Jesus Raising Lazarus from the Dead — Karl Isaksson, 1872-1922 Kategori:Målningar (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Recently, I happened to notice a post on James McGrath’s site concerning a paper by Tom Thatcher about Jesus as a healer and a “controversialist.” As I take it, that term describes a figure who is no mere contrarian, but rather one who makes controversial statements or engages in controversial actions to stimulate debate or to educate and elucidate.
Thatcher presented his paper, which apparently isn’t yet available to the public, at the Society of Biblical Research’s 2015 Annual Meeting in Atlanta. His session, entitled “Jesus as Controversialist: Media-Critical Perspectives on the Historicity of the Johannine Sabbath Controversies,” bears the following abstract:
Apart from scattered sayings with clear parallels in other texts, it remains the case that the Johannine discourses are almost categorically disregarded as useful sources for the message of Jesus. Consistent with this approach, the dialogues of Jesus in John 5–10, which include some of the most significant Christological statements in the Gospel, are generally discounted whole as reflections of the Johannine imagination. The present paper will utilize insights drawn from media-criticism to propose a more holistic approach that seeks to identify broad patterns in John’s presentation that reflect widely-accepted themes in the message and program of the historical Jesus. Close analysis reveals that the discourses in John 5-10 are prompted by specific acts of protest by Jesus (the two Sabbath healings) that are directed toward the brokers of the Jerusalem great tradition. Against the establishment claim that he is a “sinner,” Jesus contends that his widely-documented activity as a healer would be impossible were it not sanctioned by God: If God objected to healing on Sabbath, then how could Jesus do so? One may reasonably conclude that the more elaborate theological statements in this central section of the Gospel are in fact grounded in three widely accepted conclusions: that the historical Jesus was a healer; that he challenged conventional views of Sabbath; and, that he openly opposed the Judean religious establishment. (Thatcher, 2015, emphasis mine)
This post follows on from The Origins of Islamic Militancy. This time I change pace and copy a small section from pages 92 to 94 of Jason Burke’s book, The New Threat: The Past, Present, and Future of Islamic Militancy(2015). I have a lot of time for Burke’s books on this topic. He is one of the few to get out into the field, sometimes at risk to his own life, to talk with terrorists and their associates. Formatting and bolding are mine.
So why did militants turn to attack the West? One important reason is to be found in Saudi Arabia.
Abdulaziz ibn Saud
As a state, Saudi Arabia owed its foundation to the alliance of the battle-hardened latter-day followers of Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who had preached an austere, puritanical interpretation of Islam in the Arabian peninsula since the late eighteenth century, and an ambitious, capable tribal leader called Abdulaziz ibn Saud.
In 1979 came three events that shook the Saudi monarchy:
the seizure of the grand mosque in Mecca by a group of local extremists,
the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviets
and the Iranian revolution.
Each involved a different enemy — violent local militants who branded their rulers apostates, atheist Communists and Shia Islamists — but each revealed a new and potentially deadly threat to the reign of the house of Saud.
One response of the kingdom’s rulers was to use a substantial amount of the vast wealth generated by their oil revenues to expand the proselytisation of the Wahhabi creed, one of the most rigorous, intolerant and conservative existing in Islam, throughout the Sunni Muslim world. This had been a policy for some time but now the effort was massively expanded in an updated though much more far-reaching version of the original strategy that had brought them to power sixty years before. The aim was to reinforce their own religious credentials at home while increasing their influence overseas, allowing them to reassert their claim to both religious and political leadership in the Islamic world.
Over the ensuing decades,
tens of thousands of religious schools, mosques, Islamic universities and religious centres were built worldwide.
Hundreds of thousands of scholarships to Saudi universities were offered and stipends paid to preachers.
Tens of millions of copies of holy texts and, more importantly, deeply conservative interpretations of them, were published and distributed.
