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...
As an Amazon Associate I earn commissions on sales I recommend, so if you want to buy some books for folks as gifts for Christmas, Solstice, Ragnarsday, or the Ascension of the Pink Unicorn, or any such thing that might be coming right soon, check out my...
In my experience, maybe 90% of the time when someone says they can prove something true with a logical syllogism, the syllogism they present is hopelessly fallacious. There seems to be a ubiquitous failure mode caused by a popular belief that syllogisms can prove...
“Since all events are causally determined, and we don’t control our past, then we don’t control our future, and if we don’t control our future we have no free will.” The argument is compelling, but fallacious: it depends on an...
Many have been asking about the fantastic and intriguing cover art to my new book Jesus from Outer Space. It’s an original painting by artist Rena Davonne. It’s intentionally psychedelic-conceptual, in keeping with the mystical and hallucinatory origins of the...
There are two common modern myths about the Bible, one conservative, the other liberal. The liberal myth is that the Bible never condemns homosexuality. In fact it clearly does, both in the Old Testament and the New. The conservative myth is that the Bible condemns...
No matter the time of year, either Easter or Christmas or some other Holy Day is coming! Learn how to critically examine the Book that these celebrations almost loosely aren’t based on. The best fake news ever. Master how to debate and understand the Christian...
Tooling around looking for lists of “unsolved problems” in philosophy I must admit the best list that’s most easily found online is Wikipedia’s. I realized for general benefit I should write up how my worldview addresses these. I’ve...
I’ve written before about the importance and methodology of thought experiments, and how they are often screwed up even by professional philosophers (see On Hosing Thought Experiments). Today I’m going to pull a page out of the history of science to...
In my debate with Craig Evans, one of the strange arguments he attempted was the Argument from Verisimilitude, whereby he says we should believe any story that’s dressed up in a realistic background. In my original Analysis of the Carrier-Evans Debate, I...
So. You know. Zardoz. That dystopian 70s movie everyone hates because it’s so fucking weird. “It depicts,” as Wikipedia describes it, “a post apocalyptic world where barbarians worship a stone god called ‘Zardoz’ that grants them...
Years ago as part of my postdoc research for On the Historicity of Jesus I published a peer reviewed article in Vigiliae Christianae presenting the case (advanced under peer review by a few other scholars before me) that the single line about “Christ” in...
My new book is available in kindle and print (audio is still in production but should arrive before 2022): Jesus from Outer Space: What the Earliest Christians Really Believed about Christ. Copies have already gone out to reviewers, and one is already scheduled to...
Usually I don’t have to argue this because it’s obvious. But there are a few who have attempted to contend that early Christians—say, before the fourth century—never took the Gospels as factually true reports of events but only as allegorical...
I now have nine courses offered every month (follow link for the complete list and how to register). The latest added, starting this October 1, will inform you on a dozen things you probably didn’t know about ancient science and technology and how close it came...
Based on Richard Carrier’s Columbia University dissertation and now published as a book, this course will astound you with what ancient scientists thought and accomplished and how they laid the groundwork for modern science, to be recovered and built upon only after a...
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.