Required
Richard Reading
(A Link Post to the most helpful, imho, of Richard
Carrier's Writings)
Intro:
Basically this is required reading just as the title
says. Virtually any topic in unapologetics I can think of should
start with a baseline of whatever Richard has to say. Sure, use other
sources, but if you are a skeptic of Christianity, an atheist, and a
metaphysical naturalist, I highly recommend getting your bearings with
Richard's writings. They are comprehensive, well thought out, easy
enough to read, and loaded with exactly what needs to be said on these
topics. His sensibilities are awesome and those of you
out there that think I might be good...Rick is much better.
Atheists of all stripes should be familar with these materials and apologists
that want to set their sights on the cream of the crop have come to the right
place.
I've assembled a list that I think are the
core concepts that will give you most certainly the backbone of principled
unbelief in the Christian religion (and then some of course).
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Video:
The little
interview on "The God Who Wasn't
There" was okay. The
debate with the Muslims was
better. But if you want the best of Carrier TV, you'll buy this
debate on DVD.
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Books:
^^Sense and Goodness Without
GodThis should be the atheist
bible. It covers the important paradigm territory of metaphysical
naturalism that you need to know
about.
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^^The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the
GraveChapters 5
(The Spiritual Body of Christ and the Legend of the Empty
Tomb), 9
(The
Plausibility of Theft), and 10
(The Burial of Jesus in Light of Jewish Law) are
his and are well worth the purchase on their own.
The Empty Tomb
FAQThis is online, but is a helpful
companion (the FAQ was written all by Carrier) to the above
book.
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Online
Writings:
^^Review of: "16 Crucified Saviors"The
review of the above work is mainly about what not to do as a skeptic.
I have it here because it helps our side quite a bit to know how far to go and
where to draw the line. Too often unbelief amounts to just making
ridiculous claims against rididiculous claims and being that sensible soul in
the hurricane of debate can score you those much needed points. Of
course intellectual honesty is good for the brain in general as
well.
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^^Osiris and Pagan Resurrection
MythsBasically this is
the same idea as above, just more of
it.
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^^Kooks and Quacks of the Roman
EmpireCarrier talks about having to
immerse yourself in a wide range of texts from a time period to be a good
historian and I hope some of that material hasn't rubbed off.
lol Seriously though, this essay is important because it provides
numerous examples of the kinds of credulity rampant in the world around the
time of the gospels. If you've ever wanted something specific to say
rather than vaguely allude to how much ancient superstitious people shouldn't
be trusted...this is excellent.
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^^Review of: Jesus as
Myth
I
know I have fellow atheists out there that want to jump the gun on the Jesus
Myth and this is a good place to start knowing what to do with it.
Carrier reviews Earl Doherty's "The Jesus Puzzle" and tells us what's
up so far. Keep in mind if you step out from under the umbrella of
consensus scholarship, you're going to bring down a storm of "epistemic
hypocrisy" and it is simpler and still more than effective to argue for
non-supernatural historicity until headway is made in that regard.
But in the meantime, it doesn't hurt to get a sneak peek. Carrier
plans to write a full book on the topic and we'll just have to see how that
goes.
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Original J.P. Holding cartoon:
^^Why Carrier doesn't Buy the Resurrection
Story
Apologists will claim the resurrection of Jesus
is a well-attested historical event. I think its safe to say that
they're wrong. But it's probably a good idea to have a qualified
historian scout the terrain for you.
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^^The Formation of the New Testament
Canon
This is important to get an overall feel for
how we got the Bible or rather how much we know about how we got the New Testament.
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^^Was Christianity Too Improbable to be
False?especially:James Patrick Holding (the Turkelnator) managed to
look all the wrong ways and assume all the wrong things about how improbable
his religion was in its naturalistic formation. Carrier presents tons
of helpful observations to get things back on track. One of
the things I got most out of this is how obvious it is from the NT that
critical thinking was at best a second class citizen. You can assume
all you want about what isn't there, but its pretty easy to put two and two
together based on what is there. This is a good heads up for the meat
and potatoes of debates on early Christian epistemology. Read
it!
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Miscellaneous:
^^The Secular Case for Pro-Choice
Carrier presents a good form and good information for
debating for pro-choice.