This strategic choice was to have a huge impact on the Muslim world, fundamentally altering faith, observance and religious identity for hundreds of millions of people. It also contributed, as intended, to a shift of cultural influence from Egypt, once the unchallenged intellectual centre of the Arab world, to Saudi Arabia, its religious centre. Continue reading “So why did militants turn to attack the West? — The Saudi Arabia driver”
Tashfeen Malik and Syed Rizwan Farooq fit the pattern perfectly. I’ve been posting the findings of serious research into what leads someone to radicalize and kill for some time now and will continue to do so as I read and learn more. Meanwhile assertions that the Quran made them do it defy the fundamentals how the world works and ignore the realities that at least better informed security services study and follow.
My most recent post on “how radicalisation happens” was Love, Relationships and Terrorism. We saw the theme of that post played out in San Bernardino. (Other themes covered in earlier posts also surfaced and I am not yet half way through the series.)
No-one picks up and reads a copy of the Quran, and in pious isolation from the outside world comes to believe it is the word of Allah and goes out on a killing spree. No-one, except maybe some truly mentally deranged person.
Here’s the all too familiar narrative:
The settings
Scene 1: A secular democratic Western nation, one with an ongoing history of involvement and support for Western wars against Muslim countries (Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria) and support for dictatorial regimes (Egypt, Saudi Arabia). We won’t mention Israel.
Scene 2: Pakistan, more specifically the northern regions of Pakistan (especially Multan) where there is strong support for jihadist ideology and the Taliban.
Scene 3: We can throw in Saudi Arabia here perhaps as something of a holiday resort.
Main characters
Syed Rizwan Farooq: Dysfunctional family background, devout Sunni Muslim, American citizen and son of immigrants from Pakistan. Polite and generally accepted by the community. Educated and with a middle class job. Looking for a wife.
Tashfeen Malik: Strong Islamist (anti-Western) family background in Pakistan. Well educated and upper middle class. Looking for a husband.
“Stochastic terrorism is the use of mass communications to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable. In short, remote-control murder by lone wolf.”
And explains:
The formula is perversely brilliant:
A public figure with access to the airwaves or pulpit demonizes a person or group of persons.
With repetition, the targeted person or group is gradually dehumanized, depicted as loathsome and dangerous—arousing a combustible combination of fear and moral disgust.
Violent images and metaphors, jokes about violence, analogies to past “purges” against reviled groups, use of righteous religious language—all of these typically stop just short of an explicit call to arms.
When violence erupts, the public figure who have incited the violence condemn it—claiming no one could possibly have foreseen the “tragedy.”
Stochastic terrorism is not a fringe concept. It is a known terrorist modality that has been described at length by analysts. It produces terrorism patterns that are known to any member of Congress or any presidential candidate who has ever thought deeply about national or domestic security issues . . .
Sam Harris is making the news circuit again. (Who is this Sam Harris guy, anyway?) He’d choose Ben Carson over Noam Chomsky for President apparently because Ben Carson has a better understanding of the Islamist threat to the West; Jerry Coyne writes that Sam Harris drains the intellectual cesspool at Salon and sees himself and Sam as the true inheritors of the Age of Enlightenment; and of course he’s being misrepresented by his critics as always. As for everybody who has ever criticized Sam Harris being guilty of misrepresenting him, Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks analyses this proclivity masterfully in Nobody Understands Poor Sam Harris (h/t Pharyngula):
So I thought this would be an apropos time to dust off a draft post that has been sitting in my files for some weeks now. Recall back in mid October that Kyle Kulinski attempted to find a way for people like Glenn Greenwald and Sam Harris to come to a meeting of minds. Why can’t all atheists who agree Islamic terrorism is a serious problem just get along?
What I did was write notes on one of those conversations, the one published 17th October 2015. They’re too loose to be called a transcript but I have noted very approximate time markers throughout for relatively easy checking.
Kyle — There is so much agreement among us so why cannot we get along?
1:30
SH: — Says that Kyle’s attempt to establish a way New Atheists and others should be able to get along was destined to fail…..
He (SH) is going to explain why he agreed to come on KK’s show and “to nail down some basic facts”
SH says he also went on The Young Turks network where Werleman and Reza Aslan had been given a platform to “disparage me” (Sam Harris) “and lie about my views”.
