Christianity in Hitler's Ideology: The Definitive Study • Richard Carrier Blogs

Nazism is Christian Nationalism. And any Christian Nationalism today is just a new iteration of Nazism...

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/39552 

 

How to Use Pseudo-AI • Richard Carrier Blogs

This is the thing you need to accept. Asking a pseudo-AI chatbot to do research or reason for you is literally like asking a high school dropout on weed to do research or reason for you. "Hey, Jimbob, spend the day googling to answer this question for me." All the errors, conflations, failures, omissions, confusions, even hallucinations you would expect from that poor dumb Jimbob is exactly what you will always get from chatbots. And I do mean always. Do not repeat corporate lies and claim "it will get better; it's just around the corner." It has been multiply scientifically proved that it will never ever ever ever get better. This is as good as it will ever be. And it's crap. The sooner you learn and accept this the better. Failure to learn this will be your doom, as you spiral into fatal stupidity and become a state or corporate lemming, all the while marveling at the nonexistent "genius" of this stupid talking parrot...

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/39401

AI Is Garbage and a Bubble (Please Learn This) • Richard Carrier Blogs

" There is no AI. What is being called artificial intelligence and sold as snake oil under that label is actually artificial stupidity. It will destroy your own personal ability to critically reason. It will destroy your company—by reducing, not increasing, productivity; and by increasing, not reducing, your risk-exposure to critical errors. And it will destroy the economy. Not by taking jobs. It will never replace any significant number of jobs, because it is garbage. It can't do even the simplest job. It fucks up more than a tween on weed. Rather, it will destroy the economy by wrecking pensions and banks and tanking the global economic system, resulting in massive layoffs and food lines, because any time now trillions of dollars of the global economy are literally going to evaporate—the moment people realize they are being conned and AI can never make money, or do any of the big things its grifters have desperately been claiming, and they even more desperately try to sell their position, and the whole stock market crashes..."

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/38652

 

How to know what’s true • Richard Carrier Blogs

In this blog post, Dr. Richard Carrier details how to tell what's true, using methods that can be applied to any claims.  In this example, he works out a response to anti-vaxxers: On the Strange Idea That Viruses Don't Exist.

Quoting from his blog post:

I want to impart to you some advice for dealing with any claims in that domain, because there are three "dirty tricks" that all cranks like anti-vaxxers pull that you can look for to catch this happening every time, so you can vet these things yourself and not need someone like me to:

1. They will cite papers that (i) don't actually say what they claim, or (ii) don't actually imply what they claim, or (iii) have been retracted or refuted by subsequent, higher-powered studies, or (iv) have never been independently replicated while the contrary finding has been. This is dishonest and manipulative. So anyone whose argument is mostly built this way is either (a) a liar you should never trust again, or (b) their gullible victim, whose judgment on this matter you shouldn't trust until they get up to speed. And (b) you might be able to help. But for (a), just walk and block.
2. They will make claims you can prove false with ten minutes of effort, and which when thus eliminated, fatally cripple their argument, calling their conclusion (and their competence) into sufficient doubt to walk away (see my Primer on Actually Doing Your Own Research). Don't play their game of having to rebut "everything" they say. A single fatality to their argument is enough to identify it all as a waste of your time; but three is decisive. Any ensuing whining and raging is just emotional manipulation at that point. You don't owe them any more of your time. You can just walk and block.
3. They will make arguments that you can immediately identify as fallacious, and which when thus eliminated, fatally cripple their argument. Here, maybe, they can "fix" the argument, and all they have demonstrated is that they are bad at thinking. Which is not a good sign. But you can give them a chance. Though they only get three. Third strike and they're out. You then know they cannot think. And if they cannot think, nothing they do think is worth the bother of your listening to. Walk and block.

Those three tactics are common to all pseudoscience and every implausible conspiracy, so it's good advice all around. Whether it's flat earth, lizard people, or climate denial. Or, indeed, even Christianity or Islam or woo—or MAGA.

  

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/35080

A Primer on Actually Doing Your Own Research • Richard Carrier Blogs

Real "Doing Your Own Research" means being reasonably critical, looking for the best case on both sides of an issue, and comparing their merits by valid metrics—which means, not your emotions or biases or assumptions, but by their actual cited evidence and actually articulated logic. 

A real researcher seeks to be informed; to actually understand an issue. 

A real researcher traces claims to their primary source, and looks for any evidence against it of comparable quality before relying on it. A real researcher weighs sources by their objectively-evidenced track-record of factual reliability, and not by their politics or position. A real researcher is neither selectively gullible nor selectively skeptical. They apply the same standards—the same warrant for belief—in every direction. 

And that all means that a real researcher doubts their own beliefs and findings, until they can be sure. Before running off with a premise, they ask themselves, "Wait, is that true?" And they check first. Before running off with a conclusion, they ask themselves, "Wait, how would I know it if that conclusion were false?" And they check first. 

