Vridar

2007-08-22

Atheist and religious Moral Minds / Dawkins on Hauser

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by Neil Godfrey

Richard Dawkins has a section in his God Delusion (pp. 222-226) that discusses Marc Hauser‘s Moral Minds: How Nature Designed our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong.

Hauser conducted a study with Peter Singer to test whether atheists differ in their moral intuitions from religious believers. The expectation was that if people need religion to give them their moral values then there should be a significant difference between the moral values of atheists and the religious.

Three hypothetical dilemmas were the focus of the comparison: Continue reading “Atheist and religious Moral Minds / Dawkins on Hauser”

Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18e

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by Neil Godfrey

Holocaust Testimonies (pp. 493-499)

Bauckham proceeds to wax lyrical over a paragraph of recorded oral testimony from Auschwitz survivor, Edith P. He concludes:

“The most accomplished Holocaust novel could not equal the effectiveness of that story in conveying the horrifying otherness . . . . [Her testimony] discloses to us her world, the Nazi’s kingdom of the night, in a way that no novelist could surpass and no regular historian even approach. This is truth that only testimony can give us.”

Bauckham elaborates in reverential tones speaking of how “deep” and “authentic” is the “unique” experience. Some instances:

“the deep memory reaches us and we are stunned by its otherness”

“in its visual and emotional clarity we hear an authentic moment . . . ”

“This too is ‘deep memory’ that he relives by remembering it . . .”

So how ironic to read the same reverential tones with the same “deep” and “authentic” in the following words written by a former inmate of Auschwitz (Israel Gutman): Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18e”

Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18d

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

By now it ought to be obvious I can only handle Bauckham in very small doses. Maybe it’s age. I used to love downing a whole bottle of whisky straight in very short shrift but have learned to cut it back to occasional nips if I want my brain and body to survive a bit longer. Maybe that’s a metaphor for my misspent youth in the coffin of religion, leaving me nowadays only ever able to spend occasional minutes at best engaging in silly (ir)rationalizations that pass as scholarly arguments for belief in miracles and semi-human miracle performers. Anyway, if sticking at something one has promised oneself to do is a virtue then my ongoing sticking with this review bit by bit proves I am at least not totally bereft of virtue whatever my other faults. And addressing these final parts of B’s argument calls for every ounce of virtue I can muster. Must reward myself with another whisky when finished.

Testimony and its reception contd. (pp 492-493) Continue reading “Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Chapter 18d”

2007-08-18

Beyond Christian ethics: a list spun off from Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto

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by Neil Godfrey

Have just completed Michel Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto and can’t go past the review of the book you can find at that link — so won’t bother with my own. (The original French title could more literally be translated “Tract on Atheology” which would do more justice to the contents of the book, it being less a rationale for atheism per se than a polemical essay against the respected status and functions theology has long held among inheritors of the Judea-Christian and Moslem worlds.)

It is refreshing to see in print ideas that one has arrived at on ones own and only hitherto shared with trusted audiences. I imagine many who have rationally worked their way from faith to atheism have similarly found themselves afterwards thrilled to find such luminaries as Nietzsche having long before paved a way in the direction are now treading. Although as Onfray rightly reminds us, to learn from Nietzsche is to pave one’s own path, not to walk in his same steps.

Anyway, Onfray’s book reminded me of a list of ethical values that to my mind would be one huge advance on the current values that dominate our species. Most are not even hinted at in his essay, so this is really my own list of some of the changes — rooted in science and humanism as opposed to archaic mythical views of what makes us human — that I would think would make for a far more humane society: Continue reading “Beyond Christian ethics: a list spun off from Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto”

2007-08-17

Beyond Christian ethics – crime and punishment

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by Neil Godfrey

The foundational institutions, attitudes and values of our modern societies are still based on a legacy of Christian and pre-Christian assumptions of human nature that take no cognizance of the modern advances in biology, neurology, genetics, psychology. The power of the black book still binds our ethical senses. Continue reading “Beyond Christian ethics – crime and punishment”

2007-08-13

Paul’s torment and notes from Hitchen’s “God is Not Great”

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by Neil Godfrey

“The essential principle of totalitarianism is to make laws that are impossible to obey. The resulting tyranny is even more impressive if it can be enforced by a privileged caste or party which is highly zealous in the detection of error. Most of humanity, throughout its history, has dwelt under a form of this stupefying dictatorship, and a large portion of it still does. Allow me to give a few examples of the rules that must, yet cannot, be followed.” (God is Not Great, p.212)

Hitchens then cites the biblical command forbidding people to even think about coveting goods. I’m not sure there is a command not to even think about it, but the principle is certainly there. The New Testament certainly echoes this with its injunction which says that to even look on a woman in the wrong way is to actually already have committed adultery.

There can only be two possible responses to such commands: Continue reading “Paul’s torment and notes from Hitchen’s “God is Not Great””

2007-08-10

Christian Zionism: assumptions and a humanist’s critique

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by Neil Godfrey

Christian Zionists are Christians who believe that the Bible prophesies and validates the migration of Jews to Palestine as a sign of the imminence of the Second Coming of Christ. They support the establishment of the Jewish state in the Middle East today, and their claim to the whole land of Biblical Israel, and accordingly deny Palestinian rights.

