Loftus John W. - Christianity in the light of science: critically examining the worlds largest religion

Dr. Aaron Adair is an assistant professor at Merrimack College, North Andover, Massachusetts, and the author of The Star of Bethlehem: A Skeptical View (2013).

Dr. Rebecca Bradley earned a PhD in archaeology from Cambridge University and worked as an archaeologist in Egypt and the Sudan. She writes for Skeptic Ink, http://www.skepticink.com/lateraltruth/.

Dr. Robert R. Cargill is assistant professor of classics and religious studies at the University of Iowa, having earned a PhD in Near Eastern languages and cultures from UCLA. He is a biblical studies scholar, classicist, archaeologist, author, and digital humanist. His research includes study in the Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, literary criticism of the Bible and the Pseudepigrapha, and the Ancient Near East. He is the author of The Cities that Built the Bible (2016).

Dr. David Eller earned a doctorate degree from Boston University in anthropology and taught anthropology in Denver, Colorado. He has published three books on atheism, Natural Atheism (2004), Atheism Advanced (2008), and Cruel Creeds, Virtuous Violence: Religious Violence across Culture and History (2010). He has also written two textbooks, titled Violence and Culture: A Cross-Cultural and Interdisciplinary Approach (2005) and Introducing Anthropology of Religion, 2nd edition (2015).

Dr. Abby Hafer has a doctorate in zoology from Oxford University and teaches Human Anatomy and Physiology at Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts. She's a popular public speaker and the author of The Not-So-Intelligent DesignerWhy Evolution Explains the Human Body and Intelligent Design Does Not (2015).

Phil Halper is the producer of the popular YouTube series Before the Big Bang, which features interviews with some of the world's leading cosmologists, including Gabriele Veneziano (the father of string theory), Abhay Ashtekar (founder of loop quantum gravity), and Sir Roger Penrose (coauthor of the classic Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems). He earned degrees from Manchester University and Southampton University, and a diploma in astronomy from University College London.

Guy P. Harrison has degrees in history and anthropology and has written several critically acclaimed books on skepticism and belief, including 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God (2008), 50 Simple Questions for Every Christian (2013), 50 Popular Beliefs That People Think Are True (2013), Think: Why You Should Question Everything (2013), and Good Thinking: What You Need to Know to Be Smarter, Safer, Wealthier, and Wiser (2015).

John W. Loftus earned MA, MDiv, and ThM degrees in philosophy, theology, and the philosophy of religion, the last of which was under William Lane Craig. John also studied in a PhD program at Marquette University for a year and a half, in the area of theology and ethics. He is the author of Why I Became an Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity (Revised Edition, 2012), The Outsider Test for Faith: How to Know Which Religion Is True (2013), How to Defend the Christian Faith: Advice from an Atheist (2015), and Unapologetic: Why Philosophy of Religion Must End (2016). He edited The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails (2010), The End of Christianity (2011), and Christianity Is Not Great (2014). He has also coauthored, with Dr. Randal Rauser, God or Godless?: One Atheist. One Christian. Twenty Controversial Questions (2013).

Dr. Julien Musolino is a Franco-American cognitive scientist and an associate professor at Rutgers University, where he directs the Psycholinguistics Laboratory and holds a dual appointment in the Department of Psychology and the internationally renowned Center for Cognitive Science. He is the author of over thirty scientific articles, and his research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. He is the author of The Soul Fallacy: What Science Shows We Gain from Letting Go of Our Soul Beliefs (2015).

Dr. Ali Nayeri received his PhD in theoretical physics from IUCAA in 1999. He was appointed as a postdoctoral associate at the Department of Physics at MIT for two years and as a postdoctoral fellow at MIT Center for Theoretical Physics for an additional year. Since then, he has been a research affiliate at MIT. He is currently with the Harvard Physics Department in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His fields of research include early universe and inflation, brane and string cosmology, semi-classical theory of gravity, and alternative cosmologies.

Sharon Nichols is a retired associate professor of geography at the College of DuPage, Glen Ellyn, Illinois. She is also former president of the Illinois Geographical Society and a National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE) Outstanding Faculty, Distinguished Alumni, South Dakota State University. She was awarded the American Heritage Award by Americans United for her part in an ACLU lawsuit against a Ten Commandments Monument in Haskell County, Oklahoma.

Joe Nickell has been called the modern Sherlock Holmes. Since 1995 he has been the world's only full-time, professional, science-based paranormal investigator. His careful, often innovative investigations have won him international respect in a field charged with controversy. He has written numerous books, including Relics of the Christ (2007) and The Science of Miracles: Investigating the Incredible (2013).

Jonathan Pearce earned a degree from the University of Leeds, a PGCE from the University of St Mary's, Twickenham, and a Masters in Philosophy from the University of Wales, Trinity St David. Pearce has written Free Will? An Investigation into Whether We Have Free Will or Whether He Was Always Going to Write This Book (2010), The Little Book of Unholy Questions (2011), and The Nativity: A Critical Examination (2012). Working as a publisher and teacher, he lives in Hampshire, UK, with his partner and twin boys.

Dr. Robert M. Price is a member of the Jesus Seminar and author of numerous books, including Deconstructing Jesus (2000), The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition? (2003), The Paperback Apocalypse: How the Christian Church Was Left Behind (2007), Inerrant the Wind: The Evangelical Crisis of Biblical Authority (2009), and (coauthored with Edwin A. Suominen) Evolving out of Eden: Christian Responses to Evolution (2013).

Ren Salm is the author of The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus (2008) and NazarethGate: Quack Archaeology, Holy Hoaxes, and the Invented Town of Jesus (2015). He maintains several websites, including Mythicist Papers (www.mythicistpapers.com) and www.nazarethmyth.info.

Dr. Victor J. Stenger (19352014) was an adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado and emeritus professor of physics at the University of Hawaii. He was a prolific author with twelve critically acclaimed books that interface between physics and cosmology and philosophy, religion, and pseudoscience. His 2007 book God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist was a New York Times bestseller. His last book was God and the Multiverse (2014).

Edwin A. Suominen is a retired engineer (BSEE, University of Washington, 1995), patent agent, and inventor with over a dozen patents. After forty years as a Christian fundamentalist, he learned about evolution through some engineering work and underwent an intellectual awakening that resulted in the book