You may know that Freethoughtblogs, The Orbit, and Skepticon have taken on a lawyer to defend us against a lawsuit for over two million dollars by Richard Carrier. Weirdly, this suit was filed in Ohio, where none of the targets live, and where most of the conflicts did not occur, and our lawyer’s first tactic is to file for a change of venue. This is a public filing, so you can read it yourself (pdf).
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Maybe this is your idea of entertainment.
Is this one of those nuisance lawsuits where a bastard sues people hoping they will settle out of court to make the troll go away, or is this a deluded kook ?
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Moar bad stuff.
Andrew Sachs, Manuel from Fawlty Towers, dies aged 86 https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/01/andrew-sachs-dies-after-alzheimers-aged-86
-I know, 2016 only looks bad because of statistical flukes, but FUUUCK !!!
Neither. Richard was a big part of the blog system here and elsewhere for a long time.
more’s the pity.
he’s no grandstander like TFoot, nor a kook like Pivar.
He says he’s doing this because he has to in order to clear his name.
I have no dog in this hunt, so happy to let the courts decide what’s what, but even Carrier admits the core of all this was a mistake he made so….
Page 12:
It is now….
Re Sachs:
?☠️?????????
Yes, although one who was hosted at FtB for far too long. Not only a mythicist (the main form of deluded kookery popular among non-MRA atheists), but someone whothinks all historical methodology can be reduced to Bayes’s theorem, and for some years thought he correct theoretical physicists about the relationship between quantum mechanics and relativity.
Maybe he’s trying to gain enough asshole cred to land a job with the Orange Trumpeter.
Out of curiosity, does anybody know if Ohio has a history of leaning in favor of plaintiffs in liable/slander/defamation cases? My gut tells me the choice of venue was probably strategic.
If anyones interested, Atheistically Speaking podcast had a lawyer on discussing this case:
http://atheisticallyspeaking.com/as280-richard-carriers-lawsuit-andrew-torrez/
Interesting listen
@7 I think the reason is a bit less sinister than that. Carrier’s last few posts before this ordeal were about his recent move to Ohio.
Yeah, Ohio lacks any anti-SLAPP laws, while California has strong ones, and Minnesota and Missouri have some weak ones (although more potent than Ohio’s). See this map.
KG, I have seen that disagreing-with-physicists-about-physics thing before, but never managed to find it (or I have simply forgotten). Do you recall where it is?
@9 I didn’t say his move to Ohio was strategic, only the choice of venue is. He very well could have been planning to move to Ohio before the lawsuit ever became an idea. But even after the move, a competent lawyer could have told him Ohio was not the right venue for the lawsuit and would almost surely be challenged. But with Ohio having no anti-SLAPP laws, as PZ just confirmed, they would have a strong motivation to give it a try anyway.
Holms: Carrier is a historian with an actual history degree, so I don’t think you can say he’s arguing outside of his field. He’s written a couple books about his unorthodox views on whether Jesus existed, debates, and many blog posts. I haven’t read the books, but I would occasionally read the blog posts when he blogged here, and I see now that he’s still actively blogging at http://www.richardcarrier.info.
@8 That’s an excellent podcast. Really does a good job explaining the tort law involved. Also, after hearing the things he has to say about Ohio’s defamation laws and standards, I’d say its almost certain that the Ohio venue was chosen strategically. One of the counts in his lawsuit isn’t even recognized as valid in some states, but is recognized in Ohio.
I didn’t know Carrier had moved to Ohio. This whole time, I had been imagining great tension at the Bay Area meetups between Richard Carrier and Greta Christina.
@KG:
I’m unconvinced that mythicism is either deluded (as in, an actual false belief) or kookery (as in, obviously absurd or based on obviously garbage premises). Carrier has at least made the case that:
(a) It’s very odd that Paul of Tarsus, who supposedly lived not long after Jesus Christ was supposedly crucified, wrote nothing that invoked any miracles that Jesus performed (other than the resurrection itself) or teachings that Jesus taught.
(b) The Gospels on the one hand seem to build on one another, and yet all too often contradict each other. There are also events in the Gospels that only make sense as allegories. It’s therefore reasonable to reject them as having any reliability about an actual life of an actual person doing actual things.
There’s more to the argument than that, of course, but I think that’s more or less the basics.
There was something very odd going on with the beginnings of Christianity, and mythicism is not the oddest conclusion to come to given that weirdness.
