2011-12-24

Illusionist discusses psychic powers – and his link between Christianity and scepticism

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Tim Minchin’s hymn to Jesus included a line about Derren Brown, and being from the other end of the world I had to Google to see who he was. This led me to an interesting series of interview of his with Richard Dawkins.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xswt8B8-UTM&feature=relmfu]

2. Do psychics really believe?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQyfsCNFyRY&feature=relmfu]

3. Some tricks

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3QYNjCmQeI&feature=relmfu]

4. How to grow the industry

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbKOoyK7FCc&feature=relmfu]

5. Banal communication with aliens and the dead

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q9BN4WUULI&feature=relmfu]

6. And finally, “Where does your scepticism come from?”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EslEBK1ZTBU&feature=relmfu]

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Bayesian Models of the Mind; — & Irrationality - 2025-02-04 22:36:04 GMT+0000
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"Neil, in my mature judgement (I am now an old man), this fine 4-part study is a brilliant reworking, an instructive restatement of Hayden White’s Metahistory (and his subsequent writings). Your critique of certain historiographic representations as imbedded in the case study of the “scientistic”, “empirical” Richard Carrier provides a solid starting point for the more honest “fictive” reading of the New Testament that you encourage. Your last paragraph is a very intelligent call to sensitive readers of these texts. I suspect a whole generation of biblical students has been educated without the insights provided by the incomparable White. Bravo!"

-- Timothy Bagley, - November 2024
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— Gregory Doudna, – January 2019
"Neil, You’ve done a clean job in your posting on ‘Jesus the Healer’. It reflects well on you. Best, John"

— John Moles, September 2011 (personal email)
https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=145080#p145080
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-- Emanuel Pfoh - August 2020
"Neil Godfrey and Tim Widowfield, who both write at Vridar . . . happen to be some of the most astute and well-read amateurs you can read on the internet on the subject of biblical historicity. I call them amateurs only for the reason that they don’t have, so far as I know, advanced degrees in the subject. But I have often been impressed with their grasp of logic and analysis of scholarship. I don’t always agree with them, but I respect their work."

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"Very good. This post is going straight to the March 2016 Biblical Studies Carnival."

—N.T. Wrong, – March 2016
"Note that I do not use the term ‘amateur’ pejoratively. . . . In fact, Godfrey is extremely well read and his librarian skills have brought many important academic works to my attention."

Raphael Lataster - August 2019
"For an excellent example of generally high-quality scholarship by someone who isn’t a biblical studies professor, see Neil Godfrey’s work posted on the website vridar.org."

— Tom Dykstra, – JOCABS 2015
"I want to say here that this site is so resourceful and highly on top of the most modern scholarship in the areas discussed here. . . I know of no other site which offers a wide range of topics related to careful critical analysis of historically and scripturally related issues."

-- Martin Lewadny, - March 2009
"Thanks for your very elaborate review! I realized that I hadn’t added your blog to our blogroll. This oversight has been corrected. Looking forward to more segments."

— Anthony Le Donne, – September 2009
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"I’d like to thank you for this very nice representation of what I was trying to show in the book. It’s always gratifying when a reader zeroes in on exactly those aspects I thought were most interesting and most central to my argument. Thank you for this careful and engaged reading of my work – much appreciated!"

— Eva Mroczek, – June 2017
It is worth saying another word of appreciation here for Neil Godfrey's effort to make Bruno Bauer accessible in English.

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