He has come here on KK’s show to respond to Glenn Greenwald:
“Glenn came on your show and just ran me down for the better part of an hour. He misrepresented my views as he always does; he compared me to neo-nazis he’s known in his capacity as a lawyer; he called me a coward; he told the world that I changed my views where people find them offensive; and I falsely claim to have been misrepresented; and you more or less agreed with him on that point…..”
3:00
SH: “I want to take a few minutes to explain some background facts because it’s very easy for people to get confused about what’s happening here. . . . I want you and your listeners to understand why this debate is so poisonous.”
SH: To be unbiased “is a very good thing — most of the time. But it’s not such a good thing when you’re dealing with unethical and irresponsible people. If you came upon two people fighting in an alley you wouldn’t necessarily assume that each has a good reason for wanting to hurt the other. You’re aware that it’s perfectly possible that one of them is a psychopath who attacked the other for no good reason and the other’s just doing his best to defend himself. . . . ”
“Some people are in fact total arseholes. They’re unscrupulous, they’re dishonest, they’re self-serving, they’re powerfully self-deceived, they’re narcissistic, they’re unwilling to admit mistakes. Some people are just walking case studies in psychopathology and bad faith. Now, unfortunately I have managed to collide with a fair number of these people; and Glenn Greenwald and Reza Aslan are probably the most well-known. They have their minions: Glenn has Murtaza Hussain, I think he’s probably a psychopath from the way he behaves online. And Reza has Nathan Lean, who from my eyes is just aspiring to be the most ethically confused person on earth. And then there are people like Chris Hedges and C.J. Werleman. These are both famous plagiarists and loons. . . .
Many people assume that the criticising the character of one’s opponent as I’m doing now is to commit the ad hominem fallacy. It’s not. That’s only true if you’re failing to deal with their arguments. And insofar as any of these people have arguments, I’ve dealt with them. . . . But for the most part they but they just lie about my views. You are engaging with these people as though they are arguing in good faith. They aren’t. And my correspondence with them should prove that to you if you’ve been paying attention. . . .”
On KK with Werleman —
“you treat him like a perfectly moral intellectually honest person who just might have some interesting things to say about me and Dawkins and our alleged bias against Muslims. But who is C.J. Werleman? He’s a plagiarist who when caught, rather than apologize and spend a year in the wilderness ….. he created a sock puppet blog, literally a fake blog ostensibly by some woman in Brooklyn from which he accused me of plagiarism. . . . We’re talking about the most unprofessional behaviour imaginable, and yet you are taking him seriously.
“And who is Glenn Greenwald? GG is just C.J. Werleman after he won the lottery. Glenn is a totally unscrupulous defamer of people who just got handed the story of the decade because Snowden happened to like his political views. And if you think that’s unfair, you haven’t been paying attention to how Greenwald operates. Greenwald has his own sock puppet scam you might want to look into.
“I remain genuinely confused about Snowden. I honestly don’t know whether he’s a hero or whether he deserves to be in prison. I’m absolutely…. There’s a blank spot in my mind about the significance of what he has done. I simply don’t know the consequences of his actions now or what they will be in the future. But I know one thing to a moral certainty. Most people who fear government surveillance for obvious reasons and most people who are fond of what Snowden did are blinded to who GG actually is. Snowden simply handed him thousands of top secret documents and Greenwald leaked them and you seem to assume this makes him a brilliant investigative journalist. Greenwald doesn’t have a journalistic bone in his body. I have never seen someone so maliciously unconcerned about misrepresenting the views of his opponents …. apart from the other people we are talking about- Reza Aslan and Glenn’s deranged colleague Murtaza Hussain. These people are glorified cyber-bullies. Continue reading “(“Misrepresenting”) Sam Harris On Progressivism, Torture, Religion & Foreign Policy”
That question is too often asked rhetorically. The answer that is implied is that there is a “clash of civilizations” and that Islam has been plaguing the West with terrorism ever since its birth in the seventh century. The question usually hides an anti-Islamic bigotry born of ignorance of both Islam itself (and that includes the very nature of religion) and history.
I have answered the question “why terrorists are generally Islamic” in The Origins of Islamic Militancy — for those seriously interested enough to truly understand.
