Honest Debate: Historical Jesus with Richard Carrier

Dr Richard Carrier, me, Brandon Hendrickson (moderator)

Below is a link to the video of my debate with Dr Richard Carrier over the historicity of Jesus, which I lost decisively. While I lost the debate, I also feel as though there’s real value here, and it was a useful start at addressing the serious problems with Dr Carrier’s hypothesis of Christian origins. It’s definitely worth a look. Here is some context to help you see what is going on in the video.

First of all, through a miscommunication, Dr Carrier didn’t understand what was being asked of him in the middle section of the first part of the debate. I was asked to give a historical summary of Christian origins, which I did. He was asked to give a historical summary of Christian origins, which he did not. Instead, he focused on the writings of Paul and his evidence that Paul thought Jesus was a celestial angel but not a man. He has debated the historicity of Jesus plenty of times, and he approached the topic the way he is used to doing it rather than in line with our format. The fault lies with us organizers, as we did not explain clearly enough what we meant when we asked him to give a 4-minute spiel on the history of early Christianity, from AD 20 to AD 100, followed by 6 minutes of my critiques and his defense. His account of Christian origins sounds, in his own terms, “incredible”, and the meat of my argument was going to be showing people how implausible it is. Since Dr Carrier didn’t outline his account of Christian origins, I could hardly critique it. For me, that’s where the debate fell apart, and I never really recovered. My central point is that the historical account of Christian origins is plausible while Dr Carrier’s is not. In personal email after the debate, I asked Dr Carrier to provide a spoken or written outline of Christian origins to parallel the one I provided in the debate, and he said he might write up such an account for his blog. To my mind, the more details people know about Dr Carrier’s account, the better. 

Second, I apologize for losing my cool during the debate. While preparing for the debate, I was shocked to find out how insulting Dr Carrier is to other scholars. His negative words about Bart Ehrman were particularly galling since I have read a lot of Ehrman’s work and value his contributions to my understanding of early Christian history. Ehrman has taken it on himself to popularize Jesus research so that regular folks like you and me can get a look at what the scholars are saying, and that’s wonderful. In my own humble way, I’m a popularizer myself, having written a children’s book to teach kids that we evolved from fish. Dr Carrier’s comments about other scholars disturbed me so much that I felt quite ambivalent about giving him a platform and helping him sell books, but the debate was already scheduled, and I went on with it. Dr Carrier and I shared our notes with each other ahead of the debate, and he took issue with the way I was going to bring up his treatment of Ehrman and other scholars. I dropped that material from my notes, but it was still on my mind. In the debate when Dr Carrier said that other scholars are 100 years behind if they haven’t read his book, that might seem like innocent hyperbole, but it set me off. The moderator received a question from the audience asking me to explain why that claim set me off like it did, but he declined to ask that question in the Q&A, so I didn’t have the chance to explain myself. Here’s what I was getting at. If Dr Carrier says that other historians are 100 years behind, he’s implying through simple algebra that he is 100 years ahead of other historians. That’s a striking claim, and I don’t want people to miss it. Since no other historians have adopting Dr Carrier’s view, he is, by his own estimation, the world’s leading expert on Christian origins. If his hypothesis is right, he is the only historian who understands how Christianity really started and how the gospels were really written. In fact, he’s not just 100 years ahead of other scholars, if he’s right then he is 2000 years ahead. Dr Carrier doesn’t press this point himself, and in fact he backed off of it when I questioned him about his “100 years” comment, so it falls to people like me to point it out. He also claims to be ahead of other historians in his use of Bayes’ Theorem. Perhaps in the future, Dr Carrier will be recognized as history’s most important Jesus scholar, as well as the founder of truly modern historical research. Perhaps. 

Third, the moderator confessed to us at the break that he had inadvertently given Dr Carrier more air time than he had given me. There are plenty of points I never had time to bring up. In addition, the questions after the break were not as useful as we had envisioned. While there was good material in the debate, it did not live up to our expectations. 

