Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Extraordinary Claims, Extraordinary Evidence...

New mini-book!!

It is Extraordinary Claims, Extraordinary Evidence, and the Resurrection of Jesus. It's available in paperback for $9.99 or for the kindle for $2.99

In the 1800's, one of the greatest philosophers of all time, David Hume, argued that miracles could not be believed on the basis of someone's word (at least under normal circumstances). Since then, there has been a general consensus amongst skeptics that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" as Carl Sagan put it. Surprisingly, this pretty common sense demand and the arguments about why this must be have been attacked. Sagan's dictum has been called vague, people have said that Hume's reasoning leads to absurd conclusions, and so on. This book contains an essay that abolishes all of those criticisms once and for all. It also discusses and demolishes the arguments in favor of the resurrection of Jesus (which atheist-turned-deist philosopher Antony Flew thought was the most compelling case for an historical miracle even though he did not think the case for it was good enought to warrant belief).

If you've ever heard the pretentious carrying-on that comes from the likes of William Lane Craig and his fanboys about how they can prove the resurrection of Jesus, this book is great material to recommend to them or to read so that you can hammer them on the spot whenever they bring it up. It also contains a number of very interesting legends from ancient and modern times which are worth reading about in and of themselves (the story of Emperor Constantine's Vision of the Cross is one that I talk about in particular, and the post-mortem sightings of David Koresh).

I've collected not only the responses to the positive arguments for the resurrection, but I have also created some arguments against the resurrection, some of which, as far as I know, have never been pointed out by anyone else. The book is intended to be a very strong, robust, and unique take on the whole issue.

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