Richard Carrier has more waffles than IHOP

Richard Carrier has made another comment about my post. Before I respond to his latest comment, observe his evolving claims. He originally said:

And all specialists on John agree this was written in the early to mid second century, by authors unknown (yes, plural: John 21:24). 

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/9978

Subsequently, in response to my post, he said:

Richard Carrier saysApril 13, 2016 at 4:11 pm
I especially like how he insists there are specialists on John alive today who date it before 100 AD. And then doesn’t name a single specialist on John alive today who dates it before 100 AD. 

I will assume he means fundamentalists. I don’t count fundamentalists as reliable scholars. Any more than I count astrologers as reliable astronomers. 

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/9978#comment-1059207

Notice how his comment moves the goalpost–twice!:

i) He now restricts his claim to specialists "alive today."

ii) He now restricts his claim to "specialists" who aren't "fundamentalists". 

Today he made an additional comment:

Richard Carrier saysApril 14, 2016 at 2:31 pm
(P.S. I should allow that some non-fundamentalist specialists do at least allow the possibility John was written in the 90s. But not as a definite conclusion. And they generally all agree John used Luke as a source, so the specialist dating now of Luke to the 90s puts John unlikely so early.) 

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/9978#comment-1059215

i) Notice how this moves the goalpost yet again by his belated concession that all specialists on John don't agree that this was written in the early to mid-2C. So he's now reversed himself. Carrier has more waffles than IHOP.

And let's consider some other things he added:

ii) Since the internal evidence doesn't contain any data that would allow us to date it definitively, it comes down to a range of plausible dates. Given present evidence, the date will be inconclusive. However, we can rule left field dates like the mid-2C. One problem with Carrier's 2C date is that John accurately depicts the conditions of Jerusalem before the fall. That requires the narrator to be in touch with living memory. 

iii) How can scholars "generally all" agree? If it's generally, that falls short of all, and if it's all, that's more than generally. This is an indication that Carrier is just winging it. He doesn't actually have fix on which scholars say what. 

iv) To say the specialists date Luke to the 90s is a serious overgeneralization. Many Lukan scholars assign a pre-70 date to that Gospel. 

v) To say the scholars "generally all" (whatever that means) agree that John used Luke as a source is another serious overgeneralization. 

vi) There are some striking coincides between Luke and John. But it doesn't follow that John used Luke as a source. After all, right in his prologue, Luke says he used informants. Well, what if John was one of his informants? In that event, John's Gospel might sometimes seem to echo Luke, not because his Gospel is dependent on Luke's Gospel, but because Luke (the author) was dependent on the Apostle John for some of his information. Even if John's Gospel is later than Luke's Gospel (which I take to be the case), the Apostle John can be a source of information for an earlier Gospel (i.e. Luke's Gospel). Carrier fails to distinguish between a literary source and a personal source. 

Why Trust Josephus?

In an article on New Testament authorship that I wrote last week, I noted:

"Often, critics are inconsistent in their skepticism. The same critic who claims that the textual evidence for the New Testament documents is insufficient, or rejects an authorship attribution as reasonable as Mark's authorship of the second gospel, for example, will accept the text and authorship attributions of many extra-Biblical documents that have comparable or worse evidence, like the Annals of Tacitus. Many critical arguments against Christianity, such as the use of Josephus and Tacitus to argue against the census account of Luke 2, depend on an acceptance of extra-Biblical sources that's far less critical of those sources than the Biblical sources."

Jon Curry has written the following, in response to my comments above and some of my other comments:

Notice what's missing here. An actual description of the critical arguments and a refutation of them....

Let's suppose that the authorship attribution to Josephus is wrong. Do we base our confidence in Josephus on the fact that we know his name? No. Even if the author was really a guy named Steve, this author has demonstrated reliability over and over again. He shows the markers of being a reliable historian and he has been proved to be accurate often (not always). That's why he's preferred to Luke....

But why don't we take a look at the evidence, rather than taking the assertions of various people....

But does this reasoning apply to Jason, or only to Roman Catholics? Scholars don't nit pick Tacitus and Josephus like they do the NT. If they did, and they were consistent, they'd reject the authorship attributions. OK. So what does this mean? Is the solution to therefore uncritically accept everything then? If the evidence does not justify the authenticity of accepting Tacitus, the solution is not to therefore assume all the claimed authorship attributions uncritically. The solution is to reject the authorship attribution to Tacitus. The arguments against the NT authorship attributions stand on their own. They are not dependent on other beliefs regarding Tacitus.

Elsewhere in the article, Jon ignores the content of a quote I provided from the New Testament scholar Craig Keener, and he dismisses Keener with these comments:

Jason offered a quote from the conservative evangelical Christian Craig Keener...

We expect such assertions from Craig Keener. Who cares?

Should we approach Jon and his sources in the same manner? Should we ignore the content of Jon's citations of, say, Richard Carrier by commenting that "Jon offered a quote from the liberal atheist Richard Carrier. We expect such assertions from Richard Carrier. Who cares?" In a discussion I had with Jon a few years ago, he cited an article by Richard Carrier about the relationship between Luke and Josephus. Should I have dismissed Carrier and his data and sources in the same manner in which Jon dismisses Keener and the data and sources Keener cites?

Jon writes, "Do we base our confidence in Josephus on the fact that we know his name? No." Actually, the identity of an author does influence our evaluation of the credibility of his claims. Josephus claims to have been an eyewitness to some of what he reports, for example. The authorship of documents like those of Josephus and Tacitus is relevant to our confidence in those documents.

And how does Jon reach the conclusion that "this author has demonstrated reliability over and over again"? Does he compare the writings attributed to Josephus to other sources? But that would only push the question back one step. Why trust those other sources?

Where is Jon getting his information on the reliability of Josephus? Is he trusting a source like Richard Carrier (a source he cited on matters related to Josephus in a discussion with me a few years ago)? But Jon tells us "why don't we take a look at the evidence, rather than taking the assertions of various people". He doesn't want me citing men like Craig Keener and Kent Clarke in the manner in which I've cited them. Surely, then, we shouldn't accept such citations of somebody like Richard Carrier either. Jon should tell us where he got his information about Josephus. Instead of Googling the subject now, or looking something up on Wikipedia, for example, he ought to tell us what sources he was relying on for his conclusions about Josephus at the time when he wrote the comments quoted above. Was Jon "looking at the evidence, rather than taking the assertions of various people"?

I agree with Jon that we should be consistent in judging the New Testament and Tacitus, for example. I don't think the evidence for Tacitus is insufficient. I'm therefore being consistent by accepting both the Tacitus authorship attribution and the attributions of New Testament documents for which I think I have sufficient evidence as well.

But is Jon being consistent? He's often referred to ancient sources by name in his posts (Josephus, Irenaeus, etc.). Is he going to claim that he didn't intend to affirm the authorship attributions of those documents? How does Jon justify his trust in documents like those attributed to Josephus, whatever he thinks of their authorship attributions, in a manner consistent with what he's argued about Christian documents?

For instance, see the examples of Jon's questioning of the New Testament textual record here. Jon has suggested that a manuscript from the second or third century, for example, isn't enough, even if it's corroborated by other manuscripts. There may have been an alteration of the text prior to those oldest manuscripts. And the ancient Christians may have knowingly or unknowingly agreed with one another, even across large spectrums of geography, theology, etc., in accepting the same or similar textual corruptions. Yet, as Bart Ehrman noted in his recent debate with James White, we have better textual evidence for the New Testament documents than we have for the other documents of antiquity. If the New Testament text is to be doubted as much as Jon suggests, then why trust the text of Josephus and other sources Josephus would be compared to in order to conclude that he's reliable?

What about authorship attribution? If Josephus is to be trusted partly because of passages where he agrees with, say, a Roman historian who's considered reliable, and that Roman historian is considered reliable because of his identity (his access to government records, etc.), then why should we believe that the document was actually written by that person? Jon doesn't accept the authorship attributions of any of the New Testament documents. As the thread here illustrates, his justifications offered for doubting the New Testament authorship attributions are a slender reed.

Surely there are many passages in Josephus, Tacitus, etc. that could similarly be questioned. We could object that we wouldn't write the way Josephus is supposed to have written a particular passage if we were in his position. Tacitus' positive comments about the Roman empire make us suspect that a document attributed to him may have been forged by the Roman government or somebody else interested in presenting a particular view of Roman history. The Roman government is known to have sometimes destroyed documents. Maybe they did the same with documents that would have changed our view of Roman history, including on issues like who wrote the works attributed to Tacitus and other Roman figures. Jon often mentions the existence of Christian forgeries in antiquity, and he uses such forgeries to cast doubt on the credibility of the ancient Christians in general, even if there's no evidence to specifically tie an individual Christian of antiquity with the practice of forgery. But many forgeries existed among the ancient Jews and Romans as well. Should we keep pointing to those forgeries and drawing implications from them about ancient Jews and ancient Romans in general, as Jon has done with Christianity? Etc. If Jon thinks that such reasoning is enough to put every New Testament document (and every patristic document he wants to dismiss) in doubt, then he should be consistent in applying that reasoning. It doesn't seem that he is, though.

Some Neglected Evidence Relevant To The Census Of Luke 2 (Part 1)

Discussions of Luke's census often neglect some significant extra-Biblical evidence. In this six-part series, I want to address some of that evidence that tends to be overlooked or underestimated. This first post will be introductory, the second will discuss some potential objections to the approach I'm taking, the next three will discuss the evidence I have in mind more fully, and the last post will summarize the discussion and draw some conclusions.

