Currently only Patreon and recurring PayPal patrons, Facebook subscribers, and select vetted specialists, can post on my blog without their comments waiting in the moderation queue (all such patrons, please email me to find out how to secure this privilege if it isn’t already operating). All other comments go into moderation and must be approved before appearing.
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All civil and relevant comments submitted by any actual persons whose work, claims, or arguments are critiqued in the article they are commenting on will also be published. And I might whitelist your email address for the same commenting privileges of patrons thereafter. So please so-identify yourself to claim that privilege. But be warned: pretending to be someone you are not will result in a permanent ban. As will repeatedly violating the rules above.
New rule: AI content is banned from my comments. Anything that looks AI generated will be deleted. And this rule is absolute as of 2025. So even if you admit some content you post is AI generated, your entire comment will still be deleted. Use your own words and mind. Everything else is garbage.
New system: As of September 2025 I launched a new commenting system (wpDiscuz) and I am still working out its kinks. Please email me if you find problems with it.
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This page is continually updated to state present policy.
Just a quick question. I have not heard you speak about jesus as a solar god and how the winter solstice could represent the three day period where the “Sun” descends into Hades for three days. Christmas is linked to Winter Solstice celebrations of ancient Pagan cultures. While Christian mythology is interwoven with contemporary observances of this holiday time, its Pagan nature is still strong and apparent. Is this a a perspective with evidence and good methodology?
Not really a relevant question in this thread. But I did extensive postdoc research on this and found no credible evidence of it. The only connections to pagan influences that could actually be empirically established I outline in my published study, On the Historicity of Jesus. For examples of the problem see my recent article Some Problems with Modern Kemetic Mythology for specific examples illustrating that point (see especially the section on “December 25”).
You can also look at my old article on Kersey Graves, which was a methodological warning I found proved out for even contemporary purveyors of this bogus theory when I completed a focused study on it. And that’s even counting things in that article I was wrong about—I would later find even I was misled on several facts, yet correcting those errors only makes the article’s point stronger. For example, when I wrote that I gullibly believed the claim about sun gods being born on December 25. When I completed my actual postdoc study, I found that was false.
Re: Great Cameo of France? Triumph of Joseph at the Court of the Pharaoh? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7smTWI4g7kM
There is no point in just blindly linking to crank videos here.
Any further attempt to do this will be deleted per my comments policy.
Only post legitimate and pertinent facts here.
Quick technical question: I have found that I must continually refill my email, name, website, etc. for every comment. Do you have a FAQ site or are you managing this site through WordPress and I should look there for help? Thanks.
So, the comments field is run through a Divi theme on a WordPress platform. I do not like it. But changing it is a harrowing enterprise that always breaks the site so I have left it be. I may try to replace the comments system in future (there are countless plugins to try), but given past fails, I’m not encouraged.
Since the construct is a confluence of two interacting operating systems (the theme and the platform) there is no FAQ for it, per se, although I would think the engine being WordPress, then WordPress FAQs would apply, but I do not find them clear enough to be helpful on this point.
So you may try asking me what questions you have, and this will become the FAQ.
So…
I assume what you want is to get the auto-fill working.
So far as I understand it, there is only one way to do that: I have to select the option on the backend to show you a cookies option box on comments. I worry that will break something or fail. But let’s see.
I just now clicked it. In theory, now when you comment you should see that option box and can click it. It will then in future auto-fill by consulting your browser cookie. If you ever have to clear cookies, you’ll have to repeat the process to create a new cookie.
Please let me know if this works!
Oh that seems to have worked — thank you!
I also reinstalled Chrome and deleted cookies and enabled cross-site tracking but not sure if any of those things worked or it was just coincidental timing for what you did on the backend.
Well, I had not had that feature “on” until you promoted me to turn it on. So all that you should need is enabling cookies (and only for this web domain, if you micromanage your cookies).
Do confirm though that it autofills now, when you add a new comment anywhere on the site (maybe pick a random article to add a comment on); and that everything else operates as before. If yes, then your suggestion has improved the site. Thank you!
Yes I have confirmed it works well now with a couple of other comments. Next up is figuring out how to use html tags to format text and such…
Thanks again — glad I was of help to you!