Do you know of any reason to think that what Carrier points out about the writings of Paul or the Gospels is false?
I’m impressed. One of the attorneys is noted First Amendment attorney Marc Randazza.
Randazza is a hoot. We’ve had a couple of conference calls with him.
@5, KG
You presented no arguments that he’s wrong.
He actually debunks bad Mythicist memes that are popular. He’s against the kooks. His book on the subject is peer reviewed. He admits Jesus could have a 1 in 3 chance of being historically based.
If you want to see the case made (for all science, not just history) by someone other than Carrier:
https://www.amazon.ca/Our-Knowledge-Past-Philosophy-Historiography/dp/0521120772
Note that Bayes Theorem basically is just logic applied to data/premises. So it shouldn’t be surprising that correct reasoning is just like that.
@11, Holms
Seems misleading to say “disagreing-with-physicists-about-physics”, since these are not settled questions within physics. Hence why KG had to say “theoretical physicists”. So they are still in the domain of philosophy, which is one of Carrier’s areas of specialty. And he’s also well informed of the confirmed physics of relativity and quantum mechanics.
Here’s his paper he made for physicists to check out. He’s said he’s to busy with other things now to really reply to some of the responses he got, but he’d like to in the future.
Holms @11: A couple of Profound Conclusions that Carrier came to after apparently skimming some physics;
1) The universe is deterministic because photons follow null geodesics.
2) Spacetime is discrete because there is a minimum resolvable distance/time.
Whether or not the universe is deterministic, or spacetime is discrete (please note, Brian Pansky), both of Carrier’s arguments here are utter nonsense.
IANAL, but one of the glaring flaws with Carrier’s lawsuit is that he lumped a whole lot of people together.
Who don’t know each other and have nothing in common.
It’s a completely arbitrary and random grouping with only one thing in common.
Richard Carrier doesn’t like them.
I’m just guessing here, but since this isn’t a coherent group of people, the individuals and organizations involved could and should move to have Carrier file individual lawsuits for each defendant.
Get it declared a SLAPP suit.
Which it is.
Loser pays court costs and your attorney.
1. Carrier is being cosmically dumb.
In the age of Trump, New American Fascists, and the internet, everyone would forget about this tempest and move on and soon. His 15 minutes of notoriety would be over and done with.
Or he could have just shown some ability for introspection, made a public apology, and attended classes in how to be a decent human being.
2. If Freethoughtblogs wants to set up a legal defense fund, I’m in for a few bucks. I really don’t like bullies and really do value our freedoms such as free speech.
3. Another problem with this lawsuit. Because of the GOP, the federal courts are underfunded. The wait for a hearing in a civil suit depends on jurisdiction. But it is usually around 2 to 4 years minimum and can be as long as 10 years.
When the average attention span is 15 minutes these days, no one is going to know or care about any of this in 5 years.
@22 They can’t get it declared SLAPP in Ohio. That’s likely one of the reasons Carrier and his lawyer chose it as the venue. PZ and co.’s lawyer has challenged the venue, so we’ll see where that goes. Seems like they’ve got a solid argument for Ohio being inappropriate venue. Carrier’s lawyer’s whole argument for Ohio seems to be “Carrier has lived in Ohio for a few months”.
@20, Rob Grigjanis
You are misrepresenting him. He explicitly said this is not the reason. The reason has to do with why the minimum resolvable distance/time comes about, not the mere fact that there is a minimum resolvable distance/time.
You need to stop this.
I can’t evaluate your other claim, but I doubt you have anything worth my time.
@21, raven
If you don’t know what they have in common, then you literally don’t know what this legal case is about.
Brian Pansky @24: I already addressed that useless deflection here, and your response was just petulant blustering.
Seriously, how do you know that Carrier is “well informed of the confirmed physics of relativity and quantum mechanics”? Because he says he is?
I think I’m equally disappointed at the lawsuit as I am with those who seem eager to disparage his work. I have no idea what actually happened, but a $2m lawsuit seems awfully excessive. But that doesn’t change my view that this his work in the field of history is excellent.
I did some reading months ago.
It didn’t make things much clearer.
Richard Carrier is alleged to be something of a sexual aggressor or harasser towards a few (or many) women.
But do feel free to enlighten us. What do they have in common?
This doesn’t look like a coherent group of closely connected people.
They shouldn’t be lumped together in the same lawsuit.
