Select the book(s) that discuss the general topic(s) you are most interested in (e.g. Entities for ghosts etc.). But in general there is no way to force rank them. They simply represent a collection of all his investigations over several decades. It’s basically like one multi-volume book.

You said at the debate that Joe Nickell had some good books to read. I looked those up and it seems that Nickell has made almost 30 books. Would you like to recommned some of them that you have read? Of course, I’m interested about the books that talk about religion or miracles.

Ah, I see. You have been misled by specious bible translations. The relevant verse is Mark 7:2 which reads in Greek:

kai idontes tinas tôn mathêtôn autou hoti koinais chersin tout estin aniptois esthiousin tous artous

Which translate literally as:

and / they were seeing / some / of his disciples / that / with defiled hands / that is, unwashed [hands] / they ate / their bread.

The key word “unwashed” is aniptos (likewise again in Mark 7:5). It means what it says: unwashed.

The phrase “in the way” is nowhere in the text. Even the next verse reads only:

For / the Pharisees / and / all the Jews / if they do not wash / their hands / by fist / they do not eat / holding fast / the tradition / of the elders / and / when [they come] / from the marketplace / if they do not / cleanse themselves / they do not eat / and / many / other things / there are / which they have received / to hold fast to: / washing / of cups / and / pots / and bronze vessels.

You will see no reference to the words your translation inserts. Those words simply aren’t there. The phrase “to the wrist” is a modern attempt to interpret “by fist” [dative of pugmê], the more direct meaning of which is that they wash their hands with their fists (i.e. the way we scrub our hands, enclosing one in the fist of the other), meaning they wash well. Note that the disciples are not said to have washed less well, but to not have washed at all.

Hence what is being described is simply washing their hands, which “some of the disciples” weren’t doing–their hands were “unwashed” (notably, the tradition Jesus goes on to denounce here included washing your cooking and drinking utensils, too, cf. Mark 7:4, another obvious vector for germs that Jesus was evidently unaware of).

i will first quote this translation:

“““Some Pharisees and teachers of the Law who had come from Jerusalem gathered round Jesus. They noticed that some of his disciples were eating their food with hands which were ritually unclean – that is, they had not washed them in the way the Pharisees said people should” (Mark 7:1-2)”

some christian aplogists assume that the hands were CLEAN , but NOT CLEAN in the way the pharisees wanted them i.e “ritually clean”

note in the above translation “… NOT WASHED THEM in the WAY THE pharisees….”

youngs literal

HERE IS YOUNGS literal

1Then come unto Jesus do they from Jerusalem — scribes and Pharisees — saying, 2‘Wherefore do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they do not wash their hands when they may eat bread.’ 3
And gathered together unto him are the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, having come from Jerusalem,
2and having seen certain of his disciples with defiled hands — that is, unwashed — eating bread, they found fault

for the Pharisees, and all the Jews, if they do not wash the hands to the wrist, do not eat, holding the tradition of the elders, 4and, [coming] from the market-place, if they do not baptize themselves…

5Then question him do the Pharisees and the scribes, ‘Wherefore do thy disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but with unwashed hands do eat the bread?’

so does youngs translation support the claim that the HANDS WERE LITERALLY dirty? please explain

thank you

I’m not sure what you are saying. The facts are:

Pharisees assiduously washed their hands before meals.

Jesus’ disciples did not.

The Pharisees asked Jesus why.

Jesus said there was no reason to wash hands before meals.

Factually, Jesus is wrong.

Had Jesus known about germs he would have said everyone, his disciples included, really should wash their hands, and not because it was tradition, but because it would save lives and improve health.

Therefore, Jesus did not know about germs.

God would know about germs.

Therefore, Jesus was neither God nor in communication with God.

i left it here

http://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/3195

and it is still awaiting moderation

here is what i wanted to know

you recently had a debate with david marshall

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/richard-carrier-vs-david-marshall-is.html

you talked about hand washing and jesus

i will quote the relevant verses

1Then come unto Jesus do they from Jerusalem — scribes and Pharisees — saying, 2‘Wherefore do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they do not wash their hands when they may eat bread.’ 3
And gathered together unto him are the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, having come from Jerusalem, 2and having seen certain of his disciples with defiled hands — that is, unwashed — eating bread, they found fault
for the Pharisees, and all the Jews, if they do not wash the hands to the wrist, do not eat, holding the tradition of the elders, 4and, [coming] from the market-place, if they do not baptize themselves…
5Then question him do the Pharisees and the scribes, ‘Wherefore do thy disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but with unwashed hands do eat the bread?’
15And Peter answering said to him…that all that is going into the mouth doth pass into the belly, and into the drain is cast forth? 18but the things coming forth from the mouth from the heart do come forth, and these defile the man
And Peter answering said to him, ‘Explain to us this simile.’ 16And Jesus said, ‘Are ye also yet without understanding? 17do ye not understand that all that is going into the mouth doth pass into the belly, and into the drain is cast forth? 18but the things coming forth from the mouth from the heart do come forth, and these defile the man; 19for out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, whoredoms, thefts, false witnessings, evil speakings: 20these are the things defiling the man; but to eat with unwashen hands doth not defile the man.’

me:

notice that only a religious issue is at stake and jesus SEES NO OTHER REASON for washing hands before meals?
notice that jesus could only SEE ritual within the practice and nothing else?

notice that he agrees that it is NOT IMPORTANT to wash ones hands? notice that the deciples with unclean hands would continue to eat with unclean hands because of jesus’ response to the pharisees? jesus gave them an escuse to keep thier hands dirty and continue to eat because according to jesus’ logic it is not IMPORTANT to clean hands before meals.

