The Rain Miracle of Marcus Aurelius: A Case Study in Christian Lies
This September, Mythicist Milwaukee will be putting on Mythinformation Con IV, always a fun and excellent conference. You’ll definitely want to go this year. Some of the Mythicist Milwaukee team traveled to Italy recently, and among much else, took some...Christians Did Not Invent Charity and Philanthropy
Let me dispel a common myth: no, Christianity did not bring the idea of charity to the Western world. The concept of charity and concern for the poor was already fully developed before the Christians borrowed the notion from their pagan and Jewish peers. It’s...The Mythical Stillbirth of Science in Greece
A few years ago a hyper-religious Catholic chemist with no history credentials wrote a face-palming article at Strange Notions that repeats an all-too-common myth Christians love to sell today: that science was “stillborn” in antiquity, and only a...Why Do We Still Believe in Q?
Q is a hypothetical Gospel. The letter Q stands for Quelle, German for “Source.” It has long been a popular hypothesis, and it serves a lot of agendas well. But there is no evidence whatever for it. Q never existed. And there is no rational reason to believe it did....The Guardian on Jesus: Dear oh dear…
[Update: This is my critique of Simon Gathercole’s Guardian article, which is amateurish and terrible. For his more professional article in JSHJ see my analysis in 2019.] -:- Everyone keeps asking about The Guardian article “What Is the Historical Evidence...The Case for Christ: The Movie!
So I went and saw it. Here’s a review. Read on, and enjoy your Easter week pondering the aesthetic merits of a film embedded with religious propaganda. I’ll remark on both, but my focus will be on the propaganda, and what this film tells us about how...Desperately Searching the Epistles for Anything That Attests a Historical Jesus
In my book On the Historicity of Jesus, I covered pretty much every possible verse in the Epistles that any expert has ever tried to claim proves Jesus really lived. You can check yourself: it has a complete scripture index (pp. 661-71). And Chapter 11 rakes the whole...Josephus on Jesus? Why You Can’t Cite Opinions Before 2014
On whether Josephus actually ever mentioned Jesus, usually you hear people claim “the consensus is” or “such-and-such renowned Josephus expert said” that he did, so shut-up already, nothing more to see here, “move on!” Well, there...The End of the Arabic Testimonium
One of the things I talked about at the Society of Biblical Literature conference in Notre Dame last weekend was the demise of a popular argument for the authenticity of the Testiminium Flavianum (that fawning paragraph about Jesus in the Jewish Antiquities of...A Bizarre Review in Relegere
A fawningly-Christian non-historian (though reportedly she’s an atheist) wrote one of the weirdest book reviews I’ve ever seen. Not just of my book On the Historicity of Jesus. But of any book, in any academic journal, anywhere. It’s six or so pages...From Lead Codices to Mummy Gospels: Essential Links on Dubious Tales
The last two years have been the Golden Age of crankery and fake news. And not just in the ways everyone is already talking about. Hardly a month goes by that I’m not bombarded with queries from puzzled fans about this or that astonishing story about ancient...Could Simcha Jacobovici Just Go Away Already?
I’m really tired of this guy. He pops up everywhere trying to push all kinds of sensationalist conspiracy theory crap about the ancient world, from the bogus Jesus tomb, and the semi-bogus James Ossuary (the key portion of which most experts now agree was forged), and...David Marshall’s Bizarre & Dishonest Defense of the Historicity of Jesus
Liars disgust me. And David Marshall flat out lied about my work on public radio. He should be ashamed. But Christian apologists rarely are. They lie with impunity. The ten commandments be damned. Today I’ll briefly discuss that show, then detail what’s...Speaking on Josephus in Notre Dame
I’ll be delivering a paper at the Society of Biblical Literature Midwest Region meeting at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame (near South Bend, Indiana) this February 11 (Saturday), between 3 and 4pm (probably in the latter half of that hour), in the...The Real War on Christmas: The Fact That Christmas Is Better Than Christ
Let’s face it. Jesus is a dick. The Gospels portray him as a cruel, sociopathic asshole who gloats over millions being horribly tortured for billions of years at his command (Mk. 9:43-49, Mt. 13:40-42, Mt. 13:49-50, Mt. 18:7-9, Mt. 24:51, Mt. 25:40-46, Mt. 5:22,...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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