The False Trichotomy of Lord, Liar, or Lunatic
C.S. Lewis may have been the worst philosopher of the twentieth century. Worse even than his contemporary Ayn Rand. And that’s saying something; because she was pretty bad at it. Weirdly, he was an even worse historian. As Bart Ehrman put it, “The problem...Justin Brierley and the Folly of Christianity
This is the final entry in my series on Justin Brierley’s book Unbelievable? Why After Ten Years of Talking with Atheists, I’m Still a Christian. You can read my general summary of this book; where also at the bottom is a TOC linking to all the follow-ups, in...Justin Brierley on Jesus
Justin Brierley starts his discussion of the historical facts of Jesus by quoting H.G. Wells (p. 94), someone who had no degrees in history, and only remarked upon the historical effect on Well’s era of the literary character of Jesus, and merely presuming the...Justin Brierley and the Meaning of Life
“These are the reasons,” Justin Brierley says, “that I believe God is the best explanation of human existence, value and purpose” (p. 93). What reasons does he mean? Really, nothing more than a repeated confusion between the obvious natural...Unbelievable: Justin Brierley’s Epistemic Failure
Justin Brierley is an excellent host in Christian broadcasting. I’ve been on his show several times, including in person, when ironically I was an American visiting Brierley’s studio in London discussing the historicity of Jesus on a call with Mark...An Anatomy of Contemporary Right-Wing Delusions
I recently analyzed for a client the crazy rant of Chilean conservative thinktanker Axel Kaiser in “This Could End in Civil War” and realized this is a paradigmatic model of all contemporary right-wing delusionality and I should blog it. I covered a different...Erik Wielenberg and How Atheists Keep Missing the Point of Grounding Morality
In 2009 philosopher Erik Wielenberg published “In Defense of Non-Natural, Non-Theistic Moral Realism” in the journal Faith and Philosophy. The abstract claims: Many believe that objective morality requires a theistic foundation. I maintain that there are...On Jonathan McLatchie’s Objections to Jesus Mythicism
Last week I addressed a lame Christian apologist’s travesty of an attempt to denounce and villify doubts that Jesus existed (On Paul Krause’s Objections to Jesus Mythicism). This week I will address a more competent attempt, by another Christian apologist,...More Hosing of Thought Experiments: Pereboom’s Manipulation Argument Against Causal-Chain Free Will
I’ve been asked to discuss what’s wrong with Derk Pereboom’s so-called “Manipulation Argument” (or “Four Case”) argument against Compatibilism, which is of course the view that causal determinism is compatible with free will....Is Society Going to Collapse in 20 Years?
There is much discussion of late (typically gullible) of a recent article claiming that a 1972 prediction of the collapse of civilization between 2040 and 2070 from “MIT” is “on track.” This is scam logic that needs to be called...How I’d Answer the 2020 PhilPapers Survey
After reviewing the new 2020 PhilPapers Survey, I can say none of my views have changed; while philosophy as a field has slowly crept more toward my views than not (see my previous article, The New 2020 PhilPapers Survey, which also covers my thoughts on some of the...The Argument to the Ontological Whatsit (and the Foolery of Frank Turek & Tricia Scribner)
Time for some traditional counter-apologetics this holiday season. Today I tackle a dumb Christian argument atheists often have a hard time even understanding (because it’s so dumb, they aren’t thinking dumbly enough to get it). Frank Turek (of I...Galatians 1:19, Ancient Grammar, and How to Evaluate Expert Testimony
In Sense and Goodness without God I discuss the evidence ladder (section II.3): reason (logic and mathematics), empirical science, personal experience, historical facts, expert testimony, plausible inference, and pure faith. I show that faith is too unreliable to have...What Does It Mean to Call Consciousness an Illusion?
A question is being asked a lot lately: how can the most prominent position held by scientists and philosophers be that consciousness doesn’t exist? Obviously consciousness exists. It’s literally the only thing you can know with absolute 100% certainty....The Objective Value Cascade
In the movie Serenity, the crew of a spaceship far in humanity’s future discover the lost planet Miranda, where they discover a dark secret: that a government drug used on its population to make them docile and compliant, actually removed all desires of any...Get Dr. Carrier’s Latest!
About the Author
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.
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