OK Brian. Balls in your court. How are these people connected and why should they be lumped together?
Lofty, #6
Wrong Carrier.
@Brian Pansky
I glanced at Carrier’s article on relativity. He appears to make the elementary error of applying the idea of a space-time interval to space (without time). He concludes at any two points in space are adjacent, when in fact this can only apply to two points in space-time which share a light cone. All the stuff Carrier says about objective space-time is both ill-defined and unnecessary. In every respect, this resembles the work of a physics crank, yes even down to Carrier’s humility about it.
Now, over the years I have seen many attempts to poison Richard Carrier’s well by referring to that time he was wrong about physics. I disagree with this, because a) being wrong about physics is not some horrible crime, b) physics cranks are mostly ordinary people, and c) physics cranks primarily harm themselves. Furthermore, this particular case appears to have happened years ago, and I don’t know that Carrier pursued it any further.
That said, Carrier’s ideas about physics are indefensible, and you should stop trying. If you wanted to defend Carrier, you would do better by saying that was a long time ago. I judge Carrier for his more recent actions.
On second glance, I misread Carrier’s article on physics. Instead, he appears to argue that both entangled particles in the EPR paradox are connected to a single point in the past via zero-length space-time intervals. I do not think this is very coherent, and it does not change my overall assessment of Carrier’s ideas about physics.
@raven
What we all have in common is that we didn’t automatically defer to Carrier’s side of the story. That’s it. Worth 2 mil, apparently.
Lumping multiple defendants together is calling joinder.
I don’t see that there is enough in common to lump blog networks Orbit, Freethoughtblogs, conference Skepticon, and multiple defendants who all acted individually together.
But as I said, IANAL.
Is their a real lawyer in the house?
1. I don’t think that is enough to lump all the defendants, Orbit, FTB’s, and Skepticon together.
Talk to your lawyers and try to get the lawsuits separated.
2. I’ve been where you are. Many times. Don’t panic.
Truth is an absolute defense.
I just tell them to shut up, file the papers, and let’s go to court.
They never have, perhaps because I live in a strong anti-SLAAP state. Quite often they then just threaten to kill me instead.
I realize in this case, they have filed the papers.
I’d imagine the premise is that the same question of law relates (that they all defamed him in violation of the same statutes) and that the claims arise from the same occurrence (that they all defamed him for the same alleged actions). It does not matter that the organizations and people in question are not all intimately connected, nor does the claim require there to have been coordination between them. IANAL either, but that is how I read the situation.
@raven
Hey, I didn’t say it was good logic, just that it was Carrier’s logic. :P
I’m going to disagree here.
All these cases are different in occcurrence, actions, and details.
And that should matter.
At this point, since none of us are lawyers and deeply familiar with the laws and the cases, we might just as well leave it here.
The lawyers involved will know about joinder and have thought of this. Let’s see what they do.
Here’s what the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure say:
Weren’t all the blog posts related to Carrier’s behavior at Skepticon? And it seems to me that the posts could easily be a “series or transactions or occurrences”. On top of that, (B) is surely satisfied, and in the interest of judicial economy one court in one suit would be quite appropriate.
But on top of that, Randazza is a really, really good lawyer. If it had made sense to separate the defendants at this time, he would have done it.
Also note that this is a motion to dismiss (in lieu of an Answer). According to Rule 21 (Misjoinder and Nonjoinder of Parties):
So, even if it made sense, it is still too early in the proceedings to file such a motion.
Re jointer of defendants:
IAAL, though I don’t practice in this area. My understanding is that judges almost never sever cases against multiple defendants because trying them together is more efficient. That the statements alleged to be defamatory concern the same conduct on Carrier’s part is probably enough. Though I haven’t read the complaint so I don’t know exactly what Carrier is alleging.
1. I agree that Carrier’s physics is flaming nonsense.
2. However, I agree with him on the Jesus myth stuff — there is so much contradictory noise in the stories that I can easily believe that Jesus is about as real as King Arthur.
3. We actually do all know each other to varying degrees. Being aware of each other’s existence isn’t necessarily a good reason to lump us together in a lawsuit.
4. On the matter of whether we should be split into different suits…we will do whatever our lawyer tells us is best, and I’m not going to discuss his strategies (except where there has been a public statement). We are all of us committed to hang together, though, so even if we were split apart, we’d still be mutually supporting each other in this ludicrous suit.