To get some idea of the arguments commonly used by those who are critical of the Biblical data relevant to the census, see Raymond Brown's treatment of the issue in The Birth Of The Messiah (New York, New York: Doubleday, 1999) and Richard Carrier's article here. For the other side of the dispute, see Darrell Bock's Luke, Volume 1, 1:1-9:50 (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1994), Stanley Porter's article in Alf Christophersen, et al., edd., Paul, Luke And The Graeco-Roman World (London and New York: Continuum, 2003), and the responses to Richard Carrier here, here, and here.

Raymond Brown refers to Luke's account as "almost certainly wrong" and "dubious on almost every score" (The Birth Of The Messiah [New York, New York: Doubleday, 1999], pp. 36, 413). He refers to "creative Lucan construction" and Luke's alleged theological motives for referring to such a census (p. 414), and he alleges Luke's willingness to include material "for the sake of the story" elsewhere (p. 473). At another point, though, Brown suggests that Luke's account was more the result of a historical misunderstanding:

"My own judgment was that Luke confused the troubled times accompanying the formation of the province of Judea and the troubled times accompanying the death of Herod ten years previously." (p. 666)

Apparently, Brown viewed Luke's account of the census as largely a combination of intentional and unintentional fiction, partly historical and partly unhistorical. Addressing the genre of the infancy narratives in general, Brown commented that "this whole discussion has indicated that one may not classify the infancy narratives as belonging to the literary genre of factual history...my rejection of the classification 'factual history' does not mean that I fail to recognize the probable presence of items of historical value...I did not think it possible to maintain intelligently that the two infancy narratives as they now stand are totally historical...available evidence inclines against the historicity of large parts of them" (p. 562). Elsewhere, he comments that it's often difficult to discern what's historical and what isn't in the infancy narratives (pp. 578-579).

Richard Carrier writes:

"It is beyond reasonable dispute that Luke dates the birth of Jesus to 6 A.D....There is no way to rescue the Gospels of Matthew and Luke from contradicting each other on this one point of historical fact. The contradiction is plain and irrefutable, and stands as proof of the fallibility of the Bible, as well as the falsehood of at least one of the two New Testament accounts of the birth of Jesus."

Much of what Brown and Carrier have written in their works cited above is helpful. I've discussed some of the positive elements of Brown's book in the past (see here, here, and here). I've been recommending Richard Carrier's material on Jerry Vardaman's false claims about the census for years, and Carrier's correction of some of the errors of other skeptics has been helpful. But when critics like Brown and Carrier use phrases like "dubious on almost every score", "beyond reasonable dispute", and "plain and irrefutable" when discussing their conclusions about the census, they're going beyond what their own evidence warrants. And there's some other evidence that they and other critics don't address much, if at all.

Discussions of the census often include comments like the following:

"By almost any reckoning, the Gospel [of Luke] would have been composed while some would have had at least some second-hand knowledge of events surrounding the birth of Jesus. Such a glaring factual error as is suggested for the [census] passage would have been bound to arouse questions. The Lukan narrative does not provide an overt theological explanation for its particular telling of the events, since the account seems to purport to be a historical account, placing specific events within the context of other events involving actual people in the ancient world, such as Augustus and Quirinius." (Stanley Porter, in Alf Christophersen, et al., edd., Paul, Luke And The Graeco-Roman World [London and New York: Continuum, 2003], p. 168)

Even critics like Brown and Carrier will sometimes note:

"Even if Luke had little historical information about how the census of Quirinius had been conducted, he lived in the Roman Empire and may have undergone census enrollment himself. It is dangerous to assume that he described a process of registration that would have been patently opposed to everything that he and his readers knew." (Raymond Brown, The Birth Of The Messiah [New York, New York: Doubleday, 1999], p. 549)

"Some have pounced on Luke's description of the census as being inauthentic and therefore false. There are two problems with such an argument: first, an author who knew Jesus was born during a particular census could still err in describing that census, so such errors would not discredit the entire account.[1.1.5] Second, Luke's errors are not that grievous to begin with....The second 'mistake' lies in supposing that people would be called back to ancestral towns to be counted, rather than be counted in the actual towns they were in. This charge has been formulated a dozen ways, but none of them really carry much force. Though Jesus' family appears to have resided outside Judaea in Nazareth, there could easily be any number of reasons why an ancestral connection with Bethlehem would require them to journey there for a census of Judaea (so much as a tiny plot of ancestral land would be enough, and Judaic law made it unusually difficult to get rid of such properties), though it does seem oddly unnecessary to take a woman on the verge of labor on such a dangerous trip (as all journeys were in such regions). We do know that censuses could have such requirements for travel, not only from papyri [1.3] but also from common sense: it is a well known fact that even Roman citizens had to enroll in one of several tribes to be counted, and getting provincials to organize according to locally-established tribal associations would be practical (see also Endnote 8 in my essay Luke and Josephus; and also [1.3.5]). Finally, even if Luke were making this up, he would sooner make something up that sounded plausible: in other words, such procedures were probably followed in at least one census within the author's memory, and we have no way to disprove the use of such a practice in previous provincial assessments." (Richard Carrier)

Concerning the reliability of Josephus' claims about the timing of Herod's death, Carrier writes:

"In fact, we know Josephus consulted Herod's Memoires directly, and 'others' (tois allois) who wrote about Herod's reign (Jewish Antiquities 15.174). Thus, to propose that he erred in dating the king's death by a full two years (actually three, as Finegan places his death in 1 B.C.) is incredible....and since Josephus accurately proceeds through the years of his reign, including several that have independent corroboration (such as 'the seventeenth year' of Herod's reign, securely placed by Josephus in 20 B.C., see 17.4), it is absurd to suggest he made any mistake greater than a single year....That Josephus is wrong about something so central to his histories and for which he had such good, eyewitness sources is simply not credible."

Something that conservatives like Porter and liberals like Brown and Carrier agree about is the fact that Luke and his contemporaries would have known some things that we today don't know. In an attempt to fill in gaps in our knowledge of ancient history, critics of the infancy narratives often appeal to extra-Biblical sources, such as Josephus, and argue that those sources are inconsistent with the Biblical accounts.

But there are other relevant extra-Biblical sources that need to be taken into account, and they're often neglected. While sources like Josephus and Tacitus have received a lot of attention in discussions of Luke's census, not as much attention has been given to the early reactions to Luke's account by Christian and non-Christian sources. Men like Josephus and Tacitus weren't writing in response to Luke. Their alleged inconsistencies with Luke are of an indirect nature. What about the assessment of Luke's account by other ancient sources, the early Christians and their opponents, who did interact directly with what Luke wrote?

I've recently discussed Raymond Brown's acknowledgment of the significance of such evidence from the church fathers (see here, here, and here). Though Brown has little to say about the patristic evidence as it relates to the census, Richard Carrier seems to assign it more weight:

"In addition, [Stanley] Porter too readily dismisses the fact that no ancient Christian ever understood Luke 2:2 to mean what Porter suggests, despite the fact that it was written in their native language (which is not Porter's)."

"Justin Martyr's Apology 1.34 and 1.46 also shows that this is exactly how Christians understood their own history: Quirinius was the first governor of Judaea, and Jesus was born during the census he took there, which happened 150 years earlier. It is believed that Justin wrote his first apology around 155 A.D., which produces a birth year of 6 A.D. (the 150th year before Justin wrote)."

I'll be addressing Carrier's misleading treatment of Justin Martyr later, but what I want to note at this point is Brown and Carrier's acknowledgment of the significance of the patristic data. It would also follow that the beliefs of the early enemies of Christianity are of significance. Just as men like Luke, Josephus, and Tacitus were in a position to have a lot of information relevant to the census of Luke 2, so would other people who lived at that time.

Before I discuss those other sources, I want to address some potential objections to this approach I've outlined. I'll do that tomorrow.

Carrier's snow machine

Jonathan McLatchie recently debated Richard Carrier:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCcq8G-WzJM

This, in turn, generated an impromptu debate between yours truly and Richard Carrier on Facebook. 

Carrier  

I don't even consider the evangelical to be the mainstream. It's a position of extreme bias. Mainstream is centrist: undogmatic believers, and nonbelievers, with full credentials. You can't be a literalist or an inerrantist, and be mainstream. You can't be a dogmatist, either. But even by that definition of mainstream, it remains the case that the widest mainstream view is that Paul believed Jesus was an earth person (and met his biological brothers, for example), in the same way he probably believed Moses was (although the mainstream view now is that there was no Moses, or that we can't assert with any confidence that there was; and that used not to be the case; the consensus changed in the decades after being challenged in the 1970s; I'm arguing that needs to happen again; and there are at least ten qualified experts who agree this challenge to the old consensus on Jesus at least needs to be taken seriously and included among the many other contradictory but viable options entertained by the mainstream).

Hays  

Amusing to see Carrier's self-incriminating attack on "dogmatists," given the fact that Carrier is a secular dogmatist.

Carrier  

The number of experts on my side only argues against the claim that no experts agree with me. Although I'm not aware of any astronomers (as in actual Ph.D.s in astronomy) who believe in a flat earth. So that analogy seems implausible. My situation is more analogous to the 1970s when the historicity of Moses was challenged. It will take decades to see if it goes the same way.

Hays  

Jonathan McLatchie's analogy was not to flat-earthers but young-earth creationists.

Carrier  

Oh, right! Wait...Who are the Ph.D.s in relevant sciences who are young earthers?

Hays  

E.g. Kurt Wise, Todd Wood, John Byl, Andrew Snelling, Jonathan Sarfati, John C. Sanford, Jason Lisle, &c. 

