Toto

The paradigm police

GakuseiDon

If we are talking about the value of scholarly consensus generally, then I kind of agree. We have the example of the health effects of tobacco, where for years "studies" showed no causal link between smoking and cancer. Here is a commercial for Camels cigarettes, where "more doctors choose Camels than any other cigarette"

Interestingly, Price also sees the same thing happening on global climate change. On his Jan 16. 2010 Bible Geek podcast, he talks on how current views are at the mercy of an "ideological, indeed cultic, motivation". Price said:

I am just suspicious of it [global warming], which is all I claim. I’m not a global warming denier. It just seems to me suspicious partly because we used to hear about global cooling and the dawning of a new ice age, and that was put to ideological use, as was the nuclear winter hoax.

Also the fact that there’s been this disclosure of these emails that show these experts were doctoring the evidence, suppressing other people’s views, with journal editors and positions up for grabs in institutions. This sounds to me like the phony science slight of hand characteristic of the creationists...

And certainly though one can point to capitalists and those who like free enterprise and say they might have a bias against it -- meaning global warming -- no one can deny there is an ideological, indeed cultic, motivation for people to favor the global warming doctrine.

I am in no way convinced that global warming deserves that status [being called "science"] or that the debate is over, as people say to try to choke it off, a classic instance of saying something descriptive when you mean something prescriptive. So I am very doubtful about it, but again I will not deny it since I don’t have enough of the facts, but I doubt that anyone does. I cannot believe there’s been sufficient data for long enough to be able to predict these big changes.

If it turns out that there is global warming, I don't care, but I'm with you; the best thing to do would be not to return us to the Stone Age, with no transportation anymore, in order to stave off a fraction of a degree's warming in a hundred years that would be stupid but since it is that means to me it's all the same ideologically. It's even if you found out there was global warming the logical position would be your own, that it's just not feasible to try to turn back the clock; you'd just have to learn to live with it somehow.

So I'm very suspicious of it, but that's all I'll say. There might be global warming, I will not live long enough to know.

Personally I'd like to know now, so that we can start planning now! But Price does highlight a valid point with the problem of scholarly consensus where we are dealing with probabilities rather than certainty. (Price contrasts this with the solidly established science behind evolution, for example). How should the academia that supports the value of scholarly consensus in a field deal with new ideas that challenge it? It's not an issue with only mythicism, but any new idea that supports paradigm shift. What are the responsibilities on academia? What are the responsibilities on the people pushing for paradigm change?

Toto

Don, your post is really annoying, and off topic. Robert Price has some political and social views I find strange, but he doesn't claim to have any sort of expertise on those issues. In particular he doesn't claim any expertise on global warming.

He does have some expertise on New Testament issues. Please confine your comments to the subject matter of this forum.

And as far as I know, there have never been any studies that showed no ill effects of tobacco. There were just corrupt advertisements.

GakuseiDon

Toto, Price isn't talking about political or social views, but science. He is talking about how mainstream academia can be held hostage by "an ideological, indeed cultic, motivation". I think we all recognise that this is a possibility in a number of areas, including Jesus historicism. As Price states:

The new theorist must run the gauntlet, because his theory must be able to prove itself. For the scientific establishment to jump on the bandwagon at once would be to jump the gun. The theorist will (or should) be only too happy to submit his theory to exhaustive scrutiny... Isn’t that the essence of scientific method?

I think many mainstream academic positions are entrenched ones. There are reputations on the line, jobs that are threatened, that make it hard to go against the prevailing paradigm. So I think his points are accurate. How does the new theorist run the gauntlet, and what is the responsibility on academia to review their own theories in light of the new evidence?

hjalti

My 2 cents:

What always makes me suspect that Price and Carrier might be modern day Wegeners are facts like N.T. Wright being head of the historical Jesus section of the SBL. We're talking about the guy who was unwilling to admit that the "zombie apocalypse 33CE" was a legend. When guys like that are not only tolerated, but championed, then the "consensus" must be crazy.

I mean, can you imagine Ken Ham being the chair of the "National Biologist Convention"?

Vorkosigan

Price makes the same error that Ehrman does, ironically. Models in the social sciences and hard sciences are not the same and the theory process cannot be compared. The assertion that humans drive global warming is amenable to testing; the assertion that Jesus did not exist is not amenable to testing. Historical models are essentially untestable and gain adherents through their perceived explanatory power as well as a social and political processes. We are neither Velikovsky nor Wegener. Rather, the debate between mythicists and historicists resembles the debates in economics between monetarists and other economists -- except that the historicist side enjoys massive social and political hegemonic power that is hard to challenge.

If it were merely a matter of evidence and methodology, the debate would resemble the inter-atheist debate on Jesus' existence, with a wide variety of positions all held in relatively evenly. In other words, if you want to see what the Jesus position would look like if it didn't have hegemonic power behind it, look what the non-Christians say. And they are split in rich ways.

Vorkosigan

Mandelbrot

And our favorite tax dodger as Vice Chairman (with his boyfriend Bubba), Dr. Dino himself - Kent Hovind.

tanya

:notworthy:

Excellent post.

:thumbs:

EarlDoherty

I would have to partly qualify that. If statements that can be read within the texts themselves can be parsed to point in a specific, pretty clear direction, namely that an earthly Jesus did not exist, then we have a good degree of 'amenability'. I regard Hebrews 8:4 as one such statement (I devote several pages to it in JNGNM which no one has ever attempted to refute), as well as various passim remarks found consistently throughout multiple documents.

Just as theoretically if we unearthed a document which spelled out in no uncertain terms that Jesus was not an historical human being, that would make the theory 'testable.' To some extent, I regard the non-gospel record as almost equivalent to such a discovery. And when you read historicist scholars like Ehrman 'parsing' those elements of the epistle texts to make them say things which they clearly do not, including those which are clearly ambiguous, you know that virtually nothing but fallacy and authority can be used against them.

Earl Doherty

Diogenes the Cynic

Price is repeating an old canard when he says there used to be any scientific belief in global cooling or a coming ice age. That is a right wing myth.

I like Price and listen to his podcasts (he even answered one of my questions a couple of weeks ago), but his political views are out to lunch.

Incidentally, he said on his podcast yesterday that he's writing a response to Ehrman's DJE? and that the title will be Errorman. He said Ehrman is as bad as JP Holding, which is about as bad an insult as I can think of for calling an NT scholar.