thoughtful ideas on life's big questions
It’s another common statistic and argument by critics of christianity: there are 30,000 to 40,000 christian denominations in the world, which shows that the christian God doesn’t exist, because he would communicate better. How good is the argument, and the statistics?
Atheists and christians alike often feel that not only is their belief true, but it is “nicer”. One argument, which has been made to me several times by atheists recently, is over who is more generous in giving to charity. It has little to do with the truth of belief, but are there any facts […]
I am a bit of a statistics nerd, so when I came across some stats on the world’s major religions in the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, I couldn’t resist playing around with them. Note (2023): For updated statistics, see World’s biggest religion?
I have recently read two very different books about Jesus and history. One was long, one short; one was by a retired academic, the other by a rising star; one was a detailed analysis of all the things we can objectively know about Jesus’ life, the other a postmodern explanation of why our knowledge is […]
In a discussion on another post (on archaeology at Nazareth), a reader referred to first century Jewish historian, Josephus. He suggested that Josephus had not mentioned Jesus in his history, and that this was “telling”. I felt the comment merited a separate post. Did Josephus refer to Jesus? What is the current consensus of relevant […]
You don’t have to read the gospels for long to find things that don’t seem to fit together. Sceptics argue that these prove that the gospel stories can’t be trusted, and probably aren’t true. Is this a reasonable conclusion? Is it the only reasonable conclusion? How do historians deal with these apparent discrepancies?
A couple of weeks back I posted some information on the surviving documentation for a number of ancient texts including the New Testament (Revised dates for ancient documents). Now, in the comments to that post, I have been asked some more questions about the New Testament documents. So here’s the answers to those questions, as […]
A common theme in the discussion of the reliability of the New Testament documents is the number of copies we have and the dates of these copies, compared to other ancient writings. And of course, the details change as new discoveries are made. Here is an update.
Akhenaten has been attacking statements I have made here, and on my other blog theWay?. The latest comment on Christians and cathedrals questions whether “there exists a scholarly consensus that a reasonable if modest amount of facts about Jesus can be known”. I decided this question required a longer answer … (and I apologise for […]
I think this deserves a separate post. A few weeks back I posted on the historical evidence for Jesus and how some sceptics refuse to accept the conclusions of the best scholars that Jesus existed and the gospels present some reliable historical information about him (Jesus – assessing the evidence). Akhenaten has been discussing the […]