Cover of Raphael Lataster's new book There Was No Jesus, There Is No God. Cover art looks like an artist's rendering of blue spacedust and a black hole sucking everything in.I have a request for all my readers. There is a new book summarizing a case that Jesus might not have existed, which has received some positive reviews (from the Arizona Atheist and John Loftus; also reader reviews at Amazon), and some predictably negative ones (from the nefarious Christian apologist J.P. Holding, whose promised Part 2 does not seem to have materialized yet, and an even longer harangue by Nick Peters).

The book I’m talking about was published by a doctoral student in religious studies, Raphael Lataster (more on the soon-to-be Dr. Lataster here), and entitled There Was No Jesus, There Is No God: A Scholarly Examination of the Scientific, Historical, and Philosophical Evidence & Arguments for Monotheism, based on his master’s thesis. The finished book you can buy for a very reasonable price. I have not had (and likely won’t have) the time to thoroughly vet the book, much less check it against the copious Christian apologetical attacks on it (by Holding and Peters, linked above). I did read enough to note that there were some problems with it, but I’m curious to know if those were the only ones, and if anyone else would notice them (so I won’t mention them now).

The book actually is in two parts, despite being quite a short read. The second part summarizes a case against traditional arguments for theism generally (not the historicity of Jesus specifically), and some of the approaches there are novel. And humorous. So even if you aren’t interested in the historicity debate, you might be interested in Lataster’s approach to debunking theism and theistic apologetics more generally. Moreover, in both parts he adapts my work to argue from a Bayesian perspective, which may interest yet more readers keen to test that out.

So I’d like as many of my readers as seem inclined to read either or both parts of Lataster’s book and comment here on what they think, positive or negative. Though if negative, please give Lataster a hand by being specific so he has a chance to revise the work for a second edition, which I know he is interested in doing. This is basically my way of crowdsourcing an opinion and assessment of this book, since I haven’t the time to study it thoroughly myself. I’d especially love it if anyone compared their reading of Lataster’s book with its Christian critics, as linked above (quite a task, as their critiques are very long, and possibly tedious and frustrating, if history serves, so I’ll be especially impressed by anyone who voluntarily endures that and reports back here on their findings). Are the Christians being fair? Or are they doing a hatchet job? Specific examples of either would be helpful to Lataster.

Note: I am about to head out for Skepticon, where I’ll be AFK much of the time, so comments that post here might not go live until middle of next week. But rest assured they will be appreciated, and will post eventually (as long as they are polite and on topic).

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