2016-07-05

Vridar response . . .

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

by Neil Godfrey

Luciano has written a new post — Vridar Response — responding to my response — What I want as an atheist a human — to his post — What I want as an atheist. (Should I explain that with a diagram?) It’s been a very busy day and I haven’t had a chance to read Luciano’s response yet, apart from his opening paragraph:

I enjoy being a morning bird. My writing isn’t extremely well-known, but I get the occasional response and sometimes I manage to be awake as they are published. Today is one such day. My post about what I as an atheist, “wanted” was seen by Neil Godfrey of Vridar, and got a response from him. I really liked his response but there are certain things that I think deserve a response. The ending is directly addressed towards Neil, but as usual I welcome any comments and or thoughts on the post and hopefully on a greater discussion about skepticism and atheism. I want to respond to individual bits and pieces before responding to the overall post (the last few paragraphs are where I respond to the overall post). So with that little bit of context, let’s get started!

I look forward to reading what he has to say, but till I get that chance some readers here might like to check out his comments and comment there, here, before I do.

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Palestinians, written out of their rights to the land – compared with a new history - 2024-10-15 20:05:41 GMT+0000

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— John Moles, September 2011 (personal email)
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
"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
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— Earl Doherty, November 2013 (personal email)
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— Anthony Le Donne, – September 2009
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"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
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— Gregory Doudna, – January 2019
"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
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-- Martin Lewadny, - March 2009
"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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-- Jim West, – September 2010
"Many thanks for this post, and for the quality of your blog."

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"Vridar is consistently thought-provoking, well-informed, and asking the right questions. There are intelligent, thoughtful comments and commenters regularly offering productive discussion. Books and publications are covered with a range of perspectives with attempts at fair and accurate representation of others’ arguments and content (where there are occasional and inevitable missteps on that I notice Neil making corrections and apologies where warranted, which wins points with me). Please carry on."

— Gregory Doudna, – January 2019
https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=145080#p145080
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— April DeConick, – November 2007

Paul Trejo on How Did We Get Here? Part 1: “Long term history? Let’s just take the past 80 years. The Baby Boomer heaven is over. It began when WW2…” Nov 21, 15:08
Clarke W Owens on Jesus Mythicism and Historical Knowledge, Part 2: Certainty and Uncertainty in History: ““It is not the facticity of the events that is in question It is at this narrative level where problems…” Nov 21, 14:26
Thomas Worthington on How Did We Get Here? Part 1: “It’s worth bearing in mind that, as of 21st Nov, Trump has actually polled less than 50% of the votes…” Nov 21, 13:02
Petr Jancar on Jesus Mythicism and Historical Knowledge, Part 2: Certainty and Uncertainty in History: “I appreciate your friendly approach, which encourages me to write still an addition, trying to illustrate two basic points that…” Nov 21, 09:16
Neil Godfrey on Jesus Mythicism and Historical Knowledge, Part 2: Certainty and Uncertainty in History: “You referred to my quote: “History is the same. The historian looks at all the evidence that exists now and…” Nov 19, 23:04
Neil Godfrey on Jesus Mythicism and Historical Knowledge, Part 2: Certainty and Uncertainty in History: “I certainly do take your feedback “calmly” and without any thought that you are being in the slightest polemical or…” Nov 19, 22:48
Petr Jancar on Jesus Mythicism and Historical Knowledge, Part 2: Certainty and Uncertainty in History: “I have no intention to somehow argue here, I just try to give my feedback in case it could have…” Nov 19, 21:24
Neil Godfrey on Jesus Mythicism and Historical Knowledge, Part 1: Historical Facts and Probability: “Maybe it’s a fun theoretical idea, but in the real world it is nonsense, isn’t it.” Nov 19, 18:51
Thomas Worthington on Jesus Mythicism and Historical Knowledge, Part 1: Historical Facts and Probability: “I don’t think Carrier understands what Gödel proved. Unless there is some other Gödel theorem besides the one everyone normally…” Nov 19, 12:31

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