Speaking Near Detroit on April 1

I’ll be delivering a talk and Q&A on “What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?” for the Michigan Atheists at The Birmingham Temple Congregation for Humanistic Judaism (28611 W 12 Mile Rd., Farmington Hills, Michigan) on Sunday, April 1, from 5 PM...

So What About Hannibal, Then?

This kind of argument has been tried again and again and again. I’ve discussed every one. (See Okay, So What about the Historicity of Spartacus?) It’s always of this form: P1. We should not doubt [x] existed. P2. The evidence for Jesus is better than for...

C.H.R.E.S.T.U.S. for Christmas!

Did the Reason for the Season even exist? Dive into that question with a new mobile app! Reality Revolutions conceived an idea for a mobile application that would assist in quickly investigating every argument for and against the historical existence of Jesus. They...

On the Historicity of Jesus: The Daniel Gullotta Review

Two academic reviews of On the Historicity of Jesus now exist: one positive by Raphael Lataster published in the Journal of Religious History (38.4, 2014, pp. 614-16); and one negative by Daniel Gullotta published in the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus...

Last Minute Christmas Shopping? Check Out My New Amazon Store!

Amazon eliminated its astore feature. But I’m still an Amazon Associate. So here I am, recommending a whole slew of books for commissions on the sale if I can tempt you to buy any! I’ve built my own stores. Smaller. A lot fewer books listed. But the core...

The Difference Between a Historian and an Apologist

Larry Hurtado’s latest foot-in-mouth affords a good opportunity to explain what the difference is between an apologist and a historian. Not in respect to their goals (apologists need to defend a position even when it’s false or indefensible; historians...

The Bizarre Fugue of Larry Hurtado

Biblical historian Larry Hurtado went on a rant against mythicism recently. In which, once again, like nearly every other expert has done, all he does he give excuses for not reading the peer reviewed literature of his own field and (as one could then have predicted)...

How Did Christianity Switch to a Historical Jesus?

If Jesus didn’t exist, if he was originally believed to have lived and died in outer space, how did our Christianity come to exist? How could an earthly Jesus just get invented like that, and the original view of him forgotten? That’s the question Jonathan...

Did the Environment Kill Rome?

An article at Vox argues that environmental disasters destroyed the Roman Empire: “6 Ways Climate Change and Disease Helped Topple the Roman Empire,” by Kyle Harper, a professor of classics, whose article summarizes his book The Fate of Rome: Climate,...

The Cosmic Seed of David

Nicholas Covington just produced an intersting article on the cosmic seed hypothesis that so vexes Jonathan Tweet (see Jonathan Tweet and the Jesus Debate). In Seed of David, Take Two, Covington makes two valuable points: he correctly frames the logic of the argument...

Jonathan Tweet and the Jesus Debate

My debate on the historicity of Jesus with atheist activist Jonathan Tweet is now available to view. I don’t find it very useful as debates go. Overall, we tried covering too many tangential things in too little time, and it became disorganized and hard to...

Ms. Christian Apologist on Empty Tomb Stuff

You’d have to pay me to waste my time on any of the millions of amateur Christian arguments on the internet. But of course, that being the case, occasionally someone actually does. A benefactor of mine wanted an expert take on the specious argumentation of a woman...

Kristi Winters on the Historical Jesus: Part 2

Yesterday I pointed out the defects of Kristi Winters’ YouTube case for the historicity of Jesus in 2015. Her case then, mostly, was at least respectably mainstream and just uninformed about a lot of things. But then in 2016 and 2017 her videos on this subject...

Kristi Winters on the Historical Jesus: Part 1

I’ve had on my to-do list for some time to write about all the weirdly inept videos on the historicity of Jesus posted by YouTuber Kristi Winters lately. So I’ll do that now. In two parts. In the first, she starts sensible and merely wrong. In the second,...

Timothy Keller: Dishonest Reasons for God (Chapters 13 and 14)

I began my critique of Keller’s The Reason for God with an exposé of everything up through Chapter 1, then Chapters [2] [3-5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10-12]. Here I will conclude with Chapters 13 and 14. Today, Keller returns to his usual pattern of simply lying; lying...

Timothy Keller: Dishonest Reasons for God (Chapter 7)

I began my critique of Keller’s The Reason for God with an exposé of everything up through Chapter 1, then Chapter 2, then Chapters 3 through 5, and Chapter 6. Here I will cover Chapter 7. Next will be Chapter 8. I’ll continue to other chapters in future...