Bad Science: No, Atheism Does Not Cause Suicide

19 February 2014

More innumeracy for today: this religious apologist is claiming atheism causes suicide, and he cites a study that supposedly proves this, but both s/he and the study’s authors suck at numeracy and basic logic. I warned about this before (Innumeracy: A Fault to...

Komarnitsky: Required Reading on the Resurrection of Jesus

14 February 2014

Five years ago Kris Komarnitsky produced a well crafted book, Doubting Jesus’ Resurrection: What Happened in the Black Box? He has now extensively revised and updated it for the second edition, and that new version is now available, taking into account...

Magical Earthquake Ray Beams Caused the Shroud of Turin

13 February 2014

Oh, yeah, baby. Someone pointed out to me in a comment on another post that people are circulating a story now that some Italian scientists have “proved” that the Shroud of Turin is authentic because its carbon date was altered by neutron radiation from a...

On Bermejo-Rubio's Dispassionate Plea for a Historical Jesus

12 February 2014

Fernando Bermejo-Rubio is one of the most impressive new scholars in biblical studies. His work on the “quests” for the historical Jesus is paradigm-challenging and superb (see The Fiction of the Three Quests). It is thus no surprise that he would publish...

Slowly Spinning up the FTL again…

11 February 2014

I was on forced hiatus from my blog for over a week after FtBCon 2, due to a number of tech difficulties on the site and my being in studio all week recording (an exhausting and time consuming business). And then all the chores that were left undone (e.g. a major...

FtBCon 2: Philosophy for Everyone

2 February 2014

At 10am PST today (noon Central) I’ll be hosting the panel Philosophy for Everyone. Please tune in and watch. (The link to the video feed is the “Official Session Page,” down the right margin of the Lanyrd event page.) Questions can be directed to us...

Proving History Now an Audiobook!

30 January 2014

My 2012 book Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus is now available as an audio book. Much faster than we expected! As I did for all my other audiobooks, I voiced the text for Pitchstone Publishing. You can buy the audio edition...

What I'll Be Up to During FtBCon 2

29 January 2014

Lousy Cannuck had a great idea. He listed all the events this weekend he will be facilitating (and thus introducing and helping to run behind the scenes), “Okay,” he wrote, “I’ll admit it, I made this post mostly as a to-do list for my own purposes....

Another Update for FtBCon 2 This Weekend!

29 January 2014

I’ll be introducing yet another panel this weekend, featuring Kim Rippere and Julia Burke Secular Woman, who will discuss the trends and developments in 2013 at the intersection of social justice, feminism, and equality in the secular movement and beyond. Check it...

Update for FtBCon 2 This Weekend!

27 January 2014

The calendar for this weekend’s free online conference is available for perusal. It has undergone several additions and scheduling changes over the past few days, with even more speakers and panelists being added to the list (now counting over 93). Among which,...

FtBCon2: Free Online Conference Next Weekend!

24 January 2014

Remember when we had this amazing free online conference one weekend last year, with dozens of talks, panels, and speakers, that people all over the world could watch live? And ask questions in real time. And watch the recorded events ever after on YouTube. Well, get...

Hitler Homer Bible Christ: A Surprise New Book by Richard Carrier

21 January 2014

While waiting for Sheffield to finish and release On the Historicity of Jesus (the book everyone is waiting for, presently projected for late March or early April), I decided to produce my own anthology of all my published papers on history. That volume, Hitler Homer...

Consider the Poor

14 January 2014

Alex Gabriel has produced an excellent summary of “10 things atheist groups can do to take on class exclusion,” available at Alternet as “10 Ways to Make Sure the Atheist Movement Is Not Just for the Wealthy,” tagline, “Life without God...

A New Bayesian Calculator

8 January 2014

Bill Seymour has developed a new, more advanced Bayesian calculator for public use, and he would like people to beta test it and offer advice, or even develop it further. For this open-source Bayes’ Theorem calculator, Seymour writes: My intent was to find the middle...

Get Hug an Atheist to a Film Festival!

6 January 2014

Hug an Atheist is a great movie. If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s worth buying. Check out the Amazon customer reviews. Now it needs to get wider attention. The film’s director is running a crowdfunding campaign to get enough money to present it at...