I began my critique of Keller’s The Reason for God with an exposé of everything up through Chapter 1, then Chapter 2, then Chapters 3 through 5, and Chapter 6. Here I will cover Chapter 7. Next will be Chapter 8. I’ll continue to other chapters in future...
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...
I began my critique of Keller’s The Reason for God with an exposé of everything up through Chapter 1. I continued with Chapter 2. Here I cover Chapters 3 through 5. Next will be Chapter 6. I’ll continue to other chapters in future installments. Today the...
I began my critique of Keller’s The Reason for God with an exposé of everything up through Chapter 1. Here I continue with Chapter 2. Next I’ll cover Chapters 3 through 5. I’ll continue to other chapters in future installments. Here the same themes...
It used to be C.S. Lewis. Then Josh McDowell. Then Lee Strobel. Now it’s Timothy Keller, whose The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (published in 2008) is the number one most read defense of Christianity. So here’s why it’s bunk....
This September, Mythicist Milwaukee will be putting on Mythinformation Con IV, always a fun and excellent conference. You’ll definitely want to go this year. Some of the Mythicist Milwaukee team traveled to Italy recently, and among much else, took some...
Let me dispel a common myth: no, Christianity did not bring the idea of charity to the Western world. The concept of charity and concern for the poor was already fully developed before the Christians borrowed the notion from their pagan and Jewish peers. It’s...
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...
Q is a hypothetical Gospel. The letter Q stands for Quelle, German for “Source.” It has long been a popular hypothesis, and it serves a lot of agendas well. But there is no evidence whatever for it. Q never existed. And there is no rational reason to believe it did....
So I went and saw it. Here’s a review. Read on, and enjoy your Easter week pondering the aesthetic merits of a film embedded with religious propaganda. I’ll remark on both, but my focus will be on the propaganda, and what this film tells us about how...
A few years ago, Sam Harris put on a contest, that awarded $2000 to the best essay critiquing his “moral landscape” theory of moral facts—and could have awarded them $20,000 had it convinced him. It didn’t. I agree it shouldn’t have. But...
In my book On the Historicity of Jesus, I covered pretty much every possible verse in the Epistles that any expert has ever tried to claim proves Jesus really lived. You can check yourself: it has a complete scripture index (pp. 661-71). And Chapter 11 rakes the whole...
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...
On whether Josephus actually ever mentioned Jesus, usually you hear people claim “the consensus is” or “such-and-such renowned Josephus expert said” that he did, so shut-up already, nothing more to see here, “move on!” Well, there...
Bayesian counter-apologetics is the method of using Bayesian logic to turn every argument for God into an argument against God, simply by understanding how the logic of evidence works, and then reintroducing all the evidence theists always leave out when they...
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.