Please do all that. Otherwise, please don't "Do Your Own Research" at all. Because science has proved that that will guarantee your beliefs will be increasingly false, not increasingly correct. To reverse the polarity on that outcome, you have to do it right.

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/32665

Epistemology Test: Anthony Fauci Edition • Richard Carrier Blogs

Anyone who thinks Anthony Fauci is "a fraud" has a broken epistemology. 

You have selected to respect dogmatism and disrespect the scientific method; you have failed to fact-check your own assumptions about timelines and the content of actual statements made; you have selectively ignored things that actually were or weren't said; you've conflated different things as the same one thing, and conveniently in just such a way as supports rather than tests your presuppositions; and you have preferred your own emotionally satisfying narrative to anything resembling a reality-based belief-system (the signature of all tinfoil hat). 

I have seen this pattern in many other people and groups, who think (even boast!) that they are reasoning rationally but are actually reasoning illogically, often in wilful ignorance of the actual facts (exhibiting even a persistent disinterest in actually fact-checking anything they feel should be true), and all quite in slavery to their emotions, letting their desires and preferences and assumptions dictate their perceptions and inferences, and letting their anger or embarrassment or pride steer them away from ever fixing their epistemology or ever paying attention to the actual evidence and arguments presented for any position they dislike. 

Please stop. Get on the rope ladder. Climb out of that trap. Your whole life and the whole world will be better for it.

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/18469

The Scary Truth about Critical Thinking • Richard Carrier Blogs

…if you try really hard to refute yourself before trying to defend yourself, then the mere act of avoiding such methods of defending false beliefs will land you in methods of detecting them. Which is exactly where you want to land—if true beliefs are what you want to have... 

… And this is the key lesson for today. It is as important to pay attention to how people are defending false beliefs—the methods they are using to do that (and thereby to avoid discovering or admitting their beliefs are false)—and not just the methods used to catch their mistakes and debunk them…

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/22473

Baptism: It’s Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier Blogs

…"The features Christians lifted from the pagan mysteries are: passing from one state to another—life, through death, to a new life, symbolically through the water ritual. The features Christians lifted from Jewish water rituals are: humble simplicity, a joining to the body of Israel, and an atoning function that secures one access to the future resurrection. 

The feature both, Jewish and pagan, already shared, was this feature of cleansing sins in preparation to receive this new state and benefit. Christians used that common nexus to build a hybrid ritual, combining their preferred elements of both, to realize their own form of baptism. And when this began, they brought with it even such particulars as baptism for the dead, demonstrating the link to its pagan cultural past, and added joining "the body of Christ" as an analogy to joining "the body of Israel" in Jewish conversion-initiation water rituals… 

Following pagan precedent, the rite was conceptualized as a symbolic but metaphysically potent death and resurrection. And following precedents in both Judaism and paganism, this was all tied to a cleansing away of past sins. 

Baptism was thus no more unique to Christianity than a resurrected or virgin born savior…"

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/30551

Jesus Complete Myth?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYiTLBQ-cRg

How Did Christianity Begin?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVaVCa8rZLA

Come See Richard Carrier & Others Speak at the 2023 International eConference on Atheism! • Richard Carrier

Virtual. Cheap! Noteworthy preventers. Event times are Mountain Time.

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/22941

Christians Did Not Invent Charity and Philanthropy • Richard Carrier

"I often hear the claim that Aristotle never included charity among his virtues. Which is astonishing because it is in fact one of his fundamental virtues, extensively discussed in an entire chapter of his book on moral theory. I often hear the claim that no one cared for or about the poor before the Christians came along, that philanthropy didn't exist, that social welfare wasn't a concern. Which is astonishing because in fact the Greeks and Romans were famous for inventing these things, and implementing them quite extensively compared to previous empires. In fact our very word "philanthropy" comes from them! Many Roman and Greek philosophers wrote extensively on generosity and charity and concern for the poor, as being fundamental to the good person, definitive of the moral life."
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/12453

What Exactly Was the Scientific Revolution? • Richard Carrier

Why did the Scientific Revolution happen when and where it did? Random happenstance had a lot to do with it. The Greek miracle was key—its memo just didn't reach China, and while the Muslim world eventually turned its back on it, the Romans reacted in an entirely opposite fashion and thus were poised to get there, but for the collapse of their empire, which was due to yet more unrelated random happenstances (mainly, the lack of an effective constitutional government ensuring a continuous peaceful succession of power, and a poor understanding of how to productively manage a global fiduciary economy). This opened the door for Christendom to take over, which brought with it a persistent hostility to all the values needed to resume scientific progress. The power of Christian ideology had to be broken before those values could ever have a chance to reign again, and that finally came with the 15th century Reformation. 
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/20886

