Critical Thinking about History: An Essential Class to Take in the Age of Fake News
I’ll be teaching my affordable one-month online course on historical methods in a couple weeks (starting July 1): Thinking Like a Historian: Historical Methods, Practice and Theory. Please share this announcement to anyone you know who might be interested! Or...Two Lessons Bart Ehrman Needs to Learn about Probability Theory
A reader pointed something out to me that was a fantastic facepalm moment. It’s another demonstration of how Bart Ehrman doesn’t know how epistemic probability works, and not only hasn’t read On the Historicity of Jesus, he doesn’t even know...History as a Science
In 1970, David Hackett Fischer published a meaty and entertaining book, Historian’s Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (well and briefly reviewed by Philip Jenkins at Patheos). I highly recommend it. He’s funny, but correct. It’s not a...Speaking at Edinboro, Pennsylvania!
The Anthropology Club at Edinboro University has invited me to speak on Bayes’ Theorem Is the Logic of Historical Argument: A Demonstration Comparing the Historicity of Jesus and John Frum. That’s right, I’m going to compare Bayesian arguments for two...On the Historicity of Jesus: The Tim Hendrix Critique
Tim Hendrix, a mathematician, recently published an inaccurate critique of my book On the Historicity of Jesus. This is my analysis of where he went wrong. Hendrix wrote a critique of my book Proving History: Bayes’s Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus a...Lena Einhorn on the Claudian Christ Theory
Editor, physician and documentarian Lena Einhorn has written a book, A Shift in Time, arguing a new theory of the historical Jesus: that he actually was a violent rebel from the era of Claudius, who was later whitewashed into a pacifist from the era of Tiberius. My...Dykstra on Ehrman & Brodie
Rene Salm has clued me in to another important new peer reviewed journal article, by Tom Dykstra (M.Div.; Ph.D. in Russian History), who is best known for his critically acclaimed book on how the Gospel of Mark is built out of the Epistles of Paul (Mark,...Appearing in Charleston, South Carolina!
I will be in South Carolina this February 21st (Sunday) speaking on the subject of applying Bayesian reasoning to the question whether someone existed…you know, someone like, say, Jesus. I’ll be speaking at 4pm in Gage Hall (4 Archdale Street, Charleston,...Tucker’s Review of Proving History in the Journal History & Theory
As I recently mentioned, a Harvard University philosopher, Aviezer Tucker, just published a review of my book Proving History for the academic journal History and Theory (Vol. 55, February 2016, pp. 129-140), titled, The Reverend Bayes vs. Jesus Christ. Tucker is an...We Are All Bayesians Now: Some Bayes for Beginners
Two things happened recently. I was thinking about better ways to teach Bayesian thinking with minimal math in my upcoming class on historical reasoning (which starts in two days; if you want in, you can register now!). And I just finished reading an advance copy of...Speaking for Columbus Rationality Next Month!
I will be speaking on Bayesian history and epistemology for Columbus Rationality and the Secular Student Alliance at OSU in Columbus, Ohio, on Monday, November 16th, at 7:30pm in Lazenby Hall (room 021) on the OSU campus. Details here. I Will...Did Muhammad Exist? (Why That Question Is Hard to Answer)
I get asked this a lot. “Why not apply your methods and skills to the question of whether Muhammad actually existed or not?” My answer is always the same: I will not likely ever be able to do that, because it would require getting a whole second Ph.D. in...Appearing in Wichita!
I’ll be one of the featured speakers for the Skeptics of OZ Conference on Saturday October 17 (2015), in the CAC Theater at Wichita State University (Wichita, Kansas). Details here. Lanyrd here. I’ll be discussing my book Proving History, but in particular...Tim Hendrix on Proving History
Tim Hendrix wrote a critical analysis of my book Proving History two years ago, and recently made it available online. Coincidentally I also just discovered a review of the book in College & Research Libraries Reviews, which had been published in June of 2012 (pp....Okay, So What about the Historicity of Spartacus?
It’s always something. First it was, “We have better evidence for Jesus than for the contemporary emperor Tiberius.” Matthew Ferguson annihilated that one. Then it was, “We have better evidence for Jesus than for Alexander the Great.”...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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