Peter Kirby

judge: No, thanks.

GakuseiDon: I'll come back to your posts. Thank you for the feedback.

judge

The irony of it all.

GakuseiDon

Well, McGrath does write that he is referring to "a couple of other blogs". Which comment in Vridar is McGrath referring to?

Peter Kirby

I don't see this line of questioning going anywhere because I don't think we disagree substantially on what James McGrath is saying. What he is saying in full is more like a combination of 1 and 2, where "it's okay to leave out praise of positive points where they have no real bearing on the argument in question, when you are making a review with a negative emphasis."

I don't express disagreement with this statement in itself. That's not my point. I'd tend to agree that a review that took space and time to congratulate the writer for getting something - any little old thing - right is not only unhelpful to the reader but also patronizing towards the author.

The problem is this - why is he even making this point? Why is he justifying the fact that he doesn't praise irrelevant positive points? Nobody has asked him to praise irrelevant positive points. Not a single soul.

He is replying to the strawman charge, the charge that he has substantially understated the arguments that he rebuts. My post didn't defend the original strawman charge(s), however true they may be, but rather pointed out how his reply doesn't deflect that criticism. It merely shows that he doesn't know how to or chooses not to deflect that criticism appropriately.

Where was the original criticism? It's curious that James McGrath refers to a "couple of other blogs" rather than quoting any one in particular, as would be a typical custom (to give credit to your source) both in academic writing and blog writing. Here's what he says.

"On a couple of other blogs I've encountered some criticism of my supposedly not having adequately presented the full extent of Earl Doherty's claims and arguments in his book Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus."

I can't say I know where the other pair in this couple is on the Internet, but I am certain that one blog in mind is that here, which has multiple posts regarding McGrath's efforts.

http://vridar.wordpress.com/

There the relevant charge is frequently that he's erected a strawman, a charge that McGrath summarizes - yes, a bit too facilely even here - as "not having adequately presented the full extent of Earl Doherty's claims and arguments." In particular there was a post that showed an outline of the structure of Earl Doherty's argument, which may have been the touchpoint (even though not linked). It happened to be the response to the chapter 4 post, which immediately preceded this one. Thus I infer that he was responding to this post obliquely:

http://vridar.wordpress.com/2011/05/...ng-to-mcgrath/

And this one that was already linked

http://vridar.wordpress.com/2011/05/...tys-chapter-4/

I don't know why he doesn't link it. But it is unmistakable that this blog is the leading representative for the "couple of other blogs" he is mentioning.

Thank you again, GakuseiDon, for your feedback. It is well-written and well-considered, as usual.

sincerely,
Peter Kirby

GakuseiDon

Peter, that seems to be Option 2 to me. Option 1 appears to include the idea that it's okay to leave out positive points in favour of an argument, and (correct me if I am wrong) that appears to be what you are inferring in your OP. That's a damning criticism. Option 2, as you note below, is not unreasonable given the nature of the medium being used.

True.

The charge he is responding to is this:

On a couple of other blogs I've encountered some criticism of my supposedly not having adequately presented the full extent of Earl Doherty's claims and arguments in his book Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus.

I agree that nobody has asked him to praise irrelevant positive points, but (rightly or wrongly) that is the answer he gave for why he is not addressing some points.

I think he really was actually referring to a general criticism from a couple of blogs: vridar and the Debunking Christianity blog, as I explain below.

No, I can't see that McGrath is responding to a charge of building strawmen. I think he really is responding to an implied criticism of not having adequately presented the full extent of Doherty's claim on a couple of blogs, exactly as he claims. That's what had me scratching my head in your open letter: how you knew which argument he was misrepresenting as a strawman when McGrath is talking about "a couple of blogs". It seemed to me that you assumed he was referring specifically to Vridar and Neil Godfrey.

It is, and perhaps he should have directly addressed criticisms of Vridar. I just don't think -- from what McGrath wrote -- that it is justifiable to assume he was referring to Neil Godfrey's comments on Vridar. In fact, I think he was responding more to comments on the Debunking Christianity blog:

One poster, tyro, wrote:

"It's one thing to disagree or reach different conclusions, it's quite another to refuse to engage with issues and dishonestly represent their position. Since this has been a repeated concern over your dealings with mythicists, one might imagine that a serious reviewer would take some pains to treat the discussion as fairly as possible. Clearly you continue to chose a different path."

McGrath's response:

That is the same sort of thing creationists say when their work gets criticized by scientists. I am taking the time to patiently explain why what Doherty has published is of no scholarly value. If you think that I ought to offer some sort of praise first out of politeness, I do not see that that is necessary when dealing with a viewpoint that is happy to claim it is of scholarly value and yet chooses to bypass academic journals and forums and appeal directly to the public through self-published books and blogs.

I personally don't think that being a genuine freethinker means criticizing pseudoscience while choosing to embrace pseudoscholarship when it reaches conclusions you like.

And later in that thread, McGrath writes:

I don't believe I have misrepresented Doherty at all, but when a book is full of flaws and distortions, I don't feel the need to try to find positive things to say about it. I wouldn't cut conservative apologists slack, and I won't cut Doherty slack either.

This discussion on Debunking Christianity appears to have been the genesis for the criticism that McGrath felt he needed to address. Perhaps he should have addressed specific Vridar criticisms, but addressing Criticism B (even if as a general criticism) instead of Criticism A is not building a strawman against Criticism A. If he said "Neil Godfrey claims..." that would be different. But he didn't.

