This file has been relocated: it is now Section IV of Probability of Survival vs. Miracle: Assessing the Odds.

This file has been relocated: it is now Section III of Probability of Survival vs. Miracle: Assessing the Odds.

This file has been relocated: it is now Section II of Probability of Survival vs. Miracle: Assessing the Odds.

This file has been relocated: it is now Section I of Probability of Survival vs. Miracle: Assessing the Odds.

Why I Don’t Buy the Resurrection Story (6th ed., 2006) Richard Carrier   Probability of Survival vs. Miracle: Assessing the Odds   After years of study as an historian, I now believe that Jesus simply died, and the rest was invented, consciously or not, by his disciples, as a means to carry on his teaching […]

This file has been relocated: it is now Section III of General Case for Insufficiency .

This file has been relocated: it is now Section II of General Case for Insufficiency .

This file has been relocated: it is now Section I of General Case for Insufficiency .

Why I Don’t Buy the Resurrection Story (6th ed., 2006) Richard Carrier   General Case for Insufficiency: The Event is Not Proportionate to the Theory   According to the Christian theory, God is god of All Humankind, and more than that, He is god of All the Universe. This is inconsistent with the proof offered […]

Why I Don’t Buy the Resurrection Story (6th ed., 2006) Richard Carrier I don’t buy the resurrection story. That would normally be all I need say. But I am routinely asked why. This collection of short essays serves to answer that question. There are many reasons I am not a Christian. My atheism is based […]

Reply to Glenn Miller on the Burial of Jesus (2002) Richard Carrier   This is a brief reply to Glen Miller’s rebuttal (October 2002 edition) to my essay “Jewish Law, the Burial of Jesus, and the Third Day” (May 2002 edition), which he entitles “Good Question: Was the burial of Jesus a temporary one, because […]

The Date of the Nativity in Luke (6th ed., 2011) Richard Carrier It is beyond reasonable dispute that Luke dates the birth of Jesus to 6 A.D. It is equally indisputable that Matthew dates the birth of Jesus to 6 B.C. (or some year before 4 B.C.). This becomes an irreconcilable contradiction after an examination […]

The End of Pascal’s Wager? (2006) Richard Carrier   In “Is Atheism a Safe Bet?” Amy Sayers responds to my essay “The End of Pascal’s Wager: Only Nontheists Go to Heaven” (2002), but she does not understand my argument. Her first objection is that: Richard Carrier has not ended the wager in all forms, as […]

What an Atheist Ought to Stand For (1999) (Revised 2004)   Richard Carrier   A Justifiable Lament There is a common and justifiable lament that atheists are so preoccupied by naming and arguing what they are against, that people rarely hear what atheists are for. This is not only heard from the religious critics of […]

The Formation of the New Testament Canon (2000) Richard Carrier   Contrary to common belief, there was never a one-time, truly universal decision as to which books should be included in the Bible. It took over a century of the proliferation of numerous writings before anyone even bothered to start picking and choosing, and then […]

The Nazareth Inscription (2000) Richard Carrier   Several authors have advanced a particular inscription as early evidence of the empty tomb story in the Gospels. I will not attempt to trace all uses of this argument (I have encountered several), but I will note the two most important examples: it was used most recently by […]

Was Musonius Better than Jesus? (2006) Richard Carrier   In “Two Ancient Teachers, Two Bad Analogies” and “The Real Jesus: A Brief Portrait,” Amy Sayers responds to my essay “On Musonius Rufus: A Brief Essay” (1999), but she reads far too much into what I say there, and essentially argues against positions I never affirmed. […]

On Musonius Rufus: A Brief Essay (1999) Richard Carrier   Since this man deserves far more publicity than he has ever gotten in the modern age, I have written this short essay. He exemplifies the sort of man who should have been venerated and made the founder of a world religion, but was not, yet […]

The Carrier Theory of Value and the Ethical Adequacy of Metaphysical Naturalism(2001) Richard Carrier     In the May/June, 1996 issue of Promise, J.P. Moreland publisheda paper called “TheEthical Inadequacy of Naturalism” (pp. 36-39). In it he repeated anumber of fallacies and falsehoods about Secular Humanism that must berefuted, and in the process I will […]

Does the Christian Theism Advocated by J.P. Moreland Provide a Better Reason to be Moral than Secular Humanism? (1998) Richard Carrier   The following essay has been completely improved and superceded by a more accurate version and backed by more detailed analysis in Richard Carrier, Sense and Goodness without God (2005), pp. 291-348. Any critique […]

Defining Our Mission Richard C. Carrier From our inception in 1995 the mission of the Internet Infidels has always been to defend and promote Metaphysical Naturalism, a term coined by philosophers for any worldview that holds that nature is all there is. Philosophers call this a “closed” system because nothing more is needed to explain […]

Luke and Josephus (2000) Richard Carrier There has long been the observation that Luke-Acts contains numerous parallels with the works of Josephus, generating three different theories to account for this: that Josephus used Luke, that Luke used Josephus, or that they both used some common but now lost source. Steve Mason has reviewed the arguments […]

Connections Medieval to Modern (Bibliography of Skepticism in the Ancient World) (1998) Richard Carrier (copyright 1999)   Links Medieval to Modern David Hume, A. H. Basson Harmondsworth, Penguin Books, 1958. Blackwell, Constance, “Diogenes Laertius’s Life of Pyrrho and the Interpretation of Ancient Scepticism in the History of Philosophy: Stanley through Brucker to Tennemann,” in Scepticism […]

Severus Is Not Quoting Tacitus: A Rebuttal to Eric Laupot (2006) Richard Carrier   In “Tacitus’ Fragment 2: The Anti-Roman Movement of the Christiani and the Nazoreans,” a paper that was originally published in Vigiliae Christianae (54.3, 2000: pp. 233-47), Eric Laupot argues that a passage in Sulpicius Severus actually comes from the lost section […]

Kooks and Quacks of the Roman Empire: A Look into the World of the Gospels (1997)   Richard Carrier   We all have read the tales told of Jesus in the Gospels, but few people really have a good idea of their context. Yet it is quite enlightening to examine them against the background of […]

Jacoby and Müller on “Thallus” (1999) Richard Carrier   [This is a translation from the German, Latin, and Greek of Section 256 of F. Jacoby’s Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Fragments of the Greek Historians, 1923–) and the corresponding section in Carolus Müller’s Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum (Fragments of the Greek Historians, 1840–)]   The following is […]

Cosmology and the Koran: A Response to Muslim Fundamentalists (2001) Richard Carrier Muslim Fundamentalists are fond of claiming that the Koran miraculously predicted the findings of modern science, and that all of its factual scientific claims are flawless. There are two important objections to this claim that I will make, one pointing to a general […]

Introductions (Bibliography of Skepticism in the Ancient World) (1998) Richard Carrier (copyright 1999)   Introductions Barclay, William, “Hellenistic Thought in New Testament Times: the Sceptics,” in Expository Times, Vol. 71, July, 1960, pp. 297-301. The Greek Sceptics and Sextus Empiricus, John C. Berberelly, New York, Columbia University, 1974. Stoics and Sceptics, Edwyn Robert Bevan, New […]

Richard Carrier [The following article was originally published in the Fall 1996 issue of Inquiry: Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines, published by the Institute for Critical Thinking at Montclair State University (Upper Montclair, NJ).] William Reinsmith’s paper “Religious Life and Critical Thought: Do They Need Each Other?” was well written and very communicative, but I […]

Review of In Defense of Miracles (1999, 2005) Richard Carrier   The material previously contained at this location has been moved into the combined Summary.