This Thursday (April 2), tune in to hear me debate whether Jesus existed with Pastor Vocab Malone (from Urban Theologian Radio). You can then ask questions and get answers in almost real time! Tune in to Unbelievers Radio by 3pm PCT to get hear it go down and get in on the action. It should be amicable and interesting. Spread the news, too. They would love to get lots of audience questions. Details here. Live stream here.
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Richard Carrier is the author of many books and numerous articles online and in print. His avid readers span the world from Hong Kong to Poland. With a Ph.D. in ancient history from Columbia University, he specializes in the modern philosophy of naturalism and humanism, and the origins of Christianity and the intellectual history of Greece and Rome, with particular expertise in ancient philosophy, science and technology. He is also a noted defender of scientific and moral realism, Bayesian reasoning, and historical methods.
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Will you write a post about what you thought of the debate and some of the thing that the pastor got wrong if you did not respond to them in the debate ?
Maybe. But I do so many of these things, any such post is usually redundant. My book or existing blog posts already cover anything worse saying usually. But not always. Hence my post on the Waters-Carrier SBL debate.
I might not be able to listen live (i need to work out what PCT is in Pounds Sterling) but I will definitely catch up.
I’m going to sound like a bit of a fanboi now but I’ve been following your debates on youtube for about 18 months.
last night I watched a debate that was posted 6th Feb 2015 (sorry , there are no details of where and when on the youtube post) and it was the best form I’ve seen you in so far. Two Christians literally left speechless and trying to pass the mike to each other for a response.
You really seem to have grown in to the subject and the confidence you have in debating it is shining through.
I hope you keep on enjoying it as much as you seem to be.
Another debate with a Christian apologist. Sad to see, since this must mean you’re having trouble finding historians and biblical scholars that are willing to discuss the issue with you. Anyway, good luck!
Well, to be fair, I don’t pick my opponents or arrange debates at all. Others do, and then ask me. Debate isn’t really an actual thing in academia. It’s considered entertainment or sport more than the productive advancement of learning. So it’s never really arranged by academics themselves. Always by someone else who wants to put on a show, and they hire or wheedle the academics to show up. So the decision is more in the hands of who wants the show. And then who they can afford or just happen to get lucky enough to find who actually has time and doesn’t think debates are a vulgar waste of a scholar’s time.
Even the SBL chose to set me against Waters, who is both a biblical scholar and an apologist. I had no say in that decision.
Only Canada has come through. Ottawa went out of its way to find an atheist professor of NT studies (Crook), which made that the most useful debate on the subject yet. Regina did the same (Arnal) and he ended up pretty much almost agreeing with me (he admitted he had trouble finding fault with my case, at least with respect to historicity agnosticism).
I actually found the Goodacre and Horn debates to be on par with the Crook debate. I would love to see a 2nd round of you and Mark Goodacre, on Unbelievable?, as the host promised at the time. Haven’t you been invited back? They’ve been having some rather poor non-Christian guests lately.
Maybe in future. Goodacre is very busy. He has several projects of his own he’s working to get out. But certainly write the Unbelievable host about your interest in that. The more letters they receive, the more motivated they will be to pull something like that together again.
(I think it would be funny if Goodacre went to London and we did a show with him in the studio and me phoning in!)
That was surprisingly enjoyable. After Malone gave his background, I was skeptical he’d have anything worthwhile to say, but when he spoke it sounded as if, if he didn’t know his stuff, he was at least on his way to knowing his stuff. I’d say even better than that guy who thought the Egyptians recorded the parting of the Red Sea. Good rap too. Not as good as when Bill Craig and Flavor Flav tag-teamed Peter Atkins back in ’86 (including the painful five minute silence that followed Atkin’s first N-bomb), but certainly better than when Sam Harris poetry slammed his letters to a Christian Nation (though I did love Dennett in the background on didgeridoo).