Chan  

Nathaniel Jeanson, David Menton, Danny Faulkner

Bukowski  

Leonard Brand, John Baumgardner, and Walt Brown as well would be prominent names.

Paul Tobin Vs. Richard Carrier On Luke's Census

Paul Tobin:

Luke 2:1 had claimed that it was a world-wide census. Yet there was never any world-wide (or “empire-wide”) census under Caesar Augustus. Hays admits that “Luke‘s statement is imprecise” about the census being world-wide. Refusing to admit that this “imprecision” is a mistake and calling it a “hyperbole” for rhetorical effect, he then claimed that “Luke‘s original audience would appreciate that fact.” My question to him is simple – how does he know that ““Luke‘s original audience would appreciate that fact.” My question is rhetorical, of course; Hays does not, and could not know, what Luke’s original audience would have “appreciated.” He is just using this to save his beloved doctrine of biblical inerrancy – rather unconvincingly....

This is, of course, standard modus operandi of evangelicals, when the clear sense of a passage reveals the Bible is wrong, mistaken or inaccurate - invoke poetry! He has done this earlier of course, when Luke’s claim that the census was “worldwide” is pointed out to be mistaken, Hays says it’s “hyperbole!”

Richard Carrier:

On the other hand, there might be no mistake at all [in Luke 2:1]: the phrase is pasan tên oikoumenên, "all of the inhabited," where the adjective "inhabited" implies some noun in the feminine, such as "land" or "region," but usually referring to "the whole world." However, this idiom was used not only to refer to the whole Roman Empire, but to regions like "the whole Greek world," and thus may have been meant here as simply the whole Jewish world, or, even more likely, to the whole of Syria (which then included Judaea)--for "Syria" is also a feminine noun.

Another reasonable possibility is that Augustus did issue a decree that all provinces be assessed, but without ordering that it all happen at once. The second paragraph of the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy expands Luke 2:2 by saying "in the 309th year of the Era of Alexander, Augustus put forth an edict." The Era of Alexander began in 336/335 B.C., so the 309th year would be 28/27 B.C., exactly the time when provincial censuses begin (though not in all provinces: see How Often Was the Census Held? below). Luke could not have meant Jesus was born in 28 or 27 B.C. (for all the reasons given throughout this survey below, and because this early date doesn't work in Matthew's narrative, either). But if Luke meant an Augustan decree issued in 28 B.C. first applied to Judaea when Quirinius was in office, then Luke 2:2 becomes completely intelligible: this is the first Augustan census of Judaea--in other words, the first time the Augustan decree affected Judaea, which happened to be when Quirinius was governing Syria (a chronological marker no author would use unless Quirinius only governed Syria once).

Paul Tobin:

But unfortunately, the problems begin to pile up the moment we consider the whole story [of Luke's census] in more detail....

Apart from being a logistical nightmare, this method of going to one's ancestral hometown to register for the census is unheard of in other historical sources. (in John Loftus, ed., The Christian Delusion [Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2010], p. 160)

Richard Carrier:

The second "mistake" lies in supposing that people would be called back to ancestral towns to be counted, rather than be counted in the actual towns they were in. This charge has been formulated a dozen ways, but none of them really carry much force. Though Jesus' family appears to have resided outside Judaea in Nazareth, there could easily be any number of reasons why an ancestral connection with Bethlehem would require them to journey there for a census of Judaea (so much as a tiny plot of ancestral land would be enough, and Judaic law made it unusually difficult to get rid of such properties), though it does seem oddly unnecessary to take a woman on the verge of labor on such a dangerous trip (as all journeys were in such regions). We do know that censuses could have such requirements for travel, not only from papyri [1.3] but also from common sense: it is a well known fact that even Roman citizens had to enroll in one of several tribes to be counted, and getting provincials to organize according to locally-established tribal associations would be practical (see also Endnote 8 in my essay Luke and Josephus; and also [1.3.5]). Finally, even if Luke were making this up, he would sooner make something up that sounded plausible: in other words, such procedures were probably followed in at least one census within the author's memory, and we have no way to disprove the use of such a practice in previous provincial assessments.

Paul Tobin:

Finally, the clincher. Both Matthew and Luke said Jesus was born during the time of Herod the Great (Matthew 2:1, Luke 1:5). (in John Loftus, ed., The Christian Delusion [Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2010], p. 161)

Richard Carrier:

The second point is more forceful than the first: namely, that Luke is referring to Herod Archelaus [in Luke 1:5], not Herod the Great, and I think this most likely (see 1.1.3 below).

Paul Tobin:

I showed in detail why the evangelical “stock reply” of an earlier census under the same Quirinius is impossible.

Richard Carrier:

Nevertheless, though Matthew's account looks and smells like a fantastical legend (see below), I do not see Luke's account as historically impossible, as some have tried to argue.

Was God cooling his heels?

Richard Carrier on the Argument From the Scale of the Universe

By John W. Loftus at 1/12/2013

For what it's worth, at least I'm not the only one who thinks Jeff Lowder's arguments don't work against my particular case. Here's Carrier from page 290 of my anthology, The End of Christianity:

    We cannot predict from “a very powerful self-existent being created life by design” that he would do this by creating trillions of galaxies and billions of light years of empty intergalactic space and then sit around and twiddle his thumbs for ten billion years before finally deciding to create life in just one tiny place. That’s not even expected at all, much less with 100 percent certainty.

http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/2013/01/richard-carrier-on-argument-from-scale.html

For now I’ll content myself with few brief observations. At a later date I may also comment on Everitt’s argument, which Carrier footnotes.

i) There are, of course, scientifically competent Christians who reject Carrier’s timescales.

ii) Assuming we grant his timescales, if God is timeless, then God didn’t wait for 10 billion years to create life. A timeless God doesn’t wait for anything. Even if there’s a 10 billion year interval between the origin of the universe and the origin of life, that’s not an interval in the experience or being of a timeless God. Carrier is confusing what happens in or to the universe with what happens to God. But although God makes everything happen (directly or indirectly), nothing ever happens to God.

Carrier can, of course, try to attack divine timelessness. My immediate point is simply that his objection takes for granted a questionable, unstated premise.

iii) Likewise, on the B theory of time, everything came into being all at once. One can, of course, debate the scientific, philosophical, and theological merits of the B theory. My immediate point is simply that Carrier’s objection takes for granted a questionable, unstated premise.

iv) Why does Carrier assume life only exists on one planet? That’s certainly not an atheistic axiom. And that’s not a Christian axiom. Christian theology doesn’t preclude the existence of biological organisms on other planets. Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t. That’s an open question in theology.

v) To say God “finally decided” to create life 10 billion years later…is ambiguous. That could be taken in either of two different ways:

a) God decided to create life 10 billion years later.

b) God decided 10 billion years later to create life.

Does Carrier mean God originally planned to create life 10 billion years later, or that God didn’t decide to create life until 10 billion years into the process? Is it a delayed decision, or a delayed effect of a prior decision? Was God undecided about when or whether to create life? Or did God decided to create life all along, only save that development for a later stage in the creative process?

Probably, Carried just liked the sound of what he wrote, and didn’t bother to clarify in his own mind what he was even thinking.

Some Neglected Evidence Relevant To The Census Of Luke 2 (Part 2)

Before I discuss the relevant extra-Biblical sources in more depth, I want to address some potential objections.

The church fathers and other sources who lived around that time were too far removed from the events surrounding Jesus' birth to give us reliable information.

Then critics like Raymond Brown and Richard Carrier should stop citing the church fathers and their contemporaries against the Biblical data relevant to the census. If people like Josephus, Tacitus, and Justin Martyr were living too late to give us reliable information, then we can't rely on them to conclude that the Biblical accounts are erroneous.

Yes, the amount of time between the events being discussed and the sources commenting on those events diminishes those sources' credibility. But it doesn't eliminate their credibility. And it diminishes their credibility to different degrees in different contexts. Critics who argue that Luke didn't intend to give a historical account when he wrote about the census, for example, are making a claim about Luke, not just a claim about the events surrounding Jesus' birth. The churches of the early patristic era weren't as chronologically distant from Luke and the publication and early interpretation of his gospel as they were from the birth of Jesus. And just as sources like Josephus and Dio Cassius could rely on earlier written records or the oral testimony of people who lived in an earlier generation, so could other ancient Christian and non-Christian sources who aren't mentioned as often by critics when discussing the census.

The sort of detailed chronological information that modern critics utilize in examining Luke's account would have been plausibly available to only a small percentage of the ancient sources.

There's an element of truth to that objection. The average person in antiquity wouldn't have had the sort of interest, knowledge, and access to relevant sources that somebody like Josephus had. And just as we today often settle for approximations instead of seeking more detailed information, so did people in the past. We today will refer, for example, to how Jesus was born or died "two thousand years ago", even though "two thousand" isn't as precise as we could be. Similarly, Irenaeus was satisfied with referring to how Jesus was born "around" a particular time (Against Heresies, 3:21:3), and Origen comments that Jesus "seems" to have been born during the census under Quirinius that Josephus recorded (Against Celsus, 1:57). From what he says elsewhere, we know that Origen accepted the traditional Christian belief that Jesus was born under Herod the Great. Either he believed that the census of 6 A.D. was in some sense a continuation of an earlier census process or he didn't study the census well enough to recognize that the census described in Josephus and Acts 5 occurred about a decade after Jesus' birth.

