ApostateAbe

You are saying it is OK if you psychoanalyze people from a distance, but not I. I have decided not to give any more serious consideration to your rebukes. Probably should just put you on ignore.

ApostateAbe

"Sorry Toto is a moderator/admin and you are not allowed to ignore him or her."

Shoot, maybe I will petition to have that changed.

Toto

My post did not try to psychoanalyze you. I merely pointed out that you lack the academic background to describe a large category of people as engaging in bizarre thinking.

Zwaarddijk

Given the treatment Acharya's followers give anyone that ever dares criticize her, I find Abe's description of the situation fairly accurate. Even Robert Tulip engages in weird smearing and ad hominem attacking, see e.g.
http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/...p=27173#p27173
http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/...p=27169#p27169

Meanwhile, I might just as well update on the status of my blog - the list of Acharyan deceptions is constantly growing, albeit currently it's been a bit slow as other things have come up.

If anyone finds any errors in what I've spotted, I'd appreciate feedback so I can correct eventual mistakes.

I recently found a fabricated quote of Augustine, a suspiciously quoted bit from a book on numismatic evidence in archeology - quoted in such a way that the casual reader may think her own opinion is part of the quote - by deviating from her usual quote-manner, including things in her own text that usually is restricted to quotes, and having the reference in an unusual position, as well as a claim about the content of the gospels that simply is untrue.

Her academic integrity is null and void, and the "natural processes" she uses to explain things are basically conspiracy theories and distortions of academic knowledge.

EarlDoherty

Well, Looney Rooney has erupted again. Mt. Etna has got nothing on him. His new review of my Jesus: Neither God Nor Man on Amazon runs to…get this…34,000 words (his own count)!!! It is one stinking vomit of ad hominem from start to finish, even accusing me of lying that I actually have a B.A. in history and classical languages because I refuse to give out the particulars of where and when. (Is it any wonder? And what would they do with that information?) I will be making the most vociferous of complaints to Amazon for allowing this garbage to masquerade as a book review.

This sick vendetta has gotten utterly crazy. According to Looney Rooney, Gakusei Don is a “specialist” in ancient Greek religion, Platonic cosmology (you know, the business about there being layers of the heavens) is a mythicist plot, comments by me are twisted and taken out of context to cast me in the worst possible personal light. (If I had the resources I would sue him for libel.) I really don’t know what to make of it all. But this sordid underbelly of amateur anti-mythicism is something we are very familiar with on this DB. All semblance of unbiased scholarship, honesty and civility, has evaporated. Honorable debate has been buried under a pile of defecation.

Is it just a couple of lunatics? I don’t think so. Witness the ongoing campaign against Acharya S. We now have websites devoted to taking her writings apart and heaping ordure on whatever faults can be found or invented. It has become a witch hunt, with bared teeth that would do any pit bull proud. It’s become an obsessive industry. Even if everything said about her and her scholarship were true (which it is not), what is the purpose? The Acharya haters have made their point ad nauseum. She gets labelled a “bad mythicist” while allowed that she is not representative of most other mythicists. So why continue the exercise? Get a life and get on with it! Why has Don devoted half his career to discrediting both her and me, usually through devious, dishonest and disingenuous tactics that have gained him no glory, except perhaps among the congenitally ignorant? Why does Looney Rooney stay up half the night composing idiotic limericks against me, or go onto Amazon and spew out with drooling delight his own brand of vitriolic diarrhea, much of it outright lies? Why do posters like Abe never cease their pontificating against mythicism, displaying concrete brains that are impervious to any argument which goes against their broken-record appeals to authority? They follow on a long line of predecessors, from Jeffrey Gibson to Tim O'Neill and not a few in between, none of whom could actually rebut mythicism with honest scholarship to save their lives.

Why does this topic generate so many shitheads?

Earl Doherty

Zwaarddijk

Earl Doherty,
why should Acharya S's work be protected from scrutiny? That is essentially what you are saying!

Robert Tulip

I learned some interesting information about the actual evolution of the Indo-European language family from Zwaarddijk/Miekko/Sierios. Regrettably, this man of multiple pseudonyms has an overly grand sense of the withering impact of his linguistic research, drawing continual general conclusions from it that are wholly unjustified, especially in regard to the Christ Myth Theory. I am nonplussed by his recent comment about ad hominem smears, and can only say that to respond here would continue his derailing of this thread.

Earl Doherty, in my observation of his conduct, has generously welcomed reasoned critique of his work, as has Acharya S of hers. But as Earl has just pointed out, much of the criticism is quite mad. The Christ Myth Theory sticks its oar into some deep cultural currents, and the surface swirls do not always reveal what is occurring below.

Most people who discuss these topics have some sort of chips on their shoulder about religion, and there are some big topics which seem to fall stillborn from the press, as Hume put it. Gaining more clarity about the psychology and social topology of religious analysis could help to dissolve some of the stumbling blocks.

EarlDoherty

You and others have "scrutinized" it ad nauseum. Now move on.

What really moves you and others to devote this kind of time and effort? Haven't you made your point? What do you get out of it? What's the motivation? (Misogyny? Vicarious rape?) This kind of ongoing devotion is not only tedious, it's a little sick. (I notice that most if not all of you use pseudonymns.)

To borrow your own phrase, it's sad.

Earl Doherty

ApostateAbe

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Toto

Let's put a stop to this line of inquiry.

FRDB protects the privacy rights of anyone to post anonymously or to protect their personal information.

Acharya S's logic and scholarship are fair game, as are anyone's. That's life on the internet.