Oh No! Biogenesis Is Impossible?? A Case Study in Creationist Lies

I’ve written on biogenesis before (and before that). It’s even one of the subjects in philosophy in which I’ve had peer reviewed research published. And I have a whole section on it in Sense and Goodness without God, my survey of naturalism as a...

You Might Want to Follow Me on Social Media

I just updated my social media guide. And it’s been a while, so you might want to check that out. It explains in more detail the differences among what I publish on my various social media and how to take advantage of that. Because only watching my blog or...

Imperial Roman Economics as an Example of an Overthrown Consensus

My dissertation advisor at Columbia University was William V. Harris, who employed his own Ph.D. in straightforward political history to cultivate a wide range of specializations in ancient Roman history, ranging from dream culture to history of emotions, to ancient...

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...

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...

The Original Scriptural Concept of ‘The Lord’ Jesus

I recently realized a minor underlying fact in the background knowledge I laid out in my peer-reviewed book On the Historicity of Jesus has gone unnoticed. It seems trivial to me, but too many things do. I realize this stuff I take for granted is really shocking or...

Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Christianity: The First Three Hundred Years

This is part two of my series on Diarmaid MacCulloch’s book and BBC series A History of Christianity, or as the book is sometimes titled, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, referring to the fact that Christianity evolved out of trends that began a...

Diarmaid MacCulloch’s BBC Series on the History of Christianity

I’ve been asked a lot about Diarmaid MacCulloch’s book and BBC series A History of Christianity, or as the book is sometimes titled, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, referring to the fact that Christianity evolved out of trends that began a...

Crucifixion Quake! An Unusual Movie about an Unusual Passion

Years ago I sat for a day of interviews for a film by Marco Bazzi about a geologist obsessed with the alleged earthquake at the time of Christ’s death. The resulting movie is now available (you can find it in most of the usual places, including Amazon Prime or...

A Vital Primer on Media Literacy

I am getting asked the same question far too much lately: “What is your take on [x]; it seems pretty convincing; how do we know it’s not reliable?” Where [x] will be some crank on the internet, some ridiculous news headline, some random article...

The Bogus Idea of the Bogus Mysteries of Consciousness

I’ve been asked to comment on Peter Hacker’s bizarre claim that qualia don’t exist in his arrogantly braggish essay “The Bogus Mysteries of Consciousness.” So here goes. Say What Now? First, what are qualia? If you’re new to the...