in? I’ve always wanted to play around with your numbers from the book to see just what quality of evidence would be needed to tip the scales.
We thought that would be too confusing to too many users, and we didn’t want to bias anyone by pre-loading my own categories and estimates. We want people to build those themselves…even if to replicate mine, the process you have to go through to build the same categories of evidence and rate them, is essential to understanding how to play around with them, and making clear how even more could be added, and what then to do with them. So it’s best if you just do that, and see if any difficulties or insights arise as you do.
It’s available here (Sweden, iOS). It’s pricey for an app, which makes sense given that it is a niche market. But I would highly recommend releasing a free ‘teaser’/’lite’ version that basically has most stuff removed but lets you navigate around and see what you get for your money. It’s just a lot more intuitive and tangible than reading about it, it’s very easy to do, and probably necessary for an app at this price (speaking as a developer).
I just moved into the 21st century and bought a smartphone. I was underwhelmed and regretting it, then I spotted this in the mail. Reason for the Season! Yeh!!!
All the Best from Blighty.
Just in time. I got an iTunes gift card from the family for Christmas! 🙂
The app should focus way more on the pesher angle and Paul.
Dr. Carrier, I would like to know your thoughts about this:
Fernando Conde Torrens, a Spanish engineer who, according to him, spent 24 years doing research (from 1992 to 2016), which can be found in his book, “Año 303. Inventan el Cristianismo” (“Year 303. Christianity is Invented” in Spanish). He learnt Greek, Hebrew and Latin and analysed books on ancient Christianity and arrived to a conclusion: Christianity was invented between the years 303 and 313 by Lactantius and Eusebius of Caesarea by order of Constantine.
Mr. Conde, who has no degrees in history or New Testament studies, claims that degrees and universities are not important, that what matters is if what he found is true or not. Hispanic media, which is VERY sensationalist, said that Conde dismantled 2000 years of history with his book, even though we all know that books like his have been around for quite a while.
He claims that the proofs he offers are irrefutable. One of those proofs is that he found the acrostic SIMON, which can be found in every chapter of the gospel of Mark, the gospel of John, in the Epistle of James, the three Epistles of John and in several other “fake Christian documents” (according to him). The word SIMON means “humbug”.
Of course, he says that there were no Christians before the IV century, that all texts that mention Christians (before the IV century) are total forgeries and, of course, that Jesus didn’t exist (personally, I don’t care about the last thing). He goes as far as saying that the Early Church Fathers (Justin Martyr, Origen and the others) never existed, they were invented by Lactantius and Eusebius in all the years they were active.
So far, no theologian, pastor or priest has responded to Fernando Conde Torrens. The only response we have comes from Dr. Antonio Piñero, from the University of Madrid, who has not read Conde’s book and said that he will not waste time doing such thing.
If you want to look for any information about him, you’ll only find things in Spanish.
Since you are a qualified historian, I would like to know your opinion about this man and his book. If you ask me, he is practically Joseph Atwill on steroids and his book is a total violation of Occam’s razor.
That’s total tinfoil hat. We have actual Christian manuscripts dating long before 303 (not texts, manuscripts; the actual physical objects). And he is proposing, based on crazy coincidence-finding (always a big red flag for lunacy), an unbelievably massive project of forgery, so massive as to be vastly improbable—including faking all the elaborate writings of Origen, Celsus, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Cyprian, and countless others, as well as the entire New Testament (complete with all its implausible contradictions, variant styles, and authors arguing against each other), and interpolating random passages in Lucian and Pliny and Marcus Aurelius and many others. It’s ridiculous.
Thanks for your reply, Dr. Carrier.
I always knew that people who base theories like this one on coincidence-finding (like Joseph Atwill) are most probably wrong.
Don’t forget a small detail: this “mass forgery” took place between the years 303 and 313, so, according to this man, Lactantius and Eusebius had plenty of time to write the New Testament, invent Jesus and the apostles, invent the Early Church Fathers, interpolate everything and do all the other things.
What is actually funny is that he insulted a user on a forum because that user showed that Conde was ignoring (he even admitted this) a quote from Suetonius in Life of Nero, where Christians are mentioned, and in Spanish, that quote is formed by only 15 words and it is a simple sentence, so there can be no hidden acrostics.
He said that the Rylands Library Papyrus P52 dating is wrong, and that its real dating is between the years 240 and 320, so it could perfectly have been written in the IV century, but that “propagandists don’t want the world to know the truth”.
Conde says that all scholars (Christians, Jews, agnostics like Dr. Piñero, atheists, etc) who don’t share his views are “blinded by the Christian fraud” and they are all “propagandists”. Yes, according to him, you are a propagandist blinded by the Christian fraud, and I am not joking.
Before I finish writing this comment, a friend of mine wants to know if he can post your opinion about Conde and his crank theory on his blog, because he wants people to know that engineers should work on their machines instead of trying to do history without any qualifications.
Best wishes,
Arthur
You can quote my remarks as long as you link to the original.
Hi, Richard. I bought the app a couple of years ago and review it occasionally. Good stuff. If you need free Spanish translation, just drop me a note.
iaq66@yahoo.com
WhatsApp +51 997754217
I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you.
You’re welcome. You know, in English there are plenty of chances to get good readings about this subject. However, in Spanish we have mainly books by Antonio Piñero and the likes, or translations from the Catholic German historicists, or the predictably conspiranoic titles à la Conde Torrens.
Indeed. Jesus from Outer Space is being translated into Spanish soon. And I am in discussions with a Spanish language publisher to possibly get others of my works published in Spanish. But getting an evolving app into Spanish is a much more challenging and difficult prospect. So I’ll keep it in mind, but there are many other hurdles I’d have to overcome for that in particular. But the books, definitely. There is already a website that translates a selection of my blogs, though, so in the meantime, I recommend using and promoting that: Mitos o Historia. Which now has a whole exchange with Piñero even.
When will the app be available on Google Play Store in UK?
You would have to ask the owner (the website has a Contact Us link). I do not even know what is involved in making that happen (and thus whether it is even plausible to do), and in any event, I do not own the app and am not involved in its production or sale (I only get a royalty). So you’d have to query that information from them.
As best I can tell, the app is gone from the Android store now. I am seeing this on a Pixel 8a, Android version 14.
That should have been fixed. Please do take a look now and report back if it’s still not there and I’ll inform the owner.