Appearing in New York First Weekend of May!

I will be speaking at the The Secular Humanist Society of New York’s annual Day of Reason event on May 7th, at Stout NYC, 133 West 33rd St., in Manhattan, NY. The event starts with a luncheon at 12:00 noon. Talk begins at 1pm. Followed by Q&A and an...

Last Call: I’m Moving to Georgia!

One of my girlfriends and I are getting married (yes, we’re both still polyamorous; everyone always asks) and I’m moving to Georgia (yes, the other side of the country; the South; humid town; etcerera). This means this is the last chance for anyone in...

Do the ‘We’ Passages in Acts Indicate an Eyewitness Wrote It?

As I write an article on why historians no longer trust Acts, and now categorize it as mythography rather than history (though it emulates a history), I realize one question needs to be settled separately, because otherwise it’s just too tedious a digression:...

Twelve Books at Herculaneum That Could Change History

There is a fabulous ancient treasure still buried at Herculaneum in the Bay of Naples. It is an actual ancient library that has been locked under a veritable rock of volcanic ash since 79 A.D. It likely contains thousands of scrolls, comprising hundreds of books. As...

Three Common Confusions of Creationists

In response to some recent queries, and being reminded of some things in an old slideshow of mine, which accompanied a talk I gave in Humboldt some years ago (which was supposed to be my opening for a debate with a creationist; but the creationist bailed as soon as...

John MacDonald’s Bizarre Defense of a Historical Jesus

A few months ago, secular philosopher John MacDonald (a Vice President of Internet Infidels) wrote an article for The Secular Web, titled “Jesus Mythicism: Moral Influence vs. Vicarious Atonement—and Other Problems,” which he bills as “in part a...

New Video Course on New Testament Studies for Everyone!

I am gradually transitioning my online courses to a high-quality video-and-syllabus format through MythVision. The first to launch is my course on New Testament Studies for Everyone. You can check out a five-minute video describing that course and how it works. And...

A Primer on Successful vs. Bogus Methodology: Tim O’Neill Edition

Recently Tim O’Neill once again engaged his usual arrogantly dishonest methods and lied about the evidence in the very act of denouncing an actual expert (me) as incompetent, but in the process proving he was incompetent and I was not. Which is standard...

Bayesian Analysis of Shelley Park’s Uncanniness Thesis

Last month I launched my three-part series on analyzing peer-reviewed philosophy papers with my Bayesian Analysis of Faria Costa’s Theory of Group Agency, where I explain my process and how I selected the articles for review. Second up is “Uncomfortably...

Bayesian Analysis of Faria Costa’s Theory of Group Agency

Last September I ran a project testing the merits of peer-reviewed history articles, by selecting three articles at random and analyzing their methodology and its underlying Bayesian logic (because, really, all sound epistemic reasoning is Bayesian: see A Bayesian...

Chrissy Hansen on the Pre-Existent Jesus

It’s the growing consensus in Jesus studies now that the first Christians believed Jesus was the incarnation of a pre-existent celestial being. Even Bart Ehrman has gotten aboard this trend (see Bart Ehrman on How Jesus Became God); and even Larry Hurtado, who...

Robyn Faith Walsh and the Gospels as Literature

Robyn Faith Walsh, a professor of New Testament studies at the University of Miami with a Ph.D. in religious studies from Brown University, has recently hit the circuit promoting her “controversial” thesis (building on her dissertation at Brown) that the...