Standard basic HTML works in comments here, so for example you can type A HREF=”” in angle brackets at the start of a desired text, and insert the URL between the quotation marks, and then put /A inside angle brackets at the end of the text you want the hyperlink to show for, and the text will be hyperlinked.
It’s also possible to hyperlink to a comment, but currently that requires technical expertise to extract the URL hashtag (if you view page “source” and find the comment, the “article” id tag of that comment will show the hashtag that is the hyperlink to that comment, when that hashtag is placed after the URL of the post the comment is on, for example this text hyperlinks to one of your comments).
Bold (B) and italics (I) tags also work, as you discovered. And BLOCKQUOTE tags will indent quotations. It’s also possible to run UL/OL LI tag sequences, but it’s tedious (and of course you have to know what you are doing).
In your book On The Historicity of Jesus you give your opinion of the odds of Jesus having existed as I believe something like 12000 to 1 against his having existed. You then opine that viewing the information most favorably to Jesus having existed as 3 to 1 against existence. I have read and listened to many of your books and presentations since then and you never mention your opinion of 12000 to 1 against. I would like you to explain why you don’t mention or justify your opinion of the odds. Is it because you have changed your mind or because scholars and others roundly criticized you or some other reason. I think you owe it to your “fans” to explain.
The book extensively “mentions and justifies” these odds. That is in fact what that entire peer review study is doing: it explains the empirical basis for every estimate of odds. So, maybe, like, read it first and then ask a more specific question?
Even if you mean, why do I think the range is between 1 in 12,000 and 1 in 3, that is also explained in the book (and in more detail as to methodology in Proving History, the previous peer reviewed study establishing the method of developing these odds-ranges in OHJ).
The point of an error margin is that we cannot know where the actual probability lies. It is as likely 1 in 3 as 1 in 12,000 or indeed as likely any other number in between. All we can say with confidence is that the odds “are not higher” than 1 in 3 and “are not lower” than 1 in 12,000. So the 1 in 3 odds are the odds that need to be discussed to audiences skeptical of the result.
Is there any way I can view all recent comments on the blog?
For example, suppose someone asks an insightful question on one of your posts from 2022. You then provide a long and interesting answer. I would like to read such exchanges. But I won’t know that such an exchange has taken place unless I constantly go around checking all your old blog posts for new comments.
Would you consider adding a “view recent comments” feature?
Oh good idea. I activated that (bottom right margin) but my available widget only does the “last five” comments, which will quickly be swamped as comments cycle in, so probably will not achieve what you are looking for.
I’ll see if better options exist.
It might make sense to have it only show new comments on older blog posts (say, only on posts that are more than one month old) since of course everyone already knows that there are going to be lots of new comments on the latest post.
As for “how many would be enough,” it’s hard to say; depends on how long it’s been since the reader has last stopped by your blog. Ideally it would just allow you to scroll back through the latest comments indefinitely, if such a thing is possible.
So far as I can tell, no, that’s not possible with any of the widgets on offer.
I’ll do more research and see what exists.
I’d like there to be a page I can build with something like an RSS feed for comments. But I am not seeing anything like that having been built already, and I can’t code anything that complex myself.
I actually subscribe to https://www.richardcarrier.info/comments/ if that’s relevant?
There’s also one for each article individually: https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/2513/feed
Thank you. I thought that feature existed but I never see it because I’m logged in as admin so it never shows it to me.
So, yes, if that is showing for you, then that should operate to keep you apprised of new comments on each blog or (presumably in the first case?) all new comments whatever? (That might be a noisy option)
Let me know if that’s how those work, since I can’t test it myself.
It indeed works as you surmised. I seem to have made a mistake in pasting the URL. I meant https://www.richardcarrier.info/comments/feed
It’s unfortunately hidden unless you’re in the know. It’s the link rel=”alternate” tags in the HTML. I use an add-on called RSSPreview which displays an icon with a dropdown list when it comes across any.
Yes. That’s an RSS feed, which you need an RSS feed reader to employ conveniently.
