Not the Impossible Faith

I am still writing On the Historicity of Jesus Christ. But to save space there, I found I often needed to cite an online book I wrote some years ago, which is easier to do when there are page numbers. So I went ahead and produced a Lulu print edition. I just received sales stock today, so I will be selling it at my events in March after all, as I've hinted was possible. Though it is not yet posted for sale at Amazon, it will be in a few months (I'll update this blog when it appears there). I was going to wait for that, but since I'll be selling it at events next month, I decided to blog about it now so my fans are fully in-the-know.

The new book is Not the Impossible Faith: Why Christianity Didn't Need a Miracle to Succeed (2009). This is a special updated edition of Was Christianity Too Improbable to be False? (2006), which I was paid $6000 to research and write as a publicly available response to J.P. Holding's 'flagship' essay "The Impossible Faith: Or, How Not to Start an Ancient Religion," which he also reproduced as a printed book, The Impossible Faith (2007). In it he boasts that 'someone' was paid thousands of dollars to debunk his arguments, but he never names me or tells his readers anything about how to find that rebuttal (or even mentions or responds to anything I said in it). Amazon now allows product plugs in customer reviews, so you know what I'll be doing when Not the Impossible Faith finally appears on Amazon... :-)

Part of my original contract included the guarantee that my initial work would be available to the public for free. So Was Christianity? will remain on the Secular Web, free to all. The print edition, now titled Not the Impossible Faith (to rif on Holding's title), includes various changes, to the point that it certainly supercedes the online version (it's the edition I will cite and reference from now on), but nothing so significant that you "need" to buy the book if you're content with the online text. I didn't want to take any time away from my current project, so I just did the minimum necessary to produce a decent print copy (and there wasn't much room for improvement anyway--as a refutation, it's pretty conclusive).

What's new? Basically, I folded everything in the original Chapter 19 into the other 18 Chapters (where the various items in 19 belonged, each piece in a different place), folded many endnotes into the main text, wrote a new brief introduction (none too kind to Holding), rewrote some sections for clarity, made a slew of minor corrections and additions throughout, and smoothed readability in several places. Apart from all that, the main advantage of the book is that you can now cite it by page number (if you have a copy on hand), and carry it around and loan it around and write notes in the margins and highlight it and bookmark it and whatnot (I made sure it had proper 1" margins this time).

Personally, I just prefer reading physical books--lounging wherever I want, no eye strain, no battery or outlet issues, lighter to carry, easier page turning and flipping around and estimating reading time (I can see how much is left to read in a chapter or the rest of the book), I can stuff a bookmark where I left off, etc. For all these reasons, and especially if you want to start building a Richard Carrier collection on your bookshelf, it'll be worth buying the book. You can also buy a PDF version at Lulu for just $2.50, which will have to serve as a substitute for an index (since you can search that file for keywords, and still get the correct page number and see the text of the new edition, which is often different from the online version), since compiling a print index requires a solid week's work, and that was far too costly for me.

You can buy it now at Lulu (the PDF or the softback), but Amazon will give you free shipping (on the softback), so I recommend waiting for when it's available there (unless you just want the PDF). But the best option is to buy a copy from me in person (at a speaking event any time in the future), where you will get a much reduced price ($20). And of course I'll sign it if you want. Though I'll make more money on sales through Lulu than Amazon, it's already overpriced ($28 through any vendor), so I'm keen to advise fans to save where they can. Lulu passes all costs on to the customer (that means you), which means it cost me nothing to publish (which is why I bothered). Unlike most self-publishing firms, which charge at least a thousand dollars to launch a book, Lulu charges nothing (and you can do all the formatting and editing yourself online, which limits your options, but that's no matter if you don't need any). But it makes up for this in unit price. So in effect, buyers are subsidizing the publication of the print edition.

Though this means my book costs two to three times Holding's (which also just reproduces content already available for free online), mine is four times longer (454 pages to his 112) and (as you all well know) far better researched, argued, and referenced. Thus in terms of actual relative value-for-cost, the price isn't bad. My book actually contains a great deal of useful content and information, and citations of scholarship and sources, far beyond merely being a response to Holding (see the Lulu page for my full book description). It's a useful primer on the socio-intellectual context of the origins and spread of early Christianity. And of course it nails it hard to one of the most annoying apologetic windbags on the web.