Zwaarddijk

There's more than that, she misrepresents:
- Nostratic theory rather significantly
- there's two third-hand quote mines regarding later changes to the Bible which you can find documented here, which misrepresent the sources (the one you find deepest in the chain of indirect references) they are using: http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2...gery-mill.html
- she gets the time Christianity reached England wrong by centuries, and this in an attempt to score some rhetorical point. (it seems she gets it wrong because she doesn't realize the anglo-saxons weren't present in England *at the time Christianity arrived there*). Oh well, I guess a scholar of history can't be expected to keep things like that straight.
- Implying that the Yeshu ben Pandera legend of the Toldoth Yeshu tradition was something the Jews made up *after being pressured by the church to do so so as to not deny the historicity of Jesus* - why would the church pressure the Jews into making up a spoof, a parody, a document any Christian of the time would find even more offensive than complete silence on the topic? We know Christian censorship of the Talmud was over-protective of Christianity and wanted every mention of Christianity removed - so greatly that the word 'min', which means 'sect' but also 'kind' had to be replaced by 'pagan'. This funny censorship lead to the phrase 'a pagan bean' (instead of 'a kind of bean') in some instances in the text of the talmud. In light of this hyperprotectionism, Acharya wants us to believe the church pushed the Jews to make up legends about Jesus where he practices dark magic and violates commandments?
- She claims the nag hammadi library says neither Jesus or the apostles were Jews, but in fact explicitly states they were of other ethnic origins. Having read through *ALL THE TEXTS AVAILABLE (in translation, admittedly, but there's no signs Acharya ever goes to the original language anywhere, considering the number of even tertiary sources she uses for LATIN and GREEK church fathers, Greek being, after all, the language she majored in so I guess her not reading Greek sources is entirely reasonable!), I have found no such thing. However, her source is a member of a splinter-group from Jehovah's Witnesses who claim to have one extra scroll - which alas, they claim is lost since the member that had it hid it and then died. VERY CREDIBLE, isn't it? Suffice to say, no scholars take their claim to have an extra, elsewhere unattested scroll seriously (a scroll, by the way, that no non-members ever have seen - sound a lot like Book of Mormon doesn't it? Even less impressive as there isn't a bunch of witnesses having signed a statement as to the veracity of it.)
-

Tell me Robert Tulip, at what point does the amount of distortions, quote-mines, fabrications and faulty logic become a problem - give me a reasonable starting point? Is it ok at one false claim every ten pages? Every seven? Every twenty? Every other page?

Of course the problematic claims I point out don't all create any problem for the main point being made - but even then, if there are a lot of false claims that are irrelevant to the main conclusion, doesn't that create the problem of giving people the wrong idea about a bunch of other stuff - is that a good thing? Wouldn't it be better to read a book that argues for the mythicalness of Jesus or astrotheology without bad logic, quote-mines, fabrications and misrepresentation every few pages???


I think it's the duty of people who know stuff not to let miseducators like Acharya stand uncontested.

Robert Tulip

Zwaarddijk - since you don't provide references, your critique here is unhelpful. I find that when I look at the context you are often misrepresenting, so without context these criticisms can't be addressed.

,
The frustrating thing about this debate is that Acharya S promotes an evidence based approach to religion which is the antithesis of faith-based cult practices. For example, see how a Jehovah’s Witness member (a real cult) was helped to escape this religious blindness by Acharya’s work on the Christ Myth. Cults depend on authority, not reason. Astrotheology is not a cult. Acharya has actually helped people escape from cultic brainwashing.

In a recent discussion, a real former cultist by the name of Neil Godfrey exhibited something of an emotional meltdown regarding the evidence base for astrotheology. That was the website where Zwaarddijk made the cult assertions that he just swore he did not make (using the name Miekko or Sierios – why does he have three pseudonyms? I will call him Z/M/S to address his multiple identities).

Godfrey bizarrely compares Acharya to Herbert W Armstrong, former cult leader of the World Wide Church of God, an entirely faith based magical outfit that has collapsed under the weight of its own idiocy. All very like Ehrman’s (or was it McGrath’s?) silly equation between mythicism and creationism. Religion brings out the funniest comments. Abe, you are just wrong in asserting Acharya’s work is cult-like.

