15 April 2017
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...
3 April 2017
I am looking for someone who is facile at translating Medieval Arabic scientific treatises (in physics, mechanics, or engineering especially). For future research (and possibly my next book), I need a literal translation of two pages of the surviving Arabic...
24 March 2017
A few years ago, Sam Harris put on a contest, that awarded $2000 to the best essay critiquing his “moral landscape” theory of moral facts—and could have awarded them $20,000 had it convinced him. It didn’t. I agree it shouldn’t have. But...
20 March 2017
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...
19 March 2017
Register now for my online course on the historicity of Jesus! It starts again next month: learn the best arguments pro and con (so not just my case against it, but also the best arguments and evidence for it), as well as the cultural and historical background of the...
17 March 2017
Someone asked me about a confusing critique of the math in On the Historicity of Jesus by a YouTuber who goes by the moniker Fishers of Evidence. I don’t know his alignment in the debate. But he has posted a short eight minute video entitled The Error of Richard...
15 March 2017
Susan Jacoby was originally slated to speak at the Birmingham Temple Congregation for Humanistic Judaism the evening before the Michigan Atheists Conference this year. But alas, she had to reschedule to speak the Friday before that (the 21st of April, 2017)....
8 March 2017
Or just hang out, drink, and chat while I bowl. I’ll even have books to sign and sell. So come on over. I’ll be at Point Bowl (which also has a bar & grill) from 7-10pm on Monday, April 24 (2017). That’s at 2525 Dixon Street. I’ll have just...
6 March 2017
I’ll be at Bar Marco in Pittsburgh, PA on April 8 (Saturday) from 7-10pm (2216 Penn Avenue), chatting with anyone who wants to come have a drink with me, and selling and signing my books, of which I’ll have an ample supply. And take note: Bar Marco is part...
3 March 2017
Adam Ruins Everything is a fantastic YouTube series. Short videos, usually pretty much spot on, that destroy cultural assumptions by…well, just demonstrating they are only cultural assumptions—and indeed, often created for sinister or stupid reasons, and...
26 February 2017
The rolling shit show that is the Trump administration, and his Trumpish ilk in Congress, produces a lot of shock, horror, and tripe. But what if we examine a single little issue that a lot of people don’t know much about: school nutrition. We’ll find a...
19 February 2017
I’ll be at Daniel O’Connell’s Irish Restaurant and Bar in Alexandria (VA) from 7-10pm on Sunday the 12th of March (2017). That’s on 112 King St. And as locals know, that’s in Old Town, just around the corner from Washington, DC. Although...
17 February 2017
This April 29 (2017) I’ll be tabling and selling my books (including my new one on Science Education in the Early Roman Empire) at the Michigan Atheists Convention (and attending the afterparty) at the Center for Secular Humanism on 28611 West Twelve Mile Rd.,...
15 February 2017
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...
14 February 2017
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...
9 February 2017
I’m teaching my popular course Introduction to Biblical Scholarship on the New Testament online in March. This is for anyone (you don’t have to be an expert) who wants to be better equipped to debate the Bible or understand the Bible. You will learn a lot of...