The Rain Miracle of Marcus Aurelius: A Case Study in Christian Lies

27 May 2017

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...

From Lead Codices to Mummy Gospels: Essential Links on Dubious Tales

25 January 2017

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?

23 January 2017

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...

Knitting Fans, Behold Some Awesome Ancient Roman Tech!

12 June 2014

There’s this guy, you see, who knitted his way to a solution to an infamous problem in Roman history. This might be a bit premature (since academic journals haven’t weighed in yet), but I am persuaded that the mystery of the ancient Roman dodecahedrons has...

Magical Earthquake Ray Beams Caused the Shroud of Turin

13 February 2014

Oh, yeah, baby. Someone pointed out to me in a comment on another post that people are circulating a story now that some Italian scientists have “proved” that the Shroud of Turin is authentic because its carbon date was altered by neutron radiation from a...

Hitler Homer Bible Christ: A Surprise New Book by Richard Carrier

21 January 2014

While waiting for Sheffield to finish and release On the Historicity of Jesus (the book everyone is waiting for, presently projected for late March or early April), I decided to produce my own anthology of all my published papers on history. That volume, Hitler Homer...

Skeptical Humanities

29 May 2013

I’ve found several websites dedicated to applying the principles of rational and evidence-based skepticism to subjects in the humanities. I’m looking for more. I’d like to expand the following list with any website that is worth bookmarking in this...

Miracles & Historical Method

4 December 2012

Video of my talk for this year’s Skepticon is now available on YouTube. See Miracles and Historical Method. Description: Carrier talks about how to think critically about history generally, using miracles as an entertaining example. Video of my talk for this...

Glorious Smackdown of the 10/42 Apologetic

15 October 2012

Have you heard the argument that Jesus must have existed because “42 ancient sources record Jesus 150 years within his lifetime, whereas only 10 mention the contemporary Roman emperor Tiberius,” and since we consider that enough to believe Tiberius...

The Jesus Tomb and Bayes’ Theorem

29 June 2012

Finally, a mathematician actually gets the math right on the Jesus Tomb hypothesis. Conclusion? We have not found the tomb of Jesus. For those who already know the backstory and want to jump right to it, read Bayes’ Theorem and the “Jesus Family...

20 Questions

1 June 2012

Are there “20 Questions Atheists Struggle to Answer” ? I was asked how I respond to Peter Saunders’ claim that there are, and how I would respond to those questions. According to God’s Advocate, Saunders thinks “there have not been any...

Amazing Proofs of Jesus!

29 February 2012

There seems to be an odd rise the last year or so in forgeries or other bogus claims of “archaeological” finds attesting to first century Christianity. In actual fact, we have no (that’s zero) archaeological evidence pertaining to Jesus or Christians...