Oh yes, I definitely did talk about the Philonic Jesus at the Freethought Festival talk.

(I thought it seemed unlikely that it came up at the Carrier-Esposito debate, but I do so many events and Q&As I could have forgotten–and it didn’t matter, really, since either way the info is the same.)

Thanks for the links.

I think I mixed up your debate and your talk at the Freethought Festival 2012. The reference to Philo was probably at the freethought festival not at this debate. Sorry about that.

Both the recordings are available online.

The debate audio can be found linked here.
http://thinkingmatters.org.nz/2012/06/does-god-exist-lenny-esposito-vs-richard-carrier/

The Freethought Festival 2012 audio recordings can be found here:
http://freethoughtfestival.org/sched.htm

Cheers
Manoj

I discuss it in Not the Impossible Faith, pp. 250-51. See the intertextual content of Philo, On the Confusion of Tongues 62-63 and 146 and On Dreams 1.215 (for starters). The first of these refers to Zech. 6 which is (or was originally) talking about Jesus ben Jehozadak (in legend the first high priest after the exile; although this passage has him appearing in God’s throne room in heaven). Modern bibles will call him “Joshua ben Jehozadak” but that’s the same name. Philo rejects the historical reading (and thus does not regard this as Jesus ben Jehozadak, but Jesus the Logos, the firstborn of all creation). His discussion of this figure elsewhere makes clear this is not his innovation, but an existing element of Jewish theology he has inherited.

P.S. Is that audio available online?

I got to listen to an audio recording of the debate. I have a question about something you mentioned in the debate.

You mentioned that Philo “tells us that there was a pre-Christian Jewish belief in a celestial being actually named Jesus.”

Would you provide more details – what Philo says and where? Perhaps a blog post?

Cheers
Manoj

I was at the debate, too, and I really enjoyed what Richard had to say. Richard, you inspired me to start some scientific inquiry of my own (though, I’m not going to lie – when you and Lenny started delving into physics and infinity, my mind started to explode a bit from the power of SCIENCE).

I was disappointed with Lenny, though. I’m an agnostic atheist, but I was raised as a Christian and I read that he was going to bring scientific proof of God’s existence into the debate. So, I was super interested – but instead, he spent the better part of two hours trying to dampen Richard’s credibility and ignoring basic principles of evolution. I was face-palming all over the place.

I’m rambling now, but in short: it was great listening to you, Richard!

I thought it was interesting how Lenny tried to make atheism the side that has to bear the burden of proof, that it’s up to the atheist to prove that God doesn’t exist. That’s obviously not true and you were quick to lay that claim to rest, even if Lenny didn’t want to accept that. He then tried to falsely accuse you of not bringing in proof of God’s nonexistence. This seemed like it was a ploy to diffuse what you said and shift the favor back to him, which I thought failed.

Lenny dropped the ball on few of his own major arguments for God’s existence, such as consciousness, morality, and Jesus’ resurrection. These were all areas that he did not seem particularly well-educated in and you provided plenty of evidence to show that. His position that God’s existence follows if objective morality is true, didn’t seem to be logically connected. His argument on Jesus’ resurrection was nothing more than circular reasoning: it’s true because the Bible says it’s true and the Bible’s true because it’s the word of God. This of course didn’t hold up very well.

Thanks for speaking at this debate! It was the first debate I’ve been able to attend and for you to be the atheist speaker made it even better.

The God hypothesis has an absolute probability of being true or false.

It is either true or false. The only thing probabilistic about it is the uncertainty that comes with knowing things by way of senses. We can be rather sure things are true. The odds of God being true is less likely than werewolves and there is as much evidence supporting werewolves as gods.

We can have some mathematical proofs that somethings can’t happen. I cannot for example take two different sized perfect cubes of carbon and use all the molecules without losing any and make a different sized cube of carbon, regardless of those sizes.

Perhaps it’s true as Carrier noted in The God Impossible, that there could be a logical proof of the impossibility of God, and we just don’t know it yet.

In any event, as John McCarthy once noted, to be an atheist doesn’t require that we have absolute proof there is no God. One only needs to understand that the evidence on the God question is on par with the evidence for the werewolf question.

Generally we can’t have absolute knowledge, but that hardly makes gods less absurd. They are just less likely than unicorns. And I don’t believe in unicorns. But, moreover I don’t believe in gods and that alone makes me an atheist.

I wonder if Dr. Carrier would also agree that Richard Dawkins may be considered to be an agnostic or “almost” an atheist rather than a straight, down the line, “no doubt about it” ATHEIST since he told Stein that on a scale of 1 to 7 he is a 6 about god not existing?

Larry, no atheist with some life experience and some education would ever say that the God hypothesis has an absolute probability of being true or false.

Commonly, agnostics (like Neil DeGrasse Tyson) either don’t know, don’t wish to convince anyone of their opinion, or don’t have an opinion at all (and they don’t appreciate atheists telling them what category they should fit into). Atheists either don’t want anything to do with God (even if he exists), are not convinced of the evidence, or believe that there is evidence against the God hypothesis.

