2017

the presenter as a grade-school atheist

Outline of Jesus Presentation

Tuesday I’ll be presenting about the historical Jesus and Jesus mythicism at the Seattle Skeptics meeting here in Seattle. Here is the outline of my presentation, plus links to resources. 

Your Humble Presenter

Lifelong atheist. Raised liberal Christian. 

Atheist community organizer: “honest debates”, Darwin Day, Winter Solstice Potluck.

Author of Grandmother Fish: A Child’s First Book of Evolution.

Mainstream views on Jesus. The experts’ evidence convinces me.

Talk Format

There’s too much material to cover in one night, so I’ll review the whole thing briefly and then I can answer questions or expand on topics that folks find interesting. 

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt
says humans are “groupish”.

Human Cognitive Shortcuts

These biases make it difficult to hold a productive debate over the question of Jesus. 

“The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.”
—Programmer Alberto Brandolini.

Thinking Fast and Slow, emotions first and reason as your press agent.
I.e., You think you’re right when you feel you’re right.

Us versus them, emotionally motivated reasoning.
E.g., Am I a fake atheist? 

Binary thinking, all-or-nothing intuition, pattern matching.
E.g., “Are the gospels fact or fiction?” 

Confirmation bias, difficulty in recognizing one’s own error.
E.g., forgetting inconvenient facts. 

“May I?” thinking versus “Must I?” thinking, grasping at straws.
E.g., “There are no contemporary accounts.”

David Strauss said the gospels were
history plus mythology (1846)

Topic One: Historical Jesus

Who he was and how we know.

History of historical Jesus scholarship.

Who was Jesus, according to secular historians: The Jewish hillbilly exorcist.

The best evidence for Jesus: his disorganized cult. Lots of strong evidence about this leaderless cult. 

My favorite evidence for Jesus: his remarkable way with words.

Other evidence.

Jesus’ crazy life story.

How beliefs about Jesus changed from AD 30 to 100.

State of scholarship.

Occam’s razor.

If Richard Carrier can make his case, he will
revolutionize the scholarly study of Jesus

Topic Two: Jesus Mythicism

Historical evidence aside, skeptics can tell the mythicism is bogus by looking at it skeptically.

What is Jesus mythicism? Radical denial of evidence.

Mythicist arguments. They criticize historical evidence but offer little their own evidence.

Who are the mythicists? Atheist writers you’ve heard of only because they’re mythicists.

Is mythicism a conspiracy theory? Is “historical Jesus” the biggest con game in the history of secular scholarship?

Who’s right, the experts or you? What are the odds?

Conclusion

Links

Here are links for folks who want to see more.

History for atheists: examines evidence for and against Jesus, by and for atheists. http://bit.ly/atheistJesusTO

Christopher Hitchens lays out “impressive evidence” for a historical Jesus. http://bit.ly/hitchjesus

State of scholarship, this blog post addresses that issue: http://bit.ly/tweetjesus

Changes in belief about Jesus from AD 30 to 70, this blog post addresses that issue: http://bit.ly/TweetNTplotFixes

Other blog posts on Jesus: http://jonathan-tweet.blogspot.com/search/label/Jesus

Encyclopedia Britannica, an article written by the world’s top historical Jesus expert: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jesus

A coherent mythicist account of Christian origins: No link. So far no one has been able to show me one of these, so if you find one, let me know. Update (August ’17): Dr Carrier gives a brief account of how Christianity originated in On the Historicity of Jesus. I’m happy to critically compare the mainstream account to Carrier’s account any time.