The childish atheism of Richard Carrier

Dr. Richard Carrier has a PhD in ancient history from Columbia University, but he might be best known for his zealous evangelism for atheism. Dr. Carrier is a historian, not a scientist, yet he is unafraid to wander away from the focus of his professional training to offer opinions on diverse subjects ranging from theology to cosmology and the origin of the universe, or his apparently uninformed thoughts on the chemistry necessary for the origin of life. In a relatively short (11+ minute) video seen by clicking on this link, Dr. Carrier enumerates the following four points to explain why he's not a Christian. His reasons are: God is silent. According to Richard Carrier, God doesn't exist because no messages from this deity have been universally communicated so that every human on earth has a fundamental understanding of what God wants and doesn't want us to do. Dr. Carrier says, "In every culture everywhere, God's gospel would have been preached to them by God Himself, he wouldn't need intermediaries. So we'd be able to confirm, yes, there's this guy called God somewhere, who's giving us all the same information, and we we would what that information is, and we would all still have the freedom to reject that message, or not care about it or whatever, but we would all agree on what that message was, there wouldn't be disagreements on it." Obviously, Dr. Carrier rejects the Bible as being the word of God, in spite of the fact there are (allegedly) 300 specific Old Testament prophesies that were reportedly fulfilled by the life, crucifixion, and resurrection … [Read more...]