Peter Kirby

Dr. McGrath,

You are reviewing Earl Doherty's book. I will admit that I haven't
read the most recent edition, and I last read the original edition
some eight years ago or so. So I am not completely fresh on all the
arguments. Nor do I particularly care which way you believe in Jesus,
or not - what I care most about here, is seeing someone who
participates actively in academics writing at a level that shows
nothing but disdain for the intelligence of his audience when
presenting his views to the people outside universities.

You explain your program in one paragraph, in response to those who
claim that he has misrepresented Earl Doherty's arguments:

"When someone offers a homeopathic remedy as a solution to an illness,
I don't see the need for a defender of mainstream medicine to point
out that it is water and staying hydrated is a good thing, and can
represent a positive effect of ingesting it. When someone defending
mainstream science focuses on the flaws in a book promoting
young-earth creationism or Intelligent Design, I won't particularly
mind if the one criticizing the work fails to highlight the occasional
good point the author made."

You seem to have completely forgotten that you might be writing to an
intelligent audience, one which will cross-examine your own statements
just as much as they will examine the statements of the one you wish
to impugn. Not only do you unapologetically admit that you are less
interested in a balanced portrayal of the work that you purport to
"review," but you insult your own readers by misrepresenting the very
feedback you receive from your audience. They tell you that you are
not representing the substance of the argument but instead using a
strawman. You say that it's okay to leave out praise of positive
points when you are making a review with a negative emphasis. I'm
stultified enough to stop reading after that paragraph.

What I don't get is this - how do people who are trained both in
exegesis (reading what people write) and apologetics (supporting what
you say with reason) so flagrantly disregard them with regard to the
text that they are reading right in front of them, in their native
language, their native culture, and their very own field of
research... and then proceed to tell us all that they are credible
experts on the writings that have been handed down in copies, that are
in a foreign tongue, from a foreign culture, at a remove of two
thousand years? Where is the self-criticism? Where is the
introspection? Where is the plain old honesty?

I made a comment along similar lines (but from a separate starting
point) on JesusMysteries dsicussion group recently. The emotional
investments that "taking a stand" on an issue in public press upon of
us, can make us do some very weird things, when viewed from the
perspective of an academia whose goal is the dissemination of
knowledge. Such as pretend to be a lot more sure than we reasonably
can be (perhaps in fact -are-), pretend that the opposition's argument
is a lot weaker than it is (perhaps weaker than even -we see it to
be-), and in general cave to a lot of social expectations. Standards
get let by the wayside.

Now this sermonizing cannot finish here. In the Christian language, I
am but a sinner, in the common language I'm just another schlub on the
internet. But come on! Practice what you preach, be authentic, and
do so -especially- when you have the opportunity to make an impact
outside of your regular environment, on people you perceive as the
"public." They're a lot more savvy than you give them credit for,
each person wise in their own way, but every single one of them can
eventually sniff out that which stinks... when first they get a whiff
of it.

Perhaps that what is all the showmanship is about, pretending that the
dissent doesn't amount to an iota, so nobody might be inclined to read
anything -but- opposition to the opposition, when they get an urge to
read on the topic. You have managed to mention creationism in
practically... Every. Single. Post. Its the hook you hope to sell to
your reader - just as you disregard this kind of crank out of hand, so
I disregard the other. Nice narrative, I think I read that story at
least fifty times before, but maybe you could do us a favor and bring
some objectivity to your purported effort to make a review? Think
about the fact that not all of your audience may already agree with
you, and thus not all of your audience disregards the question out of
hand?

Perhaps reviewing some example reviews in scholarly journals will
refresh your memory on how you know they actually get written when
they are published to peer review. Perhaps you could try to write for
your audience and not just the segment nodding their heads. Perhaps
you could try to use your wealth of knowledge, experience, and degree
not as a club, when dealing with the riff-raff, but as a springboard
for writing in a way that is both completely scholarly and also
readable by the people you have specifically chosen to address.

Yes, this is confrontational. Its very genre is confrontational.
It's intentional. While the general tenor of academic debate is
cordial and dignified, the very point I am making here is that this
does not resemble academic debate. More importantly, it does not
adhere to the ideals of such debate that we should want to commit
ourselves in teaching and writing generally.

sincerely,
Peter Kirby

Peter Kirby

I posted this here because of the recent discussion of his blogging and this objection in particular. I put it in a new thread because it may be a significant departure from the other discussion. But let a mod decide.

mountainman

Hi Peter,

Quite an outspoken statement. Not untimely. I agree entirely.
Dr.McGrath does not appear to be engaged in a debate.


Dr.McGrath appears to be engaged in "working the crowd".


