Debating Historicity with Dennis MacDonald Today (Live Online)
Wednesday (23 May 2018) at 2:30pm Pacific, I’ll be having a cordial online debate on the historicity of Jesus with eminent scholar Dennis MacDonald on Pinecreek Doug’s YouTube Channel (where around that time the feed should appear, so save that link)....Historicity Big and Small: How Historians Try to Rescue Jesus
When the question of the historicity of Jesus comes up in an honest professional context, we are not asking whether the Gospel Jesus existed. All non-fundamentalist scholars agree that that Jesus never did exist. Christian apologetics is pseudo-history. No different...Dying-and-Rising Gods: It’s Pagan, Guys. Get Over It.
Easter this year lands most fittingly on April Fool’s Day. Because indeed, the resurrection of Jesus is akin to the greatest prank in history. Not because anyone actually faked it (though the evidence we have left, remains fully consistent with their having done...So What About Hannibal, Then?
This kind of argument has been tried again and again and again. I’ve discussed every one. (See Okay, So What about the Historicity of Spartacus?) It’s always of this form: P1. We should not doubt [x] existed. P2. The evidence for Jesus is better than for...C.H.R.E.S.T.U.S. for Christmas!
Did the Reason for the Season even exist? Dive into that question with a new mobile app! Reality Revolutions conceived an idea for a mobile application that would assist in quickly investigating every argument for and against the historical existence of Jesus. They...On the Historicity of Jesus: The Daniel Gullotta Review
Two academic reviews of On the Historicity of Jesus now exist: one positive by Raphael Lataster published in the Journal of Religious History (38.4, 2014, pp. 614-16); and one negative by Daniel Gullotta published in the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus...The Difference Between a Historian and an Apologist
Larry Hurtado’s latest foot-in-mouth affords a good opportunity to explain what the difference is between an apologist and a historian. Not in respect to their goals (apologists need to defend a position even when it’s false or indefensible; historians...The Bizarre Fugue of Larry Hurtado
Biblical historian Larry Hurtado went on a rant against mythicism recently. In which, once again, like nearly every other expert has done, all he does he give excuses for not reading the peer reviewed literature of his own field and (as one could then have predicted)...For the Existence of Jesus, Is the Principle of Contamination Invalid? Cavin & Colombetti vs. Law
A while back, Heythrop College professor of philosophy Stephen Law published a peer reviewed paper establishing that the Gospels actually undermine confidence in the historicity of Jesus owing to their inordinately fabulous nature (“Evidence, Miracles, and the...How Did Christianity Switch to a Historical Jesus?
If Jesus didn’t exist, if he was originally believed to have lived and died in outer space, how did our Christianity come to exist? How could an earthly Jesus just get invented like that, and the original view of him forgotten? That’s the question Jonathan...See Me in Canton, Michigan, with Robert Price!
Muslim YouTuber Ehteshaam Gulam has rescheduled his panel talk between him and Robert Price and myself for Saturday January 13 (2018). Tickets and details are now on EventBrite. Politics, religion, and pop culture will be the topic. Including current events, and...The Cosmic Seed of David
Nicholas Covington just produced an intersting article on the cosmic seed hypothesis that so vexes Jonathan Tweet (see Jonathan Tweet and the Jesus Debate). In Seed of David, Take Two, Covington makes two valuable points: he correctly frames the logic of the argument...How to Successfully Argue Jesus Existed (or Anything Else in the World)
In conjunction with my Critical Thinking course this month, and in light of a number of casual debates I’ve been in lately, I’ve drawn up this twelve step advice, which actually applies to all arguments for any conclusions in any subject whatever. But I’ll use...Jonathan Tweet and the Jesus Debate
My debate on the historicity of Jesus with atheist activist Jonathan Tweet is now available to view. I don’t find it very useful as debates go. Overall, we tried covering too many tangential things in too little time, and it became disorganized and hard to...Kristi Winters on the Historical Jesus: Part 2
Yesterday I pointed out the defects of Kristi Winters’ YouTube case for the historicity of Jesus in 2015. Her case then, mostly, was at least respectably mainstream and just uninformed about a lot of things. But then in 2016 and 2017 her videos on this subject...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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