biogenesis Archives • Richard Carrier Blogs

Ten Ways the World Would Be Different If God Existed

Richard Carrier — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 17:21:23 +0000

Imagine you just became a god. No, really. One second from now you become all powerful—for no reason at all; no one did this to you, you didn’t earn it, it literally just randomly happens. And by having all powers logically possible, you immediately also become all wise, all knowing, and all good. Because through […]

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Another Two ‘Best’ Arguments for God?

Richard Carrier — Mon, 26 Jun 2023 14:12:50 +0000

Last time I analyzed YouTube’s “best” argument for God: Ben Shapiro’s, which tops the YouTube “influence” list with six million views. I also briefed a really terrible argument for God second on that list by Jordan Peterson, at under a million views. Nothing else even reached a hundred thousand views. But when I took “best” […]

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Three Common Confusions of Creationists

Richard Carrier — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 23:24:34 +0000

In response to some recent queries, and being reminded of some things in an old slideshow of mine, which accompanied a talk I gave in Humboldt some years ago (which was supposed to be my opening for a debate with a creationist; but the creationist bailed as soon as they heard I’d be the one […]

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Justin Brierley on the Science of Existence

Richard Carrier — Sat, 30 Apr 2022 22:59:05 +0000

Does science prove God? It is painfully ironic that Justin Brierley opens his chapter on this topic with a false quote from a scientist (p. 22). This common Christian failure to do the work to ascertain what scientists have actually said about these subjects explains every failure to get any of the pertinent facts right […]

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Biogenesis and the Laws of Evidence

Richard Carrier — Sun, 05 Sep 2021 23:59:48 +0000

Creationists aren’t just operating on a misunderstanding and ignorance of the science (often wilful); they are also operating on broken epistemologies. The case of biogenesis affords us an illustration. I’ve written many articles on this. For example, in Oh No! Biogenesis Is Impossible?? A Case Study in Creationist Lies I document Jerry Bergman’s catastrophic ignorance […]

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Oh No! Biogenesis Is Impossible?? A Case Study in Creationist Lies

Richard Carrier — Sun, 11 Apr 2021 21:17:42 +0000

I’ve written on biogenesis before (and before that). It’s even one of the subjects in philosophy in which I’ve had peer reviewed research published. And I have a whole section on it in Sense and Goodness without God, my survey of naturalism as a worldview (III.8, “How Did We Get Here?”). It’s one of the […]

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The Latest Proposal for a Probability of Abiogenesis

Richard Carrier — Wed, 18 Mar 2020 21:12:33 +0000

A new, peer reviewed scientific paper has been published that attempts to calculate an actual rate of abiogenesis on cosmic scales, “Emergence of Life in an Inflationary Universe” by Tomonori Totani, in Scientific Reports 10 (2020). It is pretty good, but has some fatal flaws you should be aware of before citing it uncritically (flaws […]

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PragerU to The Internet: Science Proves God, You Pinko Commies!

Richard Carrier — Thu, 05 Mar 2020 19:00:38 +0000

PragerU claims in multiple conservative propaganda videos that science has proved God exists and atheists should just go stuff it already. I’ll tackle this nonsense today—just to be useful, since most of PragerU’s critiques online target its lies, fallacies, and distortions about history and politics. Which is great. But I feel like the God thing […]

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Why Life Must Be Complex (and Thus Probably Won’t Be on Mars)

Richard Carrier — Sun, 24 Feb 2019 23:16:17 +0000

I think it’s extremely improbable we’ll find life on Mars. Yet NASA is “well on its way” to finding life there. Or so headlines told us. The NASA head, Jim Bridenstin, who said that actually meant we were close to being able to test Martian soil for “biosignatures.” He did not mean the tests would […]

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Could Be a 38% Chance We Are the Only Civilization in the Known Universe

Richard Carrier — Wed, 18 Jul 2018 17:48:46 +0000

A new study that ran the Drake Equation with a proper sampling of uncertainty (something no one had done before, oddly) has found there is credibly a 38% chance humans are the only civilization in the entire known universe; and a 52% chance we are the only civilization in our own galaxy. Not ever, to […]

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