Best wishes,


Pete

Toto

McGrath is a registered user here as ReligionProf, but has not been around lately. If you want him to read this, you might want to post it on one of your own blogs, or link to it.

I don't know if anyone will get through to him. I don't think that he is very open about the role that his religious beliefs play in this debate.

Toto

Peter Kirby has posted this on his blog . McGrath's reply is on his blog here.

Neil Godfrey has commented here

It does seem clear to me that McGrath is on some sort of misguided crusade. Why is he so eager to tie mythicism to creationism? Could this be a bit of projection? His own (and GDon's) Christian beliefs could not stand up to the sort of examination that professional skeptics like Michael Shermer use on pseudoscience and fringe beliefs.

Peter Kirby

The thing about NT studies is that there is no pseudoscience, as there is no scientific method involved. There is perhaps pseudoscholarship, but that is not do to the existence of a unified scholarly method, as the guild uses the Ph.D. writing for peer review as the standard for writing scholarship, short of having any real set of rules.

Even this is hard to say, though, because a lot of the debate in this field goes straight to book, skipping the writing of articles altogether. This is especially true of more contentious areas like the historical Jesus.

When the writer is not a Ph.D. and the venue is not an academic journal, it is easy to say it's not scholarship, but this is not to say it couldn't be scholarship. The criteria are all subjective. Bless the writer with a magic piece of paper and put the text in a magic folder and, viola, it suddenly becomes scholarship.

So what is the professor to do with ideas that haven't been through that process? To me, the intelligent thing to do would be to treat even the arguments that have not been submitted by the right person to the right people as if they may one day be through that process. Historically, it is only a matter of time before they do, as writers run out of original topics, and as journals multiply to accommodate different trends in research.

That way, you could have a reply that is more than just browbeating someone for being, possibly, ahead of their time... making your own contribution just that more relevant to investigators. Plus you'll get to show the crowd how real thinking and reasoning in scholarship gets done, thus fulfilling a bit of the academic mission that the university post pays you to do.

GakuseiDon

Peter, you perhaps should have read McGrath's next paragraph. My emphasis below:

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. When someone offers a homeopathic remedy as a solution to an illness, I don't see the need for a defender of mainstream medicine to point out that it is water and staying hydrated is a good thing, and can represent a positive effect of ingesting it. When someone defending mainstream science focuses on the flaws in a book promoting young-earth creationism or Intelligent Design, I won't particularly mind if the one criticizing the work fails to highlight the occasional good point the author made.

As it happens, in chapter 5 of his book, Earl Doherty presents a fair amount of information that is simply mainstream scholarship and perfectly accurate. He provides some information about Judaism in the Hellenistic age and apocalyptic literature that is found in most books on the subject, and although he doesn't give credit to any of them, I assume that Doherty would, if pressed, acknowledge his debt to the work of scholars. But to spend time applauding what he gets right, and which has no real bearing on his mythicist case, only delays the more important point, which is that most of this chapter is attempt at deception, an attempt to get the poorly-informed and uncritical reader to accept a claim based on verses that are quoted, with the hope that they will not be aware of other verses that might leave one with an overall different impression. This is a common tactic of conservative apologists, and no one who understands what mythicism is will be surprised to find that although the case being made differs, the tactics used by mythicists are the same. Both Christian apologists and mythicists attempt to give the impression that they are engaging in a scholarly discussion of evidence, but both ignore or dismiss evidence that contradicts the assumptions of their framework of interpretation.

A case in point...

As McGrath blogs his way through an 800 page book, he is not addressing material which is not in dispute and which in his opinion "has no real bearing on his mythicist case". Whether one thinks McGrath is doing this correctly or not, is this not a reasonable approach?

Peter Kirby

GakuseiDon, you don't obviate the charge of a strawman argument by saying that there are other, inconsequential points that the author gets right. You reply by showing that you have in fact presented the real argument, in the best spirit in which it can be taken... not doing so means you're making your job of rebuttal easier by treating a more-facile version of the argument to which you reply. You're not off the hook by changing the subject to making praise about minor parts the book gets right.

To me, a reviewer has no obligation to make an author look any better than the reviewer thinks he ought to look, but the reviewer who replies to points of argument does have an obligation to uphold the principle of making an accurate representation of the opponent's case. I'd go further and suggest that honest academic inquiry even requires whether one sees a way that the opponent's case could have been more clearly stated (if ambiguous or without information that you know) to be a little stronger. Why? Because we ultimately want the truth here, not to win.

However, some people do just want to win, and one of their regular tricks of trade is summarizing an argument in a way that would appear much weaker than if one read the original argument (which, in most cases, most readers don't do).

judge

what evidence do you have this was done?

Toto

The evidence is from reading McGrath's "review."