It may be a feature in the Disqus Comment System, which is the most popular and one I want to replace mine with, but that’s the “it will break everything and take days to fix it all” worry which has been keeping me from pulling the trigger on that.
I found a possible widget that can do more than five. How many would be enough? (They all require you to pick a fixed number to show, so it’s not adjustable for each reader so far as I can tell.)
Hello Dr. RC, so what led Europe out of superstition, if the Middle Ages, having contained it, ended in the 10th century? The Age of Enlightenment being much later, what happened in the meantime? As for the modern world, there are as many believers today as in the darkest periods of history (I’m assuming that non-believers at the time must have been hiding… but I’m probably wrong), so what prevents us from falling back into a different form of obscurantism today?
The Middle Ages didn’t end in the 10th century. That’s when the Low Middle Ages (in the Western segment called the Dark Ages) ended. The High Middle Ages (the beginning of the recovery from the decline of the Dark Ages) goes to the 14th century at which begins the Renaissance (though I would personally suggest the Renaissance begins in the 13th century, overlapping that, but either way). The Enlightenment begins in the 17th century, and that corresponds with the Scientific Revolution. The question of “Why Then?” for the SR is a widely debated one. I present my theory and case in The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire.
But the short answer gets to your second question: it’s a happenstance of cultural and political decisions, aided by enough generalized economic prosperity to allow independent exploration and thought (as opposed to subsistance and survival). That’s why it didn’t happen at all in China (see Rome vs. China: What Made the Difference?). And why you are absolutely right that we could stop preserving and sustaining the requisite culture and devolve into primitive superstitious lunatics again (see The Argument from Reason for the difference between innate human and culturally invented tools of reason).
Although to correct another point: it is not the case that “there are as many believers today as in the darkest periods of history.” Global atheism and agnosticism is actually higher today and rising than ever before in history; and even within religions, so is the decline of superstition, i.e. most Christians, Hindus, Muslims today do not believe in demons, blood magic, and the like. Even insofar as they do, they distance it all from reality, having developed elaborate worldviews that are functionally naturalist by sequestering and excusing the absence of supernatural explanations in the world. So, for example, 90% of people in ancient Rome would sooner credit a shipwreck to demons or gods or black magic, while 90% of people in modern India or Africa even (much less America) would sooner credit it to ordinary physical causes.
This is why the Enlightenment was not defined by a decline in belief in gods or religion, but in a decline in recourse to supernatural explanations of everyday things or even momentous society-wide things. The role for magic has mostly shrunk and been swept into a corner and hidden under a blanket. Rather than the World Being Full of Gods and The Irrational.
This has added significance now that secular (naturalistic) superstitions and religions are replacing supernaturalist ones precisely because it is harder to believe in gods and blood magic now, and easier to believe in government conspiracies and lizard people. That’s an effect of the Enlightenment. But it isn’t progress. I discuss this at the end of my critique of Jordan Peterson.
Interesting, thank you for your analysis.
Thank you so much for the information.
Your last paragraph really resonates with me; it reminds me of all the fallacious theories that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic.
1) COVID-19 was supposedly caused by 5G waves.
2) The vaccine, planned by the world government (with the collaboration of Bill Gates ^^), is supposedly designed to control the world’s population and keep us in servitude (I don’t know how).
3) COVID is the work of the devil or the will of the divine, intended to test us.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but these examples show that no matter how much information is available on the internet or in other knowledge-sharing spaces like libraries or media centers, people will always fall into the same traps.
Isn’t humankind inherently paranoid? Which, for me, isn’t so different from superstition, in the sense that empiricism is secondary and not a method that reassures or unites.
Because, without being hypocritical, during moments of solitude brought on by the sudden pandemic of 2019-2020, I sometimes thought that fate was conspiring against us, instead of recognizing that the pandemic was an accident and the result of a confluence of circumstances.
All this to say that doubt, without going through empiricism, is just as problematic as superstition.
So the method to use would be: doubts – hypothesis – replication of the experiment – falsifiability – peer validation – new theories?
Is that correct?
