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)...
My new book The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire will be in print in just a few days! You can already pre-order it in print or kindle. But in celebration and promotion, I’m here producing an excerpt from it. You can read a bit more about the book at...
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...
Want to study the Reason for the Season this December? Christmas is coming! So you should know how to critically examine the Book that it sort of almost loosely isn’t based on. The best fake news ever. Master how to debate and understand the Bible skeptically...
I’ve been on the road, all across the U.S. and Canada, for almost four months now. I’ve driven across it many times before that. For years. I’ve logged tens of thousands of miles of driving along our nation’s greatest and smallest highways. And...
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...
An article at Vox argues that environmental disasters destroyed the Roman Empire: “6 Ways Climate Change and Disease Helped Topple the Roman Empire,” by Kyle Harper, a professor of classics, whose article summarizes his book The Fate of Rome: Climate,...
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...
I’ve been invited to give a presentation on ancient science by The Center for Science and Wonder in Las Vegas (Nevada), this November 1 (Wednesday), from 7-9pm. I will of course have books to sell and sign. And I’ll be hanging out til late to chat and...
Starting November 1, I will be teaching online my course on the historicity of Jesus! If you want to really master this subject, and learn the best arguments and evidence for both sides of that debate; if you want to learn how to critique and destroy mythicism, or...
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...
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...
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...
For Sacramento Freethought Day I’ll be selling and signing my books at The Hotel Bar on 1501 L Street, right across from the corner of Capitol Park by the festival (15th & L), from 2-5pm, this Sunday (15 October; and I’ll even be happy to stay later if you can’t...
This fourth Mythinformation Con was fascinating, and overall quite excellent, even when it was disturbingly bizarre (video here). Most readers might want to know my take on the strange hour and a half of anti-feminist cult leader Sargon of Akkad battling feminist...
You’d have to pay me to waste my time on any of the millions of amateur Christian arguments on the internet. But of course, that being the case, occasionally someone actually does. A benefactor of mine wanted an expert take on the specious argumentation of a woman...
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.