A Suggestion for Neil Godfrey

Photo credit: sxc.hu

Neil Godfrey has written an interesting blog post about the inspiring story of Jack Andraka, a 16 year old high school student who, with a bit of help from Google, Wikipedia, and some open access journals, has developed a revolutionary new test for pancreatic cancer.

Andraka wrote to 200 established scientists asking for the help he needed to put his theory to the test. 199 politely declined, but one scientist, Anirban Maitra, a Professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, offered Andraka assistance, in the form of lab access and the support of a postdoctoral chemist.

Neil questions whether Andraka would have been taken seriously if his area of interest were Biblical Studies, rather than medicine. He writes: 

The ideological nature of [Biblical Studies] will never allow it… Andraka the Bible student would be scoffed at as not having qualifications, not having published, not being a “real Scholar”. And the one out of 200 who might be sympathetic to his views would probably have to remain silent for fear of ridicule and security of tenure. 

Now, having studied Religious Studies at degree level, having no job in academia protect or religious beliefs to defend, I have to say that I disagree with Neil’s assessment of Biblical Studies. However, I think that the story of Jack Andraka suggests a way of objectively testing Neil’s claims about Biblical Studies, and what's more, I’d be more than happy to work with Neil to do this.

Overall, it seems that Neil is offering a hypothesis about Biblical Studies, which is:

A) A proposal from a non-scholar requesting assistance from Bible scholars would receive a more negative response than the proposal from Jack Andraka. Therefore:

B) Biblical Studies is more ideological than the sciences.

I think that we could design a straightforward experiment that would test whether statement A is true, and as a consequence establish the validity of statement B. The experiment would work something like this:

1. We know that Jack Andraka received a positive response rate of 0.5% (one positive response out of two hundred requests), so an equivalent request to Bible scholars should be receive a lower response rate, assuming that statement A is true.
2. We could agree upon and outline an idea that we think has some merit and that might improve Biblical Studies in some regard. 
3. We would then contact 200 established Bible scholars, requesting as non-scholars some form of assistance necessary to develop our idea (e.g. translating a particular passage, help learning a language, access to a particular text or artefact.)
4. We would then compare the positive response rate of Bible scholars with the positive response rate that Andraka received (0.5%).
5. If our experiment resulted in a lower positive response rate from Bible Scholars than Andraka received (i.e. below 0.5%), then statement A would be proven and I think we would have good grounds to think that, by implication, statement B is likewise true. Conversely if the positive response rate were equal to or greater than 0.5%, then statement A would be false, and we would likewise have good grounds to doubt the truth of statement B.

Neil rightly points out that most theories or claims within Biblical Studies claims are not capable of empirical testing in quite the same way as scientific theories (which would equally apply most Arts/Humanities subjects). However, since we’re interested in how scholars respond to novel ideas from non-scholars, rather than the truth of those ideas, this wouldn’t really matter to the experiment I’ve suggested above. 

Of course, I’d welcome any suggestions to revise or improve my proposed experiment: Agreeing on an idea that we both think is worth investigating might prove tricky, as might establishing in advance what counts as a “positive response”. The way I’ve formulated Neil’s hypothesis in statement B might not quite reflect Neil’s actual argument, and need a bit of refining. We’d also need to check that the figure of 1 out of 200 scientists offering help is true rather than a piece of journalistic exaggeration. However, I don’t think that any of these issues are insurmountable with a bit of good will on both sides.

So how about it Neil?

Tom Holland on the Evidence for Jesus and Muhammad

Photo: Wikipedia

One problem with mythicism is that while mythicists  love to claim that the evidence for Jesus' existence is weak, if you actually take the time to compare the sources we have on Jesus to those we have for comparable historical figures such Muhammad or the Buddha, it's hard to escape the conclusion that the evidence for Jesus as is at least as good, if not better.

One person who is well equipped to make such a comparison is journalist and historian Tom Holland, who has written extensively about the ancient world and the origins of Islam.

