Does Richard Carrier Exist? (April 2012)

[struggle4progress]

I’m sick and tired of the way that extremist conservative claims about history – such that Abraham Lincoln actually existed – are taken seriously, but serious, well-thought-out, well evidenced and reasonable claims – like the claim that Richard Carrier does not exist – are demonised ... Richard Carrier is also supposed to be a “world renowned philosopher and historian” ... How many History Ph. D.s are philosophers at all? Surely not very many. How many are world renowned philosophers, even though they have just obtained the Ph. D.? ... This world-renowned philosopher-historian-myther-hero is also a mathematician. Given historians’ well-known disdain for mathematical methods, the probability of this if Carrier is a real person is low, though perhaps not so drastically low as it would be if our hero were not also a philosopher ... How many trained historians would misread Plutarch’s “On Isis and Osiris” 19.358b as declaring Osiris’s physical resurrection from the dead here on earth? How many mathematicians would bungle basic probability calculations? How many philosophers, world-renowned or otherwise, would endorse the position that the laws of logic “obviously” derive from the laws of physics? Yet such blunders are what we might well expect to crop up as the community feigning Carrier’s existence attempted to demonstrate his expertise in one field after another ...
http://www.rightreason.org/2012/does-richard-carrier-exist/

[Binkie The Clown]

1. I know a guy whose brother saw Richard Carrier walk on water and heal the sick.

That's better evidence than the evidence for Jesus, so I'm going to believe it. It's a first hand account, after all.

[immoderate]

2. This blogger writes about Theology, Philosophy, and Social Issues.

But then, it's implied in a PhD that you know some philosophy. Just sayin'

(Yes I know it's a joke.)

--imm

[okasha]

4. No, it isn't,

any more than a Bachelor of Arts implies that a person knows one end of paintbrush from the other.

[immoderate]

5. I would think a person with a BA, WOULD know one end of a paintbrush from the other.

Don't you?

I learned it in kindergarten.

--imm

[okasha]

7. Not necessarily.

I can absolutely guarantee that there are members of the Texas Board of Higher Education who don't know what to do with either end of a paintbrush.

[immoderate]

12. I'll avoid the obvious retort, to point out that I meant generally, not Texas.

--imm

[jmowreader]

8. Of COURSE they know one end of a paintbrush from the other

House painting pays better than the jobs you can get with a BA in English.

[okasha]

10. See post 7.

[okasha]

3. That's a clever bit of satire.

However, the true question is whether P. Doherty, the alleged Carrier's alleged guru, exists.

[Yorktown]

6. From a publisher's point of view, this could be a goldmine.

Imagine all the potential books that could be written:

'Finding Richard Carrier'
'Richard Carrier in your life'
'Richard Carrier Saves'
'The liberation theology of Richard Carrier'
'Richard Carrier for young children'
'Was Richard Carrier gay?'
Etc

[jmowreader]

9. Of course Richard Carrier exists!

He invented the air conditioner.

[okasha]

11. ...