23 August 2022
I mentioned in my last article (What I Said at the Brea Conference) that I first became aware there that Dennis MacDonald has switched from saying that doubting the historicity of Jesus was improbable but at least plausible, to insisting it’s not even plausible....
22 August 2022
Earlier this year I presented at the Pacific regional Society of Biblical Literature conference. My paper’s title in the program was, “Field Update on the Case Against the Historicity of Jesus: Recent Peer-Reviewed Publications For and Against.” Which is now...
31 July 2022
Chris Hansen has claimed for years now to be composing a book for peer review that debunks my peer-reviewed monograph On the Historicity of Jesus. I have been waiting for that. But since it seems to not be forthcoming anytime soon, I may as well start addressing their...
23 June 2022
In Bayesian Counter-Apologetics I outlined why the Fine Tuning Argument actually disproves the existence of God. And I didn’t make that up. What I outline there was independently corroborated twice by the peer-reviewed research of multiple experts (see On the...
5 June 2022
Recently on The Canadian Catholic Show I debated the cosmological argument with theologian Robert Koons, under the title “Does the Contingency Argument Succeed?” Koons took the position he has formally articulated in two articles, “A New Look at the...
1 June 2022
I noted this month in my series on Justin Brierley’s book Unbelievable that rather than teaching its faithful how to think reliably, “Christianity teaches against any sound epistemology, even critical thinking.” In fact, “Christianity’s sacred...
25 May 2022
C.S. Lewis may have been the worst philosopher of the twentieth century. Worse even than his contemporary Ayn Rand. And that’s saying something; because she was pretty bad at it. Weirdly, he was an even worse historian. As Bart Ehrman put it, “The problem...
22 May 2022
This is the final entry in my series on Justin Brierley’s book Unbelievable? Why After Ten Years of Talking with Atheists, I’m Still a Christian. You can read my general summary of this book; where also at the bottom is a TOC linking to all the follow-ups, in...
13 May 2022
Justin Brierley starts his discussion of the historical facts of Jesus by quoting H.G. Wells (p. 94), someone who had no degrees in history, and only remarked upon the historical effect on Well’s era of the literary character of Jesus, and merely presuming the...
30 April 2022
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...
29 April 2022
“But why exactly do we believe that human life should be valued?” Justin Brierley asks (p. 52). Nowhere in his quest for an answer does he ever resort to asking experts in moral psychology or sociology what science has found the answer to this question...
23 April 2022
“These are the reasons,” Justin Brierley says, “that I believe God is the best explanation of human existence, value and purpose” (p. 93). What reasons does he mean? Really, nothing more than a repeated confusion between the obvious natural...
22 April 2022
Justin Brierley is an excellent host in Christian broadcasting. I’ve been on his show several times, including in person, when ironically I was an American visiting Brierley’s studio in London discussing the historicity of Jesus on a call with Mark...
26 March 2022
Last week I addressed a lame Christian apologist’s travesty of an attempt to denounce and villify doubts that Jesus existed (On Paul Krause’s Objections to Jesus Mythicism). This week I will address a more competent attempt, by another Christian apologist,...
21 March 2022
An interesting exchange just occurred at MerionWest. Peter Clarke wrote a decent essay on why it is becoming more acceptable to doubt the historicity of Jesus than scholars tend to let on, which Paul Krause answered with “In Reply to ‘Jesus Mythicism Is...
9 February 2022
On Sunday, February 27, at 8:30am I will be presenting a paper, “Field Update on the Case Against the Historicity of Jesus: Recent Peer-Reviewed Publications For and Against.” You can find the program here. And if you want to attend and register in advance...