Of course the fact is that throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s the only terrorists most of us ever heard about were fighting for national liberation and Islam per se rarely if ever entered the picture. Islamic terrorism is unquestionably a new phenomenon that has burst on the scene quite recently in historical terms.
I have added to my original post, The Origins of Islamic Militancy, since its first posting. I have added a section on global jihad and the author of this concept, Abdullah Azzam. I have one more section to add to this post and that will be Osama bin Laden’s contribution and what it was, historically, that led to his particular slant on what jihad should be all about. I will notify interested readers when I complete that section.
The earlier generation of terrorists before “Islamic terrorism”
The turning point was in October, 1981, argues Jason Burke. Prior to the 1980s the most well-known terrorists were Leila Khaled and Carlos the Jackal. Religious agendas were very rarely found in the mix of ethnic, nationalist, separatist and secular revolutionary agendas.
The terrorist act that changed all this was the assassination of President Anwar Sadat of Egypt in Cairo in October 1981. Sadat’s killers were very different from most of the terrorists of the decade before. (p. 24)
An ideological movement had taken root in the broader Muslim world — “a generalised rediscovery of religious observance and identity, coupled with a distrust of Western powers and culture.”
The historical matrix
History is necessary to enable us to understand. Burke points to the century between 1830 and 1930. These years saw the Russians, the Han Chinese and especially the Europeans invade and subjugate the Muslim regions from Morocco to Java, from the central Asian steppes to sub-Saharan Africa.
Almost all the invasions provoked a violent reaction among many local people. Resistance took many forms but, naturally enough in a deeply devout age, religion played a central role. Islam provided a rallying point for local communities more used to internecine struggle than campaigns against external enemies. (p. 25)
European armies and their local auxiliaries fought rebels whose motivations ranged widely but who all shared
a profound belief that they were acting in defence not only of their livelihoods, traditions and homes but of their faith.
The superior technology of the foreign powers guaranteed the defeat of the rebels but these defeats were interpreted by the devout as evidence that they had neglected to please God and lost his favour.
Though by the twentieth century most movements had withered away a few remained active: British India’s North-West Frontier, Italian Libya, Palestine. The Afghans were not ruled by foreigners but in the 1920s they did throw out their king who had attempted to introduce foreign ways into his country.
Others chose withdrawal to open revolt, and to isolate themselves from the corrupting influences of alien cultures: e.g. the Deobandi school of India.
Some, however, fully embraced Western ideas in a spirit of rivalry. They sought to out-do their invaders: e.g. the University of Aligarh.
Ed Husain (author of The Islamist and previously posted about here) recalled as a boy growing up in a mainstream Muslim household when and the context in which he first heard the name Maududi:
“I liked Grandpa. Most of all, I used to delight in watching him slowly tie his turban, wrapping his head with a long piece of cloth, as befitted a humble Muslim, though he also seemed like a Mogul monarch. (Muslim scholars and kings both wore the turban in veneration of the Prophet Mohammed.) Whenever Grandpa visited Britain to teach Muslims about spirituality, my father accompanied him to as many places as he was able. My father believed that spiritual seekers did not gain knowledge from books alone, but learnt from what he called suhbah, or companionship. True mastery of spirituality required being at the service, or at least in the presence, of a noble guide. Grandpa was one such guide. . . .
“He often read aloud in Urdu, and explained his points in intricate Bengali, engaging the minds of others while I looked on bewildered. As they compared notes on abstract subjects in impenetrable languages, I buried myself in Inspector Morse or a Judy Blume. I heard names such as ‘Mawdudi’ being severely criticized, an organization named Jamat-e-Islami being refuted and invalidated on theological grounds. All of it was beyond me.” (The Islamist, p. 10, my bolding)
Abul Ala Maududi
What interests us, however, are those who took the middle road. The first was the work of Abd Ala’a Maududi [Abul Ala Maududi/Maudoodi/Mawdudi]:
In India, a political organisation called Jamaat Islami was founded in 1926. It sought religious and cultural renewal through non-violent social activism to mobilise the subcontinent’s Muslims to gain power. This approach involved embracing Western technology and selectively borrowing from Western political ideologies, while rejecting anything seen as inappropriate or immoral. (p. 26)
Like the South Asian Jamaat Islami, it combined a conservative, religious social vision with a contemporary political one. For its followers, the state was to be appropriated, not dismantled, in order to create a perfect Islamic society. This approach was later dubbed Islamism.