“Jesus never gave any good advice reflecting what is known now but was not known then. So Jesus should have been saying that it’s important to have clean hands to avoid contaminated or being contaminated, but not just to follow a ritual mindlessly.”

but then there a christians who say that it is not talking about “literally dirty hands” but…

i quote:

“the word translated as defiled or unwashed (you know, you put it in caps–that means you are right!) is defiled or unwashed in the ceremonial or purification sense. Likewise people were, for various reasons, told to ceremonially wash themselves not because they were literally dirty but because it was a purification right”

i don’t know anything about the greek and i have questions about this

can the greek word used refer to LITERALLY dirty hands?
Mark 7:1 The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and 2saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were “unclean,” that is, UNWASHED.
so the pharisees OBSERVED literally dirty hands, right?

Thanks. Yes! For the video now see here.

IF the universe had an absolute beginning, that means it must have arisen from “nothing”, and they would dismiss the quantum wave function hypothesis because that is already “something”, which in turn would require an explanation and is incompatible with the “absolute beginning” conclusion previously established.

God is not nothing either. So the competing hypotheses are “God” or “quantum wave function.” The latter is vastly simpler and has vastly more background evidence in its support (indeed, it requires positing no new entities not already observed).

Any argument that “but God must have existed then” will also go to prove “but the quantum wave function must have existed then” or whatever else one proposes.

That’s why the Kalam lacks any logical syllogism that gets from “there was a first cause” to “that cause was a personal being.” Hence, it’s not a logically sound argument. It’s just hand waving.

But one can even keep beating the dead horse, since time cannot even in principle have a cause. Causation being by definition temporally prior to its effect–and if you abandon that and allow causes to be simultaneous to their effects, the first-cause argument goes out the window, since if simultaneity can obtain, then that entails just positing a first thing, which exists in the first moment of time and not before it, which eliminates any syllogism that gets to god as having to be that first thing. And then there’s the fact that we have no evidence that there was a first moment of time (the Hawking-Penrose theorem was refuted by Hawking and Penrose themselves decades ago). And so on.

Kalam is just nonsense on stilts. Anyway, my refutation summarizes all this and more in briefer space in the Carrier-Wanchick debate (search “KCA” here and here).

One thing that immediately caught my eye in Marshall’s comments was the extent to which some of his arguments depended on the reliability of personal testimonials. But unfortunately, we all know from the multiple examples provided by both young-Earth creationists and Intelligent Design creationists that Christian apologists frequently can’t be trusted to tell the truth. And anyone who has read Marshall’s book on the new atheism knows that Marshall in particular can’t be trusted to tell the truth.

Here’s just one example of his “truths behind the new atheism.”

1. Marshall falsely accuses Dawkins of being inconsistent in claiming that the search for irreducible complexity (IC) is both scientific and unscientific. (p. 63)

Marshall concocted this false accusation by taking Dawkins’ statements out of context. Dawkins’ actual argument is that IC is: (i) scientifically relevant in trying to *falsify evolution;* but (ii) scientifically irrelevant in trying to *prove ID.* Since Dawkins’ two statements relate to two different functions (disproof vs. proof) and two different theories (evo vs. ID), it’s obvious that they are no more inconsistent than reporting that the Yankees won their first game and lost their second game. Those baseball scores are not logically inconsistent, because they refer to two different contexts. Dawkins’ statements are not logically inconsistent either, for exactly the same reason.

Interestingly, when Marshall was challenged on this point in another forum, he defended his false accusation by concocting yet another falsehood, claiming that Dawkins had basically said that it’s OK for evos to point to biological structures that disconfirm evolution, but not for creationists to do the same thing. Marshall never provided a citation for this remarkable claim, perhaps because he knows it’s an outright falsehood, just as his original accusation was.

Incidents that make Marshall look like an unrepentant, serial liar.

A list of 30+ additional, blatant falsehoods or other misleading arguments from Marshall’s book on the new atheism can be found here.

http://www.amazon.com/forum/religion/ref=cm_cd_pg_pg1?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx1M9TK6UGAX6EO&cdPage=1&cdThread=Tx3UCB48O3G6426

Marshall has known about most, if not all, of these allegations for years, and yet as far as I know, he has not responded to a single one in any substantive manner. (He did refuse to provide a supporting reference for a couple of challenged statements, but I don’t think refusing to provide supporting documentation counts as a “substantive” response.)

In any event, when someone routinely resorts to blatant falsehoods and then turns around and argues for the reliability of personal testimonials, that doesn’t strike me as a very convincing argument.