But people like Irenaeus and Origen didn't need to be correct about everything in order to be credible about some things. And the issues surrounding the census don't just involve detailed matters of chronology that few people have studied. To repeat an example I've cited above, the early Christians wouldn't have needed Josephus' level of knowledge of ancient Israel in order to discern the genre of Luke's census account. And if Matthew and Luke dated Jesus' birth about ten years apart, as critics like Richard Carrier assert, then the early Christians wouldn't have needed to have had a detailed knowledge of chronology in order to recognize the contradiction. If the Matthean communities, to use a common phrase among critics, were referring to how Jesus was born under Herod the Great, while the Lukan communities were referring to how Jesus was born under Herod Archelaus, it wouldn't require a detailed knowledge of chronology in order to recognize that two different men were being discussed. Similarly, if the early Lukan Christians believed that John the Baptist and Jesus were born about twelve years apart, as Richard Carrier suggests as a possibility, then passing on such a view of the age difference between those two men wouldn't require a detailed knowledge of chronology. The early Christians and their opponents didn't need to have as much knowledge of ancient chronology as modern scholars do in order to have reliably passed on information of a more general nature that's relevant to the census.

And while only a small percentage of ancient sources would have had the sort of detailed historical knowledge that somebody like Josephus or Tacitus had, that small percentage of the population has to be taken into account. Porphyry was just one man, yet his arguments for a late date for the book of Daniel left many ripples in the historical record. The large majority of people in today's world don't know much about science, but the discoveries of one scientist can be popularized among billions of people.

The people who had the relevant information might not have had much knowledge of or interest in Christianity. The early enemies of Christianity might not have given the infancy narratives much attention, since they knew that they had so little information on those distant events.

Much of the information relevant to modern discussions of the census (the genre of Luke's account, whether Jesus was born under Herod the Great or Herod Archelaus, etc.) would have been of interest to many people, would have been easy to attain early on, would have been easy to understand, and probably would have been widely known. The relevant information wouldn't have been restricted to sources like Josephus and Tacitus.

The early opponents of Christianity weren't apathetic about the religion, and they weren't apathetic about the infancy narratives. Many of the arguments used by modern critics of the infancy narratives are found in Justin Martyr's Dialogue With Trypho, Origen's Against Celsus, John Chrysostom's Homilies On Matthew, and Augustine's Harmony Of The Gospels, for example. Trypho was denying that Isaiah 7:14 refers to a virginal conception and was comparing the virgin birth account to pagan mythology nearly two millennia before modern critics of the infancy narratives were born (Justin Martyr, Dialogue With Trypho, 67). Celsus alleged that Mary was an adulteress and claimed to know the name of the man involved, an account cited by some critics to this day (Origen, Against Celsus, 1:32). He also said that he doubted the historicity of the Slaughter of the Innocents (Origen, Against Celsus, 1:61). Raymond Brown's argument against the infancy narratives from John 1:33 was known to and addressed by Augustine (Harmony Of The Gospels, 2:15). Etc. The early enemies of Christianity would have been interested in denying Christian claims relevant to the census and would have had many opportunities to leave traces of such denials in the historical record.

It's possible that people who had access to relevant information, and seem likely to have been interested in having that information, didn't attain it, despite what we would expect. Or maybe some people did dispute Luke's account of the census, or argued that Matthew's account contradicted Luke's, but the views of those people weren't mentioned in our extant historical records.

That's possible. But historical judgments are about probability. We can think of many possible historical scenarios, but our primary concern should be what's probable.

And I realize that the census is a complex issue. There are a lot of theories about what Luke meant and a lot of theories about what happened. In the church fathers alone, there surely are hundreds of contexts in which the subject could be addressed from one angle or another. I don't claim to know about or to have studied every such passage in the fathers. But I've studied the earlier fathers enough to see patterns emerge that lead me to some conclusions about what's probable. I don't claim that the evidence I'm going to present is exhaustive. I'm interested in hearing from anybody who has anything to add.

Even if you can show that there's some additional evidence for the traditional Christian view of the census that critics have neglected, we still have contrary evidence from sources like Josephus. That contrary evidence has to be addressed.

I agree that it has to be addressed. I referenced some sources that address it in the first part of this series. I'm not suggesting that the evidence I'm discussing in this series should replace the other evidence. I'm suggesting that it should supplement that other evidence.

And though some people who hold the traditional Christian view of the census would argue that a source like Josephus isn't reliable on this subject, it seems that the majority of those who hold the traditional view will acknowledge the reliability of Josephus and attempt to harmonize his material with the Biblical data. Sometimes it's suggested, for example, that Quirinius might have been in some unusual position that involved him in a census around the time of Jesus' birth in some manner we wouldn't expect. Critics will respond by emphasizing that it would be unprecedented or unusual for Quirinius to have been involved in such a census, given what we know of where he was and what he was doing around that time. Critics are emphasizing what we would normally expect under the circumstances, while those arguing for the traditional Christian view are emphasizing the evidence we have that something abnormal occurred. The church fathers and other sources that critics often neglect are relevant in strengthening the case that something abnormal happened. The more corroboration there is for something abnormal, the less sense it makes to keep appealing to what we would normally expect to happen. I'm combining what we're told by Josephus and other sources critics often cite with what other sources tell us. A census could be handled in different ways under different circumstances. "Responsibility for the census lay normally with the governor, but many other men of senatorial, and later equestrian, rank were involved (ILS 3, index, p. 351)." (Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth, edd., The Oxford Classical Dictionary [New York: Oxford University Press, 2003], p. 308) As Richard Carrier mentions with regard to an element of Luke's account that critics often dispute:

"Finally, even if Luke were making this up, he would sooner make something up that sounded plausible: in other words, such procedures were probably followed in at least one census within the author's memory, and we have no way to disprove the use of such a practice in previous provincial assessments."

Some of these issues aren't relevant to all critics of the traditional Christian view of the census. Not all critics deny that Luke intended to convey a historical account when he wrote about the census, for example. And not all critics deny the historicity of the census to the same extent.

I'm aware that there are many different views among critics on this subject, as there are many different views among those who defend the traditional Christian position. Raymond Brown didn't claim that Luke places Jesus' birth under Archelaus in 6 A.D., so an early Christian consensus that Jesus was born under Herod the Great wouldn't be a problem for his position. Richard Carrier doesn't deny that Luke meant to give a historical account, so evidence that Luke intended to convey history isn't a problem for Carrier. I'm addressing critical views in general, even though I've been citing Brown and Carrier as examples. The relevance of the evidence I'm discussing will vary from case to case.

What about the inconsistencies between arguments for the traditional Christian view of the census and the evidence you're citing from the church fathers and other sources?

In the first part of this series, I quoted Richard Carrier's comments in response to Stanley Porter: "no ancient Christian ever understood Luke 2:2 to mean what Porter suggests". If Carrier's claim is true, I would agree with him that it's a significant piece of evidence against the interpretation of Luke 2 that he's critiquing. The evidence I'm going to discuss can cut both ways.

Species dysphoria

Atheists pride themselves on their intellectual honesty. Pride themselves on their high-minded commitment to a scientific worldview. They accuse Christians of wishful thinking. Because we can’t face the finality of death, we invent heaven. Because we can’t cope without objective value, we invent a heavenly Father.

By contrast, the atheist is tough-minded. Prepared to swallow the hard facts of life.

But how does their flattering self-image compare to reality? Take the transgender political fade. Richard Carrier recently lauded the “awesomeness” of Laurence Wachowski for “coming out” as a transsexual woman. He even praised “her” for being “super cute.”

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/2783/

Likewise, Jeff Lowder recently said “I consider myself extremely supportive of the transgender community”

http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2012/11/pre-op-mtf-ts-nudity-in-womens-restroom.html

But that’s not intellectual courage. Quite the opposite–that’s intellectual cowardice. It’s kowtowing to leftwing make-believe.

What could be more unscientific than transgenderism? Do they really think gender is socially constructed? Isn’t your gender an objective biological fact, based on primary and secondary sexual characteristics, as well as your sex chromosomes?

In a contest between science and radical chic, atheists like Lowder and Carrier instantly sacrifice science on the alter of politically correctitude.

Suppose a man really does imagine that he’s trapped in a woman’s body, or vice versa. Shouldn’t Lowder and Carrier have the candor to classify that belief as a type of mental illness? But they don’t have the courage to confront the far left. They are both intellectual cowards.

But let’s take this a step further. If you really believe in transgender rights, then why stop there? Why confine this to a human rights issue? Why not extend it to therian rights?

Feeling one is trapped in the wrong body isn’t limited to gender. After all, there are people think they are animals trapped in a human body. Take clinical lycanthropy or boanthropy.

To be consistent, shouldn’t we enact nondiscrimination policies for lycanthropes? If you classify lycanthropy as a mental illness, does that make you a lycanphobe? Should you be charged with a hate crime?

What if a lycanthrope behaves like a wolf? What if he begins to view humans as prey? What if he stalks children in the schoolyard? What if he kills and consumes little boys and girls?

Would Jeff Lowder and Richard Carrier defend the right of lycanthropes to engage in lupine behavior? Is Jeff extremely supportive of the lycanthropic community? If a woman “comes out” as a wolf or werewolf, is that “awesome” and “super cute”?

If gender is socially assigned, why not humanity? If sex chromosomes and sexual anatomy don’t determine sexual identity, why think physical and biological facts determine taxonomic identity? 

Atheists like Jeff Lower and Richard Carrier are intellectual frauds. Poseurs. They pretend to be rationalistic and scientific, yet they play along with pseudoscientific nonsense like transgenderism. They check al the right boxes on the membership form to be accepted within their social circle.

Richard Carrier's Marvelous Amusements

In the process of that I also came to realize I can’t do monogamy and be happy…Rather than divorce right away, Jen offered to try an alternative for a while to see if that would work for us. So we agreed on some rules and have had an open marriage for almost two years now, and it’s helped us work through a lot of things, and has helped us both in very different ways. 

