A new show is out that has an extended interview of me (and adding others). Which reminded me to update my Videos Page (adding and subtracting and rearranging some things). So check out that page, and the new interview, on Think for Yourself!
That’s mainly about two subjects: grief and moral philosophy for atheists, and then the historicity of Jesus and why the idea meets so much irrational resistance, with some fun segue-aways on subjects like how Dear Christian: You Might Be Worshiping the Antichrist!
Anxiously awaiting your next volume updating the current scholarship of the historicity of Jesus. Any idea when to expect it? Thank you. James Preston, DDS.
Sometime this year. It’s in review now.
Dr/ Carrier do you have any views or publications on world population?
I’ve not written anything specifically on it, but it comes up a few times in Is Society Going to Collapse in 20 Years?.
In general, without space colonization I think ZPG should be our societal target (and we are expected to reach that this century), while NPG would be helpful (and is likely this century too) but requires special management (i.e. negative PG creates problems for economies structured to run on growth; there are better structures for NPG but they require systematic implementation, as discussed in the above article).
And though PPG is a problem now (it is already responsible for numerous systematic ills), it is not an existential threat (the natural progress of economic systems is already solving it, albeit overslowly, as also discussed in the above article).
Have you heard Dumb All Over by Frank Zappa? If ever there was a song that matched your essays – this would be it.
https://youtu.be/Y8TKiRo-W4U?si=u4JkZIh1G9e-ikMi
Richard, do you have any writings/current thoughts on the merits and demerits of ethnography, and its ability to discover truths? I find it very informative to watch – for example – the group behavior of chimpanzees or baboons in the wild as surveilled by nearby hidden cameras but recognize that the scientist running the study is prone to anthropomorphize when narrating: maybe there are no “tribes”, no “wars” no “alliances” but just human projections. And I understand that putting 60 chimps in cages and giving 30 a drug and 30 a placebo while keeping food macronutrients, total calories, temperature, humidity, light cycles, etc the same is science, controlling all variables but the one of interest, but that kind of science never gives me a sense of what it is like to be a chimp
I don’t follow any logic there. Studying animal behavior is ethology, not ethnography. And apes only show precursor behaviors to ours, not the same behaviors. Apes lack identity politics (and all tribalism and nationalism is identity politics) and lack central planning (hence they cannot “wage war” in any relevant sense nor “make alliances” or “form nations” or “organizations” or “interest groups”).
Those things are thus not illusions but real things (a common misunderstanding of social construction theory is that social constructs don’t exist; they obviously, objectively, physically do exist—as the causal products of social systems). And they have material consequences. Just as we study with the sciences of economics and sociology and political science (which are not the same things as ethology or ethnography).
Ethnography, meanwhile, is a subfield of cultural anthropology, which studies cultural systems. Which are again physically real things; they are just built and maintained by people and systems of people, not nature independent of people. Apes have precursors to culture, but only barely, and nothing significant enough to draw much study from anthropology (as opposed to ethology, which studies all animals’ behaviors, biological or learned).
Meanwhile, testing drugs on animals is not for studying animals at all. It’s for studying physiologies, which we do indeed share with animals (and especially with apes, our closest ancestors). Completely different sciences study animals to understand animals (ethological science is rife with studies and results). So if you want to have a sense of what it is like to be a chimp, you are looking at the wring science. There is a ton of other science you should be looking at instead.
Found you recently, ive been of the position that the historical jesus must have lived until i found a video presentation of yours. My friend and i had argued this topic for years but hes as delusional as an apologist and his reason were really bad so i couldnt take it serious. i came across an idea of Josephus the historian being Joseph of arimathea (supposed to be of or from “Mathias” which he has several relatives by that name). What do you think about that? Im not saying anything to suggest that josephus definitively proves Jesus lived just asking your thoughts on this. Thank you
It’s implausible pattern matching.
The names are common and there is no interpretable relationship in the data.
But worse, the idea comes from tinfoil hatters like Atwill.