Despite my loss, I think that the debate demonstrates some points on my side. We get to hear from Dr Carrier himself the negative way in which he talks about other historians. He acknowledges that the mainstream historical account is plausible. He agrees with me that whoever is responsible for the Sermon on the Mount was a counterculture genius. He names the cult of Osiris as the cult most similar to the early Christian cult, which is strange. Perhaps he was answering the question, “Which cult had a savior figure most like celestial Jesus?” because the Osiris cult as a religious organization is hardly like the early Christian sect. Since he didn’t bring up the “cosmic sperm bank” from which he says the celestial Jesus was created, I did. On these and other points, the debate shows the beginning of what could be useful inquiries into Dr Carrier’s account of Christian origins and its many problems. 

As I said in the debate, I am not trying to prove to anyone that Jesus existed. My point is that the mainstream historical account is the most plausible account of Christian origins available to us. It might be wrong, but there is no other account that is equally plausible. The small number of historians who agree with Dr Carrier about the historical Jesus being dubious also agree with me that his account is not plausible. When debates about Jesus are filled with competing proof texts, they can make the eyes glaze over, and it’s hard for non-experts to evaluate the evidence. Lay people are better suited to evaluating a debate that evaluates the relative plausibility of two hypothetical accounts of Christian origins. I learned a lot from this debate, and I hope I get a chance to do better in a similar debate some other time. 

Link to debate

Other Posts

Honest Debate Format—The format for this debate, plus links to more data on historical Jesus.

Honest Debate: Christianity Good and Bad—Here’s my post on the previous debate. It is a better example of the “Honest Debate” format than my debate with Carrier is.

New Testament Plot Fixes—The New Testament is full of erroneous details invented to paper over the inconvenient facts of Jesus’ life. These inventions point back to the historical Jesus, whose life and ministry they amend and “improve”. 

2017

Kate Willich’s Dance Church

Dance Church, Seattle

Secular communities are a pet interest of mine, and my latest discovery is Dance Church, which operates here in Seattle and now in Portland, too. In Seattle, the talented Kate Willich leads people of all ability levels through synchronized dance in a large group, as she has been doing for seven years. The group started as a movement class, but her students soon enough told her that the community she was leading is a church, and she embraced that terminology. The way the “church” concept bubbled up from a secular dance class reminds me of the way that a spiritual “Temple” bubbled up out of the profane Burning Man festival. Dancing together makes you feel connected to other people the way that talking just can’t match. If my Unitarian church featured more dancing, that would be fine by me.

Before we humans could talk about world politics over coffee and share gossip over the fence, we danced together. Walking is something that we humans have to learn, but we are programmed to learn it. It’s the same with dancing. Toddlers are desperate to learn to walk, and adults love to dance. To be fair, not every last person on the face of the planet over the last hundred thousand years has loved to dance, and not every toddler has learned to walk. It’s just the norm, the behavior that the human genome is adapted to. Today, not loving to dance seems common. I know people who basically never dance. But I’m not sure we love dancing any less. What’s different is maybe not so much that we love dancing less but that we fear it more. One reason it scares us is that we don’t know how to do it, and that’s generally because we dance like no one else ever has. In primeval terms, dancing is about making music and moving rhythmically together. In most languages, there’s one word for singing and dancing. In many languages, that same word means ceremony or ritual. For our ancestors, being able to sing and dance was assumed, just like being able to walk is assumed. Dancing together is how our ancestors reminded each other that they were all equal and were all one. But today the culture has taught us that we are all individuals and that it’s shameful to do what other people are doing because that’s bowing to peer pressure. “If your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump off?” The obvious answer is that it depends entirely on what happened to your friends. If twelve of them are down there in the water under the bridge yelling up at you that it’s OK, then yes, jump off! Today, people are expected to dance as individuals. But not too much as individuals, because if you dance funny, people will laugh. Singers, even professionals, are not expected to write their own songs, but amateur dancers are expected to invent their own choreography, ad lib. The unmet need for dancing in synch creates dance crazes, such as the Macarena or line dancing. Dancers are so grateful to have the choreography provided for them that they flock to these popular dance styles. Predictably, the elites mock the “simple” people who like dancing and don’t like choreographing their own steps. Meanwhile, the people who dance most frequently are often those who are part of a choreographed program. They do square dancing, contra dancing, exercise dancing, or otherwise follow a caller. You don’t see those dancers at the clubs, but you see them week after week at community centers and ballrooms.

Seattle has a chapter of Jerk Church, for eating and singing together; the Seattle Atheist Church, for intellectual discussion; and Dance Church, for dancing. The big thing that any regular church has that these secular communities lack is a multigenerational community. That’s a big ask.