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/6737

I'd like to briefly discuss the concept of an open marriage. Isn't that oxymoronic? What's the point of getting married in the first place if you continue to play the field?

I suppose the cynical explanation is that an open marriage gives you a fallback in case you can't scrounge up something superior that day. Hookups are better, but that's unpredictable. That depends on having a regular supply of appealing, willing sexual partners. But what if no winsome prospects are available that day? 

Well, you always have your spouse to fall back on. If ransacking the singles bars doesn't turn up anything more exciting that day, you still have a sexual partner at home to come back to. Unless your spouse got lucky that evening and is away on a one-night stand. 

In an open marriage, the spouse is second-best, but better than nothing if you can't find somebody more appealing when you're in the mood. Just like eating second-rate food is preferable to hunger-pangs.

On the face of it, prostitution might seem to be the best of both worlds for someone like Carrier. But there's a catch: they charge for their services. And the high-end callgirls are pricey. 

Perhaps, though, Carrier could set up a special PayPal account to subsidize trips to the brothel.  

Coming out poly lends new meaning to "Richard Carrier Games" and Richard Carrier's Marvelous Amusements." 

Takedown of Richard Carrier

Richard Carrier palms himself off as a probability theorist. If you don't mind the technicalities, here's a critique by a Cambridge educated cosmologist and physicist:

http://letterstonature.wordpress.com/2016/02/05/final-word-on-richard-carrier

https://letterstonature.wordpress.com/2016/02/01/richard-carrier-one-liners-part-3/

HT: Patrick Chan

Art imitates life

I'm continuing my analysis of Richard Carrier's On the Historicity of Jesus (Sheffield 2014). 

Analogously, the mythical Abraham is conveniently named ('father of many') in Gen. 17.5 (and his original name, Abram, 'exalted father'. is no less convenient). similarly anticipating what he would become in the future. which doesn't tend to happen in the real world [240n9]

i) To begin with, do we even have Abraham's original name? Or do we have a Hebrew cognate? Abraham didn't speak Hebrew. His parents didn't give him a Hebrew name. He has a Hebrew name because the OT is written in Hebrew. But presumably that's a translation. 

ii) More to the point, a name that forecasts a future destiny is, indeed, improbable in a godless universe, but of course, that's hardly the viewpoint of the Pentateuchal narrator. Rather, the Pentateuch depicts a God who is orchestrating events behind-the-scenes to their appointed end. History as a series of divinely-planned events. As such, there's no incongruity within the narrative viewpoint of figure who has a prescient name. 

That should make us suspicious from the start. Isn't his name abnor­mally convenient? The 'Christ' part was assigned by those who believed he was the messiah, and thus not accidental. But what are the odds that his birth name would be 'Savior', and then he would be hailed as the Savior? Are historical men who are worshiped as savior gods usually so conveni­ently named? [240]

But according to Matthew and Luke, both his parents had angelic revelations regarding the future destiny of Jesus. Of course, Carrier is an atheist, but the point is that there's nothing inconsistent with his having a "convenient" name given the Jewish outlook of the Synoptics. 

Carrier fumbles the argument from evil

David Marshall recently debated Richard Carrier. Among other things, Carrier deployed his own version of the argument from evil, which Marshall has posted:

http://christthetao.blogspot.com/2013/03/marshall-vs-carrier-richards-opening.html

i) A basic problem with Carrier’s argument is that he fails to distinguish between the internal argument from evil and the external argument from evil.

The existence of infant mortality isn’t even prima facie inconsistent with the existence of the Biblical God. It’s not as if the Bible depicts a world in which no child ever dies of illness, in glaring contrast to the real world where children die every day.

Death is a fixture of Bible history. In Scripture, everyone dies–sooner or later. Likewise, the Bible acknowledges the existence of disease. Indeed, Carrier appeals to the healings of Jesus to document that fact.

The Bible doesn’t depict a disease-free world. The Bible doesn’t depict a world in which everyone is immortal.

Therefore, there is no prima facie discrepancy between Biblical theism and human mortality. So why does Carrier think human mortality is an undercutter or defeater for Biblical theism? From a Biblical perspective, the coexistence of the Biblical God with human mortality is clearly compatible, for the obvious reason that Scripture acknowledges both.

It’s as if Carrier deployed the argument from water to disprove Biblical theism. Carrier cited statistics regarding the volume of freshwater in lakes, rivers, glaciers, icecaps, and aquifers. He cited statistics about snowfall and rainfall. He cited statistics about the volume of saltwater in the oceans.

He then triumphantly explained how the existence of water disproved the existence of Yahweh! But since the Bible doesn’t deny the existence of water, how would the existence of water be inconsistent with the existence of Yahweh?

ii) The Bible has a theology of death. There is a theological rationale for death. Carrier doesn’t even engage that argument.

Human mortality a divine curse. We live in a fallen world. Exposure to natural evils like disease and death are hallmarks of our fallen condition.

iii) Although death is a curse, death has fringe benefits. Many of us exist because others have died. Take replacement children. Or widows and widowers who remarry. Take war, which results in dislocation. That, in turn, results in men and women mating with different men and women than if they hadn’t migrated from the war zone. Same thing with famine. A fallen world has compensatory goods.

iv) Although death is a curse, immortality in a fallen world would be a curse. To live in sin century after century, millennium after millennium, to be trapped in a fallen world, to be unable to die, is no less punitive than death. Indeed, that’s what the Bible means by everlasting punishment.

Many unbelievers begin killing themselves long before their natural lifespan has run its course. Many unbelievers begin killing themselves in their prime. They drink themselves to death. Or escape into recreational drugs. Or commit suicide.

They can’t stand to be sober. They hate getting up in the morning. They dread the prospect of getting through another day. They are miserable, depressed. The emptiness of their godless existence is unendurable.

v) Death is the great reminder of how life without God robs us of everything we hold dear. In a fallen world, time is often our worst enemy. The thief of time. The passage of time devours our past. Steadily consumes everything that makes life worthwhile.

Coming face to face with the death of friends and relatives forces us to confront our desperate need for divine healing. Physical healing. Spiritual healing. Emotional healing.

vi) The Bible has a doctrine of immortality. That’s an eschatological promise. Although death is the Last Enemy, death won’t have the last word.

Having to wait for something makes it more precious than instant gratification. Dying makes eternal life more precious. Frequently we don’t know how good we had it until we lose it.

As an internal argument from evil, Carrier’s argument fails–badly.

vii) What about an external argument from evil? But from that perspective, why is infant mortality evil?

To begin with, Carrier supports abortion. So he’s shedding crocodile tears when he feigns indignation over the death of babies.

viii) In addition, from his Darwinian perspective, high rates of mortality for young offspring figure in the balance of nature. That’s a common phenomenon in the animal kingdom. Out of large litters, only a few survive to adulthood. Most offspring die to feed predators, scavengers, and detritivores. Carrier complains about germs and parasites, but that’s an integral part of the ecosystem. Has Carrier bothered to consider what would happen to life on earth if we eradicated all germs and parasites? Has it occurred to him that that would be detrimental to life on earth?

From a Darwinian perspective, the death of simian primate offspring is no different than the death of prosimian primate offspring (e.g. gibbons, lemurs, orangutan, marmosets). Of course, because it’s our own species, natural selection has programmed our brain to form emotional attachments for certain members of our own species, like offspring. But that has no objective significance.

ix) Carrier makes hay about Christ’s opposition to ceremonial handwashing. Is Carrier really that illiterate, or is he just playing to the galleries?

In context, this has reference to ritual cleansing, not hygienic cleansing. Ritual ablutions don’t use antiseptic soap and water. There’s nothing inherently sanitary about ritual ablutions.

x) Carrier said:

No. Jesus argued that we don't have to wash our hands before we eat, that washing is a human tradition, with no endorsement from God. And that nothing we put into us can harm us. And as he is claimed to have said in the Gospel of Mark, not even poison. Clearly, Jesus knew nothing about germs. Nor did he know that faith doesn't make you immune to poison, either.

a) Carrier is partly alluding to the Long Ending of Mark. But that’s probably a scribal interpolation.

b) In addition, Carrier is alluding to Mk 7:14-23 (par. Mt 15:10-20). Once again, is Carrier really that illiterate, or is he just playing to the galleries?

Jesus is discussing “defilement,” not hygiene. “Defilement” is a cultic category. It refers to ritual impurity, not unsanitary conditions.

Moreover, Jesus is contrasting manmade purity codes (concocted by the Pharisees) with actual sin. Moral evil. Moral pollution, not physical pollution. 

xi) Carrier makes tendentious claims about the healing miracles of Jesus, as well as post-biblical healing miracles. He says it’s all psychosomatic.

Really? Raising Lazarus from the dead after three days in hot tomb is psychosomatic? Why doesn’t Carrier visit the county morgue and test his theory on the cadavers.

Of course, Carrier would deny the historicity of that event, but that’s different than classifying it as “psychosomatic.”

