2021-07-07

I’m interviewed on Harmonic Atheist

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

by Neil Godfrey

Thanks to Tim Mills of Harmonic Atheist

The Facebook page: Harmonic Atheist

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4 thoughts on “I’m interviewed on Harmonic Atheist”

db says:

2021-07-08 14:21:09 GMT+0000 at 14:21

Is VRIDAR pronounced pronounced like FREE-DAR ? You could of mentioned the magnanimous CC licensing of your content. 🙂

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db says:

2021-07-08 18:06:18 GMT+0000 at 18:06

Per The Video summary:

After we briefly discussed his personal story, we went on to discuss various topics, including:
[…]
• The important contributions of Earl Doherty (author, “The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ?” and “Jesus: Neither God Nor Man – The Case for a Mythical Jesus”)
• The ways that “consensus” berates and shuns those who don’t agree with them, and how their failure to address critical and relevant questions, and instead just dismiss them, leads people to more easily see the failures of the consensus and to continue on to better questions and research.
• Learning to see the Gospels as re-writes of Old Testament stories.
• How the books “The Ascension of Isaiah” and “Enoch” affected the origins of Christianity.
• How the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD was a large impetus behind the creation of early Christianity.
• The question of whether ancient Rome had any part to play in the origins of Christianity.
• Trying to understand how early Christianity, where the Jesus story was a parable, got turned into a historicized story.

FYI: Doherty first published “The Jesus Puzzle: Part One: A Conspiracy of Silence”. Humanist in Canada. 114: 20–24. Autumn 1995.

Anyone that happens to have that issue certainly has a family artifact that will be valued just as much as the journal issue of Alan Turing’s “Imitation Game”.

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db says:

2021-07-09 13:02:49 GMT+0000 at 13:02

• “r/atheism”. Reddit. is fully mythicist.

Per https://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/wiki/historicaljesus

Did Jesus Really Exist?

The short answer is “no”.

The slightly longer answer is “Maybe, but only if you’re willing to accept extremely loose definitions of the words ‘did’, ‘Jesus’, ‘really’, and/or ‘exist’.”

Here is an AMA they once hosted:

• “Lifelong atheist with a PhD in New Testament and Early Christianity: AMA”. reddit. 13 December 2011.

• Richard Carrier requested a moderated AMA on “/r/AcademicBiblical”, that was declined.

I have never seen anything worth engaging on Reddit. IMO, the amount of time it takes sorting through the garbage is not worth the trivial payoff the effort could even bring. If some academic group there wants to invite me into a formal, moderated engagement that will filter out trolls and amateurs and lazy readers who misrepresent what’s in my book or won’t even actually read it, I’m game. But otherwise, it looks like just a useless time suck to me.

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1. db says:
  
  2021-07-09 17:19:53 GMT+0000 at 17:19
  
  The AMA (ask me anything) is by “arquebus_x”, a lifelong atheist with a PhD in New Testament and Early Christianity, who claims: “I finished my PhD in 2008, conveniently 6 months before the economy tanked and all the potential jobs in my field disappeared.”
  
  This is an interesting snapshot of the 2008 consensus.
  
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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.

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Editor, An English Edition of Bruno Bauer’s 1843 Christianity Exposed
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— Russell Gmirkin, – October 2016
"Many thanks for this post, and for the quality of your blog."

— Philippe Wajdenbaum, – November 2018
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— Gregory Doudna, – January 2019
"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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"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."

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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.

-- Peter Kirby, - May 2023
"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"

-- Emanuel Pfoh - August 2020
https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=145080#p145080
Neil made a good synthesis of the work without being an “expert” of the field.

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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"

— John Moles, September 2011 (personal email)

Andrew Dabrowski on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 3 – “received with pleasure”: “(I should have written “emend”.) I mean that many propose the entire TF is a later insertion. That’s arguably a…” Jul 3, 19:33
Neil Godfrey on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 3 – “received with pleasure”: “There’s a thread about my reviews on the Early Writings Forum — and after a little flurry of personal attacks…” Jul 3, 08:23
Neil Godfrey on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 3 – “received with pleasure”: “In what way is my reasoning “dubious” here? (Sorry — I’m missing your point. — I write these things publicly…” Jul 3, 08:15
Andrew Dabrowski on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 3 – “received with pleasure”: “I agree with you the TF is probably fraudulent. But if so it reveals your reasoning here to be dubious:…” Jul 3, 01:47
Neil Godfrey on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 3 – “received with pleasure”: “What Morton Smith wrote was: If we suppose the alterations to the text were minimal, the original was something like…” Jul 3, 01:28
Neil Godfrey on “Josephus and Jesus, New Evidence” – Review 3 – “received with pleasure”: “I have addressed Morton Smith’s methods several times now. Unfortunately he falls into the traps of circular reasoning and confirmation…” Jul 3, 00:26
Neil Godfrey on Speaking of Josephus . . . .: “There is nothing historical about Acts. It is second century fiction. The scenes are borrowed from the gospels and created…” Jul 3, 00:20
Thomas Worthington on Pitfalls in Seeking Authenticity in Ancient Texts: “This all reminds me of dealing with chatGPT and other LLMs which simply can not bring themselves to say “I…” Jul 2, 07:58
Mike on Pitfalls in Seeking Authenticity in Ancient Texts: “Was proved centuries ago, God of Abraham was completely invented Cephas (Peter) and Paul invented Jesus from their “visions” Even…” Jul 2, 01:37

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