There were others across the Muslim world who rejected the compromise and non-violence of Jamaat Islami and the Muslim Brotherhood as the means to achieving their common goals.
By the early 1960s European powers had for most part withdrawn from the Muslim world leaving behind new regimes that had adopted Western ways and ideas: witness the new states founded in varying degrees of secularism and socialism. And of course there was Israel:
The establishment of the state of Israel, now recognized by the international community after a bloody war and the flight of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from lands they had worked or owned for generations, acted as a new focus for diverse grievances among Arab and Muslim communities. Anti-Semitism had long existed in the Islamic world but, fused with anti-Zionism, gained a new and poisonous intensity. Defeat in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 deepened a sense of hurt, loss and humiliation. (p. 27)
Something more important was happening within the newly independent nations themselves: “immense demographic change”.
Population explosions
Urban population mushroomed and rural populations relatively declined
Urban areas of poverty and unhealthy conditions proliferated — inadequate electricity, sanitation, education, health services, policing
Food in short supply and expensive
Previous decades had produced many university graduates whose future expectations were now dashed
Traditional communities were being shattered: new shanty towns and apartment blocks meant that extended families were broken up, village communities were vanishing, traditional leaders lost their authority
“For the older people there was loss. For those young enough not to know anything of the former rural life, there was disorientation.“
Cairo slums
Egypt’s President Sadat represented to many the worst of these changes. Sadat was opening up Egypt to the new capitalism and foreign investment that accelerated the extremes of the rich-poor divide. Middle incomes declined dramatically.
Worse still, a growing economic gap between rich and poor was accompanied by a growing cultural gap. During the riots in Cairo in 1977, favourite targets for arson and vandalism were nightclubs — of which more than three hundred opened during the decade — and luxury US made cars — of which imports had gone up fourteen times. Both were symbols of the lifestyle of an elite that was enjoying greater connection with the rest of the world, and particularly the West, but which was increasingly detached from the majority of Egyptian population. By the end of the decade, more than 30 percent of prime-time television programming was from the US, with episodes of Dallas repeated ad infinitum. Inequality was combined with a sense of cultural invasion. It was an explosive mix. (p. 28 – my bolding in all quotations)
Amidst those swayed by Western influence nationalist and socialist commitments were those who turned to their religion in various ways, some withdrawing into mysticism, for example, others looking for wider change. Islamism was spreading through the universities and professional bodies.
Islamism promised to re-establish confidence and pride and to provide a solution to the many pressing challenges now faced by tens of millions of people. (p. 28)
Good to see Scott Atran respond specifically to the nonsense of Sam Harris and Jerry Coyne on the question of wheher religion is or isn’t a cause of current and past political violence. . . On his Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/scott.atran?fref=nf&pnref=story[link no longer active – Neil Godfrey, 24th July 2019]
How in fact can we destroy ISIS and its ilk. . . . It certainly will not be with the mindless diatribe against “religion” that produces exactly the kind of knee-jerk reaction that the Islamic State so conscientiously seeks
I have posted before on Sam Harris’s and Jerry Coyne’s ideologically driven dishonest and ignorant attacks on the researchers who do the hard work of understanding the causes of terrorism. Here’s part of Scott Atran’s response to the most recent falsehoods and distortions by Jerry Coyne: Once again Scott Atran exculpates religion as a cause of terrorism. Dismaying how some leading public intellectuals abuse their status and presume to be experts outside their specialist area and exploit the murderous acts of others as an opportunity to propagate their pet anti-theistic hobby horse.
Extract from Atran’s response (only and extract, do read the full post):
I have discussed the matter at length in the historical record (about 7 percent of recorded wars since the punic wars have been explicitly religious wars, and when non-religious conflicts take on a religious cast they also tend to endure and resist exit strategies).
