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Old 03-28-2013, 04:17 PM   #1
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Default Crankiness and other off topic matters split from Christianity as Warmed up Egyptian

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I wonder if you are aware that this is exactly the explanation Creationists and Hollow Earthers give when they try to account for why it is their "evidence" and their views are rejected by the scientific community.

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Flat earthers don’t cite mainstream sources.
So what. Citing is no guarantee of understanding the sources or that the sources are cited correctly and not selectively in ways which misrepresent what those sources say ot that a work that engages in citation is any good.. And there is, as I've already noted, the question of whether an author of a book who does cite "mainstream sources", is doing what good/real scholars do -- showing an awareness of, and engaging , what's in recent relevant and important sources. In AS's case, it certainly doesn't look like it.

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It seems your knowledge of history is weak Jeffrey. Mythicists were burnt, jailed, sacked and ostracised for their scholarship. As Acharya explains in the Easter Address that I drew to your attention, when Robert Taylor was jailed for blasphemy, Charles Darwin realized the power of the church to suppress scholarship about Jesus. Your comparison of mythicism, a prominent but suppressed theological scientific strand, to creationism and hollow earthism, is a weak insult, revealing much about your standards of analysis.
If anything has been revealed here, it's that you've misread what I wrote, and have missed my point entirely, and have chosen instead to do what cranks do -- throw out red herrings.

My point was that the explanation that you gave for why mainstream scholarship does not, and would not, take the claims AS has made seriously -- i.e., the ad hominem claim that it's because mainstream scholars are afraid of losing their jobs, etc, if they do -- is the same explanation that Creationists and Hollow earthers put forward to account for why their claims are not taken seriously by the academy.

And there is no doubting that it is.

Have a look at what Henry Morris says in this regard on pp. 84-85 in his chapter on the Death of Evolution in his Twilight of Evolution regarding why creationsis are given little creedence in the biology and geolgfy departments in established universities and in the profesional journalsn in these fields.

Have a look at what a fellow named Marshall B. Gardner, a proponent of a hollow earth, had to say in the preface to his book 1913 book (enlarged and expanded in 1920), Journey to the Earth's Interior. There he admits that he does not expect to get a "fair hearing" for his views because of the "conservatism of scientists who do not care to revise their theories—and especially when that revision is made necessary by discoveries .. . made independently of the great universities." The scientists, he writes bitterly, "have their professional freemasonry. If you are not one of them, they do not want to listen to you."

Now, as to your being a crank, lets place what you say and how you've acted here against the definition of cranks and crank behaviour given by Marvin B. Gardner's (no relation to the hollow earther) in his author of Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (or via: amazon.co.uk). (on the value of the book, see here.)


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(1) "First and most important of these traits is that cranks work in almost total isolation from their colleagues." Cranks typically do not understand how the scientific process operates—that they need to try out their ideas on colleagues, attend conferences and publish their hypotheses in peer-reviewed journals before announcing to the world their startling discovery. Of course, when you explain this to them they say that their ideas are too radical for the conservative scientific establishment to accept. (2) "A second characteristic of the [crank], which greatly strengthens his isolation, is a tendency toward paranoia," which manifests itself in several ways:

(a) He considers himself a genius. (b) He regards his colleagues, without exception, as ignorant blockheads....(c) He believes himself unjustly persecuted and discriminated against. The recognized societies refuse to let him lecture. The journals reject his papers and either ignore his books or assign them to "enemies" for review. It is all part of a dastardly plot. It never occurs to the crank that this opposition may be due to error in his work....(d) He likens himself to Bruno, Galileo, Copernicus, Pasteur, and other great men who were unjustly persecuted for their heresies. If he has had no formal training in the field in which he
works, he will attribute this persecution to a scientific masonry, unwilling to admit into its inner sanctums anyone who has not gone through the proper initiation rituals. He repeatedly calls your attention to important scientific discoveries made by laymen. (e) He often has a tendency to write in a complex jargon, in many cases making use of terms and phrases he himself has coined.
I note that elsewhere you say you have been studying astrotheology for 30 years. I am sorry that you've wasted so much of your time.


Jeffrey
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Old 03-28-2013, 04:17 PM   #2
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I should note that Murdock's discussion of this material in Christ In Egypt relies on primary sources and credentialed scholars.
Which means absolutely nothing when taken out of context and quote mined.


