A new study that ran the Drake Equation with a proper sampling of uncertainty (something no one had done before, oddly) has found there is credibly a 38% chance humans are the only civilization in the entire known universe; and a 52% chance we are the only...
Five years ago I took Michael Shermer to task for pushing pseudoscience in his bungled attempt to argue (in agreement with Sam Harris and myself) that moral philosophy could and should be retooled into a proper empirical science, the same way every other philosophical...
Part 2. I just addressed Plantinga’s ontological and metaphysical arguments (A through I). Here I cover his epistemological arguments (J through Q). Next I’ll cover his moral and other arguments (R through Z). I’ll link those in when they go up. For...
Famously, Christian apologist Alvin Plantinga once posted a lecture guide online outlining dozens of arguments for the existence of God (which was built-out a little bit in a book, and will evolve soon into an edited volume of its own). I’m often pointed to it...
Years back George Dvorsky wrote a popular article at io9 titled “8 Great Philosophical Questions We’ll Never Solve.” It’s interesting because all eight are triggers for the same cognitive biases sustaining irrational theistic belief. Is it true...
You remember a while back when I dared to call Alvin Plantinga a terrible philosopher spewing pseudoscience? (Plantinga’s Tiger and Other Stupid Shit) Soon after, the Christian presuppositionalist Josh Sommer was having none of that. So he wrote three whole...
I began my critique of Keller’s The Reason for God with an exposé of everything up through Chapter 1, then Chapter 2, and Chapters 3 through 5. Here I will cover Chapter 6 (and next 7). I’ll continue to other chapters in future installments. In these two...
At futurism.com, there is a brief article explaining why the universe is mathematical, by saying, essentially just, that’s what we invented math for, to explain the universe. But this isn’t really an answer to the question. Theists have long used the lack...
A few years ago a hyper-religious Catholic chemist with no history credentials wrote a face-palming article at Strange Notions that repeats an all-too-common myth Christians love to sell today: that science was “stillborn” in antiquity, and only a...
The rolling shit show that is the Trump administration, and his Trumpish ilk in Congress, produces a lot of shock, horror, and tripe. But what if we examine a single little issue that a lot of people don’t know much about: school nutrition. We’ll find a...
My talk entitled “Philosophy’s Not Dead: Why Scientists Need Philosophy & How Philosophers Need Science,” with Q&A after and the selling and signing of my books, will be delivered on Tuesday, February 21 (2017) from 11:30am-12:30pm in 107...
I once wrote about how we aren’t really doomed, per se. Things could get bad, even really bad, owing to climate change and irrational energy and environmental policies, even economic crashes, even war, even worldwide NBC war. But it won’t be an apocalypse....
In 1970, David Hackett Fischer published a meaty and entertaining book, Historian’s Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (well and briefly reviewed by Philip Jenkins at Patheos). I highly recommend it. He’s funny, but correct. It’s not a...
Everyone agrees multiverse theory refutes any fine tuning argument for God. Because on a standard multiverse theory (e.g. eternal inflation), all configurations of physical universes will be realized eventually, and therefore the improbability of any of them is...
I’ll be announcing the events along the Richard Carrier Exists Tour as they are finalized. Second in is Omaha, Nebraska. That’s my fourth stop on the move across country. And that’s Friday night, May 27. Come verify my historicity!...
A good interview with me has gone up at Atheistically Speaking with Thomas Smith (“Taking a clear, rational look at atheism and surrounding issues!”). It’s episode 202, “Dr. Richard Carrier on EvoPsych.” The description: Is 90% of all Evo...
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.