Coming in at #7 — others have been urging me to do more about publicity, and I keep meaning to, but here we are….
https://bloggers.feedspot.com/atheist_blogs/
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Not really happy about seeing Vridar in the same list as History for Atheists, though. 🙁 Maybe I should take that as reason enough to do more about what I think is an alternative voice to “history”, what it is, how it works — not just for atheists but for everyone, and a counter to both Tim O’Neill (who follows the fallacious methods of theologians) and Richard Carrier (who follows the long outdated positivists).
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Congratulations on the mention. I must say that from a distance (Argentina) I’ve been following your publications with interest.
From another distance, perhaps an intellectual one, I fail to understand your animosity toward Tim O’Neill, whose website, by the way, is right next to yours in my bookmarks. I also find it unjustified to accuse him of following the fallacious methods of theologians; as a fellow historian, I believe this is not the case.
In any case, I’m glad there are websites that disseminate critical thinking. In these dangerous and, let’s say, dark times, they are more necessary than ever.
Greetings from Rosario, Argentina
Hi Gustavo. Tim O’Neill has made it a habit if personally ridiculing and insulting and denigrating me personally whenever my name or blog is mentioned on other websites or forums. He used to post some of his bile towards others on this blog but I banned him with the clear point that he could continue engaging with posts here on the condition that he refrain from abusive language. That condition was apparently too much for him to accept.
As for methods, O’Neill has posted uncritically the works of a catholic apologist to argue his claims about the nature and role of the church in the middle ages. On the subject of Christian origins he repeats uncritically the “criteria of authenticity” arguments of theologians, and with respect to history he further regurgitates the New Testament line that “we can never be certain about anything” in history, especially ancient history — which is nonsense, but ironically used to justify conclusions of theology rather than history among NT scholars. Both Tim and I disagree with Carrier but Tim goes for the jugular and spills insults followed up by mockery of arguments he misrepresents and appears not to understand.
I once posted a series here on the archaeology of Nazareth. I was responding to O’Neill’s posts that personally denigrated and belittled René Salm, grossly misrepresented his arguments, and uncritically repeated other critics who responded to Salm without so much as a hint that Salm had demolished their misleading and even uninformed claims with sound scholarship.
It is Tim O’Neill’s penchant for personally denigrating certain others with whom he disagrees, he uncritical and uninformed repeating of the methods that are found only among NT scholars and never among historians, and uncritical repeating of catholic and other apologists and apparent ignorance of the methods of historians — and his personal abuse and ridicule of me when I challenge him on any of the above — those are the reasons I do not wish to appear on the same platform with him.
I recall years ago him saying that he is embarrassed to be an atheist when he sees other atheists promote wacky theories — hence his website. To me, atheism has nothing to do with what else one believes and it means nothing to me or to my atheism that there are atheists who have all sorts of wacky and even despicable ideas. But I do not have time for anyone who makes a habit of going out of way to denigrate and abuse and insult and belittle anyone else.