CADRE Comments

These are the voyages of Jesus myther propaganda... (part 1) It's five year mission, to seek out new lies and new propaganda slogans, to boldly go where no historians have gone before...    Years ago, way back in 2009 I did a post on Atheistwatch about the Jesus project , not seminar but project . They really did have a five year mission. Last week I did a post on the parent organization , the centerpiece of atheist propaganda machine, the center for inquiry (they do skeptical inquiry magazine). What came of that Jesus project? It's five years  were up in 2013. I said that the time: " Cracking The Jesus Myth Phony Scholarship Code ." Richard Carrier has a couple of articles on his blog about a big conference for the Jesus Project held at Amherst last December. O it sounds very scholarly. It presents the image of a group of major scholars meeting to mull over the lattes scientific findings that proving that Jesus never existed. This create...

Recently atheists such as Nicholas Everitt and Richard Carrier have appealed to the immense size and age of the Universe as features we wouldn't expect if the latter were the creation of the Christian God. There are various ways to flesh out this argument, but Carrier captures the gist of it in his essay Why I Am Not a Christian : ...the Christian hypothesis actually predicts a completely different universe than the one we find ourselves in. For a loving God who wanted to create a universe solely to provide a home for human beings, and to bring his plan of salvation to fruition , would never have invented this universe, but something quite different. But if there is no God, then the universe we actually observe is exactly the sort of universe we would expect to observe. In other words, if there is no God then this universe is the only kind of universe we would ever find ourselves in, the only kind that could ever produce intelligent life without any supernatural cause or plan. Hen...

Warning!--a long and dense post is approaching. Several weeks ago, I posted up ( here on the Cadre Journal ) a revision of Richard Carrier's deductive anti-theistic argument from suffering, which he attempted during his debate with Tom Wanchick a few years ago (which for reference can be found here at the Secular Web. ) Now comes the commentary, where I take some time to explain the tactical and strategic applications of my revision. For an even longer commentary, where I discuss in more detail why I made the revisions I did, as well as discuss the level of similarity to Richard’s original argument, please see the doc file posted in the second comment of this thread at www.evangelicaluniversalist.com. The thread’s initial post is the revised argument found here on the Cadre as well. Note: all argument element references afterward in this article, such as P1 or C1, refer afterward to the elements of my revision of Richard's argument, not to the element labels given by Richard t...

I've been busy in recent months writing as an invited guest-author (on orthodox Christian universalism) over at the Evangelical Universalist forum ; so I haven't had much time (or energy {g}) to contribute new articles here. But my friend Professor Victor Reppert has been posting up new and previous articles on arguments from evil (especially the deductive kind), for his students and readers, at DangIdea recently (as he tends to do about twice a year); and this reminded me that I've been meaning for some time to post up a deductive variation of the anti-theistic argument from suffering that I myself came up with a while ago. (A set of anti-theistic deductive arguments from evil, linked to by Victor during the discussion, can also be found collected by Jeff Lowder at the Secular Web here. ) This is an expanded, detailed and amplified form of an argument my sometime-previous-sparring partner, Richard Carrier, was attempting to make a couple of years ago in the opening statem...

In Part 1 , I discussed whether Richard Carrier was wrong about his understanding of Romans 8:18-23, where Paul compares the redemption of Christian bodies with the redemption of creation itself ("the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God"). Rather than forfeit the point that the universe and the bodies of believers will be renewed at the resurrection, Dr. Carrier argues that Paul does not believe in the renewal of creation but rather in its complete destruction. The old world will be completely replaced by the new with no element of continuity. A chief flaw in Dr. Carrier's argument, explored in Part 1, is his reliance on what he thinks other, later Christian writers meant when writing about the end of the world. So there can be no doubt that the earliest Christians believed the present world would be annihilated and replaced with a new one, just as graphically described in 2 Peter 3:3...

The Universe and Our Bodies No, this is not a Discovery Channel special. In my series of “Is Richard Carrier Wrong ....” posts I have focused on his arguments in support of the theory that Paul believed in a two-body “resurrection” of Jesus -- and by implication, Christians. Although this post is somewhat tangential, it fits the series. The subject is the end of the world, or rather how Paul envisioned the end times. This is relevant to his views on the resurrection because in Romans 8 Paul compares what happens to the universe to what happens to our bodies. In verses 19-21, Paul discusses the universes' desire to be free of corruption and its liberation from bondage: The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the ...

This is a continuation of CADRE blog responses to Richard Carrier's chapter in The Empty Tomb , which argues that Paul believed in a two-body resurrection that entailed the original body remaining in the tomb while a brand new body unrelated to the old was given to the Christian. For links to previous posts on the subject, go here . For now, I address Carrier's arguments concerning Origen and Paul. Does it Matter what Origen Believed? According to Carrier, “the great Christian scholar Origen understood Paul’s resurrection doctrine as I do.” That is, Carrier claims that Origen believed that Paul described a resurrection process whereby the old body remains in the grave and the Christian (and by necessary implication, Jesus) is given a completely new body, with no continuity between the two. If this was truly Origen’s understanding, it is left unclear why this would lend any support to Carrier’s novel theory. Origen was not even born until about 130 years after Paul wrote hi...

In a section of his Chapter in The Empty Tomb entitled, “Paul and the Pharisees,” Carrier reviews the Rabbinic writings in an attempt to separate Paul from the Pharisees so as to drive a wedge between their firm belief in bodily resurrection and Paul’s resurrection views. As with previous sections of his chapter (about the Sadducees , the Herodians , Qumran , Paliggenesia , the Assumption of Moses , the Scribes , Philo , and the Pharisees ) there are several problems with his analysis. The Rabbinic Writings as Questionable Sources of Pharisaic Belief Carrier mistakenly assumes that the Rabbinic writings reflect the Pharisaic views of Paul’s time. This assumption is inexplicable because Carrier contradicts himself by his speculation that at least one sect of Pharisees taught a two body resurrection belief that left no trace in the Rabbinic writings. In any event, the Rabbinic writings were composed 200 to 400 years after Paul’s letters. Those hundreds of years were not witho...