Hi, I'm a Christian. Help Me Disprove My Religion!

[Aractus]

Good analysis, Aractus. I don't doubt that Paul knew the disciples (indeed, it's my hunch that he was not converted "on the road to Damascus" by a vision, but was converted during the process of Christian-hunting on behalf of the Romans, and ran in his own direction--influenced by his Pharisee background--with the information he had, one of the reasons Paul seems so different in tone from Jesus, and why I like to joke that modern Christians are actually "Paulians"), but it's clear from his own writings that they considered him a fanboy and questionable in his theological approach. Nevertheless, I don't think one should throw the baby out with the bathwater, with regard to Carrier. His questionable results should be criticized, most heavily of all by us, but his speculations may produce fruit when turned over by other scholars, and at the very least I find his speculations about the relatedness of Hebrew theology to the theological inputs of now-extinct religions to be useful in forming a picture of the ancient mindset.

Paul was converted on the road to Damascus - that's what he himself says. He says he received a revelation, but he doesn't say how he received it. It's likely he received his revelation from a Christian (or whatever you want to call the followers of Jesus at that time) in 36AD. Christians use Acts 9 to tell them about it, but it's not contemporary and is written by someone who didn't have first-hand knowledge of any Christian events that early. Acts 22 quotes Paul directly giving testimony that he did have a vision and hear the voice of Jesus on the road to Damascus - and the author is writing about contemporary events they have some first-hand knowledge about at this point, and furthermore the author knew Paul. So Acts 22 is the strongest case that Paul did indeed receive a vision - or at least believed that he had.

However, Paul doesn't mention it as a part of his conversion in any of his letters. So I would agree that it's perfectly disputable about whether he had a vision or not - however we know that's the time and location he was converted because he himself says so.

Carrier doesn't really make ANY interesting insights in that video. He has a few minor valid points, but they're overshadowed by his quackery, and don't contribute anything substantial to showing that his hypothesis should be treated as a theory.

As I said, any decent presenter would have references on their slides - yet he has none at all. That's not academic, and if he's using other people's ideas (as he claims to be doing), or even his own published ideas, then it's plagiarism. So either he's making everything up as he goes along, or he's plagiarising - that doesn't make him very credible at all in my book.

This is one of his slides:



And this is how it should look, either like this:



Or like this:



Or of course you can use other referencing methods such as supertexts: "4. And other evidence forged in its place6" ... and then on your references slide have them ordered by number instead of author. But the fact is he didn't use any at all.