We’re taking the whole thing very seriously, but ultimately, I’m confident that we shall prevail.
Of course, I said that about Trump, too.
I have placed a copy of Carrier’s Complaint on my website.
Having it be a single suit also helps the defendants, in that they don’t have to hire separate attorneys, or, with a single attorney, have the same papers filed multiple times for each suit.
Im a bit confused – the public document posted by PZ which I accessed at https://archive.is/fVYml is different to the one currently on the site here?
Which is the correct document?
@deepwater
The only difference I noticed was that the document linked by PZ above was 126 pages and the one on archive.is was 170 pages. The extra pages on archive.is are the exhibits to Trey Rothell’s Declaration, which are omitted on PZ’s above.
I judge Carrier’s mythicism, and his belief that all historical methodology can be reduced to Bayes’s theorem, to be deluded kookery because the overwhelming majority of relevant experts say so.
Why is it odd? His letters are to groups of Christians about various points of procedure or doctrine on which Jesus would have had nothing to say, because they could only arise once Christianity had begun to spread. These groups had presumably already been told the miracle stories and teachings – or how would they have become Christians? But beyond that, if this was a serious issue, why wouldn’t the relevant experts – who include many non-Christians – not have noticed? Are you so much cleverer than all of them?
Bayes Theorem is extremely useful in certain areas – for example, medical diagnosis, where you are likely to have extensive data on confirmed cases and non-cases of disease X which tell you how often a particular sign or symptom appears, and hence how useful it is in diagnosing disease X, and it therefore makes sense to say there’s a 1/3 chance this case is disease X – one time in 3 that you observe this cluster of signs and symptoms, the correct diagnosis is disease X. It’s fuck-all use in almost all cases of historical research, where you are reasoning about unique events, and it makes no sense at all to say there’s a 1/3 chance Jesus was real. Either he was, or he wasn’t. What you need to do in that sort of historical case is construct one or more hypotheses that cover the facts so far (believed to be) known, then deduce what other data could reasonably be expected to be available if each hypothesis is true, and look for it. What the consensus of relevant experts says (and this includes atheists, agnostics and religious Jews as well as Christians) is that Carrier hasn’t even got close to a mythicist hypothesis that accounts for the existing evidence (e.g. the egregious bulshitting he goes in for with regard to Paul referring to James as “the brother of the Lord”).
And your opinion counts for just as much as mine – viz, fuck-all. How is it that in this particular case so many atheists who are not experts in the field are eager to abandon the general principle that the consensus of relevant experts – especially when they disagree on many other issues – is very likely to be right?
Further to my #45, and in response to PZ’s 41, there’s also the evidence of Carrier’s crankery in the case of physics (everyone except Brian Pansky seems to accept that that is deluded kookery). So we know Carrier is quite capable of spewing egregious garbage in areas he knows fuck-all about. That should at least alert people to the possibility that his mythicism is similarly deluded kookery. And atheists should particularly beware of accepting conclusions that would be emotionally very satisfying – such as that Christians have made complete fools of themselves by worshipping a person who never even existed.
Are you familiar with the Thompson affair?
http://www.bibleinterp.com/opeds/critscho358014.shtml
In short, the scholar who initially advanced mythicism for the old testament patriarchs received quite less than a reasonable and welcome response from the so-called expert community for his work. In short, his career was destroyed, almost no one would hire him, and even 15 (IIRC) years later when he received a job in scholarship, he was being accused of being an anti-semite, and the university was attacked for hiring such a person.
One should not bow to expert opinion merely because they happen to occupy the position of “expert”. Based on several sources, including the Thompson affair, I’m well convinced that the so-called experts of historical biblical studies are not worthy of that title and respect and trust.
PS:
According to a completely random source, who cites another source:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/iu0/trusting_expert_consensus/
Concerning your claim that the “relevant experts […] include many non-Christians”? That seems to be false from a cursory examination. Is my source wrong? On basis do you make your claim?
@KG:
Wouldn’t these putative teachings they had already been told have had some reference to the law; to behaviors that God wanted from people? At the very least, to the directive to love one’s neighbor, emphasized in the Gospels with “Love one another”, and expounded upon with the parable of the good Samaritan?
Yet if you look at Galatians, for example, Paul never reminds his readers that Jesus taught this too. Looking at Galatians, Paul makes reference to the OT law, including the part about loving one’s neighbor, but nothing about what Jesus said about it.