He also disregards evidence to the contrary. For instance:

R. Gardner, Healing Miracles (DLT 1987)

C. Keener, Miracles (Baker 2011)

B. Palmer, ed. Medicine and the Bible (Paternoster 1986)

M. Scott Peck, Glimpses of the Devil (Simon & Schuster 2005)

G. Twelftree, Jesus The Miracle Worker (IVP 1999)

Some Neglected Evidence Relevant To The Census Of Luke 2 (Part 4)

It was sometimes claimed that a government record of the census still existed into the second century and beyond:

"Now there is a village in the land of the Jews, thirty-five stadia from Jerusalem, in which Jesus Christ was born, as you can ascertain also from the registers of the taxing made under Cyrenius, your first procurator in Judaea." (Justin Martyr, First Apology, 34)

"And yet how could He [Jesus] have been admitted into the synagogue - one so abruptly appearing, so unknown; one, of whom no one had as yet been apprised of His tribe, His nation, His family, and lastly, His enrolment in the census of Augustus - that most faithful witness of the Lord's nativity, kept in the archives of Rome?" (Tertullian, Against Marcion, 4:7)

"For He [Jesus] was from the native soil of Bethlehem, and from the house of David; as, among the Romans, Mary is described in the census, of whom is born Christ." (unknown author [not Tertullian], Tertullian's An Answer To The Jews, 9)

"Let, then, such as trust to instruments of human skill, who may (approving of applying them as attestators of the holy word) inquire into this census, if it be but found so as we say" (unknown author, Five Books In Reply To Marcion, 5:198-203)

"Finally, though never at Rome, on authority he [John Chrysostom] knows that the census papers of the Holy Family are still there." (Catholic Encyclopedia)

"He [an author falsely writing as Cyril of Jerusalem] asks Julius to assign the true date of the nativity 'from census documents brought by Titus to Rome'; Julius assigns 25 December." (Catholic Encyclopedia)

"If verifiable this text [a homily attributed to Jerome] would suggest that Jerome, like Augustine, believed 25 December to be the historic anniversary of Christ's birth on the basis of the putative census records from the time of Augustus." (Susan Roll, Toward The Origins Of Christmas [The Netherlands: Kok Pharos Publishing House, 1995], p. 104)

Some of these claims are problematic, and we don't have much information by which to judge the more credible claims. Justin Martyr's claim is the earliest and the most credible. But Richard Carrier writes:

"Justin Martyr's Apology 1.34 and 1.46 also shows that this is exactly how Christians understood their own history: Quirinius was the first governor of Judaea, and Jesus was born during the census he took there, which happened 150 years earlier. It is believed that Justin wrote his first apology around 155 A.D., which produces a birth year of 6 A.D. (the 150th year before Justin wrote). Justin also claims that one can check the census records to confirm this, but this is certainly a bluff: it is extremely unlikely that Justin checked them himself. He does not say he did, and the information he gives is too vague to suggest he was drawing on an official record. Had he read the actual record, he should have been able to report at least one of the items the record would include: for Joseph there would be a full name, age, name of father or family, residence, occupation, and amount of property, as well as the character and extent of any land and the number of slaves owned. If a baby Jesus would be listed at all in the census records, it would only be as part of this entry. It is also unlikely that just anyone could access such important records--to prevent fraud, they must have been kept under very tight guard and accessible only to Roman magistrates. Cf. Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (1996), s.v. 'census.'"

There are a lot of problems with what Carrier is asserting here.

I have the 2003 edition of the dictionary he cites. It says more than Carrier does on some issues and less on others. The last sentence in Carrier's comments above, prior to his reference to the dictionary, expresses Carrier's opinion. The dictionary doesn't assert Carrier's conclusions. Apparently, Carrier was citing the dictionary only to corroborate some of his more general claims.

Notice that Carrier refers to what Justin Martyr and "Christians" believed. Notice, also, that Carrier suggests that a specific year for Christ's birth, 6 A.D., was still known to these Christians as late as the middle of the second century. Think about the implications of Carrier's argument. He's suggesting that these Christians were interested and knowledgeable enough about the relevant chronological data to keep track of the year of Christ's birth more than a century after the event. He's also suggesting that the alleged contradictions between Matthew and Luke, as well as between earlier and later interpretations of Luke, were prominent and persisted as late as the middle of the second century. If Carrier's suggestions are true, we would expect to see them reflected in other sources. But we don't.

Jack Finegan, in his Handbook Of Biblical Chronology (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1999), discusses fourteen different sources who date Christ's birth in the second through sixth centuries (pp. 288-291). Of those fourteen, none give 6 A.D. as the year. The large majority give a year in the closing decade of the B.C. era.

The closest any source gets to the date Carrier assigns to Luke's gospel, Justin Martyr, and "Christians" of Justin's time is 9 A.D. And that 9 A.D. date comes from Epiphanius' description of what was believed by a heretical group of the late second century. But Epiphanius' description of the same heretical group suggests elsewhere that they dated Jesus' birth to "around" 4 B.C. (p. 290) Apparently, either this heretical group, the Alogi, were inconsistent in their own dating or were misrepresented by Epiphanius. But even if they, or some of them, did intend to date Jesus' birth to 9 A.D., that date would be a few years off from what Carrier attributes to Luke, Justin, and other Christians. And that's the closest anybody gets to Carrier's date.

Finegan mentions seven sources who either were contemporaries of Justin Martyr or lived shortly after his time (Alogi, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Julius Africanus, Hippolytus of Rome, and Origen). All of them give a year in the closing decade of the B.C. era. And Finegan doesn't mention all of the sources he could have. Clement of Alexandria, for example, makes reference to other people who dated Jesus' birth to the same year he did (The Stromata, 1:21).

And Carrier's interpretation of Justin himself is dubious. He refers to how Justin's First Apology was written "around 155 A.D." Eric Osborn dates the work to "shortly after 150" (Justin Martyr [Tubingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 1973], p. 8). Leslie Barnard dates it "between 151 and 155 C.E." (St. Justin Martyr: The First And Second Apologies [Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1997], p. 11). John McGuckin places it "c. 155" (The Westminster Handbook To Patristic Theology [Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004], p. 200). A recent book on Justin edited by Sara Parvis and Paul Foster, Justin Martyr And His Worlds (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2007), places the First Apology at "154-155" (p. xiii). All of these dates are approximations, yet Carrier has to assume that 155 is correct in order to get to his result of "a birth year of 6 A.D. (the 150th year before Justin wrote)".

Leslie Barnard comments that Justin's reference to 150 years is "no doubt a round figure" (St. Justin Martyr: The First And Second Apologies [Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1997], p. 11). In addition to the fact that 150 is the sort of number that somebody would cite if he were rounding off, we see Justin using round numbers repeatedly elsewhere in the same document. In chapter 31, speaking of Jesus' fulfillment of prophecy, Justin writes:

"And He was predicted before He appeared, first 5000 years before, and again 3000, then 2000, then 1000, and yet again 800; for in the succession of generations prophets after prophets arose."

Those are all rounded numbers. Similarly, in chapter 42 of the same document, shortly before the passage Carrier cites:

"The words cited above, David uttered 1500 years before Christ became a man and was crucified"

Again, he's using a rounded figure. Elsewhere, Justin repeatedly cites Matthew's gospel approvingly, treats the accounts of Matthew and Luke as harmonious (Dialogue With Trypho, 78), and refers to Jesus' birth under Herod the Great, distinguishing him from Herod Archelaus (Dialogue With Trypho, 103).

We don't know what year Justin's First Apology was written. The figure Justin cites in the passage under discussion (150 years) is the sort of figure somebody would use if rounding. Justin repeatedly uses rounded year numbers elsewhere in the same document. He accepts Matthew's gospel as harmonious with Luke's, states that Jesus was born under Herod the Great, and specifically distinguishes between that Herod and Herod Archelaus. Several other sources contemporary with Justin or born shortly after his time give a year for Jesus' birth, and all of them, with one possible exception (the 9 A.D. dating discussed earlier), place Jesus' birth in the closing decade of the B.C. era. Those sources include men who had lived where Justin lived, possessed Justin's writings, and thought highly of him.

And Justin is the only source Carrier cites to argue that "Christians" understood Luke's gospel the way Carrier represents it. It's much more likely that Justin was using a rounded figure. Since I reject Carrier's interpretation of Justin Martyr, I don't know of any source in the earliest centuries who agreed with Carrier's interpretation of Luke.

What about Carrier's assessment of whether there was a census record as Justin describes it? It's reasonable to think that Justin might have been speculating or repeating something he had heard without confirming it. But I think that Carrier is overly confident in his conclusion that Justin was "bluffing".

Carrier tells us that, if Justin had seen a census record, he could have mentioned "at least one of the items the record would include". But Justin does mention one of the pieces of information supposedly in the census record: the Bethlehem birthplace. Apparently, Justin thought that the record referred to Bethlehem in some context (because Joseph owned property there or for some other reason).

Besides, why would Justin think he needed to mention the sort of details Carrier asks for? If Justin's claim wasn't being disputed, and he thought that people could access the census record themselves, why would he go into the sort of detail Carrier wants?

And while Carrier thinks that only government officials would get access to the census records, Justin's claim doesn't require that he or anybody else outside of the government had gotten access to such a record without government assistance. A Christian or non-Christian who had been in a position to access such a record could have seen it.

Again, though, I think it's reasonable to question Justin's claim. What's more significant than Justin's claim about such a census record is what's implied by his willingness to make that claim. The claim of a government census record involves a historical interpretation of Luke's account, so Justin's comment tells us how he viewed the genre of the census account in Luke's gospel. And even if Justin was mistaken about the existence of such a census record, he was so confident about the historicity of the census as to expect corroboration of it from the Roman government. Even if his confidence was too high, it's unlikely that he would become so confident if he was living in an atmosphere in which the census account in Luke was being widely questioned or denied. Similar implications follow from the other ancient sources, mentioned earlier, who refer to a census record kept by the Roman government.