Gary Burge contributed “Theological and Biblical Assumptions of Christian Zionism” (originally as a conference paper) for Challenging Christian Zionism : Theology, Politics and the Israel-Palestine Conflict (2005). He discerns six steps by which Christian Zionist theology is developed (pp.51-53): Continue reading “Christian Zionism: assumptions and a humanist’s critique”

2007-08-09

Victimhood and the Sermon on the Mount

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by Neil Godfrey

There is another more subtle way that the Sermon on the Mount has the potential to cripple true believers psychologically. (I have already addressed the self-absorbed, fear-driven, irresponsible submissiveness that its supposedly noble teachings actually promote.) Some of its most exalted sayings are really guidelines for anyone taking them seriously to go through life playing the victim game. (But firstly, I am well aware that there are two types of victims: there truly are those who have been cruelly victimized, but there are also many who find the victim game an alternative to getting on with more positive and productive mentality. Unfortunately few among one of those types can tell the difference.)

Blessed are the poor, the mourners, the meek, the merciful, the pure . . . . Continue reading “Victimhood and the Sermon on the Mount”

2007-08-07

If I lived like Jesus tells me to . . .

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by Neil Godfrey

. . . . I would not follow Jesus and let myself be angry with thieves in the temple or let myself denounce hypocritical clerics who rob the poor. Continue reading “If I lived like Jesus tells me to . . .”

Religious fundamentalism meets humanist ethics

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by Neil Godfrey

Although the reason many religious fundamentalists are opposed to abortion and euthanasia is really strictly doctrinal (God says don’t kill), they ironically find themselves couching their arguments in other ways entirely, even if it means they must deny and manufacture facts to do so. It is as if they know that their doctrinal reasons have no real basis and that morality truly is grounded right where humanists know it is, after all. Continue reading “Religious fundamentalism meets humanist ethics”

2007-08-06

The questionable ethical standard of the Sermon on the Mount

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by Neil Godfrey

Why is the Sermon on the Mount so often upheld as the ultimate in ethics? Surely we have progressed ethically in 2000 years. Continue reading “The questionable ethical standard of the Sermon on the Mount”

Our moral instincts?

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by Neil Godfrey

Before I write anything more myself on this I have to link to two discussions of some of the research: Continue reading “Our moral instincts?”

2007-08-05

Novelistic plot and motifs in the Gospel of John

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by Neil Godfrey

“The narrative of the Fourth Gospel is a synthesis of two distinct stories — the cosmological tale and the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth — into one coherent narrative.” (Jo-Ann A. Brant, Divine Birth and Apparent Parents: The Plot of the Fourth Gospel, in Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative.)

The following notes, based principally on Jo-Ann Brant’s articles (the one above and Husband Hunting: Characterization and Narrative Art in the Gospel of John, in Biblical Interpretation, 1996, 205-223), looks at some ways the Gospel of John appears to draw on novelistic motifs and plots to construct it theological narrative. How the author mixes honey with his medicine. Continue reading “Novelistic plot and motifs in the Gospel of John”

2007-08-02

The subtext of Jesus’ family relationships — (2)

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by Neil Godfrey

When I wrote The subtext of Jesus’ family relationships — (1) I was looking at the Jesus who emerges from the gospels after they had achieved the status of being the definitive life of Jesus. The intention is to examine the psychology of the family relationships of Jesus. The idea was sparked by a much more accomplished psychological study in relation to Achilles and Socrates by Richard Holway. In that article I was intrigued by the what the subtext of the personal relationships implied for the values and/or experiences of those who saw these men as models of certain virtues. Achilles is semi-divine in the mythology, but whether mythological or literary, the characters are viewed as creations of the human mind and as such their actions are the products human psychological processes. Ditto for Jesus. For what it’s worth, I’m adding another scratch to the surface of this exploratory thoughts here, though by no means in the depth that Holway delved. Continue reading “The subtext of Jesus’ family relationships — (2)”

"Here I give an admittedly subjective short list, in random order, of useful, high level and regularly updated weblogs on the study of the Old Testament . . . ‘Vridar: Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science’ (http://vridar.org/) by Neil Godfrey"

-- Klaas Spronk, - Bibliotheca Orientalis LXXI, 3/4 (2014)
"I want to say here that this site is so resourceful and highly on top of the most modern scholarship in the areas discussed here. . . I know of no other site which offers a wide range of topics related to careful critical analysis of historically and scripturally related issues."

-- Martin Lewadny, - March 2009
"For an excellent example of generally high-quality scholarship by someone who isn’t a biblical studies professor, see Neil Godfrey’s work posted on the website vridar.org."

— Tom Dykstra, – JOCABS 2015
"I always enjoy reading Neil’s blog because I think that he is careful, thorough, intellectually fair, and honest."

