How to Correctly Employ Bayesian Probabilities to Describe Historical Reasoning (Jesus Edition)
I recently did a quick forty minute debate on the historicity of Jesus with Canadian Catholic (with James Is Tired capably moderating), which was remarkably content-rich for such a truncated timeline. The overall takeaway was that Canadian Catholic wasn’t...Debating the Authenticity of Daniel: A Discussion with Jonathan Sheffield
In May I published How We Know Daniel Is a Forgery and discussed a debate on the topic involving my Anglican friend Jonathan Sheffield, who has now produced an attempt at a rebuttal, his best case for Daniel being authentic after all. We have arranged to engage a...Jesus and the Problem of the Fraudulent Reference Class
Several students and patrons have lately asked me a similar question. Apparently the new fad is for Christians to go around insisting Jesus is so historically unique that he cannot be subsumed under any other reference class by which to estimate any prior odds on any...Postgame on My Pastor Damon Richardson Debate
Yesterday I debated Pastor Damon Richardson, “the Urban Apologist,” on the Dagger Squad Show (18 June 2021). The topic: “Did Jesus Exist?” You can still purchase access to view the archived video of it by emailing a request to the host Brother...Come See Me & Others Speak at the 2021 International eConference on the Historical Jesus!
The Global Center for Religious Research (GCRR) is hosting the 2021 International eConference on the Historical Jesus next month, July 24–25. I will be among the presenters. Registration is super affordable, only $15. Which is even discounted for GCRR members (a...Why You Should Not Believe the Apostle John Wrote the Last Gospel
This month I have been showcasing how apologetics is fundamentally bankrupt methodologically. It depends on fallacious reasoning, held up as sound and professional, yet which adheres to the methods of no actual legitimate academic field—except those very fields...How We Know Daniel Is a Forgery
Even the historicity of Daniel the man is dubious. Unlike other prophets, he has no patronymic, profession, or place of origin, and he first appears in historical records when “Ezekiel the priest, the son of Buzi, by the Kebar River in the land of the...Hitler’s Table Talk: The Definitive Account
I have written many times before on the strange history of my scholarly involvement in the so-called “Table Talk” of Adolf Hitler. The most prominent example is the inclusion of my peer reviewed article in German Studies Review, with a new epilogue and...No, Christianity Was Not Invented in the 4th Century
And yes. We know that for a fact. Like QAnon, which is a new secular religion spreading, quite bizarrely, across the globe, I have noticed another strange conspiracy theory gaining popularity and spreading worldwide: the belief that Christianity was invented in the...The Korean “Comfort Women” Dust-Up and the Function of Peer Review in History
It’s not common that major, respected academic journals exhibit a catastrophic failure in their peer review process. But it happens. Everything from creationist dribble to just about anything in any field has “slipped past” peer review protocols in...Should We Assume Jesus Was Historical? The Mythvision Carrier-MacDonald Debate
Dennis MacDonald and I have discussed the question of Jesus’s historicity many times over the years. These are among the most important kinds of discussions to have, as MacDonald isn’t a Christian apologist and actually agrees the Gospels are almost...A Few More Attempts to Rescue Jesus
A while ago I composed Historicity Big and Small: How Historians Try to Rescue Jesus, summarizing and categorizing the main arguments pushed in a kind of phylogeny. Here I will expand on that by adding a few more arguments, within the same scheme I constructed there....Some Problems with Modern Kemetic Mythology
There is a sub-category of Neopaganism today called Kemetism, or Egyptian Neopaganism. It is often heavily wrapped up in Black Supremacist or Afrocentrism movements. By analogy to Wicca, the most well-known variety of Neopaganism, which is based on a European pagan...“What Did Josephus Mean by That?” A Case Study in the Relationship between Evidence and Probability
I recently engaged a friendly debate with Dennis MacDonald on the MythVision podcast regarding the historicity of Jesus. Much of which was the usual stuff expected of a serious, expert, secular discussion of that question (follow the link to watch). I might blog about...How To Fabricate History: The Example of Eusebius on Alexandrian Christianity
As a fellow of the Westar Institute I recently attended a webcon on Eusebius, as part of their new project Seminar on the history of Christianity, and it was heartening to see their reliance on real historians and not just theologians and biblical scholars (all the...Get Dr. Carrier’s Latest!
About the Author
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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