A Bayesian Analysis of Susannah Rees’s Ishtar-in-the-Manosphere Thesis
As an ongoing project I’ve selected three articles at random from among credible open-source journals in order to analyze their arguments in a way that makes clear their Bayesian structure, and what grasping this about them can tell us about sound historical...Empirical Logic and Romans 1:3
Paul’s statement in Romans 1:3 that Jesus had “come of the seed of David according to flesh” is one of the most commonly cited pieces of evidence for Paul believing Jesus had been an actual man walking around Palestine (see Argument from...We Do Need to Do Something about Global Warming
The headline of this article should be a no-brainer. But there are still too many people who think otherwise, causing little action to be taken, and who are thereby dragging the rest of us into hell—a problem recently made fun of in the movie Don’t Look...List of Historians Who Take Mythicism Seriously
There are legitimate reasons to doubt Jesus existed, even as a mundane man whose legend became exaggerated (which is, definitely, always plausible too). These reasons have survived peer review—twice. And yet a common fallacy deployed against this fact is that...Dennis MacDonald’s Change of Position
I mentioned in my last article (What I Said at the Brea Conference) that I first became aware there that Dennis MacDonald has switched from saying that doubting the historicity of Jesus was improbable but at least plausible, to insisting it’s not even plausible....What I Said at the Brea Conference
Earlier this year I presented at the Pacific regional Society of Biblical Literature conference. My paper’s title in the program was, “Field Update on the Case Against the Historicity of Jesus: Recent Peer-Reviewed Publications For and Against.” Which is now...Chris Hansen on Jesus from Outer Space
Chris Hansen has claimed for years now to be composing a book for peer review that debunks my peer-reviewed monograph On the Historicity of Jesus. I have been waiting for that. But since it seems to not be forthcoming anytime soon, I may as well start addressing their...What Exactly Was the Scientific Revolution?
The “Scientific Revolution” is often mentioned and discussed as a crucial development in human civilization that fundamentally changed the entire course of history. World society after and before that event looks consistently yet radically different. For...The Argument from Reason
In 2004 I composed for The Secular Web a detailed Critical Review of Victor Reppert’s Defense of the Argument from Reason. I still reference it whenever the “Argument from Reason” comes up. But anyone who visits it will notice it’s quite long....The Ontology of Logic
One question atheists tend to be bad at answering, because they rarely give it much competent thought, is the ontology of logic: what, physically, does it mean to say that logically impossible things can’t ever happen or exist? Or as a theist might pose the...Why Google’s LaMDA Chatbot Isn’t Sentient
Claire Hall summarizes the case with beautiful succinctness: “Blake Lemoine, an engineer at Google, was recently suspended after claiming that LaMDA, one of its chatbot systems, was a conscious person with a soul,” because “AI experts have...Why the Fine Tuning Argument Proves God Does Not Exist
In Bayesian Counter-Apologetics I outlined why the Fine Tuning Argument actually disproves the existence of God. And I didn’t make that up. What I outline there was independently corroborated twice by the peer-reviewed research of multiple experts (see On the...Some Ancient Chinese Philosophy on Why We Ought to Be Moral
When looking for “the objectively correct” answer to the question of why we should be moral, we also should look to what the ancient Chinese had to say on the matter. Not because it is any more likely to be correct than Western answers; but because ancient...Koons Cosmology vs. The Problem with Nothing
Recently on The Canadian Catholic Show I debated the cosmological argument with theologian Robert Koons, under the title “Does the Contingency Argument Succeed?” Koons took the position he has formally articulated in two articles, “A New Look at the...A Primer on Christian Anti-Intellectualism
I noted this month in my series on Justin Brierley’s book Unbelievable that rather than teaching its faithful how to think reliably, “Christianity teaches against any sound epistemology, even critical thinking.” In fact, “Christianity’s sacred...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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