Toto

I think that Price is saying in his essay that this is the same process as any new idea faces. Even when there is a possibility of scientific proof or disproof, people tend to cling to familiar ideas, and use political and social influence to maintain the status quo. The process is messy, and usually takes a generation or more to work itself out.

The responsibility of academia, represented by Ehrman, is to engage with ideas, and not to rely on ridicule or cling to the supposed consensus.

GakuseiDon

Yes, I've read that it usually takes for the older generation holding to the old paradigm to die away before the new paradigm can be adopted. If that is consistently the case, then there is something wrong with academia.

Yes, of course. I don't think that anyone disagrees with that, regardless of what side of the fence you are on, historicist or mythicist, global warming proponent or skeptic, creationist or evolutionist. In his article, Price quotes Berger and Luckmann:

The outsiders have to be kept out… If… the subuniverse [of meaning] requires various special privileges and recognitions from the larger society, there is the problem of keeping out the outsiders and at the same time having them acknowledge the legitimacy of this procedure. This is done through various techniques of intimidation, rational and irrational propaganda…, mystification and, generally, the manipulation of prestige symbols.

(Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1967), p. 87.)

My question is: How to put into place a mechanism whereby academia can engage new ideas? Peer review won't work if the intention is to keep outsiders out. New ideas will be rejected before peer review. So, assuming Dr Price is correct, how do we stop a guild-mentality from controlling academia?

GenesisNemesis

Personal pride, as well as arrogance are probably most at fault here. Either people in academia are too prideful of their work to engage new ideas, and/or they are too arrogant to consider new ideas. But what those new ideas consist of is also another matter. Academia appears to be something of a popularity contest, but that is not to say it doesn't have its uses.

GakuseiDon

That's kind of funny. Ehrman has been called "Error man" by evangelicals for a few years now because of his earlier books.

aa5874

What you state cannot be shown to be factual.

Toto

That's beyond the scope of this forum. It would take a revolution in human psychology.

You might think that the problem is compounded when religion or quasi religious ideas are involved, that people will cling to the historical Jesus beyond all reason, well after they would have given up on a dead and useless scientific theory.

But this is not confined to religion. John Maynard Keynes wrote that "even the most practical man of affairs is usually in the thrall of the ideas of some long-dead economist." The wars over fats versus carbohydrates in diets approach a religious fervor.

It's part of being human.

Adam

It works both ways. I have commented here that there seems to be a visceral component to the intensity of the atheism on FRDB, particularly the attachment to MJ. Everyone assumes they can ignore my challenge to the Consensus because....the Consensus has to be accepted? I'm puzzled.

Vorkosigan

I think we're disagreeing on what "testability" means or perhaps confusing testability and falsification. Of course the appearance of certain evidence bears on your theory, but that is not the same as "testing" it. If this were chemistry, we could arrange for element X and Y to be combined to test your theory that they would yield Z. If this were biology, we could impregnate llamas with bactrian camel semen to see whether all camelids were interfertile to test a claim that they split off recently in geological terms. But we can't arrange to find evidence that shows Jesus is mythical, we can only hope that it will show up. In the physical sciences testability and Popperian-style naive falsification are coincident, one basically equals the other. In the social sciences, they are not -- your theory is falsifiable, but it is not testable.

In any case major models in either the social or physical sciences don't stand or fall on single pieces of evidence....

....which means that an unambiguously mythicist document wouldn't change anything.

Vorkosigan

maryhelena

:thumbs:

Well said!

And perhaps necessary to be said...

This historicist verse ahistoricist debate is never going to be 'won' by arguments for a mythical JC. Never.

Sure, arguments for JC historicity are problematic - but that does not give any weight to the mythicist argument for JC. None

Actually, I do find that a lot of this debate is nothing more than a version of Bible thumping i.e. it's all interpretation of the NT literature bouncing off the interpretation of the other side...

If this debate is ever to have a chance of being settled, it will not be via interpretation of the NT literature. The knock down punch has to come from outside that literature. The NT literature, the gospel JC storyboard, has to be set against the relevant history of the Hasmonean and Herodian period. Indeed, even that would, most probably, not be that final knock down. Something has to give - and to my mind, that something is the Josephan writer. It's that writer that holds the key - or more accurately lost the key - to accurate history of the relevant time period. Without Josephus the historicists have no 'evidence' for their assumptions. Thus, it is the Josephan writer that has to be challenged - not the NT storyboard. The NT storyboard is what it is - a fertile field for growing a myriad of theological or philosophical theories. It is the Josephan 'history' that is not what is, what was. It's the Josephan field that has been planted with weeds alongside the grain. History plus pseudo-history.

Bible punching, bible thumping - that's most probably been going on since day one. And where has it go to - nowhere. And, as in the case of the OP, all the blame cannot be placed on the consensus. The ahistoricist/mythicist argument does not have the inherent ability to deliver the knock down punch for the historicists JC. Yes, the JC historicist position cannot be validated - but there is no victory by default in this debate for the mythicists.

aa5874

Your statement is just a massive load of BS. You seem to be completely out of touch with Reality and Mythology.

We have many many recovered Texts that Show Jesus as the Son of a Ghost and God the Creator.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...stament_papyri


Mankind have been INUNDATED by Mythological and Legendary characters probably long BEFORE the time human beings were able to write.

Do you NOT realize that Hundreds, more likely THOUSANDS, of characters have already been considered Mythological or Legendary??

The very Greeks and Romans WORSHIPED Mythological characters as Gods during the SUPPOSED time of a character called Jesus PUBLICLY described as the Son of a Ghost and God the Creator.

Jesus of the NT MATCHES the Myth and Legends of the Greeks and Romans.

It is PERFECTLY reasonable to ARGUE that Jesus of the NT [the Son of a Ghost and God the Creator] is just one of the hundreds of Mythological characters of antiquity.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ympian_deities

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._creatures_(A)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ical_creatures