I have also written empirical papers showing the role of religious claims . . . in faith in the strict sharia of the Caliphate as one of 2 key motivators for volunteers for the Islamic State.
Yet, it remains a fact that the principal factors that predict actual involvement in violence concerns social network factors.
Coyne and Harris have never done a single empirical study involving violent political and religious actors, have never met one in the field (only ostensibly “reformed” ones in a safe environment), and not only do not know what they are talking about, but willfully distort and cherry pick statements -without the slightest awareness or scrutiny of the science – in repetitive declamations to support their ideological position and hackneyed harangue against “liberal apolegetics.”
I invite then to accompany me to the frontlines in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, or even to the banlieues of Paris, to see for themselves what is driving people to fight and die. And to discuss, as I regularly do, with military and political leaders how in fact we can destroy ISIS and its ilk.
It certainly will not be with the mindless diatribe against “religion” that produces exactly the kind of knee-jerk reaction that the Islamic State so conscientiously seeks, as outlined in tis manifesto Idarat at-Tawahoush (The Management of Savagery-Chaos,) and in the article in its online magazine Dabiq, titled “The Gray Zone,” whose goal is to eliminate any shady area between believer and non-believer, so as to polarize sentiment towards war.
I am finding Raphael Latater’s book, Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists, a most invigorating and fresh approach to the topic. Caveat: I am taking it slowly and so far have not even completed the first chapter. I have read Richard Carrier’s introductory remarks and Raphael Lataster’s own background introduction and am only about half way through the first chapter. Along the way I’m stopping to study and follow up most of the footnotes, too. But if what lies ahead is as insightful and thorough as what I have read so far then I can see this book being the last word on the flawed attempts of Casey, Ehrman, McGrath and others who have attempted to shriek their conviction that “Yes, Virginia, there really was a Historical Jesus and anyone who doubts that is a very bad person who should be shunned.”
Interestingly, Lataster points out that the only serious attempts by scholars to publish arguments for the historical existence of Jesus — those by Erhman, Casey and McGrath — have done outside the scholarly peer-review process. On the other hand, the two serious attempts by scholars to publish reasons to doubt the historicity of Jesus — Richard Carrier and Raphael Lataster — have gone through the scholarly peer-review process.
The irony of that little datum is not lost on anyone who is aware of the complaints of “historicist scholars” (those arguing for the historicity of Jesus and against the mythicist hypothesis) that mythicism does not subject itself to scholarly peer-review.
A handy collation of Richard Carrier’s responses to James’ McGrath’s less-than-professional attacks on Carrier’s work is found in the Introduction to Raphael Lataster’s book, Jesus Did Not Exist: A Debate Among Atheists:
McGrath has only published responses to historicity on his personal blog (Exploring Our Matrix), and in an online trade publication (Bible & Interpretation) that is also not peer reviewed. In these open venues he has made such embarrassingly false claims about the ancient world in defense of the historicity of Jesus as to deeply call into question the competence of his opinion in the matter.[5] And he all too often makes wildly false claims about the arguments in my book, rather than addressing what it actually says.[6]
McGrath evinced this behavior even before reading my book. For example, he argued confidently that no Christians would erect inscriptions promoting their gospel because only government officials erected inscriptions. That this is wildly not true is bad enough, and that he wouldn’t know it’s untrue is worse, but that he was so arrogant in his ignorance that he never even thought to check and make sure before resting his argument on it, is worst of all. And indicative of the problem. Historians who would defend the historicity of Jesus aren’t doing their jobs as historians. And all too often, they literally don’t know what they are talking about. This is commonly observed in the frequency with which historicists claim the evidence for Jesus is as good as we have for Socrates, Alexander the Great, Spartacus, and Julius and Tiberius Caesar. That they would be so ignorant as to think that was true is shocking.[7] But more shocking is that they didn’t even check before asserting it. What academic disease does this signify?