Inside Richard Carrier's padded cell

According to Richard Carrier:

“Ever since The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails (TCD) came out we've been expecting deluded and irrational attacks. One such going the rounds now is the laboriously long treatment by the Christian crackpots at Triablogue…”

http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2010/09/infidel-delusion.html

An obvious problem with this opening salvo is that it doesn’t mesh with Carrier’s worldview. To say somebody is a “crackpot” is normally a putdown–the assumption being that to be a “crackpot” is something undesirable.

And yet, from a secular standpoint, it makes no difference in the great scheme of things if the maggot is gnawing on the brain of a dead crackpot or a dead infidel. Both the infidel and the crackpot suffer the same fate.

That’s one of the intrinsic problems of atheism. If you’re right, you might as well be wrong. You lose by losing the argument, but you also lose by winning the argument. It’s like having the winning ticket to your own execution.

“…which they have amusingly titled The Infidel Delusion (I say amusingly because the ‘I know you are but what am I’ tactic only reinforces the stereotype that many Christians are emotionally stunted children--who also have no grasp of irony).”

i) If the fact that I named The Infidel Delusion after The Christian Delusion reinforces the stereotype of Christians as emotionally stunted children, then does the analogous fact that John Loftus named The Christian Delusion after The God Delusion reinforce the stereotype of infidels as emotionally stunted children? Carrier talks of irony, but the self-incriminating irony of his putdown is lost on him.

ii) Let suppose the contributors to TID are “emotionally stunted children.” In a godless universe, what difference does that make? Does the cemetery care whether or not the rotting corpse six feet under belongs to Richard Carrier rather than Steve Hays? Who is Carrier trying to impress? The maggots? In a godless universe, what difference does it make who believed what? How you lived or how you died?

It’s not as if infidels are happier than crackpots. Crackpots can enjoy a very cushy standard of living. Crackpots can have a lot more fun than a stoic martyr to the cause of science. In a godless universe, which would you rather be: a happy-go-lucky crackpot, or a dutiful scientist who slaves away 18 hours a day, 7 days in a windowless laboratory to score some scientific breakthrough? Suppose he emerges from the lab 20 years later with albino skin and a Nobel prize? Was it worth it? Burn the best years of his life for a plaque on the wall?

Even Richard Feynman preferred surfing and womanizing to physics. And from a secular standpoint, who can blame him? Why not party until you drop dead?

iii) And while we’re on the topic of “emotionally stunted children,” notice Carrier’s emotional need to feel intellectually superior to his opponents. He’s like a preschooler who won first prize for his Play-Doh dinosaur. Why does he feel the need to have somebody pat him on the head?

“Their entire collection of rebuttals is a good example of a delusional construct. It's built on delusionally failing to read statements in the very same text which contradict them, delusionally misreading statements in the text and then rebutting the whole book by rebutting things it never said, and delusionally believing that logically fallacious arguments are rationally sound.”

That’s the pregame bravado you get from two boxers talking smack about their opponent: “My opponent is overrated! My opponent has a glass jaw! I’m gonna knock him out in the very first round! I’m gonna take his belt!”

Both boxers say the same thing about their hapless opponent. The winner says it and the loser says it.

“And all that in an attempt to avoid the conclusions of the book: that they are all deluded precisely because they refuse to take the Outsider Test for Faith for fear of its results, and consequently they fail to admit the demonstrated inconsistencies in their belief system, by building an even more elaborate system of inconsistencies that possess the superficial appearance of being correct.”

Notice that Carrier treats the OTF as a given. But, of course, in TID we subject the OTF to a sustained critique. Therefore, Carrier is in no position to take that as a given. For the cogency of OTF is one of the very issues in dispute.

How does that question-begging objection demonstrate the rationality of Carrier’s position? It doesn’t. Quite the opposite.

Here is their argument analyzed formally:

1. There are many different Christianities.

2. If there are many different Christianities, no two Christianities have any elements in common.

3. If no two Christianities have any elements in common, then no collection of essays purporting to refute Christianity can refute Christianity.

4. TCD is a collection of essays purporting to refute Christianity.

5. Therefore, TCD cannot refute Christianity.

That’s a straw man argument. It doesn’t bear any resemblance to our actual argument. At a minimum, Carrier needs to supply a verbatim quote from our detailed response(s) to show how he derived that summary.

“Premises 2 and 3 are blatantly false. Premise 2 is false because all Christianities share core elements in common, without which no relevant form of Christianity is true, e.g. that Jesus was resurrected from the dead and that believing this secures us eternal life.”

That’s irrelevant to our critique of Eller. We were responding to Eller, not Carrier. Carrier is making up an argument that doesn’t correspond to Eller’s argument. Carrier’s rebuttal is therefore irrational.

“Premise 3 is false as well, because obviously a collection of essays can collectively refute a whole array of Christianities, by attacking overlapping sets of Christianities.”

In principle, that’s true. However, one of the many problems with TCD is the way in which one essay often contradicts another essay. Therefore, they don’t present a united front against Christianity.

“Indeed, Part 1 of TCD applies to any and all forms of Christianity (not just one single form of it). Since Christianity has not passed the Outsider Test for Faith (OTF), i.e. when Christianity is judged by the same standards as other religions, Christianity is no better supported than any other religion (and therefore no more likely to be true than they are)…”

Once again, that begs the question by assuming the cogency of the OTF. But that is one of the issues we challenged.

“…and Part 1 of TCD proves beliefs that have not passed the OTF are very probably false, therefore Christianity tout court is already refuted thereby. One can only retreat from this conclusion by trying to get Christianity to pass the OTF. Which the remaining chapters in TCD show can't be done for any relevant form of Christianity.”

Once again, that assumes the very thing Carrier needs to prove. We wrote a systematic critique of TCD, chapter by chapter. At a minimum, the burden of proof is now on Carrier to present an adequate counterargument.

Here is their argument analyzed formally:

1. Cultural background determines how one will believe.

2. If cultural background determines how one will believe, then this is as true for atheism as for Christianity.

3. If this is as true for atheism as for Christianity, then Christianity is not a delusion.

4. Therefore Christianity is not a delusion.

Here Premise 3 is not established. Nor is it even plausible. Because claiming atheism is a delusion "for the same reasons" in no way argues Christianity is not also a delusion. Thus the conclusion does not follow. This is therefore an irrational argument.

In fact, claiming atheism is a delusion merely because "Premise 1 is true" would entail Christianity is also a delusion (because Premise 1 is just as true for it as for atheism), thus refuting their conclusion.

Actually, our counterargument was a tu quoque argument. I, for one, don’t concede Long’s claim that cultural conditioning determines every belief of every individual. I’m merely responding to Long own his own terms. What are the implications of his position for his own position? For someone who takes pride in his powers of rationality, Carrier is strikingly unsophisticated.

“But of course Long does not argue that it does. All he argues is that because Premise 1 is true, we need to make sure our beliefs are not delusional. In other words, Long's chapter proves Christianity (like atheism and any other belief) needs to pass the OTF, and that if it does not, it's probably false (for all the scientifically established reasons he documents).”

But that’s self-contradictory. If our beliefs are delusive due to the irresistible force of cultural-conditioning, then we all lack the ability to distinguish between reality and fantasy. If, due to our cultural-conditioning, we’re all delusional, then none of us can pass the Outsider Test (even assuming the cogency of the Outsider Test). A delusional test-subject will subconsciously filter the Outsider Test through his delusive cultural-conditioning. He will subconsciously convert every Outsider Test into a culturebound Insider Test. So it’s self-defeating to invoke the Outsider Test when you stipulate at the outset that every test-subject is delusional by dint of his cultural conditioning.

“They cannot avoid this conclusion with the irrational dodge they have attempted. Such avoidance behavior is typical of the delusional, however.”

Far from “avoiding” the issue, we marshaled a series of arguments to the contrary. Carrier’s refusal to engage the argument is an irrational dodge, which is all too typical of delusional infidels.

“Moreover, John Loftus already rebuts their entire argument in Chapter 4 of TCD, demonstrating that Christianity is only a delusion because it has not passed and does not pass the Outsdider Test for Faith (OTF), whereas atheism does pass that test, and therefore Premise 1 does not entail atheism is a delusion, but does entail Christianity is a delusion. They don't want to honestly face this argument, so they come up with hundreds of pages of delusional excuses to avoid it.”

Of course, Carrier is hardly entitled to that value-judgment when he has failed to interact with the “hundreds of pages” of our counterargument. Notice the gaping chasm between his rationalistic rhetoric and the actual level of his intellectual performance.

Using the word “rational” in every other sentence doesn’t make you rational. Carrier substitutes rationalistic adjectives for rational arguments.

In other words, the argument of TCD is:

1. Cultural background (and common psychological biases and mistakes) determines how one will believe (collectively proved by Eller, Tarico, and Long, in Chapters 1, 2, and 3), unless one corrects for these influences when deciding what to believe.

2. One can correct for these influences only by ensuring a belief will pass the OTF.

3. A belief that does not pass the OTF is very probably false (proved again by Eller, Tarico, and Long, and by Loftus in Chapter 4).

4. A belief that is maintained in the face of overwhelming evidence that it is probably false is a delusion.

5. TCD provides overwhelming evidence that Christianity does not pass the OTF (regardless of whether atheism also does not).

6. Therefore, TCD provides overwhelming evidence that Christianity is probably false.

7. Therefore, Christianity is a delusion.

Nothing argued in Triablogue's rebuttal to Long (or Loftus or anyone else for that matter) actually challenges any premise in this argument. And the argument is formally valid. Rejecting a sound and valid argument is irrational. And a belief that can only be defended by irrationality is a delusion.

i) Actually, the argument is self-refuting. If cultural-conditioning determines our belief-system, then we cannot correct our delusional belief-system by taking an Outsider Test–for the test-subject is culturally-conditioned to view the Outsider Test from the perspective of culture-bound insider. A delusional test-subject can’t assume the viewpoint of an outsider. His attempt to be objective will turn into yet another delusional exercise.

ii) Moreover, Carrier keeps defaulting to the OTF as if that represents an uncontested frame of reference.