Add to that we have obscure views, not followed by mainstream scholarships.


Is this not a dishonest way to promote pseudo-history just to sell books?
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Old 03-28-2013, 04:30 PM   #3
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Some of my favorite scholars claim this is why the movement was so successful.

Its ability to evolve forward and absorb the ever changing beliefs and mythology in these Hellenistic communities.
I take it that you have read little or nothing of Rodney Starks work on the issue of why Christianity was "successful".

Jeffrey

Jeffery, your intelligent, don't keep getting me wrong.
I trust that you mean "you're" intelligent".

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But Stark is a sort of a quack, who makes negative statements about evolution,
He does? Where?

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and is a known apologist after changing his agnostic views.
A known apologist for what?


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Yes I know about Stark, and some of his work was decent, but he does not follow mainstream scholarships
Mainstream what??

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or science regarding the obvious.

He certainly does not change the details of what made the movement successful.
Really? Which of his books on the rise of Christianity have you read?

Jeffrey
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Old 03-28-2013, 04:52 PM   #4
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Do not attack me Jeffrey, attack my message if you can.




Do you even begin to understand how the authors from this time period often paralleled previous people, mythology and theology?

Its just how they wrote.
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Old 03-28-2013, 05:04 PM   #5
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Mr Gibson's accusation that I and Acharya S are cranks is the purest ad hominem fallacy, and should not be tolerated on this site, since he is entirely wrong and unable to back up his claims.

Look, for Christ's sake, at what just happened this year to Thomas Brodie for outing himself as a mythicist. Brodie was sacked from his position as a Roman Catholic teacher. Look what previously happened to Leonardo Boff, Strauss, Taylor, other mythicists, etc etc. Look what happened to the fundy who was sacked last year for questioning the zombie resurrection story in Matthew. And Mr Gibson would have us believe that the Jesus Guild maintains high standards of rigour and does not bully its critics, this in a subject that is kept in asylum from normal scientific standards.

Oh but the enlightened Mr Gibson will tell us that David Strauss and Thomas Jefferson were in fact secret hollow earthers, and Thomas Brodie is a crank, as are Earl Doherty and Robert Price. They must be cranks since the curia says so. This sort of desperate insult is what people resort to when their arguments are shown up as foolish and ignorant. Those who challenge the received authority of Christian dogma are ignoramuses and deluded cranks in Mr Gibson's view, expressed on a site apparently devoted to free thought and reason.

I already mentioned the no true scotsman fallacy, which is abundantly in evidence in this thread. If anyone says Isis was a virgin, as attested by the Theological Dictionary cited above and ignored by Mr Gibson, he says they are by definition a crank. Mr Gibson has found some tame group-think academics who are unwilling to research the topic, and then ignores the refutation of his false assertion regarding the virginity of Isis.
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Old 03-28-2013, 05:05 PM   #6
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Jefferey

Do you understand that Hellenistic Jewish Proselytes and Pagans were the members of this movement?

For the most part they had no loyalty to Judaism while creating this new religion which was not located in a vacuum with no outside influence.


Do you understand how many Pagan ceremonies were "factually" adopted by the movement?
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Old 03-28-2013, 05:21 PM   #7
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Do not attack me Jeffrey, attack my message if you can.


Do you even begin to understand how the authors from this time period often paralleled previous people, mythology and theology?

How can I understand how they did what you claim they did (did all authors do this? no exceptions?) if I haven't been shown that they actually did do this, let alone exactly when they supposed did this and exactly what the nature and extent of their doing this was?

Its just how they wrote.
And again I ask, what makes you so certain of this?. What informs your claim about "the way ancient writers" wrote? Actual and direct study of ancient authors' styles and manners and writing habits and use of sources? Just how many ancient authors have you read? And if you haven'tv read any of them -- or at least enough of them to get a sense of what their style was -- have you read secondary works describing and documenting not only the way ancient writers wrote but that your claim regarding the way ancient writers wrote is true.

Please forgive me, but I'm not going to take your word for what you claim until I have some reason to believe that your claim is a well informed one.


And I did "attack your message". I indicated that I do not think that the claims made within it in about Stark show any or much direct awareness of what he's written.

