2014-03-25

What The Hell Do People Believe In If They Don’t Believe In God?

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

by Neil Godfrey

Stephen Fry explains what the meaning of life is to him as a nonreligious person. In three minutes.

[youtube:https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Tvz0mmF6NW4]

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"I still wonder at all the material you turn out for Vridar. The more I read your stuff (and I still do, of course), the more I realize how much we all owe you. Your voice is unique."

— Earl Doherty, November 2013 (personal email)
"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!"

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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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"Many thanks for this post, and for the quality of your blog."

— Philippe Wajdenbaum, – November 2018
https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=145080#p145080
Neil made a good synthesis of the work without being an “expert” of the field.

-- Enrico Tuccinardi, - October 2022
"By the way, my thanks to Neil for an ongoing superb job of exposing Jim’s review for what it is: a farcical and none too effective exercise in mythicism assassination, nothing to do with rational, let alone unbiased, scholarship. I’m also happy to see even Jim giving Neil credit where credit is due."

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"Neil, You’ve done a clean job in your posting on ‘Jesus the Healer’. It reflects well on you. Best, John"

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"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
This is superb work, Neil, and reminds me of Albert Schweitzer’s work from a century ago. . . . .

I commend you for being the first to even TRY to translate Bruno Bauer’s brilliant Kritik der Evangelien und Geschichte ihres Ursprungs, which is now more than 150 years old.

. . . . .Thank you for your historic effort.

-- Paul Trejo, M.A., - November 2022
Editor, An English Edition of Bruno Bauer’s 1843 Christianity Exposed
"Neil, for what it is worth it is obvious to me that if you had earlier in life tracked into a graduate program at one of the world’s leading research universities you would be one of the world’s formidable ones. You are doing essentially the same quality now (apart from the philology and languages) except mostly sticking to commenting on others’ work as informed comment/discussion."

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— Mary Booker, – February 2020 (personal email)
"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."

— Richard Carrier, – March 2014
"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
"Very good. This post is going straight to the March 2016 Biblical Studies Carnival."

—N.T. Wrong, – March 2016
"Fantastic. I’m so glad you’re helping to spread these ideas!"

Nancy Fraser - June 2019 (personal email)
"Thanks much for this book review. I think it expands, and contributes to, the effort in honouring Thomas that we with Lukasz originally had in mind with this volume. Best, Emanuel"

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— Russell Gmirkin, – October 2016
"I always enjoy reading Neil’s blog because I think that he is careful, thorough, intellectually fair, and honest."

— April DeConick, – November 2007
"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."

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— James McGrath, – June 2009

Neil Godfrey on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 2 – ‘a teacher of . . . truisms’: “Schmidt describes as “new evidence” a hypothetical source behind two or so specific witnesses of the TF in late antiquity/early…” Jun 24, 23:56
Stephen on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 2 – ‘a teacher of . . . truisms’: ““and not even their calamities [The Jewish War] opened their eyes to the truth” of this ambiguous prophecy applying to…” Jun 24, 23:38
Stephen on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 2 – ‘a teacher of . . . truisms’: “I think Josephus may be saying the ambiguous prophecy of a world ruler coming out of Judea was true (truth)…” Jun 24, 23:27
Neil Godfrey on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 2 – ‘a teacher of . . . truisms’: “ἀρετή is not the word being discussed here. I want to keep the focus on what Schmidt himself is arguing.” Jun 24, 21:39
Neil Godfrey on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 2 – ‘a teacher of . . . truisms’: “It’s worth following through on Nina Livesey’s book that I discussed in depth here: https://vridar.org/tag/livesey-letters-of-paul-in-their-roman-literary-context/ — there is no historical…” Jun 24, 21:31
Neil Godfrey on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 2 – ‘a teacher of . . . truisms’: “but I guess if they aren’t refuted they just sit in the corpus providing ammunition for each new generation of…” Jun 24, 21:27
db on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 2 – ‘a teacher of . . . truisms’: ““ἡδονῇ . . . also to pleasures in doing right, self-sacrifice, spiritual laws etc.” Cf. Arete ‘…being and doing one’s…” Jun 24, 21:12
Stephen on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 2 – ‘a teacher of . . . truisms’: “Perhaps I should have said: “It might be noted the Gentile churches of Paul also did not like the Jerusalem…” Jun 24, 18:41
Stephen on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 2 – ‘a teacher of . . . truisms’: “Stephen said: “Therefore I guess Josephus is saying Jesus taught the truth, but to men who received it with worldly…” Jun 24, 17:09

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