Find out more about Kate Willich, her Dance Church, and more at her website: http://katewallich.com/#/dance_church

For more about how deep dance and music go in the human psyche, read This Is Your Brain on Music, by Daniel Levitin. 

Sunday School for Geeky Kids

UU youth at the General Assembly

When I was a kid, Sunday school at my family’s Lutheran church was no place for me. The teachers taught material that didn’t make sense, and my hard questions weren't welcome. My geeky interests had no place, and the system was designed to get all us different kids with all our different personalities and experiences to conform to the same credo. Then, after Sunday school ended I had to attend the church service with my family, which was even worse. For instance, you weren’t allowed to kick the back of the pew in front of you, not even if you were bored as hell. Take a guess as to whether I hated and resented the whole ordeal. So you can imagine my surprise when I ended up, 30 years later, teaching Sunday school myself. What I found out is that a Unitarian church can be a pretty great place for geeky kids. My 10-year-old self would have gotten something out of it. In September, Unitarian churches all across the States are starting their Sunday school programs. Here, the kids are not subjected to the church service, hard questions are welcome in class, and each student’s own beliefs are valued. The programs help kids understand the “big ideas” rather than laying out a creed for them to sign onto. Maybe one of these programs would be a good fit for a geeky kid in your life. 

Geeky Kids. Unitarians are the only denomination in the US to edge out Jews when it comes to high SAT scores. We’re a highly educated bunch, and you can see it in the kids. They are into Harry Potter, Star Wars, and Cosmos. Here you might find kids with names like Mithril. These kids are curious, with good questions that deserve good answers. “What is a Jew?” “Why do different religions fight all the time?” 

Geeky Topics. The official curriculum includes holidays around the world, contemporary world religions, the scientific story of our world’s origins, and justice in today’s society. Questions are welcome, and conformity is not expected. One 8th-grader got us into a discussion of whether the universe is a computer program. A 4th-grader was interested in Greek myths, so she ran a class session where she presented information to the class, followed by an improvised skit where the kids acted out the story of Artemis and Actaeon. Kids like acting things out, and one 6th & 7th-grade class improvised a skit about the Six-Day War. My daughter’s class, when studying religious history, watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which I never got to watch as part of my Sunday school training. 

Modern Values. The kids start the class year by crafting a “covenant” covering the behavior that they expect of each other and of themselves. This exercise enforces the idea that social rules are up to us. The curriculum embraces pluralism and freedom of conscience. My own training in Sunday school was mostly about teaching me how to be a Lutheran, while Unitarian Sunday school is mostly about what it means to be a human in these modern days. Our 6th & 7th grade class visits houses of worship around the area: Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, etc. Eighth graders take a yearlong class in sex ed called Our Whole Lives (OWL). It’s a world-class program with no-nonsense information in the context of personal choices, confidential conversations, and intention. It’s the class where my daughter learned something that Dan Savage didn’t know, that you can’t use male and female latex condoms together. Our ninth graders finish off the whole shebang with a year-long coming-of-age program, where each adolescent is paired with an adult from the congregation who participates with them over the year’s conversations and activities. And if you want your kids to be aware of climate change, racism, gay rights, poverty, immigration, and other important issues, a UU church is a great place for them to see liberals engaged in these topics. 

Atheist UUs. Here in Seattle, there are plenty of atheists in our congregation and teaching Sunday school. The believers believe in a non-anthropomorphic God that might be identified with nature or described as ineffable. For the most part, I couldn’t tell you which of my students were atheists and which weren’t. They’re kids, so they probably don’t know exactly what they believe anyway, and we don’t force them to pick a side. For that matter, I also can’t tell which adults are atheists. Word on the street is that our head minister believes in God, but not so’s you’d notice. Some congregations, especially on the East Coast, lean more toward Deism. We don’t have a pope or creed to enforce conformity from one congregation to another. 

Multigenerational Community. When my late wife made us all start attending church almost 20 years ago, I was not into it. After a couple years, my daughter talked me into teaching Sunday school, and that’s when I connected to the community. For me it’s been rewarding to see kids grow over the years, from Sunday school, to OWL, to coming-of-age. For the last three years, I’ve been involved in the local atheist community, but none of the promising new groups are intergenerational. Now my late wife’s ashes are interred in the memorial garden, which is a service that atheist groups have a hard time matching. 