I have not seen Expelled but Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers, both interviewees, have interesting stories to tell about how the movie was edited.

Stein seemed to have set a trap for Dawkins which Stein worked to attempt to demonstrate Dawkins hates conservative Jews. And Dawkins clearly hates the god of Judaism as Stein managed to have Dawkins quote the “trash talk” he piles on the Jewish god in his book “The God Delusion”.

Next Stein wants to know: “if god didn’t create the universe and life on this planet, then how did it get here?” Richard Dawkins admitted that nobody knows how the universe came to exist or how life as we know it came to exist here on this planet. Dawkins goes further and says that it could be that some high intelligence in the universe created life as it exists here on earth and it was seeded from outerspace but this view, if it turns out to be correct, has NOTHING to do with a god that religious people promote!. Here Dawkins must be talking about something similar to what is presented in an old book I have from 1981 by Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe, PhD titled “Evolution from Space”.

One can view this interesting exchange between the often arrogant Ben Stein and the cocky Richard Dawkins by going to YouTube and typing in the search box “Ben Stein interviews Richard Dawkins”.

Also very recently there was a show on one of the cable channels on creation of the universe where they play Stephen Hawking’s latest understanding of the creation of the universe and speaking as he must via his electronic voice; Hawking states that his view now is that the universe came to be when the big bang happened over 13 billion years ago and all matter, energy, time and space (yes space; before the big bang there wasn’t a place for any of us to be located) came to exist at that moment and it all happened WITHOUT a god. THE UNIVERSE ACTUALLY CREATED ITSELF OUT OF NOTHING!! To me that was as odd and fantastic as Genesis 1.

Then the host of this show introduced Machio Kaku, a current popular author, host of science shows on cable TV and physics professor in New York City and Paul Davies who did his PhD at Cambridge under Fred Hoyle (Hoyle always rejected the big bang and I remember Hoyle saying how he was most put off by the fact the big bang was originated by a Roman Catholic Priest…but Hoyle is credited with naming the theory “the big bang” while debating it’s merits on the BBC years ago ) and these two men took exception with Hawking saying he has taken it too far and has NOT put a god out of any possibility in the creation.

I also have an old book from Paul Davies titled “God and the New Physics” which this man invokes a kind of god often into his discussion of physics, astronomy and creation of the universe.

It seems clear to me that the god these men seem to think exists or may exist is not the god of any religion & may not even be aware of our existence. That is what Hoyle would say later on the BBC. That life is cosmic in scale, older than the earth & that even the interstellar grains are dried bacteria and life came to this planet via comets and meteors! That view is gaining some acceptance now but not exactly as Hoyle thought. Probably just the building blocks of life and water comes from space. The oceans may have built up over millions of years from space rocks one drop at a time!! They showed a slice of meteor on this science channel show last year and locked in it were organic material and a few water droplets and the scientist interviewed said it shows life and the oceans likely accumulated from material coming from outerpace on the early/young earth. (maybe they got the damn thing out of the ocean! I don’t know)

Also there are those who hold the big bang is bogus. But I did some checking over the weekend and most of these people are now dead and I’m of the opinion that almost NO scientists today reject the big bang. Yes there are different opinions about secondary mechanics concerning how the big bang worked but that is about it.

But there is this video on YouTube “The Big Bang Never Happened”. And the lead scientist interviewed who rejects the big bang is Geffory Burbidge who recently died. When he talks about it, he sounds as if his objections have great merit from his work as a scientist! His wife Margaret also has a PhD in astronomy. Those two wrote a paper with Fred Hoyle and Willy Fowler in the 1950’s which proved (in an attempt by Hoyle to overthrow the big bang which then held that all the elements were created by the big bang itself) that the elements are created inside stars including carbon which is said to be the cornerstone of life. But the two elements which are responsible for stars to burn remained outside this work and are NOT created inside stars; so while it changed things concerning how most of the elements are formed, it didn’t kick the big bang’s ass after all! The others who hold the big bang is bogus are also dead now including Hoyle and Herrman Bondi and Tommy Gold. Gold was a physics and astronomy professor at Cornell and actually hired Carl Sagan. I heard him lecture years ago and he was most interesting. One of the big bang detractors on this video IS still alive and that is Dr. Arp but he is 85 now. So it seems any big opposition to the big bang is literally dying out.

Gee I guess I’m showing my age! Yes I was alive when Hoyle named the big bang in and I followed the fight with great interest during the 1950’s between the two camps.

Well pardon me for rambling here much too much but I wonder if Dr. Carrier would also agree that Richard Dawkins may be considered to be an agnostic or “almost” an atheist rather than a straight, down the line, “no doubt about it” ATHEIST since he told Stein that on a scale of 1 to 7 he is a 6 about god not existing?

Not sure what you mean. But okay.