What Do We Do When Some Theist We Don’t Know Sends Us E-mail? (1997) Richard Carrier   The Basic Guidelines 1) Always respond. 2) If the letter was abusive or childish, politely but curtly say so, and that you wish to have no further contact with such a rude and immoral person, or else you […]

Review of The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark (by Dennis R. MacDonald; Yale University, 2000) By Richard Carrier An Incredible Book This is an incredible book that must be read by everyone with an interest in Christianity. MacDonald’s shocking thesis is that the Gospel of Mark is a deliberate and conscious anti-epic, an […]

William Lane Craig, Herodotus, and Myth Formation (1999) Richard Carrier This essay addresses one specific argument made by William Lane Craig, to the effect that “tests” from Herodotus demonstrate that myths or legends (such as resurrection appearances or an empty tomb) cannot grow within a single generation. A great deal more could be said about […]

The End of Pascal’s Wager: Only Nontheists Go to Heaven (2002) Richard Carrier   The End of Pascal’s Wager: Only Nontheists Go to Heaven The following argument could be taken as tongue-in-cheek, if it didn’t seem so evidently true. At any rate, to escape the logic of it requires theists to commit to abandoning several […]

Kersey Graves and The World’s Sixteen Crucified Saviors (2003) Richard Carrier [Editor’s note: This is a conflation of three responses which were made by Richard Carrier to feedback and e-mail involving questions about the scholarhip of Kersey Graves, in particular, and about scholarship, in general, in the subject area about which Graves concerned himself in […]

Generalia (Bibliography of Skepticism in the Ancient World) (1998) Richard Carrier (copyright 1999)   Generalia Alexander, Loveday, “The Living Voice: Scepticism Towards the Written Word in Early Christian and in Graeco-Roman Texts,” in The Bible in Three Dimensions: Essays in Celebration of Forty Years of Biblical Studies in the University of Sheffield, D. Clines, and […]

Bad Science, Worse Philosophy: the Quackery and Logic-Chopping of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists (2000)   9. The Odds of Life Evolving by Chance Richard Carrier   Advance to: Shuffling Cards Advance to: Typing Monkeys Advance to: Hemoglobin and the T4 Genome I have surveyed most of the strangeness of Foster’s book. But I have […]

Bad Science, Worse Philosophy: the Quackery and Logic-Chopping of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists (2000)   8. Misrepresenting Darwinism Richard Carrier   Foster’s main enemy is Darwinism, which he claims to have ‘refuted.’ But he seems to have no proper idea of what Darwinism actually is. Some of his misrepresentations may be polemic. Take for […]

Bad Science, Worse Philosophy: the Quackery and Logic-Chopping of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists (2000)   7. Why Foster Needs to Take a Basic Thermodynamics Course Richard Carrier   The Second Law of Thermodynamics, or ‘The Law of Entropy,’ is a common feature of creationist arguments. More often than not it is totally misunderstood. Even […]

Bad Science, Worse Philosophy: the Quackery and Logic-Chopping of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists (2000)   6. Why Foster Needs to Take a Basic Physics Course Richard Carrier   On page 158 Foster demonstrates a very strange confusion. He begins with the seemingly innocent statement that in chemistry “the most economic and efficient processes are […]

Bad Science, Worse Philosophy: the Quackery and Logic-Chopping of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists (2000)   5. Why Foster Needs to Take a Basic Statistics Course Richard Carrier   Foster’s book is entirely dependent upon statistics, and his equations and calculations look impressive. But how he came about the use of them is a serious […]

Bad Science, Worse Philosophy: the Quackery and Logic-Chopping of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists (2000)   4. Why Foster Needs to Take a Basic Biology Course Richard Carrier   Now, I have already surveyed a hodge-podge of strange notions that threw me for a loop when I read them. But Foster’s mistakes extend beyond mere […]

Bad Science, Worse Philosophy: the Quackery and Logic-Chopping of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists (2000)   3. Exercises in Self-Refutation Richard Carrier   Some of Foster’s philosophizing can be used against his own position. Chapters 4 and 5, for example, are the only good chapters in the book, in my opinion, though they do not […]

Bad Science, Worse Philosophy: the Quackery and Logic-Chopping of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists (2000)   2. Some of Foster’s Strange Notions Richard Carrier   I will begin with examples of the more trivial of Foster’s strangeness, simply to prepare you for the worst. To begin with, Foster makes several amateurish philosophical errors that betray […]

Bad Science, Worse Philosophy: the Quackery and Logic-Chopping of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists (2000)   11. Conclusion Richard Carrier   Religionists are faced with the daunting sophistication, accuracy, and success of science, which can predict and explain everything it can study in terms so mathematically precise that nowhere can be found those ambiguities which […]