All my Unitarian posts: http://jonathan-tweet.blogspot.com/search/label/Unitarian

To find a congregation near you, visit this page: http://www.uua.org/find

2017

Rob Heinsoo (right) and me, with 13th Age rulebooks

Gen Con 50 and my Projects

Here are all the things I’m plugging at Gen Con 50. 

Grandmother Fish

The first book to teach evolution to preschoolers, back in print, this time from Macmillan. Available in bookstores. I have copies to show. www.grandmotherfish.com

Over the Edge, Atlas Games, booth 1401

All new. What have I learned about roleplaying game design in the last 25 years? Find out! I’m posting about it on Google+. Earlier edition and supplements still available at the Atlas booth. Sign up here to get on the mailing list to hear about the upcoming Kickstarter campaign. http://atlas-games.com/in/ote_kickstart/

Clades and Clades Prehistoric, Atlas Games, booth 1401

How do you make a kids’ game about evolution that gets the science right? These two animal-matching games feature living animals (Clades) and extinct animals (Clades Prehistoric). Information here: http://www.grandmotherfish.com/clades Preorder here: http://bit.ly/CladesPreorder

13th Age fantasy RPG, Pelgrane Press, 1317

Character-oriented roleplaying meets fast d20 action. Bestiary 2 is here, including my personal recommendations for twisting monsters to your better use. Core rulebook is here, plus years of supplements. http://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/category/products/13th-age/

Follow me on 

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.tweet

Twitter https://twitter.com/JonathanMTweet

G+ https://plus.google.com/+JonathanTweet

And here’s my schedule if you want to find me

Wednesday evening, Diana Jones Award Party

Thursday

     11 am, 13th Age Adventure Design Workshop

     5 pm, Over the Edge panel (all new version coming to Kickstarter) video recording here

     6 pm, Ars Magica panel

Friday, 11 am, 13th Age Monster Workshop

Saturday, 2 pm, Wizards Resurrects D&D, with the entire 3e design team, Monte Cook, Skip Williams, Rich Baker, and Peter Adkison.

Sunday, 2 pm, Contemporary Designs in Roleplaying Games, with Luke Crane, Vincent Baker, James Wallis, Ron Edwards, and Jared Sorensen

2017

Dr Richard Carrier is the world’s
leading doubter of the historical Jesus.

Honest Debate Format

Update: Last Friday I debated Dr Carrier and lost decisively. Several things went wrong. Then again, several things went right. Other than that, I’m saving my commentary until the video of the debate goes up.

Friday, August 11th, I'll be debating Dr Richard Carrier, the world's leading doubter of historical Jesus. This debate is the fourth in our series, and it uses the “honest debate” format inspired by Daniel Dennett and Jonathan Haidt. Classic debates are polemical, and they date from an era when “men” thought that Reason was a divine faculty. Now we know that cognition is messy, and we understand that a productive dialog requires a better format than dueling proofs. Verbal disagreements tend to trigger tribal instincts of us-versus-them, and our debate format is designed to avoid that reaction. Here's a rundown of our event outline, with commentary. Richard and I are termed "advocates" because we each advocate a position. We're not opponents because we have a shared goal of presenting both sides clearly to the audience. A moderator runs the dialog. 

We are recording the event for publication online. 

Link to Event — August 11

Debate Format

We want to start by defining the positions Richard & Jonathan represent, so we start by polling the audience, and giving each advocate a 2-minute opening statement.

We want to show our audience where both sides agree, so we’re doing a quick Agreement Round. We quickly cover points that establish a common ground, making it easier to understand the context of each position. On an emotional level, this exchange sends a signal to everyone that this dialog is not a fight.

We want to show our audience where both sides disagree, so we’re doing a quick Disagreement Round. Again we cover points quickly, framing the scope of the debate and hitting some high points.

We then want to dig into why each advocate believes what he believes, so we’re doing a Straight Debate Round.  

• The Straight Debate Round will consist of 3 major topics.
• The Moderator asks each advocate to summarize the other advocate’s views.  (This is to help our debate stay focused; it’s even more helpful, though, to allow the audience to focus on the big points.)
• Our three topics are the mainstream narrative of Christian origins, Richard's narrative of Christian origins*, and the state of Jesus scholarship. 