Here is their argument analyzed formally:

1. The Bible is unclear about many crucial and important things a God should want us to know (proved in Loftus' chapter).

2. If the Bible is unclear about many crucial and important things a God should want us to know, then it is unclear about anything and everything it says.

3. If the Bible is unclear about anything and everything it says, then Babinski’s and Tobin’s chapters must be false (because those chapters argue the Bible is clear about several embarrassing things).

4. Therefore, "if Loftus’s chapter is true, Babinski’s and Tobin’s chapters must be false!"

Actually, our argument went well beyond that: The problem with Loftus’s argument isn’t simply that it contradicts the policy of Tobin and Babinski–although that would be bad enough. A deeper problem, as I pointed out, is that his argument is self-contradictory. Loftus takes the clarity of Scripture for granted whenever he imputes error to Scripture, or takes umbrage at some Biblical narrative or injunction.

“Ironically, here we have the shockingly irrational and patently delusional black-and-white thinking that Tarico and Long warn against in their chapters. It’s a fallacy of false dichotomy: either the Bible is entirely clear on every point, or it's entirely unclear on every point. Yet neither is even probable. Loftus only argues for the middle case (which the Law of Excluded Middle requires any rational person to take into account): that the Bible is only unclear in enough places to be a self-refuting foundation for Christianity.”

But, of course, that’s ad hoc. Carrier or Loftus would have to show how Scripture just so happens to be clear when it’s offensive to the politically correct sensibilities of a liberal atheist writing in 2010 (or thereabouts). Well, that’s very convenient, now isn’t it?

Needless to say, that coincidental clarity is a textbook case of special pleading. The Bible is accommodatingly clear or unclear at those just those turning-points in his argument where he needs it to be clear or unclear. And the Bible is clearly wrong when it uncannily anticipates sociopolitical positions which offend the liberal dogmas of a white American atheist living in the first decade of the 21C. Good luck with that.

Here is their argument analyzed formally:

1. Avalos is a moral relativist.

2. Avalos concludes the Christian God is morally evil in respect to Christianity's own moral ideals.

3. A moral relativist cannot consistently argue another moral system is inconsistent with itself.

4. Therefore, Avalos' conclusion is inconsistent with his moral relativism.

That’s another straw man argument:

i) As I pointed out at the time, Avalos wasn’t actually commenting on “Christianity’s” moral ideals but, at most, Paul Copan’s moral ideals.

ii) Moreover, Avalos didn’t limit himself to judging Biblical ethics on its own terms. To the contrary, Avalos ventured his own value-judgments along the way. Take statements such as:

“Treating workers like the master did is an injustice” (217), and “this contrasts to the cruel attitude expressed by Sarah concerning Ishmael…So where Abraham might represent a humanizing tendency, God actually demands the more inhumane option” (217-18), and “basing a moral system on unverifiable supernatural beings only creates more violence and endangers our species” (233), and “Speaking only for myself here, I can say that atheism offers a much better way to construct moral rules. We can construct them on the basis of verifiable common interests, known causes, and known consequences” (233), and “if the word ‘moral‘ describes the set of practices that accord with our values, and if our highest value is life, then it is always immoral to trade real human lives for something that does not exist or cannot be verified to exist” (233).”

So it’s demonstrably false to suggest that Hector’s attack on Biblical morality was merely a case of evaluating the sacred text on its own terms (“inconsistent with itself,” “in respect to Christianity’s own moral ideals”). And a large part of my argument against Avalos was predicated on that fact.

For Carrier to so thoroughly misrepresents Hector’s actual argument, as well as my counterargument, is quite self-incriminating, coming on the heels of his allegation that TID “is built on delusionally failing to read statements in the very same text which contradict them, delusionally misreading statements in the text and then rebutting the whole book by rebutting things it never said, and delusionally believing that logically fallacious arguments are rationally sound.”

Carrier’s summary of our argument commits the “delusional” mentality which he imputes to us.

“Which makes this yet another irrational objection to what is actually a soundly proved conclusion: that God is evil by Christianity's own standards. Avalos is simply arguing that Christianity is delusional because it is internally incoherent. Moral relativism makes no difference to whether that conclusion is true. Even if moral relativism is true, Christianity is still internally incoherent, and continuing to believe what has been soundly and validly shown to be internally incoherent is still delusional.”

i) It’s true that, in principle, a moral relativist could try to show that Biblical ethics falls short by its own standards. That, however, is not the argument which Avalos deployed. He tried to judge Biblical ethics by his own standards.

ii) And even if, for the sake of argument, Avalos were successful in that regard, so what? Why should a moral relativist care about delusional beliefs? He doesn’t think there’s anything intrinsically wrong with entertaining delusional beliefs. So why spend so much time and effort trying to convince the reader that Christianity is delusional? To what end?

“Meanwhile, moral relativism itself is internally consistent.”

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that this is true. So what? If moral relativism were true, then there would be no moral value in the internal consistency of moral relativism. If moral relativism were true, then there’s no virtue in consistency. Why not be incoherent?

“Avalos can objectively prove the God of the Bible is inhumanly cruel (and he does; my online supplement The Will of God decisively supports him on this), which conclusion has no inherent moral status, and then from his own moral principles he can declare that cruelty immoral (and thus unworthy of worship) without requiring readers to agree with that judgment. But they still must agree with the first judgment, as inhuman cruelty is not a value judgment but an objectively defined set of behaviors.”

i) Words like “cruelty” and “inhumanity” have ethical connotations. That’s why writers use them to characterize a “behavior” they oppose.

ii) A moral relativist declaring “from his own moral principles” that cruelty is “immoral”? And what does that declaration amount to? It can’t be objectively or intrinsically immoral. Indeed, from the standpoint of a moral relativist, cruelty is amoral.

“Anyone who then also shares Avalos' personal belief that inhuman cruelty is evil (which is the moral truth ‘relative to him’) must also share his value judgment, too (that the OT God is evil), even if moral relativism is true.”

The “personal belief” of a moral relativist that inhuman cruelty is “evil”? Once again, what does that personal belief amount to? It can’t correspond to any objective moral fact about inhumane cruelty (even if, ad arguendo, we grant that tendentious characterization).

“Otherwise they are being irrational. Which is exactly what the Triablogue crew is being.”

i) Nothing is more irrational that Carrier’s illogical exercise in special pleading to salvage Hector’s hopeless argument.

ii) But suppose, for the sake of argument, that the “Triablogue crew” is irrational. So what? If moral relativism were true, then rationality instantly ceases to be an epistemic virtue. There is no epistemic duty to be rational.

Jason has already responded to Carrier’s example of Price, so I’ll move on.

“Eller doesn't argue for any morality being true in this chapter.”

That’s an understatement. He argues against any morality being true.

“Eller only argues that Christianity is not the source of all morality but is just one source among many for one morality among many, therefore Christianity cannot be considered the foundation for morality (and he's right).”

This is another case in which Carrier offers a deceptive summary of the actual argument by one of his contributors to TCD. Although Eller says that, that’s not all he says. He goes on to make a far stronger claim–as I documented in my original response. He also makes statements like:

“There are many people who assert that morality is ‘natural’ or ‘real’ or ‘objective,” and therefore independent of religion; in fact, they use (supposedly) natural/real/objective standards to judge, and often to reject, religious ‘morality.’ I am not, for reasons not manageable in this chapter but hopefully obvious in this chapter, one of these people; morality is too diverse and contradictory to be natural or real or objective…” (358).

“The question that is generally not asked in the discussion of morality, but that should be asked, is not ‘what is the basis of morality?‘ and certainly not ‘what is the true morality‘ and not, as some well-intentioned thinkers have done, ‘why be moral?‘ Asking ‘why be moral?‘ is no more sensible than asking ‘why be linguistic?‘ or ‘why be bipedal?‘ (361). ”

Does Carrier lack elementary reading comprehension?

“Neither Avalos nor myself argued that our chapters refuted Christianity. To the contrary, our chapters show examples of what sorts of delusions many Christians succumb to or resort to in order to bolster their delusional belief that Christianity is correct and necessary for modern society…Another significant point of our two chapters is that there are millions of people, even trained scholars, who actually are this deluded. If the Triablogue authors wish to concede that these are delusions, and that their fellow Christians should abandon them, we welcome their help in getting those delusions dispelled. But they cannot honestly deny that millions of Christians, even trained scholars, still embrace these delusions, as our chapters document both their widespread embrace, and that they are delusional. This should cast serious doubt on the ability of many Christians and even many Christian scholars to arrive at rational beliefs about the world and its history.”

i) “Millions” of Christians? Let’s see. Hector’s chapter on the Holocaust pans a book by Dinesh D’Souza, while Carrier’s chapter on science pans a book by Rodney Stark. How does Carrier extrapolate from two individual writers to “millions” of Christians? Does he have scientific polling data to show that what Stark and D’Souza argue represents the belief of “millions” of Christians?

ii) There is also Carrier’s systematic and demagogic use of the word “delusional.” However, a delusional state is a psychotic statement. But even if Stark or D’Souza were mistaken in their historical analysis, that hardly makes them psychotic.

Or if it does, then it also makes Carrier psychotic given the number of times he’s changed his position over the years on the historical claims of Christianity.