Could the basis for the cult claims be the idea that cults are driven by theory, astrotheology is a theory, and therefore astrotheology is a cult? Such association is fallacious. The question at issue is the quality of the theory. An accepted theory is never called a cult except by the ignorant (eg evolution). I am not suggesting astrotheology has the scientific standing of evolution, but nor is it readily debunked either, as seen in the weak arguments in this thread.

Calling astrotheology a cult is just a way of expressing dislike for the topic. I regard the theory behind astrotheology as sound, especially around precession of the equinox as a framework for mythology. But instead of engaging on theory, we see Mr Z/M/S vainly impugning the quality of Acharya’s research (and finding some small errors, such as one footnote out of forty pages that was incorrect).

In long books dealing with controversial topics written without any help there are bound to be gaps and mistakes. The question is how readers respond. They can either go ‘gotcha you are a creationist after all, gnash your teeth in the outer darkness’ (the McGrath approach), or engage in civil dialogue. The former approach smacks of religious bigotry, whose motives can only be guessed at. It is rather like evangelists who cite the Letter from John to say anyone who questions the historical Jesus is an antichrist. Such language is mere rhetoric, without content.

And here is a prime example of baseless rhetoric:Spin has been quick to jump on the Mr Z/M/S baseless bandwagon regarding Polynesia, and this is a useful case study regarding fallacious and malicious method in argument. Does Acharya insist, contrary to evidence, that Polynesia was settled in the Pleistocene? No, she does not. Her reference (why do I feel I am banging my head against a brick wall?) is to the fact that Polynesian people colonised Melanesian islands in the Pleistocene, rather like saying “peoples of Britain colonized parts of Germany before invading Britain.”

In the chapter in question (in her 1999 book The Christ Conspiracy) she states “the further we delve back in time, naturally, the more difficult it is to discover solid ground and the more speculative is the discussion.” (CC p 391). Perhaps spin missed this massive caveat, which indicates that her quotation of Churchward is not an endorsement, but rather a pointer to the complexity of such topics. All this material in this highly speculative chapter is aimed to start discussion, not to provide definitive conclusions. Spin, like Z/M/S, is engaged in nothing but shameful cherry-picking, taking quotes out of context to prosecute a baseless agenda of closing down discussion.

I noted earlier in this thread the tired ranting about Atlantis that Acharya-debunkers engage in, without interest in her actual views. Spin has shown very predictable form in vaguely implying some discussion of lost continents. The two indexed mentions of Atlantis in CC describe it merely as a scenario about Noah, and a story about Enoch, of whom Murdock says he “was not a historical character.” Mu does not appear in the index of CC, so we can only wonder why spin mentions it.

ApostateAbe

Don't misunderstand. I don't think astrotheology is a cult. I think Acharya S's small online circle is a cult. And of course Acharya S is the leading authority of that cult. It may be the case that Acharya S's literature deconverts people from Christianity or other cults--I have actually seen it happen myself--and that is generally what effective cults do. Heck, everything Acharya S could be perfectly correct, and she may still qualify as the leader of a cult. Cult leaders take advantage of adherents by telling adherents things they already believe or want to believe. Many things make a cult, but the central thing is an authority figure who exercises excessive control over the minds of adherents. Like I suggested, a good exercise is to make yourself acquainted and comfortable with something wrong Acharya S has claimed that you yourself disagree with.

Horatio Parker

Bernal made a valid point about the prejudices of the academy towards ancient Greece, but it doesn't follow that all academic criticisms are motivated by prejudice.

For my part, I think astrotheology has a point, but I don't think it's a religious one. It's a scientific one, or what passed for science in ancient days. Whatever the beliefs or gods of the ancients, astronomy was the province of the divine. We don't have Christian gravity, we have gravity. Such things are not the province of faith. I suspect the divinity of the stars were not either(well maybe for the Epicureans).

spin

I'm sorry, if you don't like my posting on the Polynesia mess. I thought it better to keep the discussion narrow, rather than looking at the rest of the pastiche, which would open up such a can of ugly worms that one would wonder about the critical facilities of her readers, (Do you want for example to talk of her speculations about baalim & adonai or her naive use of Wellhausen's analysis of the torah sources or her belief that the author of "Ezra" stems from 586-538 BCE?? This is the sort of stuff we deal with here.)