In this interview on Australian radio, Holland (who says he is sure that Muhammad existed) points out that:

The gospels you have in the New Testament are actually much closer in time to the life of Jesus than the earliest biography of Muhammad is to the life of the prophet.

Holland goes on to say:

Jesus is elusive, but in a way you'd expect him to be, because he's a criminal in an obscure corner of the Roman Empire, so in a sense it's amazing that we have anything about him at all. We have Paul's letters, which start to be written within twenty years probably of the crucifixion, and Paul clearly thinks that Jesus existed. So in a sense, the evidence for Jesus is kind of stronger than for Muhammad.

 Many thanks to Neil Godfrey for drawing my attention to this.

So Shakespeare Scholars Also Have Weird Theories To Deal With..

Nice article here on the BBC about claims that William Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him, and attempts by mainstream scholars to debunk such views.

[W]hat has stirred Prof Wells, who has edited the Oxford Shakespeare for 35 years, is his worry that this question about Shakespeare's authentic authorship seems to be entering the mainstream.

"What's annoying is that it's spreading," he says.

A Declaration of Reasonable Doubt About the Identity of William Shakespeare has gathered prominent signatories, with the claim that there is insufficient unambiguous evidence to link the man from Stratford and the plays attributed to his name.

And a movie, Anonymous, fanned the embers of the idea that the Earl of Oxford was the true author.

Prof Wells, like one of Shakespeare's own grey-haired faithful retainers, has gone into battle once again.

"It's quite true that we don't know as much as we would like to know about Shakespeare. However, we do know more about him than most writers of his period."

Demolishing rival claims is much more straightforward than standing up Shakespeare's.

Sound familiar?

TalkHistoricity Draft - What is Mythicism?

Some time ago, James McGrath of the Exploring our Matrix blog set up TalkHistoricity, a wiki intended to set out mainstream scholarly views on the historical Jesus and rebut mythicist claims about Jesus. 

Not much has happened with the wiki since it was set up, so I've decided to add a few entries myself in the hope that it will stimulate others too add their own contributions. 

To get started, I've written a draft "introduction to mythicism" type entry, adapted from an earlier post I wrote on the subject. If you have any suggestions for corrections, additions, or stylistic improvements please make them below. Otherwise, I'll upload the entry to the wiki in a few days. Once I've done that, I hope to follow up with an entry on mythicists' (mis)use of the argument from silence.

***** 

If you look at the Wikipedia entry for Jesus, and compare it to the entries for other figures such as Julius Caesar, Socrates, or Pythagoras, you might, if you read carefully, notice something interesting: there is a section devoted to the question of Jesus’ existence, and to the “mythical view”, that Jesus did not exist. In fact, there is a separate, and fairly extensive, wiki page devoted to the topic. But there is nothing similar for Caesar, Socrates, or Pythagoras: their existence does not appear to be in doubt. So is the existence of Jesus less certain than that of these historical figures?

There is a group of people who say that it is. These people are most commonly known as mythicists. Mythicists claim that there is no single historical person who lies behind the New Testament figure of Jesus. For mythicists, the figure of Jesus is nothing more than a religious or literary invention of early Christians. 

The arguments that mythicists make and the conclusions that mythicists reach are rejected by the overwhelming majority of scholars. That is, virtually all scholars of antiquity or the Bible agree that Jesus existed. Figures such as James McGrath, R. Joseph Hoffmann, Bart Ehrman, Maurice Casey, Stephanie Louise Fisher, and Larry Hurtado and have written extensive criticisms of mythicism. However, despite a lack of scholarly support, mythicist views have gained a certain degree of popularity,  particularly on the internet and among atheist activists. 

As evidence for their views, mythicists put forward a range of arguments, including unreliability of the Christian New Testament as a historical source, the relative lack of ancient references to Jesus from non-Christian sources, similarities between the figure of Jesus and characters of Pagan and Jewish mythology, and to perceived bias or incompetence among New Testament scholars.