Three Things to Know about New Testament Manuscripts • Richard Carrier

…So here we are. Three things you should know about the New Testament manuscripts…their number is useless, they all come from the same late and flawed edition, and they are more riddled with error and distortion than the most competently transmitted of secular texts would have been. And that is the very worst kind of book to base your life on…
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/11209

The Rain Miracle of Marcus Aurelius: A Case Study in Christian Lies • Richard Carrier

…More likely than not, the Rain Miracle of Marcus Aurelius began as just a couple of fortunate coincidences, later conflated, that then all who were there praised as a miracle of pagan magic. A few years later, Christians changed the entire account to make them the heroes, forging state documents, fabricating narratives, and inventing a whole fake legion. Rapid legendary development, completely eclipsed subsequent history. Christian lies triumphed. A myth was born by pagans, and then out of that, an even more absurd myth was born in its place by Christians. That's how all religious history was created (OHJ, Element 44, pp. 214-22; OHJ, Chapter 9; OHJ, Chapter 10).

Yet another of countless examples of Christian authors making up stories to sell Christianity by, routinely fabricating history and forging documents to do so. It didn't matter that their stories are thoroughly implausible and fairly easy to refute for anyone who took the trouble to check the facts. It is clear no one did. Few could (Not the Impossible Faith, Chapter 7); and none were encouraged to (Not the Impossible Faith, Chapter 17). And if any did, nothing they said would be preserved by the subsequent Christian gatekeepers of all print media, who delighted in "disappearing" every book there was that ever challenged or criticized Christianity—or even their preferred sect of it…

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/12480

My Debate with Ray Comfort: Can Moral Facts Exist without a God? • Richard Carrier

"Value only comes from us; we decide what we want from ourselves and the world. This would be true even if there were a God: we ourselves still have to choose to value anything that God says. Values come from our nature. And God or not, we are cognitive and social beings. If we wish to live as fulfilled as possible, we must cultivate empathy to share the joys of others, else we lose a whole dimension of happiness; and we must cooperate and get along with each other as much as reasonable, so we can manifest by that cooperation a functioning social system, that we all benefit from. Only moral systems that create rather than destroy human happiness have any value to us, and as such, only they are "true," in the sense that we have sufficient reason to obey them. Accordingly, we as humans have decided to label evil everything conducive to our misery; and good, everything conducive to our happiness. And moral good and evil, as a subset of all, is that which derives from human decisions, which can be changed through reason, persuasion, education, and self-reflection. This standard comes from nothing outside of us. It comes from us. Moral facts are facts about us, about what will most likely lead us each to a better life."

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/13558

The Real Basis of a Moral World • Richard Carrier

…Thus, before we invented better ways of doing things, when we acted simply as we evolved to be, as savages and ignorant primitives, we invented a Biblical God to tell us all sorts of things were right and good, like slavery, that we later realized were not. Since then we have empirically discovered we are not happy endorsing or allowing slavery, or women's inequality, that we need democracy and human rights to reduce our personal risk of conflict and misery, that things go better for everyone when we cultivate respect for personal autonomy and individualism, and pursue the minimization of harm, all to generating good will, and contented neighbors. That's all an empirical fact. And remains a fact whether gods exist or not…
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/14879

That Christian Nation Nonsense (Gods Bless Our Pagan Nation) • Richard Carrier

…When people cry for the hanging of the Ten Commandments of Moses on school and court walls, I am astonished. Solon's Ten Commandments have far more right to hang in those places than those of Moses. The great Athenian's Commandments are far more noble and profound, and far more appropriate to a free society. Who would have guessed this of a pagan?…

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/3314

The End of Pascal’s Wager: Only Nontheists Go to Heaven (2002) Infidels

…Since this easily and comprehensively explains all the unexplainable problems of god (like divine hiddenness and apparent evil), while other theologies do not (or at least nowhere so well), it follows that this analysis is probably a better explanation of all the available evidence than any contrary theology. Since this conclusion contradicts the conclusion of every form of Pascal's Wager, it follows that Pascal's Wager cannot assure anyone of God's existence or that belief in God will be the best bet…

https://infidels.org/library/modern/richard-carrier-heaven/

Rome vs. China: What Made the Difference? • Richard Carrier

…Understood as such, it is not surprising that China didn't develop it. Because "it" here means something fundamentally different from what China did do, which was merely excel above all at what all civilizations do, which is merely accumulate philosophical and craft knowledge that nevertheless remains scattered within a sea of errors, fantasies, and bad ideas all given the same weight. That only happens when you have no conception of how to tell the difference between those two things. And so really, the "secret sauce" is simply the remarkable, indeed clearly extraordinarily rare, discovery of how to tell the difference…

https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/19104