Richard Carrier What follows is a half-hour lecture I gave at Yale on 26 October 2000 at the request of the Yale College Humanists and Secularists. It was followed by a Q & A session that actually lasted nearly two hours. I have subsequently been asked to give this lecture elsewhere on other occasions, so I am reproducing it here, with hyperlinked footnotes in brackets giving more detail than I am able to give in the lecture itself. Though it shares the same title as the much-longer essay here, it is not the same paper, but actually a synthesis of several papers I have published here, and including entirely new arguments and information. It is worth reading on its own, in addition to or even in lieu of the much lengthier essay also called Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story . Today I am going to tell you why I don't buy the resurrection story. By that I mean the tales in the Gospels, of Jesus physically rising again from the grave. As a professional historian, I do not b...

by Matt Scheeren (mattisdx at hotmail dot com) Today I was walking downtown in the streets of Pittsburgh, when I came across a nice older gentleman handing out Christian End of the World Apocalyptic literature. While at the time I didn’t think this was so out of place, later I got to thinking, what if this man had been Muslim? And what if the literature he had been handing out cited passages from the Koran and talked about “The End Times”. BAM! This guy would have automatically been labeled a terrorist, arrested, and thrown in some rudimentary prison cell while being harassed and harangued by armed guards and police dogs. Why is it that in today’s society it seems so taboo to be anything but Christian ? Could it be because our founding fathers were Christian ? No, certainly not. Because it was people like them that actually supported religious freedom. Than maybe it was our parents, who so harshly pushed their ideas and ideals upon us. While half true, most of ...

I don't know who painted this, or why. I don't know what it means, or what the title of the piece is. Any suggestions?

(found on www.evilbible.com ) 10 - You vigorously deny the existence of thousands of gods claimed by other religions, but feel outraged when someone denies the existence of yours. 9 - You feel insulted and "dehumanized" when scientists say that people evolved from other life forms, but you have no problem with the Biblical claim that we were created from dirt. 8 - You laugh at polytheists, but you have no problem believing in a Triune God. 7 - Your face turns purple when you hear of the "atrocities" attributed to Allah, but you don't even flinch when hearing about how God/Jehovah slaughtered all the babies of Egypt in "Exodus" and ordered the elimination of entire ethnic groups in "Joshua" -- including women, children, and trees! 6 - You laugh at Hindu beliefs that deify humans, and Greek claims about gods sleeping with women, but you have no problem believing that the Holy Spirit impregnated Mary, who then gave b...

I am tired of hearing Lee Strobel's book touted as the absolute final Christian apologetic word on logically "PROVING" the validity of the Christian religion. When will Christians figure out that apologetic works like this are not aimed at the unconverted but are written with the intention of assuaging the doubts of the "true believer?" It is the "true believers" who buy and read nearly all apologetic literary attempts. They are written by and for people who want to believe, but are fighting with "doubts" otherwise known as having a brain. The next time someone attempts to justify the reasonableness of their faith, and use L.S. as the foundational "reason to believe" feel free to aim them in the direction of some salient links: The Rest of the Story (1999) Critique of Lee Strobel's The Case for Faith (2003) Free Advertising Isn't the Point (2000) Objections Sustained! (2001)

by A. Uiet Bhor Religions claim to have many things to offer many virtues lacking from secular philosophy, I’m going to address this. I recently read an interview with Richard “The Meam Man” Dawkins, he was going on about how truth was so important to him, and how he wanted others to see the world the way he did, but he admitted there was a vacuum when religion was removed. He said he was unable to fill it, that he could only speak for himself and how happy he was. Fair enough, but I reckon I can go one better. I required the same conclusions as to the meaning of life, the nature of the universe, and the virtue of the scientific method, but from a completely different angle, that of morality. To me the inherent value of human life was self evident, and only philosophies that served life without subverting it through its own self interest were good enough to be considered applicable to answer the questions posed by sentient existence. Life is more important than truth, but if the quest ...