If Jesus had been some putative radical rabbi, wouldn’t there have been at least something about what he taught from or about the law that made him radical that Paul would have referenced, considering that both he and his readers presumably would have thought of Jesus as being some sort of authority? Even if they both already had these teachings, wouldn’t there have been at least some small thing that Paul would have thought worth referencing and emphasizing as being from Jesus’ authority?
But there’s nothing about Jesus having said or done anything at all.
If you can find one or more non-Christian expert who dismantles the mythicist position using something better than special pleading, I’d like to see it.
Note that mythicists don’t think that the mythicist arguments are absolutely conclusive. Maybe Paul had some perfectly understandable reason for not referencing anything that Jesus taught or did, for example. Maybe the argument that James was a member of a brotherhood of Christians (rather than being actual kin to a putative real Jesus) is mistaken, as another example.
But mythicism is not claimed to be absolutely conclusive, only a reasonable conclusion given a close analysis of the available evidence.
Ow. Someone throws a 6-sied die, and it falls where you can’t see it. That’s a unique event that has already happened.
Are you really going to say that it makes no sense to say that there’s a 1/6 chance that it came up “6”? It either came up 6 or it didn’t?
Bayesian history is basically trying to figure out how many sides the “dice” of historical events have.
You have to be careful with this, though — there are Christians who proudly proclaim that they use just those methods to prove that Christianity is true; that Jesus existed and did miracles, and so on.
But then, there are also Christians who do the same thing with Bayesian probability analysis. Any method can be abused.
Heh. Is it your expert opinion that it’s “egregious bullshitting”?
This is an odd criticism to levy, given that as atheists, we all conclude that all religious people ever worship (or did worship) one or more invisible intangible persons who never even existed.
While I think religious people are wrong, I don’t think they “have made complete fools of themselves”. And that’s certainly not the reason I think that mythicism is at least somewhat reasonable.
EnlightenmentLiberal@47,
I suppose it depends what you mean by “many”. Among the prominent non-Christian scholars of the NT and closely related issues are: Geza Vermes, Hector Avalos, Bart Ehrman, Burton Mack, Robert Eisenman, Gerd Lüdemann, Dennis R. MacDonald (possibly regards himself as a Christian, but if so, on what grounds is unclear), Richard E. Rubenstein, James Tabor, Robert M. Price (the only mythicist in my list). The Thompson affair certainly shows that some university departments are intolerant – but note that Thompson (an OT scholar, of course), like most of the NT scholars I list, has or had a tenured position at a resepcted university.
Owlmirror@48,
Apologies for coming back to this after such a long delay – I kept meaning to get round to it.
I don’t want to get into a detailed discussion of Paul’s epistles, because my main point is that neither I, nor most of those atheists who jump enthusiastically on the mythicist carousel have relevant expertise. I know from your comments on previous threads that you do have at least some such expertise but still, if I am to choose between a pseudonymous blog commenter and the consensus of relevant named and credentialed experts, I don’t find the choice difficult.
I’m sure that whatever I referred to, you would consider it “special pleading”, but I’ve found James McGrath’s articles quite convincing, and for a more positive non-mythicist position, Geza Vermes’ work on the historical Jesus and early Christianity. But I wolud like to ask, what “mythicist position”? Mythicism seems to me to resemble other denialist groups, in that there is a lack of a coherent alternative to the expert consensus. One mythicist says Jesus was a hallucinogenic mushroom, another that he was a recycled Horus myth, a third (Doherty, whose view Carrier largely accepts) that the crucifixion and resurrection took place in a kind of semi-celestial mezzanine.
You choose an excellent example for me to demonstrate how absurd the comparison is. The die throw is emphatically not a unique event: dice throws take place all the time, and can readily be repeated. If you have good reason to believe the die is a fair one – from previous throws with that die, or knowledge of how it was manufactured – then of course it makes perfectly good sense to say the chance of it having come up 6 is 1/6. Even if you don’t know that, you can say “Assuming it was a fair die, the chance it came up 6 is 1/6”, or “Fair dice will come up 6 one time in 6”. If the die hasn’t been destroyed, you can test it post facto. Where are the corresponding possibilities in relation to Jesus’s existence – or for that matter, most historical events? Bayesian history is a classic example of inappropriate quantification.
If you haven’t read it, you might be interested in this review of Carrier’s (mis)use of Bayesian reasoning by an expert in that field.