We want to see how the audience is responding, so we take a halftime poll.

We want to collect audience questions, so we take an intermission and hand out index cards.

• At the beginning of the intermission, both advocates privately ask each other if they’re succeeding at keeping the tone polite and respectful.

We want to address audience questions, so we do a Q&A Round.

• Questions are submitted on cards to prevent verbally aggressive audience members from dominating air time. 
• During the Q&A Round, we’ll go extreme in re-stating the other advocate’s opinion.
• Again, the purpose of this is to help keep the debate on track — but even more it’s to model “first understand, then discuss” for people in our community. Part of why we do these debates is to improve people’s understanding of what good debate looks like.
• Specifically, here’s how it will go: 
• The Moderator reads an audience question.
• Richard will have 1 (uninterrupted) minute to answer the question.
• Jonathan will get 1 sentence to restate the gist of Richard’s answer.
• The Moderator asks Richard if Jonathan got it at least 80% right.  If so, then we switch.
• Jonathan will have 1 (uninterrupted) minute to answer the question.
• Richard will get 1 sentence to restate the gist of Jonathan’s answer.
• The Moderator asks Jonathan if Richard got it at least 80% right.  If so…
• Both panelists have a 5-minute free debate — which might look more like a two-way conversation, or like more a moderated dialog, depending on how it shapes up.

We want to bring all the information together, so we conclude by giving each advocate a 2-minute closing statement.

We want to see how views have changed (if at all), so we take a final poll. 

*This section, Richard’s account of early Christian origins, is the part that got dropped, due to miscommunication.

Moderating and Humanizing

Two features of the debate are not apparent from the outline. 

The moderator sometimes takes an active role in getting the advocates to come to terms with each others’ questions or arguments. 

We put some work into humanizing everyone involved, for example with personal details in bios. The human touch helps set a tone of collaboration. 


Other “Jesus” Pages
Several posts on this blog flesh out my take on Jesus as a historical figure. See my blog posts on Jesus. 

Other “Honest Debate” Pages

These are the other posts I've made about this debate format.

Honest Debate: Christianity Good and Bad: Good example of the format working right, with me as Moderator. Link to video. 2016. 

Agreeing How to Disagree: Theory behind the practice, with reading list. 2014.



Evidence Can Bring Us Together

At Seattle's March for Science, I said that evidence can bring us together, and I think that's true with history as well. Here are some great resources, assembled by a Daniel N. Gullotta, a Ph.D. Student in Religious Studies (Christianity) at Stanford.

Dale Martin at Yale Universityhttp://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152

Philip Harland of the University of Toronto's podcast on ancient religion in the Mediterranean world:
http://www.philipharland.com/Blog/religions-of-the-ancient-mediterannean-podcast-collection-page-series-1-6/

Stanford's Continuing Studies podcast has a good one with Thomas Sheehan:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/historical-jesus/id384233911?mt=10

Mark Goodacre of Duke University's the NT Pod:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/nt-pod/id420553592?mt=10

Bart D. Ehrman of UNC Chapel Hill has his great course on the Historical Jesus:
https://www.thegreatcoursesplus.com/the-historical-jesus

HDX's "The Letters of Paul" taught by Laura Nasrallah, who is based at Harvard University:
https://www.edx.org/course/early-christianity-letters-paul-harvardx-hds1544-1x

And finally, if you want to watch a documentary on the historical Jesus with the world's best scholars, the best one, with no pandering and no sensationalism is From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians from PBS. 
Part 1: https://youtu.be/kZPKCDOeyMg
Part 2: https://youtu.be/NB1WXhoEA0o
Part 3: https://youtu.be/S0pfQ2ZBe2Q
Part 4: https://youtu.be/-_jY2E8I_mA

Speech at March for Science Seattle

Here’s the 4-minute speech I gave at the March for Science in Seattle, Earth Day 2017, April 22. That’s Karen up on stage with me, wearing a coral reef on her head. It was an honor to speak and a joy to march.

My topic is how evidence can unite us all. My book, Grandmother Fish, gives children evidence for evolution when they wiggle like a fish and hoot like an ape. Kids love learning that humans are part of the great family of animals. Evidence also says that humans are all one family, as Charles Darwin concluded. Evidence can unite the human family because it allows people to share ideas across cultural boundaries.

