September Course

This September (in just a few weeks) I will be visiting lecturer at CFI's online campus, teaching their one-month intro course The Real Origins of Christianity alongside Dr. John Shook (we co-taught the last course, on naturalism). Anyone can attend and receive a certificate of completion (though only students at UB receive college credit). It is all online and all flextime (you can work at any

The End of Christianity

The End of Christianity (the long awaited sequel to The Christian Delusion) is now available in bookstores (and I'm assured will soon be available in kindle and other digital formats). Delusion was an awesome book. End is even better. Indeed, I think the two volumes together amount to a decisive refutation of Christianity. A bona fide litmus test. No rational person can read both volumes and not

Atheist Film Festival

I'll be appearing at this year's Atheist Film Festival at the Roxy in San Francisco, California, to give a Q&A for the audience after the showing of the film Agora. The festival starts on Sunday, August 21 (2011) at 10am. There will be two screens with different things running concurrently. For more details (including directions, tickets, etc.) see the SF Atheist Film Festival website.

If you

Amazon Dumps Us

Now that California has signed into law a tax reform that counts internet business associations as establishing legal "nexus" for state taxes to apply, Amazon has dumped all of its California internet sales associates. That means I can no longer earn a commission on referring you to Amazon to buy my books, or other books that I think are worth reading (which I had been doing in my Richard Carrier

Calling All Physicists

Over the years I have been mulling a problem in metaphysics: the ontological mysteries of Quantum Mechanics. I have been developing a theory in this regard (see, for example, The Ontology of Time and my unresolved alternatives in Sense and Goodness without God, pp. 98-99, III.4.1), and now, informed by some recent discoveries and publications in the sciences (and finally a stronger understanding

New Podcast & Vids

I recently did an interview for the Think Atheist podcast, which is now available. We discuss historical method generally, how historians work and what makes their work logically valid, including discussion of Bayes' Theorem and the philosophy of history, and the completion schedule of my four books currently in progress (one of which is completed and now under contract at a publisher and in the

Pauline Interpolations

In the New Testament, at least two passages have been interpolated into the letters of Paul: 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 and 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. Today I'll present the evidence for this conclusion that most experts have long known about, but most laymen never hear.

For those not savvy to the study of ancient manuscripts (called textual criticism), an "interpolation" is a word or passage that