Raphael Lataster

Going One God Further Atheism

Key Concepts

Atheism Agnosticism Antitheism FAQ for the Newly Deconverted

Articles to not believe in

Pascal's wager Atheist Community of Austin Humanists International Maryam Namazie

Notable heathens

Massimo Pigliucci Stephen Fry Ophelia Benson Joseph Stalin v - t - e

Raphael Lataster (1984–) is an Australian secular teacher of religious studies, 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), and Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists (2015), with Richard Carrier.

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. Lataster's PhD thesis analyses arguments for the existence of God by philosophers like William Lane Craig and Richard Swinburne.

Lataster passed his Master of Arts (Research), undertaken in the Department of Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney, with Distinction, has published numerous articles, 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.

There Was No Jesus, There Is No God

There Was No Jesus, There Is No God was published on September 2, 2013, and was for a time the bestselling book in the atheism category (ranked 10^th on September 5^th and ranked 12^th in July 21^st of the following year), displacing Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. The book questions the existence of Jesus, and was positively reviewed in academic theological journals, including reviews by religious studies scholars Carole Cusack (one of Lataster's mentors) and professor Chris Hartney. In the book, "Lataster re-presents and amplifies the arguments that the fictional dimensions of Jesus are foundational." Hartney found that Lataster "does more than most to argue that Jesus did not exist," 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."

Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists

Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists, was published November 12, 2015, with Richard Carrier. 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)."

Questioning the Historicity of Jesus

Questioning the Historicity of Jesus was published July 2019 by Brill and as its summation states it moved "beyond the mainstream scholarly scepticism over the Christ of Faith and considers if there is sufficient evidence to establish the existence of the more mundane Historical Jesus." It concluded that many relevant sources are unreliable as historical documents and a good number of Historical Jesus arguments "appeal to sources that do not exist." In August 2019 he did a blog also called Questioning the Historicity of Jesus

Other activities

Lataster has debated Christian apologists, including Randal Rauser. 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."

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

Unsurprisingly, Lataster holds strong anti-vax views and promotes them at Substack

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.
• The Case Against Theism: Why the Evidence Disproves God’s Existence, 2018.
• Questioning the Historicity of Jesus: Why a Philosophical Analysis Elucidates the Historical Discourse, Brill 2019.

Articles

• Is There a Christian Agenda Behind Religious Studies Departments?, 2013.
• Bayesian Reasoning: Criticising the ‘Criteria of Authenticity’ and Calling for a Review of Biblical Criticism, Journal of Alternative Perspectives in the Social Sciences 2013 5(2), pp.271-93
• New Atheists and New Theologians, Alternative Spirituality and Religion Review, 2013 4(1)
• The Fourth Quest: A Critical Analysis of the Recent Literature on Jesus’ (a)Historicity, Literature & Aesthetics, 2014, 24 (1); pp.1-28
• A Superscientific Definition of ‘Religion’ and a Clarification of Richard Dawkins’ New Atheism, Literature & Aesthetics, 2014, 24(2); pp.109-24
• The Attractiveness of Panentheism—a Reply to Benedikt Paul Göcke, Sophia, 2014, (53)3, pp.389-95
• Did historical Jesus really exist? The evidence just doesn't add up, Washington Post, Dec 18, 2014
• Pantheistic God-Concepts: Ancient, Contemporary, Popular, and Plausible Alternatives to Classical Theism, Literature & Aesthetics, 2015, 25; p.65; republished in Pandeism: An Anthology (2017), p.171
• Questioning the Plausibility of Jesus aHistoricity Theories — A Brief Pseudo-Bayesian Metacritique of the Sources, Intermountain W Journal of Religious Studies 6 (1), 2015; 62-96
• A Philosophical and Historical Analysis of William Lane Craig’s Resurrection of Jesus Argument, Think, Cambridge University, 2015, 14 (39); pp.59-71
• It’s Official: We Can Now Doubt Jesus’ Historical Existence, Think, 15 (43), 2016, pp. 65-79
• Bart Ehrman and the Elusive Historical Jesus Literature & Aesthetics, 2016, 26; p.118-192
• Defending Jesus Agnosticism Think 18 (51), 2019, pp. 77-91
• Questioning Jesus’ Historicity, Bible Interp, Aug 2019
• When Critics Miss the Point About Questioning Jesus’ Historicity Bible Interp, Aug 2019,