The only ones I don't have are the books by Carrier and Bice.

What she means by "intellectual conversation" would probably amount to a deep philosophical discourse of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

The passage in Jeremiah 31, read in its own context, was about the exile of the Jewish people (children of Rachel) and their eventual return to the holy land. It takes a lot of creative wordplay to make it a prophecy.

In our local freethought group, there was a debate raging about alt-med, and some members believe in obvious quackery.

Also, other members in our group believe in conspiracy theories (illuminati, 9-11 truthers, etc).

For making illicit sex videos? That's a tad extreme.

I'm waiting for the paperback for this book and Dawkins'.

I think most of MJ's fans that support him during his darkest days probably did have a nagging feeling that their idol was a creep, but they supported him nontheless because they want a 2nd Thriller. I don't know how that parallels with the Roman church where the faithful really are blinded.

Instead of constantly referring to this essay whenever debating True Believers™, I'll just post the text in my blog. :)

Given that the Church has canonized saints with far less evidence for their miraculous feats, this is a major step.

Another scholar who has questioned the historicity of Nazareth is Rene Salm. On Harwood's Nazareth=Dispersion/Diaspora argument, Galilee was still part of Palestine and the Jews in the land have not usually been thought of as part of the greater Diaspora. From my studies of Jewish history, Diaspora Jews are those that had lived in Asia Minor, North Africa, Babylonia, and the Greek and Roman states. So I don't put much stock on the word coincidence. The Nazareth=Nazarite connection is more compelling.