On Evaluating Arguments from Consensus

8 May 2014

I have often been asked how we should evaluate arguments from consensus. That’s where someone says “the consensus of experts is that P, therefore we should agree P is true.” On the one hand, this looks like an Argument from Authority, a recognized...

If You Learn Nothing Else about Bayes’ Theorem, Let It Be This

26 April 2014

There are two things one learns from Bayes’ Theorem that are the windows to everything else Bayesian reasoning can ever teach you. And there is a lot it can teach you besides these two things. But here I’m cutting to the chase of the two that are most...

Hitler Homer Bible Christ Now an Audiobook

18 March 2014

My recent book Hitler Homer Bible Christ: The Historical Papers of Richard Carrier 1995-2013 is now available in audio format. As for all my other audiobooks, I voiced the text for Pitchstone Publishing. You can buy the audio edition of Hitler Homer now through...

Proving History Now an Audiobook!

30 January 2014

My 2012 book Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus is now available as an audio book. Much faster than we expected! As I did for all my other audiobooks, I voiced the text for Pitchstone Publishing. You can buy the audio edition...

Hitler Homer Bible Christ: A Surprise New Book by Richard Carrier

21 January 2014

While waiting for Sheffield to finish and release On the Historicity of Jesus (the book everyone is waiting for, presently projected for late March or early April), I decided to produce my own anthology of all my published papers on history. That volume, Hitler Homer...

Forgotten Books

21 October 2013

I’ve just been given membership to an online research site that you might want to join, too. It’s called Forgotten Books, an online warehouse of over a million books dating back to the 1500s, and all the way up to the 1940s, all image-over-text editions,...

Atwill’s Cranked-up Jesus

9 October 2013

Joseph Atwill is one of those crank mythers I often get conflated with. Mythicists like him make the job of serious scholars like me so much harder, because people see, hear, or read them and think their nonsense is what mythicism is. They make mythicism look...

Craig vs. Law on the Argument from Contamination

15 July 2013

In a recent attempt to rebut a peer reviewed philosophy paper by Stephen Law on the methodology of Jesus studies, which challenges the historicity of Jesus (hence my interest), William Lane Craig comes up with something so awful it would be worthy of a young earth...

A Well-Deserved Nod to Aviezer Tucker

24 June 2013

After I published Proving History a reader said I should check out Aviezer Tucker’s book Our Knowledge of the Past: A Philosophy of Historiography, since it appeared to back up the entire core thesis of my book. I am amazed and ashamed that I did not discover...

Brown Out: A Christian Reviews Proving History

14 June 2013

My latest book Proving History has been negatively reviewed by Kevin Brown (a Christian book reviewer [he has since deleted that post] who confesses he is “not a mathematician or historian by anyone’s standard,” although I must note that one only needs...

Miracles & Historical Method

4 December 2012

Video of my talk for this year’s Skepticon is now available on YouTube. See Miracles and Historical Method. Description: Carrier talks about how to think critically about history generally, using miracles as an entertaining example. Video of my talk for this...

Historicity News: Thallus et Alius

10 October 2012

I have a slew of things to report. I was thinking of doing some book reviews, for example, but I am not going to have the time. With my England trip coming up and my push to hunker down and finish On the Historicity of Jesus Christ, I will have much less time for...

Understanding Bayesian History

9 October 2012

So far I know of only two critiques of my argument in Proving History that actually exhibit signs of having read the book (all other critiques can be rebutted with three words: read the book; although in all honesty, even the two critiques that engage the book can be...

McGrath on Proving History

10 September 2012

James McGrath has reviewed my book Proving History. We’ve argued before (e.g. over claims Bart Ehrman made), so there is backstory. But his review is unexpectedly kind and praising at points, and he likes the overall project of explaining the underlying logic of...

Bad Science Proves Demigods Exist!

27 July 2012

Scientists prove Beowulf and the Iliad are true stories! Not. Sometimes scientists can be so clueless, you just want to pat them on the head and go “Aw, that’s so sad.” To get up to speed on this new silliness, check out John Bohannon’s article...

Ehrman on Jesus: A Failure of Facts and Logic

19 April 2012

Having completed and fully annotated Ehrman’s new book Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth (Harper 2012), I can officially say it is filled with factual errors, logical fallacies, and badly worded arguments. Moreover, it completely...