That you have avoided answering the particular questions I raised over the validity of these claims and about your whether you have actuallv read Stark's books only increases my suspicion that you haven't.

You have derided others here for not being suffciently well educated with respect to the matters they make claims about and said that they shouldn't be given any credence because of this.

Goose and gander time.

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Old 03-28-2013, 05:22 PM   #8
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Mr Gibson's accusation that I and Acharya S are cranks is the purest ad hominem fallacy, and should not be tolerated on this site, since he is entirely wrong and unable to back up his claims.

Look, for Christ's sake, at what just happened this year to Thomas Brodie for outing himself as a mythicist. Brodie was sacked from his position as a Roman Catholic teacher. Look what previously happened to Leonardo Boff, Strauss, Taylor, other mythicists, etc etc. Look what happened to the fundy who was sacked last year for questioning the zombie resurrection story in Matthew. And Mr Gibson would have us believe that the Jesus Guild maintains high standards of rigour and does not bully its critics, this in a subject that is kept in asylum from normal scientific standards.

Oh but the enlightened Mr Gibson will tell us that David Strauss and Thomas Jefferson were in fact secret hollow earthers, and Thomas Brodie is a crank, as are Earl Doherty and Robert Price. They must be cranks since the curia says so. This sort of desperate insult is what people resort to when their arguments are shown up as foolish and ignorant. Those who challenge the received authority of Christian dogma are ignoramuses and deluded cranks in Mr Gibson's view, expressed on a site apparently devoted to free thought and reason.

I already mentioned the no true scotsman fallacy, which is abundantly in evidence in this thread. If anyone says Isis was a virgin, as attested by the Theological Dictionary cited above and ignored by Mr Gibson, he says they are by definition a crank. Mr Gibson has found some tame group-think academics who are unwilling to research the topic, and then ignores the refutation of his false assertion regarding the virginity of Isis.
I rest my case.

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Old 03-28-2013, 05:32 PM   #9
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Originally Posted by Robert Tulip View Post
Mr Gibson's accusation that I and Acharya S are cranks is the purest ad hominem fallacy,.
I don't know bud, the shoe sure looks like it fits.


I may argue with him, but I agree here.

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and should not be tolerated on this site
So we should let poor work and what I see as dishonesty, be promoted so that someone who isn't even a historian or scholar can try and weasel a foot in the door of historicity???

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since he is entirely wrong and unable to back up his claims.

Actually he sort of has, you just don't agree.


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Look, for Christ's sake, at what just happened this year to Thomas Brodie
STOP

Do not even begin to place you or the party your defending in the same league as Thomas. That is flat ridiculous.

Your only proving Jeffrey correct.


Not only that, your also out of context and off topic. Thomas was fired because he was hired to do a job and his new belief and work did not represent what he was hired to do.

It in no way effected his mythical work or beliefs, which he is free to pursue.


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Those who challenge the received authority of Christian dogma are ignoramuses and deluded cranks in Mr Gibson's view
False again.

Under this false assumption and poor definition most scholars actually fit as apologetic's back a biblical Jesus and not the historical Jesus most scholars are investigating.

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Mr Gibson has found some tame group-think academics who are unwilling to research the topic, and then ignores the refutation of his false assertion regarding the virginity of Isis.
STOP

This is a educated group with diverse beliefs, we do not pander to one group or another, we surely do not harbor a biased view in any way shape or form.

But you did mention Spin was kicked out what? your home forum where only biased views are tolerated?


Here we do try and research to the limits of our knowledge and ability.



While it could be stated that Isis may have been viewed as a virgin or maiden at one point in time in the mythology, the GENERAL view and proper interpretation holds she was not viewed as a virgin, and it clearly states that in the wiki link that started this whole thread.

By the way back your statements with credibility and you could get wiki changed to fit your personal hobby horse.
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Old 03-28-2013, 06:35 PM   #10
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Do not attack me Jeffrey, attack my message if you can.




Do you even begin to understand how the authors from this time period often paralleled previous people, mythology and theology?

Its just how they wrote.
You are thinking holy rollers now, evangelists. These are mythmakers, they are different and do not think like you. They are inspired to write and certainly are no copycats.
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