The example of inscriptions illustrates the other problem as well. McGrath falsely implied that I endorse the lack of early inscriptions as an argument for the non-existence of Jesus. In fact I have publicly rejected that argument and explained why it doesn’t work (there are many reasons Christians would fail to erect such inscriptions even if Jesus did exist; just not the reason McGrath gave). McGrath routinely makes false claims like this about what I or my book argue. Many far more galling than this. Such as claiming my book relies on conspiracy theories, when in fact my book repeatedly denounces them. Or claiming I don’t adduce any allegorical meanings to explain Gospel pericopes but just assert they must have them, and using that as an argument against the merits of my book, when in fact I devote almost an entire chapter of the book to doing that, in fact not just adducing such meanings, but in many cases arguing for them, and citing peer reviewed scholarship that does the same – none of which facts McGrath informs his readers of. Or claiming I didn’t make an argument for a conclusion but just asserted it in the book (such as that a given miracle story is not likely to be true, or that a given word can too easily have come from a targum to be certain it came from a source about Jesus), when in fact, in every case, the book contains an extensive argument for that conclusion. An argument he fails to tell his readers about (and thus certainly offers no rebuttal to).
It should be a fundamental requirement of competent and honest scholarship to correctly represent the arguments of anyone you disagree with, and rebut their actual arguments, not arguments they never made, or conveniently distorted variants of arguments they did make, or to falsely claim they didn’t make any arguments to rebut. It is a disgrace for a scholar to use falsehood like this. Worse even to do so as arguments against a book they are reviewing. Yet these aren’t the only instances. McGrath does this a lot. Why? If historicity is so evidenced as to be certain, why do arguments against it have to be misrepresented to rebut them? Is it because the actual arguments can’t be rebutted? So fake arguments have to be contrived to knock down instead? That does not make it sound like historicity is so certain to me.
We must fight their growing power any way, anywhere, we can. With words, with weapons, with sincere efforts at warm embrace for those who might otherwise be pulled or pushed into their dark world that would exterminate all who dare be free and different.
I think that most of us comfort ourselves with the thought that “they can’t win,” at least in the long run, that they must burn themselves out in their frenzy . . . . But this may be dead wrong. Why is it that so many young people are being drawn into this increasingly powerful destroyer of human rights, which despises the very idea of government of and by the people? — Scott Atran in correspondence with Professor Hoodbhoy in wake of UN address
Military operations are obviously necessary but ISIS is not a conventional army. The risks of the wrong kind of military attack are warned against by Stern and Berger in ISIS: The State of Terror:
Even ground forces would likely not be enough to completely destroy ISIS. Absent a military invasion that would somehow— improbably, magically— transform both Iraq and Syria into truly viable, pluralistic states in which Sunnis and Shi’a both feel secure, ISIS would likely remain, at least as a terrorist group, for many years to come.
Beyond the necessity to oversee political change in both Iraq and Syria, a tall order indeed, the international impact of ISIS must also be considered, as it inspires oaths of loyalty and acts of violence in nearly every corner of the globe. As with its military might, ISIS’s potential to wreak terrorism has been limited until now, although the alignment of regional terror groups such as Jund al Khalifah in Algeria and Ansar Bayt al Maqdis in Egypt raise serious concerns going forward.
6 Millenarianism involves the expectation of sweeping societal change, possibly as a result of the apocalypse.
The broader problem is that jihadism has become a millenarian movement6 with mass appeal, in some ways similar to the revolutionary movements of the 1960s and ’70s, although its goals and the values it represents are far different.
Today’s radicals are expressing their dissatisfaction with the status quo by making war, not love. They are seduced by Thanatos rather than Eros. They “love death as much as you [in the West] love life,” in Osama bin Laden’s famous and often-paraphrased words. In this dark new world, children are seen to reenact beheadings with their toys, seduced by a familiar drama of the good guys killing the bad guys in order to save the world. Twitter users adopt the black flag by the tens of thousands. And people who barely know anything about Islam or Iraq are inspired to emulate ISIS’s brutal beheadings.
ISIS has established itself as a new paradigm, one that is more brutal, more sectarian, and more apocalyptic in its thinking than the groups that preceded it. ISIS is the crack cocaine of violent extremism, all of the elements that make it so alluring and addictive purified into a crystallized form.
ISIS’s goals are impossible, ludicrous, but that does not mean it can be easily destroyed. Our policies must look to the possible, which means containing and hopefully eliminating its military threat and choking off its export of ideas.
