The Methodological Application of My Theory of Humor
In interviews and hangouts I’ve often discussed my theory of humor and its importance to how we interpret humor, from how we use comedy to understand things about history, to how we decide whether a joke is actually racist or offensive rather than simply funny...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...Addressing the New Christian Apologetics: The Embarrassing Follies of Conway and Ferrer
Every few years I check what the top ten books are in Christian apologetics (by Amazon ranking). And what I have recently noticed is that Christian apologetics is in a state of intellectual stagnation or even decline. Seven of the top ten are old, long-refuted,...Bayesian Analysis of the Barkasi-Sant’Anna Defense of Naive Memory Realism
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. I followed that with my Bayesian...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...The Scary Truth about Critical Thinking
The fundamental goal of legitimate critical thinking (as opposed to the fraudulent kind) is to ascertain what is true, about yourself and the world. So the tools that constitute critical thinking must be tools for finding the truth. And that means tools for...How A Personal Fear of Death Might Also Be Driving the Anti-Abortion Delusion
I had a thought recently about abortion ideology that I wanted to explore. I used to think the only prime driver of anti-abortionism is literally just Christian patriarchy (predominately in the West at least; elsewhere it might be Islamic patriarchy). In other words,...Gun Control That’s Science-Based & Constitutional
As a veteran, and yet hard-core lefty with an obsession for evidence-based policy, I’m often asked what my position is on gun control; which is to say, in my country (because that subject isn’t as much of an issue in other developed nations—we are...Antinatalism Is Contrafactual & Incoherent
Antinatalism is the view that the human race should let itself go extinct; more particularly, it should do so because that outcome is “better”; and therefore having children is immoral (there is a decent entry on this in the Internet Encyclopedia of...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 move Don’t Look Up....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...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...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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