Richard Carrier writes on a variety of topics, including critical thinking, naturalism, history, and atheist community affairs. He has a Ph D in ancient history, with expertise in the origins of Christianity among many other things. He has also delivered speeches at various conferences, and he has had several debates on various religious and ethical topics.
He was raised a very liberal Methodist, something which was a happy experience for him. Still he read the Bible and found it very confusing. After some seeking, he discovered Taoism, and he was a philosophical Taoist for a while, even having some mystical experiences. Carrier continued seeking and learning from a variety of sources, and he gradually developed a more secular world view. He read the Bible again, and he found it grossly inadequate. When he finished, he decided that he was an atheist.
After watching how liberal Christians were unwilling to stand up to the Religious Right and assert their beliefs in the face of it, he decided to become a secularist activist.
References[]
- Official Website of Richard Carrier
- The Richard Carrier Project, a fan site that lists responses to his work, and also his audio and video appearances
- Richard Carrier is his site at the Internet Infidels, which includes
- From Taoist to Infidel, his "spiritual" journey
- Why I Am Not a Christian
- Did Jesus Exist? Earl Doherty and the Argument to Ahistoricity
- Kooks and Quacks of the Roman Empire: A Look into the World of the Gospels
- Cosmology and the Koran: A Response to Muslim Fundamentalists
- I Was a Big Bang Skeptic
- Antony Flew Considers God...Sort Of
- Predicting Modern Science: Epicurus vs. Mohammed
- The Real Ten Commandments, from ancient Athenian politician Solon
- Books:
- Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism
- Not the Impossible Faith, a response to Christian apologist J.P. Holding's book The Impossible Faith
- Why I Am Not a Christian: Four Conclusive Reasons to Reject the Faith
- Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus
- Upcoming books on the historicity of Jesus Christ and scientists in the early Roman Empire
- Contributions to The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails, The End of Christianity, The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond The Grave, Sources of the Jesus Tradition: Separating History from Myth, and The God Who Wasn't There
Adapted from Pharyngula Wiki