Added The Quest for the Historical Paul (Part A) (2025) by John MacDonald to the Historicity page under Christianity in the Modern Documents section of the Secular Web Library.
In this first of four articles, John MacDonald offers the suggestion that the historical Paul did not exist and was a literary creation of Acts in two ways. This then makes the Pauline letters fictive epistles like Seneca’s moral epistles. First, as a theoretical framework MacDonald summarizes Nina Livesey’s recent book arguing to this effect. Next, he uses that foundation to make the case that the converted Paul in Acts is a literary creation as the literary pair of the converted soldier at the cross in Luke—just as the forgiving dying Jesus is paired with the forgiving dying Stephen.
New in the Kiosk: Group Hallucination is as Common as the Earth I Stand Upon (2025) by Trygve Rasmussen
In this fun little essay new Secular Web author Trygve Rasmussen expounds upon a selection from the great Frenchman Gustave Le Bon’s The Crowd that gives several examples of group hallucination. From this selection Rasmussen draws insights about the confused Gospel accounts of the resurrection of Jesus and wonders aloud whether there is some very minute possibility that a few chaps in old Jerusalem ‘hallucinated’ a thing or two altogether. The author concludes with a consideration of the resources and duty that Le Bon’s study leaves a naturalist, and his widely unexplored counterapologetic possibility has parallels in contemporary examples of social contagion like the November/December 2024 New Jersey drone sightings.
Recommended reading: The War on Science: Thirty-Nine Renowned Scientists and Scholars Speak Out About Current Threats to Free Speech, Open Inquiry, and the Scientific Process (2025) edited by Lawrence M. Krauss
From assaults on merit-based hiring to the policing of language and replacing well-established, disciplinary scholarship by ideological mantras, current science and scholarship is under threat throughout Western institutions. An unparalleled group of prominent scholars from wide-ranging disciplines and political leanings detail ongoing efforts to impose ideological restrictions on science and scholarship throughout Western society. The very future of free inquiry and scientific progress is at risk, and many who have spoken up against this threat have lost their positions, creating a climate of fear that strikes at the heart of modern education and research. Topics covered include free speech, victimhood, ideology, corruption of academic disciplines, cancel culture, diversity-equity-and-inclusion, gender, and race, and what rationalists can do about them.