Ecrasez L'infame

There's no reason why there shouldn't be many types of fringe theories - say, divided into those which might be true but according to the consensus just happen not to be, and those which couldn't in a million years be true. We might even suppose a whole spectrum of fringe theories, ranging from (say) Icke's Lizards at the impossible end to (say) Eisenman's James of Jesus at the maybe-and-interesting end (I just know, someone's gonna bawl me out, saying the latter is no more plausible than the former). But it's still perplexing. There was a thread here recently by Larsguy which proposed an alternative chronology for the C4th back, and I read it, and I thought this guy has graphs and eclipse charts and is very very good at arithmetic, and his writing style is good, and I was really quite convinced. Then I read some of the replies, and, well, maybe not after all. What's a person to do? See, like everyone here, I think these issues are important - so I did my best, struggled with the dates and the evidence, trying to work it out - and that's all we can do: our best. It's futile - there's too much to know - but that's the only way through the overgrowth.

BTW - if I had to place MJ on this spectrum, I'd say it's about where cold fusion is in physics - a long way from orthodoxy, supported by a small number of brilliant outsiders, and with the consensus well aware of it but studiously ignoring it. In short, probably wrong, but if so, wrong for very interesting and fertile reasons. Creationism, on the other hand, is Lizardland.

Thanks for helping me with this.

Robert

youngalexander

Indeedy!

I became slightly hot under the collar at the mention of cold fusion (being a physicist and all). Even prepared the devastating reply. Then I had a bit of a think - always useful. Decided that you had given a reasonable analogy, given the degree of bilge which passes for MJ argument here.

I disagree however, the balance of probabilities are for MJ.

Chris Weimer

I'm surprised, with you being a physicist and getting so upset when someone mentions cold fusion, yet don't bat an eye to mention the Mythical Jesus hypothesis and assume you, who being not a Biblical scholar, can have the gall to say the "balance of probabilities" favor it.

It's hypocrisy to the worst degree.

Malachi151

It's only hypocrisy if you consider Biblical scholars on an equal level with physicists. Obviously he doesn't, and neither do I.

As I've said many times, the majority of the fruitcakes are the ones who believe that Jesus existed, which puts the HJ school in a hard position, because you have to admit that most people who believe in HJ are wrong in their beliefs.

Jack the Bodiless

"Cold fusion" is a testable claim which has been tested by many people, who have failed to reproduce the effect. It also appears to violate the laws of physics, as we understand them.

The MJ position is not remotely comparable.

Malachi151

I was asking for a website so that we could link to it in this tread to make some assessment of the claims and their quality.

We have the arguments for MJ laid out in several places, my article provides a clear list:

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/ar...th_history.htm

Can you provided what you think is the reasonable information that supports the HJ view? I want you to provide the source so you can't claim that we are picking a poor source.

Chris Weimer

There are quite a few "fruitcakes" who believe in evolution. Worse than that - there are many more fruitcakes who believe in mythicism as well. Does that mean that both positions are automatically wrong?

GakuseiDon

I've used the "MJ is the equivalent to ID" analogy before also, but it isn't really related to the equivalent strengths of their cases. IMO the evidence for a HJ is so small that it should be questioned, and I have no problems with that.

Where the analogy makes sense, however, is the attitude of proponents. How often do you see the comment, "I don't agree with everything Doherty writes, but..." But what are the disagreements? Where are the Doherty supporters who are looking into Doherty's work to test it one way or the other? Where are the reviews of his work by supporters? I can only think of one, Richard Carrier's, and even he came away with disagreements. Doherty even had an article published in a journal dedicated to questioning the status quo in academia, and as far as I know, the interest generated from this was zero.

To those supporters who don't agree with everything that Doherty claims, can you tell me where Doherty is wrong?

Any discussion of Doherty quickly starts to revolve around how "Paul doesn't refer to the Gospel Jesus". And that is where the truth in the analogy sits: Creationists aren't so much interested in reviewing their work in order to present the best case possible for Creationism, they seem far more interested in disproving evolution.

I've seen good threads started by Ben C Smith, krosero and others that actually investigate the data underlining some of Doherty's points. Those threads raise some potentially substantial problems for Doherty mythicism... and they just die. Mythicists don't respond. Or they turn back to "But Paul doesn't refer to the Gospel Jesus".

At some stage, Doherty supporters will have to actually start investigating Doherty's ideas rather than just repeating them and/or sitting behind "But Paul doesn't refer to the Gospel Jesus". If that kind of investigation has been done, I haven't seen any evidence of it.

Malachi151

I don't deny that, but seeing as how there are some 2 or 3 billion believing Christians in the world (I think), and that most of those people hold to beliefs in heaven and hell and all kinds of other supernatural nonsense, and that most Christians accept the Gospels as basically true and are generally uncritical, you have to admit that the portion of people who hold what you believe is an intellectually justified belief that Jesus existed is less than 1% of the people who believe that Jesus existed.

On the other hand, I doubt that anyone would say that less than 1% of the people who accept biological evolution are intellectually justified in doing so.

The truly respectable HJ "scholars" are a thin crust of some few hundred people at best, or would you disagree?

Gooch's dad

I also agree with the OP, for the reason given above--that MJ'ers seem completely unable to get their views published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals.

And when Doherty comes to IIDB and accuses atheist posters who defend a HJ of being "apologists", he loses pretty much all credibility as an unbiased scholar.

Why can't Doherty (or any other MJ proponent) get his views published in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal? Why does his pop-press book get accolades, and Behe's gets scorn?