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^^The Odds Assessments for Abiogenesis to
Date
This is an excellent resource, though
incredibly boring to read. Basically he's keeping tabs on all the
odds calculations to date so that when creationists start getting any funny
ideas, its all in one place to find out why they are
mistaken.
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General
Links:
^Richard's Blog
^Richard's
Office
^Richard on
Infidels.orgObviously there are many more
excellent pieces he's written.
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Outro:
Hope these are helpful links.
Ben
Comments (8)
Dang, son. Didn't your mama ever tell you that a cluttered post is evidence of a cluttered mind? Hoo.
ryc: It's funny you should mention it, because the last pastor to serve my church used to wear exactly that outfit. Every Epiphany, she'd suit up and get lowered from the ceiling in a wire harness, shouting out "The Holy Spirit Descends Like A Dove!" That worked fine until 2002, when we had a new deacon working the winch. Oopsie.
It was a service to remember, though.
@Beloved_Spear - I guess I aimed at creating a link shrine of pertinent Carrier articles and failed miserably somehow. Don't know what to tell you. It seems pretty straight forward to me. Maybe you don't know where I'm coming from with this and I guess that's fair enough. In that case, pretend like its not addressed to you.
No suprise to me I couldn't escape you're omnicient eye. Believe it or not, I haven't had internet or television for, almost 8 months now... It was horrible.
Life is great though, I work in the automotive assembly sector of america now... I get dumber every day and I really understand why Mommy wanted me to go to college now(working on it!). :S Lot's of christians there, but I've never been linched for being an atheist yet and talking to them, they all take the most interest in the Flying spagetti monster argument, as if sarcasm and satire are the only things that effect thier stance at all.
@Mr_Gundam - Thanks for stopping by. Good luck with college. You might as well take advantage of their interest in FSMism and dress up like a pirate whenever you can. Noodles do sound good right now. According to some Christians just getting atheists talking about God is "dangerous conversion territory" for us. Perhaps it works both ways? :)
Haha, Christians don't have any trouble whatsoever getting me to talk about god, but I always feel bad when I acctually start making the question thier god. It just seems like I'm injuring someone by trying to get them to release something that thier mother, father, grandmother, and children all take so seriously. I tred very lightly in that world, offending them always turns them away.
@Mr_Gundam - I agree with the treading lightly at work. Like you said, if you're not careful, it is about the equivalent of being that doctor that has to tell the patient's next of kin that they died on the operating table. On the Internet there are a lot of ways to get around that for them and they can more easily read whatever they want to read and fill in the blanks with whatever suits their preconceived notions and misunderstand at their leisure. But in person, especially after being able to get to know me, and having to hear my voice inflection and being directly between that rock and the hard place of a strong rhetorical point...I really do feel bad for them and try to avoid it as much as possible. I'm there to work, not drown puppies.
ARU
I just ordered Sense and Goodness Without God. It had better be all that you say it is, or else I shall be severly disappointed. Actually I'm rather excited about it. It should provide some food for thought.
Oh, and, if you get around to it, I would still be interested to hear your response to my post a while back concerning morality.
~dan
agnostics: A very thoughtful comment. I do understand, and on many levels agree. I am a higher primate, as are you. I didn't "evolve from monkeys," but rather from some intermediate stage ancestor. That ancestor developed sentience largely as a result of the tendency of creation to favor forms that are more sentient and thus more capable of responding to their environs in a way that goes beyond simple organic response. This is a process that has taken, as our dearly departed mutual friend Carl Sagan used to put it, "billions and billions" of years.
We don't agree in all of this, obviously. Where we differ is purpose. I see evolution as part of the design of the universe, part of the goodness spoken into it by it's Maker. I see the progression of forms of being as fundamentally non-random on a macro-level. And while I do appreciate where we are, I hold from faith that life itself is inherently progressive. The struggles that atheism has in forming a cohesive teleology are signs of it's deep memetic flaws, because it cannot articulate a purpose that transcends the semiotics of culture and mechanistic biology.
I don't expect you to agree, of course. We have to differ somewhere, eh? Otherwise these conversations would be pretty darn boring. ;)