“Can you wiggle?”

Karen and I are available for artist and author visits, either together or independently. Contact us here: http://www.grandmotherfish.com/contact/

For what it’s worth, here are the notes I used when giving the speech.

evidence together
grandmother fish
earliest fish with jaws
over 400 Mya
200 million greats
3 years
evidence
Grandmother Fish
evidence for little kids
wiggle like a fish—earliest fish
crawl & breathe early reptiles
squeak & cuddle early mammals
grab & hoot early apes
walk & talk early humans
kids love: animals, family, animal family
“I am a HUUMAN”
family of life
humanity one big family
Charles Darwin knew—evidence
evidence says: all related
evidence bring us together
Chinese translation of Grandmother Fish—language, culture, political system, economic system
Not like me: English, Seattle, Mary Oliver, Unitarian
everyone’s story
we are all related
a vision of who were are that we can all share

2017

Male robins fighting over territory

Robins and Evolution for Kids

[This post was posted in March of 2017, before John & Colleen Marzluff and I created Crow Scientist, the free app that teaches kids how to observe real-life crow behavior.]

Now that spring has come to the northern latitudes, here in Seattle the robins are back in the parks. Robins are easy to observe so they provide a good opportunity to talk to kids about how behavior and natural selection play out. Here are science notes for kids, worded simply and arranged roughly from the most basic for the younger kids to the more advanced for older kids. These notes teach a core evolutionary concept, that individuals within a species compete with each other to have healthier and more numerous offspring.

Brighter Robins Are Male, Plainer Robins Are Female

The robins you see easily are males. They have bright red feathers on their chests, and they spend a lot of time out in the wide open. You can sometimes spot females, too, but they have duller breast feathers, and they don’t put themselves on display the way males do. Males also tend to be somewhat larger than females. Male robins are like roosters, and female robins are like hens. 

Male Robins Fight for Land

Robins need to gather food for their children, so each male fights to have a bigger plot of land. You often see two male robins out on a field or big yard, each keeping his distance from the other. When two robins face off and neither one backs down, they fly at each other and turn around each other in a sort of whirlwind. It’s easy to spot male robins facing off against each other because they stand out in the open. If they notice that you’re watching them, however, they might stop fighting, so be sneaky.  

Female Robins Choose Males with Good Land, Good Feathers, and Good Songs

When a female chooses a male with brighter feathers and a stronger song, that male is probably healthier than average. When she picks a male with a larger area of land, she probably gets more food for her chicks. If her mate is healthier and her chicks have more food, then her chicks are more likely to be strong and to survive. 

Most Chicks Die

A robin mother might hatch a dozen hatchlings in one summer, and most of them die before winter.   

Robins Fight Because They Can’t Cooperate

Robins don’t have language, laws, money, or other tools that humans use to divide up resources. That’s why robins are stuck fighting. Fighting takes lots of time and energy, and it’s dangerous, but it’s the only way a male robin can claim enough land to get a mate. Male robins don’t help each other, work together, or make friends with each other. 

Robins Don’t Know What They’re Doing

Male robins don’t know why they’re fighting. When they see another male’s red chest, they just feel like fighting. Female robins don’t know why they choose males with lots of land, bright feathers, or strong voices. They just feel like making that choice. Humans are driven by feelings, too, but we can reflect on our own behavior and even make explicit agreements with others about what we will do or won’t.  

This lesson is a big one because it’s easy for humans to project human-like thinking onto animals, or even machines.  

Testosterone Drives Male Competition

Hormones are chemicals that animals’ bodies make that affect how they grow, feel, or act. Testosterone is a hormone that affects how robin chicks develop in the egg. One effect of testosterone is to organize the male chick’s brain for fighting. When the chick grows into an adult and the breeding season starts, the male chick’s body creates more testosterone, driving it to fight the other males. Testosterone is a type of hormone called a steroid.

“Testosterone for Amateurs”, the basics about this much-talked-about hormone.

Cock robins at peace, a 10-second video of newly returned male robins hanging out peacefully. 

Bonus Science Humor

Robins are a type of thrush, and the genus name for thrushes is Turdus (Latin for thrush).

Crows in the Park
Once you learn the call of a hungry juvenile crow, it’s easy to spot crows families. With any luck, you'll see the the juvenile beating its wings and the parents feeding it.