The purpose of this wiki is to show how and why mythicist claims about Jesus, Christian origins, and New Testament scholarship are wrong. Rebutting mythicist claims is not the same as arguing for particular Christian beliefs about Jesus, such as that he was the Messiah or the pre-existent second person of the Trinity. Thus the purpose of this wiki is not Christian apologetics but instead to show why mainstream Biblical scholars reject mythicist claims about Jesus. Many Biblical scholars are of course Christians, but many others are Jewish, agnostic, or atheist.

 

A seperate wiki has been set up to set out the "positive" case for the existence of Jesus.

 

Confessions of a Denialist

A couple of days ago on Exploring Our Matrix (a blog I thoroughly recommend for RS students), James McGrath compared Jesus mythicists with those who spin conspiracy theories around the recent shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. McGrath took a bit of a pasting from some commenters on his blog, who found the comparison offensive.

I have mixed feelings about McGrath’s post. Upon reflection, I think McGrath was wrong to use the tragedy to score a cheap point in an academic debate. However, I do I think McGrath’s argument is a valid one: some of the reasoning employed by mythicists could equally be (and indeed is) used to justify all sorts of marginal theories, including thoroughly unpleasant positions such as 9/11 trutherism and holocaust denial. At the same time, I think it needs to be made clear that pointing out that (for example) holocaust deniers and mythicists employ similar arguments, or that the two movements share other characteristics, does not imply that there is any moral equivalence between these positions.

I thought it might be useful then, to make a comparison between mythicism and a different form of denialism, one where I actually sympathise with the ideology that underpins it. As it happens, I think I’m in a reasonable place to be able to do this because something has recently dawned upon me: I used to be a denialist.

Let me explain. Some of you might know that I’m a vegetarian. These days I’m a fairly sloppy sort of vegetarian: I wear leather shoes, I don’t obsessively check food labels for suspect ingredients, and I occasionally enjoy the odd pint of bitter, even though it might contain extract of fish bladder. In my younger days though, I took it all much more seriously. I kept a strict vegan diet, pitched up at animal rights demos, and saved up my pennies to buy vegetarian DMs. Thinking back, I’m amazed that my friends and family put up with me for as long as they did, I must have been a terrible bore…

Like many vegetarians, I became interested the debate about the legitimacy of vivisection, the use of animals in medical experiments. In particular, I held a view, common among people who hold strong beliefs about animal rights, that scientific experiments on animals are not only morally unjustifiable, but also scientifically flawed.

A few days ago, I read an interesting blog post on some of the tactics used by denialists and noticed that the author listed the anti-vivisection movement as an example of denialism. And of course he was spot on. I’d never really thought about it before but there it was: I used to be a denialist. 

As with other forms of denialism, the position of anti-vivisection campaigners is completely opposed to the consensus position among medical researchers (i.e. that animals offer the best model of the human body when testing new medicines or procedures). As with other forms of denialism, anti-vivisectionists tend to focus on the problems with the scientific case for animal experiments (such as the case of thalidomide, where animal experiments failed to identify a risk to unborn children). As with other forms of denialism, prominent anti-vivisection authors often (though not invariably) lack relevant qualifications and expertise. As with other forms of denialism, these authors tend to appeal directly to the general public rather than participating in genuine academic discussion (via self-published books and leaflets; we didn’t have the internet in my day).

And as with other forms of denialism, anti-vivisectionists tend to share a strong ideology that is obviously closely related to the debated issue. So just as holocaust deniers are usually characterised by anti-semitic views, and mythicists tend to share a militant form of atheism, anti-vivisectionists almost invariably share a strong commitment to animal rights.

One of my students once asked me whether I thought that denialists arrive at their views on the basis of their ideology and then manipulate the evidence to support their views, or whether it was more likely that their ideology predisposed them to look at the evidence in a particular way, such that they arrived at a conclusion that supported the ideology. It’s an excellent question, and the answer is, I think, a little bit of both.

