Raphael Lataster

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Raphael Lataster (born 1984) is an Australian secular teacher of Religious Studies,[1] and author of books and articles questioning the historicity of Jesus and asserting Christ myth theory, especially There Was No Jesus, There Is No God (2013),[2][3][4] and Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists (2015), with Richard Carrier.[5]

Lataster identifies his main research interests as including "Philosophy of Religion, Christian origins, logic, Bayesian reasoning, sustainability, and alternative god-concepts such as pantheism and pandeism.[1] Lataster's PhD thesis analyses arguments for the existence of God by theologians like William Lane Craig and Richard Swinburne.[6]

Lataster passed his Master of Arts (Research), undertaken in the Department of Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney, with Distinction,[6] has published numerous articles,[6] and in 2015 received a teaching award, the Dean's Citation for Excellence in Tutorials in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of the University of Sydney.[7]

There Was No Jesus, There Is No God

There Was No Jesus, There Is No God was published on September 2, 2013,[3] and was for a time the bestselling book in the Atheism category (ranked 10th on September 5th[8] and ranked twelfth in July 21st of the following year[9]), displacing Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. The book questions the existence of Jesus,[2] and was positively reviewed in academic theological journals, including reviews by Religious Studies scholars Carole Cusack (one of Lataster's mentors)[10] and professor Chris Hartney. In the book, "Lataster re-presents and amplifies the arguments that the fictional dimensions of Jesus are foundational."[4] Hartney found that Lataster "does more than most to argue that Jesus did not exist,"[4] and that Lataster "goes through the numerous arguments that demonstrate that the story of Jesus must have taken place" and "does a good job of dismissing all these."[4]

Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists

Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists, was published November 12, 2015, with Richard Carrier.[5] The book was positively reviewed by atheist author David Fitzgerald, who wrote that the book "doesn’t just inform and invigorate the debate – arguably, it settles it." Fitzgerald additionally notes Lataster's excoriation of Bart Ehrman, "taking Ehrman to task over his misuse of that same evidence, double standards, outright errors, and most of all, what he terms “Ehrman’s Law,” his propensity to uncritically appeal to hypothetical sources (a tendency shared by all too many historicists)."[11]

Other activities

Lataster has debated Christian apologists including Randal Rauser.[12] Rauser deemed the discussion "abortive", complaining of the standards of evidence insisted upon by Lataster, as well as personality differences. Lataster presented a program on the opening day of the 2015 Australian Historical Association Conference, "The Gospel According to Bart: The Folly of Ehrman’ s Hypothetical Sources."[13]

Lataster's December 2014 Washington Post article, Did historical Jesus really exist? The evidence just doesn't add up,[14] drew contentious replies from figures such as Christian authors John Dickson[15] and Michael Bird.[16]

Publications

Books

  • There Was No Jesus, There Is No God, 2013.
  • Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists, Nov 12, 2015, with Richard Carrier.

Articles

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Amazon.com author bio for Raphael Lataster.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Forget Santa Claus, Virginia. Was there a Jesus Christ?", by David Gibson, Deseret News, Dec 19, 2014.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 There Was No Jesus, There Is No God at Amazon.com.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Christopher Hartney, review, There Was No Jesus, There is No God: A Scholarly Examination of the Scientific, Historical, And Philosophical Evidence and Arguments for Monotheism by Raphael Lataster, Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review 5, no. 1 (2014): 171-174.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists at Amazon.com.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Current Postgraduate Research Projects, University of Sydney (as of December 18, 2014).
  7. ↑ Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Excellence in Teaching Awards: Current and Past Winners, University of Sydney.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Carole M. Cusack, review of There Was No Jesus, There Is No God: A Scholarly Examination of the Scientific, Historical, and Philosophical Evidence & Arguments For Monotheism, by Raphael Lataster, Literature & Aesthetics 23, no. 2 (2013): 105.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Randal Rauser, My abortive Nuskeptix conversation with atheist Raphael Lataster, The Tentative Apologist, June 8, 2015.
  13. ↑ 2015 Australian Historical Association Conference.
  14. ↑ Raphael Lataster, Did historical Jesus really exist? The evidence just doesn't add up, Washington Post - Dec 18, 2014.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.

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