Bad Science, Worse Philosophy: the Quackery and Logic-Chopping of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists (2000)   10. Foster’s Biggest Blunder Richard Carrier   I have refuted Foster’s first argument, his claim that life is too improbable to have evolved through natural selection. But about half of Foster’s book is concerned with establishing or drawing conclusions […]

Bad Science, Worse Philosophy: the Quackery and Logic-Chopping of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists (2000)   1. Who is David Foster? Richard Carrier   David Foster received his technical training at King’s College London and has the degrees of M.Sc. and Ph.D, retiring in 1993 from a career as a scientific consultant. He has written […]

Bad Science, Worse Philosophy: the Quackery and Logic-Chopping of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists (2000) Richard Carrier   Originally published in 1998 and revised in 2000. T A B L E of C O N T E N T S: Who is David Foster? Some of Foster’s Strange Notions Exercises in Self-Refutation Why Foster Needs […]

A Fish Did Not Write This Essay (1995) Richard Carrier   [This essay won second prize in a competition and was published in Freethought Today 12:7 (Sept. 1995), p. 8. The Freedom From Religion Foundation which publishes Freethought Today comes highly recommended as a very human, professional, national organization for freethinkers of all varieties, and […]

Response to James Hannam’s ‘In Defense of the Fine Tuning Design Argument’ (2001) Richard Carrier   In his essay “In Defense of the Fine Tuning Design Argument” (2001) published here on the Secular Web, I do not believe Hannam has addressed the full range of issues and problems with the Fine Tuning Argument as discussed […]

  Entropy Explained (2003, 2005) Richard Carrier   Addendum A to “Bad Science, Worse Philosophy: the Quackery and Logic-Chopping of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists” (2000)   Introduction The concept of entropy is generally not well understood among laymen. With the help of several physicists, including Wolfgang Gasser and Malcolm Schreiber, I have composed the […]

Was Christianity the Cause of Modern Science? Sources of the Claim (as of 2000) Richard Carrier     Was Christianity the Cause of Modern Science? This is a list of all known places where the claim is made that Christianity was in some sense the cause of modern science. I am eagerly seeking others that […]

Wanchick’s Closing Statement (2006)   Basic Argument for Naturalism (BAN) Per Carrier, P1 assumes science specifically is the “most reliable method” for finding truth. Scientific indication is sufficient for belief. But Carrier’s opening statement failed to demonstrate that science (or any discipline) provides a sufficient condition for belief. He now says it’s obvious that science […]

Wanchick’s Second Rebuttal (2006)   Leibnizian Cosmological Argument Carrier says the “only evidence” I offer that the universe is non-necessary is scientific. Not at all; I first noted that “the universe appears obviously contingent”: we can easily conceive of its nonexistence. Carrier never challenges this. Alas, he concedes it, stating that possibly nothing or a […]

Wanchick’s First Rebuttal (2006)   Basic Argument for Naturalism (BAN) It’s hard to make sense of Carrier’s opening argument. He aptly labels it his basic argument for naturalism (BAN). Unfortunately, its lack of depth apparently stems from his failure to justify its premises. P1 says propositions entailed by reliable methods trump those supported by less […]

Wanchick’s Opening Statement (2006)   Leibnizian Cosmological Argument It seems reasonable to believe that every substance[1] has an explanation for its existence: it was either caused by something else, or exists necessarily (it cannot not exist). This premise is evidently more plausible than its denial, for if confronted with a new substance, everyone would assume […]

The Rules We Followed (2006)   Welcome to Naturalism vs. Theism: The Carrier-Wanchick Debate. Here Richard and Tom explain the rules of debate they both agreed to follow.   (1) The parties to the debate composed a joint statement specifying the proposition to be defended and defining every term in that proposition to the reasonable […]

What We Are Debating (2006)   Welcome to Naturalism vs. Theism: The Carrier-Wanchick Debate. Here Richard and Tom cowrote and approved a joint statement stating as clearly as is reasonable what claims each intends to defend here. JOINT STATEMENT In the present debate Richard Carrier and Tom Wanchick will each be defending a different thesis […]

Carrier’s Closing Statement (2006)   Wanchick Failed to Make His Case Naturalism Is True The best methods known for ascertaining the facts have only discovered results corresponding to naturalism. Wanchick hasn’t shown otherwise. The results of inferior methods cannot supercede the results of superior methods, because, by definition, the probability of an inferior result being […]

Carrier’s Second Rebuttal (2006)   Wanchick Gets It Wrong Basic Argument for Naturalism (BAN) Wanchick thinks I “beg the question” when claiming scientific methods are the most reliable ones known for resolving questions of fact. Evidence of the superiority of science in ascertaining the truth in every matter of fact is so vast and undeniable […]