No. They are driven paranoid by mass persuasion designed to produce that very outcome. Disinformation by sowing distrust has been a deliberate, science-driven policy of the power-elite ever since Big Tobacco invented the tactic, Big Oil borrowed the tactic, and Fox News implemented it on a mass media scale.
There are studies of the Rwanda genocide that reflect this. Before a single radio station started driving Rwandans literally insane by sowing paranoia and fears that didn’t exist before, resulting in a mass murderous hysteria—even just ten years before—no antipathy even existed between the tribes. It was deliberately manufactured by a media campaign.
If you were a Rwandan informed by a time traveler that this was going to happen to you, what steps would you and your neighbors have to take to be immune to the manipulation and thus remain sane under intense reality distortion pressure?
All the things you list have been captured and coopted by science-informed media operators to hijack every single one against you. You can google and read about how the tobacco and oil industries did this systematically. The technique is now routinely used even by minor players now (e.g. it is documented that both Depp and Baldoni hired PR agencies to build underground disinformation campaigns to shape people’s opinions of their opposing parties, and those campaigns used all the same strategies).
There is evidence that a Saudi Arabian bot farm recently did this to Chappell Roan (we just don’t know who funded it behind all the shell corporations: I highly recommending watching the whole long analysis on matt bernstein’s channel). Pro and anti-zionist interest groups are running these ops on us right now, all the time. It’s so ubiquitous that we should simply assume every interest is an op being run on us using these techniques, all the time, and never trust any intuition we have about people or subjects we have not personally and carefully and responsibly and thoroughly researched.
The solution is not a list of buzzwords. But a whole skillset.
For example, it’s not enough to value doubt. You have to value reasonable, informed doubt, which achieves rather than resists belief. Responsible belief should be your goal, not doubt. Skepticism unregulated becomes just a rabbit hole of denialism and conspiracy theories and thus, ultimately, madness. And media and marketing and lobbying agencies actually seek to push you down that pipeline all the time, because you are easier to manipulate or disempower down there.
Likewise, “hypothesis” under the pipeline becomes “whackadoo” and “conspiracy theories”; replication and peer validation become “echo chambers”; falsifiability becomes “apologetics” to dismiss anything whatever no matter how evidenced, based solely on what you want or fear to be true, and thus emotion rather than reason dictates which “new theories” you believe.
And the bogus package of fake critical thinking skills the moneyed elite push on you is designed to convince you to rationalize all this away so that you go around saying “facts don’t care about your feelings” while you in fact are all about feelings dictating your facts and thus not even remotely following your own advice. That’s the pit everyone is being actively pipelined to, on purpose, with science-based skills of persuasion.
The only protection is awareness of the threat and overwhelming dedication to competence and responsibility in pursuing knowledge and belief critically. You have to value truth above all else—above who you fear, who you hate, what you fear or hate, everything you have any feelings about whatever, it has to be truth first. Only then will it be harder to manipulate you. But as soon as you put any lever above truth, they will exploit it, pull the lever, and control you.
So the only step forward is commitment to that value, followed by skill-building. And that means reading and learning, as just the start, The Scary Truth about Critical Thinking and A Primer on Actually Doing Your Own Research
Hello, If I were Rwandan and a time traveler informed me of the genocide, I would immediately turn off my radio and urge everyone to do the same, preaching what the time traveler revealed to me. But since you’re labeled crazy or naive when you don’t share the general opinion, I would run as far away as possible before that happened. It’s quite sad.
Without wanting to digress, people lie all the time anyway, so it’s not like the institutions are going to be honest with us.
The elites, politicians, and others all serve their own interests.
To try and return to your example of mass manipulation, I’d like to bring up the sexual assault trials against Michael Jackson in the 90s. What do you think about that?
Or, more recently, the Sean “P. Diddy” Combs case (although I don’t lump these two individuals together)?
Not that I’m obsessed with it, but I’d like to know who benefits from this uproar.
I’d like to know your opinion on this and how the media plays on our perceptions and how they use myths to manipulate us.
Regards
Those cases are not commensurate. And neither is really indicative of any general social issue. Their stories are as old as time.
But to get at the truth of either, you have to Do Your Own Research competently as advised. And not just repeat common opinion; as that is too often wrong.