Reading Time: 7 minutes Here is a guest post from Ed Atkinson of Wycombe Skeptics in the Pub, and occasional appearer on Unbelievable on Premier Christian Radio in the UK, hosted by Justin Brierley. I will host a dialogue, here for Ed, between Ed and a Christian called John Nelson. Join in the debate! Read a previous piece by Ed here […]
historical Jesus
Posted inReligion
Lord Snow Presides… over Friends Like These. (#20)
Reading Time: 6 minutes Christians’ biggest problem can be found looking at them in the bathroom mirror every morning. Mark Driscoll just reminds us of that fact every time he hits the publish button on the blog platform. Today we look at his problem with projection in Lord Snow Presides.
Posted inThe Secular
On the Skepticism of the Resurrection
Reading Time: 6 minutes Christmas is over, time to get on to Easter. Someone in Malawi is about to have a debate on national TV with a Christian about the Resurrection accounts and I have been asked to help provide some ideas for the debate, so here goes.
Posted inReligion
Anecdotes Aren’t Evidence: The Marshall-Carrier Debate.
Reading Time: 12 minutes In 2013, a Christian apologist named David Marshall debated historian Richard Carrier on the topic “Is the Christian Faith Reasonable?” The debate was hosted by both an atheist and a Christian student group at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Today we’ll be talking about it–and about debates generally. Here is the video of the […]
Posted inReligion
How Historicized Mythology Works.
Reading Time: 10 minutes Sorry about yesterday; I was laid up with one of those fun migraine-and-nausea episodes I get sometimes. All better now! On to today’s topic: the historical Jesus. We’ve talked about him before here, but some new stuff’s happened in the last year that’s brought my attention back to the subject. Before we start, let’s be […]
Posted inReligion
Superhero Jesus.
Reading Time: 9 minutes During a very painful and lonely stretch of my childhood, I did exactly what fundagelicals say everyone ought to do: I turned to Jesus. Today I’ll show you how well that worked out for me.
Posted inReligion
Okay, So Sure, Let’s Talk About the Historical Jesus
Reading Time: 10 minutes Yeah, we’re going there. Strap in. Ask almost any Christian if Jesus really existed, and you’ll get an immediate and absolutely positive “yes, oh yes, definitely he did.” With all the 41,000-some-odd denominations of Christianity, it’s just about the only thing most churches’ doctrines agree on. I spent my entire early life believing–and parroting–the tired […]
Posted inHistory
The Puzzling Figure of Jesus – Man, Myth, Messiah? Our very own Aaron Adair on Jesus.
Reading Time: < 1 minute Recently for my local Secular Student Alliance (SSA) group I gave a talk about what we can know about the historical Jesus, and perhaps he was originally a non-historical figure made flesh. This proposition is not the least bit popular among academics, let alone Evangelicals, but it isn’t necessarily crazy either. You will find some comparing it to Holocaust denial or creationism, but the evidence that Jesus existed is nowhere near as strong as it is for evolution or the Nazi-led Holocaust. There is significant evidence for Jesus, prima facie, but things get hairy when you look again.
Posted inUncategorized
Heads You Win, Tails I Lose #1
Reading Time: 4 minutes When thinking about subjects like the fine-tuning argument it becomes apparent that the theist loves to have their cake and eat it. They thrive off a “heads I win, tails you lose” scenario.
What I mean by this can be exemplified as follows:
In the fine-tuning argument when a skeptic argues:
The universe is more fine-tuned for death than life. The size of the universe is so unbelievably and unnecessarily massive that it appears that it is not designed for human life.