@Mikhael

"I mean I don't know what research I could do that would be better than a PhD. These are claims made in On The Historocity of Jesus, which passed peer review, meaning that nothing written in that book was found to be obviously false by others in his field. Carrier knows his shit, and corrects himself when found wrong. Of course he is not infalible but as of yet his work in this field has not been definitively challenged"

Mate I think you're underestimating yourself and overestimating academia. Good research has nothing to do with being highly educated per se.

Research is for me was first about learning to use a good library. University libraries may be better for some of the more obscure areas of interest.,. You should be able to read anything you like , but just won't be able to borrow books. If not, a major public library should be able to get just about anything you want through intra library loans.--AND there is a vast amount of relevant stuff available free on line . Perhaps just begin there.

Then it' s a matter of motivation, patience and persistence.

While at university, I was stunned at the number of professors, and ordinary Phd's who were arrogant arseholes and/or quite hopeless outside of their discipline. One in particular philosophy Phd could not be trusted to cross the road by himself. Really.

Going by your posts, I have no doubt that you would have little real difficulty doing excellent research. I suspect that for you it is more a matter of confidence than anything else.

Perhaps spend a bit of time online looking at say Youtube videos and web pages on 'How to conduct university research' or something similar.

I had the chance to apply for a special mature age university programme. I wasn't going to because I thought I wasn't smart enough to go to university. As luck would have, the bloke in the flat alt next door was a clinical psychologist. I mentioned the opportunity and my misgivings to him. He laughed out loud. He actually said "Mate ,you'd shit it in" -and I did, straight A's in every subject. It was only confidence.

Do give it a go, I think you might surprise yourself. There are some pretty good minds on this forum. Pretty sure just about anyone here will be happy to help you .

I don't put too much stock in the Bayes numbers, if for no other reason than my smarts are word based moreso than numbers and it's honestly very difficult for me to keep up when he starts talking in numbers and equations and probability. It's just not an aspect of the debate that carries weight for me.

I think one who isn't tied to theism would find little of Carriers more well known works and ideas to he contentious on terms of raw evidence, even if they disagree with where the evidence goes.

For example, he is far from the only historian hold enough to say the entire Jesus passage of Josephus is a forgery , and not just part. Even Ehrman now agrees that it's likely Paul saw Jesus as an angel or other pre existing being, even if they disagree about his historicity.

The thing is, you should not fall into the fallacy of popularity but at the same time the more people who uphold an observation of history the more likely it is that there's some legitimacy to it.

That's a reason I like Fitzgerald too. He isn't a historian himself, but a historical writer who Combs through and compiles the work of others, showing the overlaps

I have the audio version; I'm able to listen to books at work so it was super convenient and I'm pretty sure I can download a PDF of his sources

It's a brick of a book, heads up. Its 28 hours audio