But certainly the history of ISIS and al Qaeda before it show that overwhelming military force is not a solution to hybrid organizations that straddle the line between terrorism and insurgency.
Our hammer strikes on al Qaeda spread its splinters around the world. Whatever approach we take in Iraq and Syria must be focused on containment and constriction, rather than simply smashing ISIS into ever more virulent bits.Continue reading “ISIS: The First Step To Combating It”
In early 2014 I published On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt. It passed professional peer review. It was published by a major, well-respected academic press that specialized in Biblical Studies, Sheffield-Phoenix, the publishing arm of the University of Sheffield. And it is the first book of such tested merit to argue that Jesus probably did not exist. It argues instead that Jesus began life as a revelatory archangel, and was transferred to human history decades later through the writing of myths for educational, missionary, and propagandistic purposes. This would have proceeded, in both cause and procedure, much like the invention of the life and teachings and miracles of Moses, whom the mainstream Academy now concedes probably did not exist.
Well for all you readers who really did want to read those books or who were waiting in vain for me to get around posting on them in depth, this is your lucky day. Matthew Ferguson of the Κέλσος blog has given up waiting for both of us and posted the nitty gritty details on these authors and their studies of Aesop vis à vis the gospels:
Did you know that the “New Atheists and their online acolytes” have “a long list” of historical ideas that are “wildly wrong”? If this situation has been causing you sleepless nights then you will be relieved to learn that Tim O’Neill has started a new blog to bring these dimwits to their senses. It’s called . . . .
For those of us who had not realized the full extent of this problem, Tim explains that these New Atheists — and he names them: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens (and also P.Z. Myers, Jerry Coyne and Richard Carrier) — happen to get wrong just about any and everything they ever say about history whenever they try to declare how bad religion has been for humanity.
Given that they are such historical ignoramuses it is not surprising that the one “cluster of fervid and contrived pseudo history” that comes in for special attention is the “elaborate fringe theory . . . that is the Jesus Myth hypothesis”.
Tim proudly promises his readers plenty of sarcasm and scorn [meaning, if he continues with his past form, personal insults and abuse along with plenty of factual and logical fallacies], but his opening post, Why History for Atheists? An apologia for (yet) another blog, also promises some confusion of argument besides.
Before we address the promised confusion let’s understand more of Tim’s view of his new blog. Tim is pretty pleased the number of online hits to his earlier articles, laced as they are with “occasionally Irish-Australian atheist bastardry”, and has interpreted these clicks as “an appetite and a clear need for some level headed, carefully researched and objective fact checking and debunking of New Atheist Bad History”. Of course Tim is the one equipped and willing enough to meet that appetite and need.
He sincerely assures his readers that though his motives are dual they are not duplicitous. His two motives are
Firstly, I love history, including the history of religions, especially Christianity. . . .
Secondly, as a rationalist, I like to take rationalism seriously. So I go where the evidence takes me on history as with everything else. However much an idea may appeal to me emotionally, if the historical evidence doesn’t support it, I can’t accept it. Many New Atheists don’t seem capable of putting their emotions aside and looking at the evidence.
Little sign of the self-awareness and humility of a Daniel Boyarin here.
Thank God and Rationalism for Tim.
So what is all of this history that the New Atheists get wrong? Tim set it all out in “the long list”:
Christians burned down the Great Library of Alexandria and Hypatia of Alexandria was murdered because of a Christian hatred of science
Constantine was a cryptopagan who adopted Christianity as a cynical political ploy (and personally created the Bible)
Scientists were oppressed during the Middle Ages and science stagnated completely until “the Renaissance”
“The Inquisition” was a kind of Europe wide medieval Gestapo and the medieval Church was an all powerful totalitarian theocracy
Giordano Bruno was a wise and brave astronomer and cosmologist who was burned at the stake because the Church hated science
The Galileo Affair was a straightforward case of religion ignoring evidence and trying to suppress scientific advancement
Pope Pius XII was a friend and ally of the Nazis who turned a blind eye to the Holocaust and helped Nazis escape justice
