Iskander

What are you trying to say?

spin

Training gives you a context and a how to do things. Belief gives you a what to hold as significant. The how to do things can still function regardless of the what you choose to hold significant. Your training can itself become systemic.

Iskander

Thank you. I am not trying to be awkward but on the contrary this should be considered as a compliment to you.

How could anyone repudiate training if you define training as the how to do things?

spin

I don't understand what interests you here. Isn't training specifically about learning means of doing things in a specific field?

Isn't the reason Ehrman is in the field of religious studies after losing his religion a matter of using his expertise? This is what he knows how to do.

Iskander

Yes, he is still working in the field for which he was trained, but he is using his honesty and skill to say something different.


He is an honest and skilful academic and I am glad you agree with this

mountainman

Have you even had a cursory examination of my ideas and notes?


Do you mean to say that you are able to gauge scholarly research by how close the views are to the mainstream view?

gurugeorge

As I explained to you, that wasn't the point. The point is that if a consensus is so obvious and clear and established, and a critic's criticisms so misbegotten, then it ought to be the work of half an hour to easily form a strong argument against a critic. That's how evolutionists roll wrt to creationists, for example.

Since that hasn't actually happened wrt to historicism vs. mythicism, yet historicists believe that "someone else in the past did it" (or something to that effect), then that's demonstrative of a kind of intellectual sleepiness that's characteristic of a hegemony situation. The ramparts are set up even though nobody knows why they're setting up ramparts. It's an automatic response to diss mythicism, even though historicist have yet to put up any argument against mythicism that isn't itself open to strong doubt.

The fact that a non-biblical historian like Grant participates in the same general sleepiness just shows how pervasive the hegemony is.

It's all about not rocking the boat.

Were mythicism purely a crank idea, then there would be no need to respond, but mythicism is merely a fringe idea, that's been held by quite a few thinkers who are not obvious idiots. That requires a response. But no response has been forthcoming. (Until Ehrman - his is actually the first attempt that's even semi-serious. I haven't read it yet so can't properly comment, but judging by excerpts and critiques I've seen, it's not looking good - looks like more non-boat-rocking.)

J-D

Just because an idea has been clearly demonstrated to be wrong it doesn't necessarily follow that the demonstration is easy. Sometimes powerful demonstrations of error are difficult to find, difficult to explain, and difficult to follow. Also, sometimes people cling to errors tenaciously in the face of demonstrations of their error, and often one of their techniques for doing so is something I mentioned earlier, obstinate avoidance of clarification.

'The experts haven't proved this is wrong' is exactly the sort of thing cranks say.

Toto

That might be true theoretically, but it is not the case here. There is no powerful demonstration of the error of mythicism. There is no well thought out consensus of scholars that has emerged from a rigorous process of challenging ideas and refining them in the face of criticism.

Charging critics with being cranks is exactly the sort of thing that Christian apologists say when they can't came up with a good argument.

LegionOnomaMoi

So say mythicists. But even if this is true, again, it doesn't a hegemony make. The kind of phenomenon that so many posters in this thread have referred to is of a different sort. When you have a group of experts who all hold basic assumptions which they don't challenge, and employ unsound methods, relying on the validation of others in the field who employ the same methods, and they find arguments against their assumptions and methods faulty, you have what Kuhn and his followers described: a paradigm in which all evidence is explained through a shared set of assumptions, epistemology, etc., and counter-evidence is dismissed or somehow made to fit within the model.

Hegemony involves qualitatively different mechanisms.