Of course, denialists reject the idea that ideology has anything to do with their views on the issue being debated, and in a sense I think they’re telling the truth. Certainly I genuinely thought that animal experiments were scientifically flawed, and I could have given you plenty of evidence why that was the case. I’d say I was pretty good at debating with people on the topic, even people with more obvious qualifications than mine.

What I think what is happening here is that a set of ideological beliefs is predisposing the denialist to interpret the evidence that favours their existing beliefs. However, once this has happened, I think perhaps this reading of the evidence strengthens the initial ideology. Once the evidence (or at least your reading of it) has persuaded you that animal experiments aren’t even good science, wouldn’t that make you more convinced that you were right in the first place that animals are misused by scientists? Similarly, once the evidence has persuaded you that the holocaust is a hoax arising out of a Jewish conspiracy, wouldn’t that confirm your anti-semitic worldview? And when the evidence has persuaded you that Jesus didn’t even exist, wouldn’t that make you more convinced that religion is a lie? And so, as the ideology is reinforced, a denialist’s reading of the evidence becomes ever more biased, and the ideology becomes more and more confirmed – a denialicious circle.

That’s why I think it’s almost impossible to confront almost any form of denialism on the basis of the evidence. Actually, I’ll clarify that: mainstream historians and scientists should certainly address the flaws and errors in the arguments of denialists, but it’s as well to recognise that you’re not going to change a denialist’s mind merely by pointing out that their reading of the evidence is wrong. Denialists will either ignore or gainsay any evidence that you put forward.

I suspect that the only way that most denialists will change their minds is by coming to see that there is something wrong with the underlying ideology, or at least that things are not quite as black and white as they appear. Certainly, nobody ever persuaded me on evidence grounds that I was wrong about vivisection. Actually I could still put up a pretty good fight in a debate if you feel like a row about it.  What happened was that as time passed I gradually became less vegangelical. I lapsed to being a regular vegetarian, stopped reading animal rights literature, and generally found other things to think about. As that happened, I think that gave me the intellectual space to re-think my perspectives.

So today, while I’m still uncomfortable with the idea of vivisection, I’ve come to accept that they are scientifically valid. It would be convenient for me if they weren’t, but they are. Perhaps a necessary part of becoming a mature thinking person is realising that the world does not always arrange itself to suit our beliefs.

Questions on Mythicism and Denial Movements

A big thank you to those of you who participated in my Virtually University sessions on Mythicism and the question of Jesus’ existence. From talking to other teachers, I wonder if my class was more a chat about some stuff I find interesting than a proper university style lecture, but hey - it was more fun than teaching the ontological argument.

I was really impressed by the quality of some of the thinking and the questions you raised, and pleasantly surprised that many of you could anticipate some key Mythicist arguments and the counter-arguments to these. I was also pleased that a couple of you had even heard of exciting things like Q and the apocryphal gospels... though on reflection, perhaps you’ve just been watching The Da Vinci Code?

I did say that I would post some follow up work for you, so here it is. Below are a few questions that I think were raised in the course of our sessions:

• How strong is the historical evidence for the existence of Jesus?
• How convincing is the mythicist case against the existence of Jesus?
• Why makes some people reject the consensus view of experts in particular field?
• What is the role of ideology in shaping way denial movements use evidence and the conclusions they draw?
• Is mythicism a denial movement?
•  Is rejection of human-caused global warming a form of denial?
• Is denying scientific consensus (such as evolution or HIV as a cause of AIDS) different to denying historical consensus (such as the existence of Jesus)?

Please could you pick one of these questions, research the issues raised, and write me a response.  I won’t ask for it to be done by Monday – I’d rather you took your time doing some reading and thinking and came back to me later, even if it’s in the holidays. I’m also planning to post my own thoughts on a few of these questions over the next week or two, so you may wish to read those posts too.

You can either email me your work to my school account or post them as a comment below, though please remember the house rules.