You're welcome. Having reviewed Doherty's book myself, I'm pleased that McGrath is finding the same problems with Doherty's theories as I did. And having been charged myself with the inevitable accusations of intellectual dishonesty, misrepresentation, vendettas, lying, etc, by mythicists, I'm obviously sympathetic to where McGrath is coming from.

For what it's worth, I think you have done McGrath a disservice. Your OP infers that McGrath is not covering positive points that support Doherty's argument, which I think we both agree that is not what he said. (As Neil Godfrey writes in his blog post on your open letter: "In [McGrath's] latest “review” he even “justifies” not giving a fair account of what Doherty himself writes.") And you infer that McGrath built a strawman argument of Vridar criticisms, while I don't think he was addressing specific Vridar criticisms at all.

Toto

Thanks for linking to this blog thread.

So a poster claims that McGrath has not represented Doherty's position correctly, and McGrath's response is "this is the sot of thing creationists say when their work gets criticized by scientists."

WTF?

McGrath comes off very poorly there.

Peter Kirby

I view it as a false dichotomy. My option is option 1+2. You can call it option 3. I have already stated that I substantially agree on your reading of McGrath here. So, please just let me correct you. That is not what I am inferring in my OP. McGrath doesn't defend making strawmen (a somewhat ludicrous position). He gets accused of it and shrugs it off by giving a reply that addresses a different, much less offensive type of criticism, different from the criticism leveled against him.

Analogy? If it may help, which it may not. I accuse you of cheating on your taxes, and you tell me that it's no big deal that you didn't tell the IRS about all the Christmas gifts you bought for your family or that 20 bucks your neighbor gave you to water his lawn while on vacation. Well, yeah. We know that. But we're kinda talking about how you handle the relevant data, not the irrelevant. Why even bring up the subject of completely irrelevant data?

I think we'd have to say that, technically, it's his representation of the criticism that's been made against him in the blogosphere. What I'm saying is that he should deal with other people's arguments, to the extent he is aware of them, in their strongest possible form. He's broken this in one way or another.

I'd say the answer was given wrongly to the extent that it doesn't deal with the nature of the question, that being, couldn't you have represented the argument from Doherty better?

Yes, this is a possible mistake I made before I wrote the article. I hadn't read the other blog(s), one of them apparently John Loftus's blog (linked in another post from James McGrath).

This is ... somewhat funny. Because even though I thought he was replying to Neil Godfrey, the other person on the other blog has the very same form of criticism, and the response has the very same form of fallacy. Ceteris paribus, with everything relevant similar and the name's changed, whether it's Neil Godfrey or this other fellow to which he responds, he should really consult a text to know what people actually mean when they say strawman.

Yes, I could have fallen on my face here. I could have found that he was replying to someone else and that other person was in fact accusing him of leaving out irrelevant positive points of Doherty's book, or just not mentioning enough of the positives. However, that didn't happen. For whatever stroke of luck, he's found replying the very same way on someone else's blog, understating what the objection about fairly representing Doherty's argument really means.

It's the nature of the internet beast... it demands you grow a thick skin or be selective with whom you make conversation. If you asked me ten years ago, I chose the former path. Now I much prefer the latter.

Actually, my OP doesn't infer that, and I have mentioned on several occasions that my OP doesn't infer that. I haven't read Doherty's recent book, see? He might not have misrepresented anything in it, so far as I know. What I do know is that he isn't giving his readers the kind of response they deserve to their criticism... should he choose to respond to it, he should respond to the criticism they make and not a weaker version of it.

But thanks for hunting down the other blog in the pair to which he makes mention. It's useful and a testament to your own acumen.

sincerely,
Peter Kirby

Peter Kirby

One more thing. I would never have written my letter if I thought he was replying only to the quotes you mention. While Neil Godfrey goes into detail on what he feels was misrepresented, this other fellow is commenting, not blogging, and not going into detail, from what I understand. That's the kind of drive-by criticism that you don't have to spend a lot of effort showing why it's wrong... mostly because the person doesn't criticize you on particulars and thus leaves you with no real course of action to take, other than saying that they should read what you wrote again and point out what you did wrong.

So, yes, if McGrath didn't read Godfrey, I owe him a bit of apology. I'll put a link to Loftus's blog in my blog, showing the possible alternate source.

By the way, there's a reply to my post by McGrath on my blog. And another blog post from him in reply to mine. At some point I'll respond to them too.

Peter Kirby

Instead of continuing this with just assuming - my bad - I've e-mailed James and asked him whether he was replying to one of the blogs, the other, or both. For those actually interested in the reply, I'll keep you posted!

GakuseiDon

But, how do you know that McGrath is responding to an accusation of building strawmen? How do you know he is shrugging it off by giving a reply that addresses a different, much less offensive type of criticism? He doesn't point to Vridar. He doesn't mention specific criticisms. He refers to "a couple of blogs". So how do you know? That's the part I don't understand.

I agree that, if he were responding to accusations of building strawmen, then he should respond to those accusations.

But what if he wasn't responding to those accusations? What if he felt that in a couple of blogs he'd encountered some criticism of his supposedly not having adequately presented the full extent of Earl Doherty's claims and arguments in his book? I mean, that is what he wrote. I simply don't understand how you can assume that he is responding to something else.

I agree. Should he choose to respond to criticism, he should respond to that criticism and not a weaker version of it. What I don't understand is how you know what criticism he isn't responding to.

Yes, and I think this is reflected in McGrath's blog. IMO McGrath is responding to general criticisms across a couple of blogs. Perhaps he should respond to specific criticisms in one blog or the other, but for whatever reason he did not. And I don't see him inferring that he DID respond to specific criticisms on Vridar.

Thanks Peter. That would be fair.