Reading Time: < 1 minute Richard Carrier plugs a book I have just edited and published, a book by Aaron Adair, contributor here. The video should start at the relevant time. Nice! I am now going to try and watch the video in full…
Richard Carrier
Posted inEthics and Morality, Philosophy
Can an ‘is’ be an ‘ought’? Mike D on the science of morality.
Reading Time: 2 minutes Mike D’s excellent blog The A-Unicornist has some real gems, and if only I had more time I would hang out there more often (I am trying to get a sidebar widget to link to offsite blogs). His latest post concerns the is/ought debate, especially dealing with Sam Harris/Richard Carrier and the great philosopher of science, Massimo Pigliucci.
Posted inUncategorized
Problems with the Fine-Tuning Argument
Reading Time: 7 minutes Here are some notes I made some time ago, based on various sources, some of which are linked below. Richard Carrier’s book “Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism” provided an excellent backbone to the first set of points.
The methodological and other problems:
Posted inReligion
Feeling A Burden (for Atheists).
Reading Time: 8 minutes A bit of housekeeping: Richard Carrier is coming out with a book that deals with the historicity of Jesus Christ. I’m planning to get it at some point once it’s released and I’ll let y’all know what I thought. It should be interesting to see how my amateur analysis holds up. Also, I’m on Day […]
Posted inUncategorized
Richard Carrier on his mythicist theory
Reading Time: < 1 minute Here is a good talk from Richard Carrier as it sets out his thesis from start to finish and it is recent. See what you think. Are you a mythicist? Are you a historicist? Or are you, like me, somewhat agnostic?
Posted inHistory
Joseph of Arimathea – fact or fiction? Er, fiction.
Reading Time: < 1 minute Joseph of Arimathea used to be used by William Lane Craig as a pillar of his truth claims for the Resurrection, itself one of the four cornerstones of his apology. Richard Carrier, amongst others, has provided some very interesting viewpoints on the historicity of this figure (or lack thereof). Craig no longer seems to reference J of A, quite possibly the result of the weakness of any positive evidence and the strength of negative evidence for his historicity.
Posted inUncategorized
How Likely the Jesus Miracle Stories?
Reading Time: 6 minutes How can probability be used to help clarify the God question? A quick (and easy) summary of Bayes Theorem will provide a useful tool in weighing competing claims.
Posted inBooks
The Pope on the Nativity Part 2
Reading Time: 7 minutes Continuing from my last post, I will take a look at some of the historical claims of the Nativity of Jesus from the Bible and see how Pope Benedict XVI defends them in his most recent book.
First, let’s make a note of an argument that His Holiness seems to use several times in defending the historicity of the stories from modern critics. Many scholars will point to the theological reasons as to why the author of a given Gospel would tell such a story, which in turn gives us reason to suspect that the tale make not be historically authentic. Benedict, on the other hand, says that that is not sufficient to consider the tradition inauthentic. Perhaps not, but it should make us suspicious. Besides, this is not the only reason scholars doubt things such as the birth in Bethlehem or the miraculous conception of Mary. There are other things to consider.
Posted inGeneral
Everything you wanted to know about Judas but were afraid to ask
Reading Time: 6 minutes I have recently been reading Richard Carrier’s excellent book “Proving History” which essentially sets out a case for the use of Bayes’s Theorem in historical contexts in order to work out the most probable explanation for a given event, or the relative probabilities for alternative explanations. In his first book, Carrier sets out the case […]