I appreciate that you have no comeback other than the claim of cherrypicking, but the advocacy I've italicized above is an admission that part of the book is "highly speculative". If you can admit that, how do you know what is not highly speculative in the book? You have no yardstick. (This leads to a reflection on your sorely lacking epistemology, not necessarily hers.)

I have no interest in lost continents, nor do I impute anything about them to AS. Your reading skills are failing you. They are just lurking there in her sources. Lost continents are not a reflection of her, but of her abysmal choice of sources.

Umm, she cites Churchwood. Nobody in their modern minds would cite Churchwood on the subject of Pacific colonization if they are interested in scholarship and accuracy, so it is worthwhile mentioning what Churchwood had passing through his head. Mu is not significant other than to show where the head of one of her sources was at, ie utter nutter speculation. It is Churchwood--cited by AS--and not a modern scholar in the field, who states that "the Polynesians... have been shut in from the rest of the world for over 12,000 years". Notice that 12,000 "years"? This is while talking about the Marquesas which weren't colonized for another several thousand years. It's a quagmire of confusion.

Immediately before the wildly inappropriate Churchwood reference we find a brief mention of the Island of Bowditch, which hadn't been called that for a very long time. The island of Fakaofo in the central Pacific is way out of the "12,000 years" zone. Maybe she cited Christianity Before Christ (Jackson, John G., American Atheists, 1985) on the subject of Bowditch because it was a relatively modern source rather than say J.G.Frazer, who mentions the issue way back in 1918 in Folk-lore in the Old Testament. AS's intentions are clear. She is just not interested in the dating of the colonization of the Pacific: she picks and chooses snippets to support her conclusions and is not interested in getting any facts straight. It's left for her apologists to clean up.

Whatever the case AS's bibliography looks predominantly like a New Age bookshop's shelves: Zecharia Sitchin, Rudolf Steiner, Blavatsky, Baigent & Leigh, Graham Hancock, Churchwood--I mean, really! One cute source listed is Edward Carpenter, a jack of many trades. He wrote a speculative book on sexuality which Marie Stopes used when writing Married Love. Yet AS cites him sounding forth on Jesus. May as well cite Freud on Moses. There are very few arguably scholar works in this bibliography, which is usually a sign of the ill-informedness of the author. What's wrong with a subscription to jstor?

Zwaarddijk

Robert Tulip,
I have repeatedly referred you to the blog; the various problems I have mentioned are documented there, and more are added semi-regularly, it would be easier for me if you responded in the comments section there, and read the stuff I write there. I will probably get around to documenting a bunch tomorrow as well.


- an unsubstantiated (AND FALSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) claim about the Nag Hammadi library's content ( http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2...chapter-6.html )

As for the other ones I mentioned, you have:
- failure to get the century during which Christianity arrived in England right
(http://somerationalism.blogspot.fi/2...ction-and.html , in the same chapter, she uses a very wide definition for "religious Jew", and even attributes things to Paul that aren't even in letters attributed to him to show what a terrible person he was; she also presents another false claim about etymologies)

The others will be dealt with in due time.

Happy with the references? Considering how much effort goes into checking each and every bullshit claim of her, I think it ok that you have to read through post-long stuff (no, you don't have to - you actually have the benefit of ctrl-f, which does not work with paper books.)

ApostateAbe

I went to Acharya S's forum, and, as expected, Freethinkaluva recently posted in that forum a harsh denunciation of the point made in this forum that Acharya S leads an online cult.
There is at least one good thing in this. The checklist of cult characteristics by Janja Lalich is very useful for making sense of dangerous cults, and I recommend it.

Zwaarddijk

Anyone care to bet whether Robert Tulip now will ignore me for a while, only later to claim that I never gave any references to where the claims were so he couldn't check them?

ApostateAbe

Everyone has the tendency to treat opposing ideologues as the enemy in need of a loudspeaker of facts and logic to their ears, but of course a loudspeaker of facts and logic is useless against entrenched doctrines. I think we are better to think of them as victims, because sometimes it isn't their fault. With the posse of Acharya S, that should be easy, because they share the patterns that make the external indoctrination evident.

ApostateAbe

Here is a follow-up thought from Tat Tvam Asi in Acharya S's forum, who, unlike Freethinkaluva, identifies me by username in his or her denunciation.