— April DeConick, – November 2007
"Neil, for what it is worth it is obvious to me that if you had earlier in life tracked into a graduate program at one of the world’s leading research universities you would be one of the world’s formidable ones. You are doing essentially the same quality now (apart from the philology and languages) except mostly sticking to commenting on others’ work as informed comment/discussion."

— Gregory Doudna, – January 2019
"These reviews of yours are so bloody weird!"

— James Crossley, – April 2010
"By the way, my thanks to Neil for an ongoing superb job of exposing Jim’s review for what it is: a farcical and none too effective exercise in mythicism assassination, nothing to do with rational, let alone unbiased, scholarship. I’m also happy to see even Jim giving Neil credit where credit is due."

— Earl Doherty, June 2011
It is worth saying another word of appreciation here for Neil Godfrey's effort to make Bruno Bauer accessible in English.

-- Peter Kirby, - May 2023
"Very good. This post is going straight to the March 2016 Biblical Studies Carnival."

—N.T. Wrong, – March 2016
"Thanks for this detailed interaction! I’ll try to offer something more substantial than 'Thank you' in response at some point, but I didn’t want to wait . . . to express appreciation for your detailed interaction with what I’ve written!"

— James McGrath, – June 2009
Congratulations, Vridar, . . . I declare, Vridar, your own hard work translating Bruno Bauer will make a major difference in future studies of Bruno Bauer and the evolution of Hegel’s philosophy of religion.

-- Paul Trejo, - April 2023
https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=145080#p145080
Neil made a good synthesis of the work without being an “expert” of the field.

-- Enrico Tuccinardi, - October 2022
This is superb work, Neil, and reminds me of Albert Schweitzer’s work from a century ago. . . . .

I commend you for being the first to even TRY to translate Bruno Bauer’s brilliant Kritik der Evangelien und Geschichte ihres Ursprungs, which is now more than 150 years old.

. . . . .Thank you for your historic effort.

-- Paul Trejo, M.A., - November 2022
Editor, An English Edition of Bruno Bauer’s 1843 Christianity Exposed
"I find your blog most interesting and appreciate your ongoing effort to keep to the evidence for the issues discussed!"

-- Thomas L. Thompson, - April 2020
"Neil, this is actually rather useful. Good job."

— R. Joseph Hoffmann, – June 2014
"Many thanks for this post, and for the quality of your blog."

— Philippe Wajdenbaum, – November 2018
"Neil Godfrey and Tim Widowfield, who both write at Vridar . . . happen to be some of the most astute and well-read amateurs you can read on the internet on the subject of biblical historicity. I call them amateurs only for the reason that they don’t have, so far as I know, advanced degrees in the subject. But I have often been impressed with their grasp of logic and analysis of scholarship. I don’t always agree with them, but I respect their work."

— Richard Carrier, – March 2014
"Note that I do not use the term ‘amateur’ pejoratively. . . . In fact, Godfrey is extremely well read and his librarian skills have brought many important academic works to my attention."

Raphael Lataster - August 2019
"Vridar is consistently thought-provoking, well-informed, and asking the right questions. There are intelligent, thoughtful comments and commenters regularly offering productive discussion. Books and publications are covered with a range of perspectives with attempts at fair and accurate representation of others’ arguments and content (where there are occasional and inevitable missteps on that I notice Neil making corrections and apologies where warranted, which wins points with me). Please carry on."

— Gregory Doudna, – January 2019
"Neil, You’ve done a clean job in your posting on ‘Jesus the Healer’. It reflects well on you. Best, John"

— John Moles, September 2011 (personal email)
"I’d like to thank you for this very nice representation of what I was trying to show in the book. It’s always gratifying when a reader zeroes in on exactly those aspects I thought were most interesting and most central to my argument. Thank you for this careful and engaged reading of my work – much appreciated!"

— Eva Mroczek, – June 2017
"I still wonder at all the material you turn out for Vridar. The more I read your stuff (and I still do, of course), the more I realize how much we all owe you. Your voice is unique."

— Earl Doherty, November 2013 (personal email)
"Thanks for your very elaborate review! I realized that I hadn’t added your blog to our blogroll. This oversight has been corrected. Looking forward to more segments."

— Anthony Le Donne, – September 2009
"Neil, in my mature judgement (I am now an old man), this fine 4-part study is a brilliant reworking, an instructive restatement of Hayden White’s Metahistory (and his subsequent writings). Your critique of certain historiographic representations as imbedded in the case study of the “scientistic”, “empirical” Richard Carrier provides a solid starting point for the more honest “fictive” reading of the New Testament that you encourage. Your last paragraph is a very intelligent call to sensitive readers of these texts. I suspect a whole generation of biblical students has been educated without the insights provided by the incomparable White. Bravo!"

-- Timothy Bagley, - November 2024
"Thanks much for this book review. I think it expands, and contributes to, the effort in honouring Thomas that we with Lukasz originally had in mind with this volume. Best, Emanuel"

-- Emanuel Pfoh - August 2020
"I think you have a high quality blog that provides a positive public service by discussing academic topics within a wider audience."

— Russell Gmirkin, – October 2016
"I’ve even been cited by atheists with approval (which I really don’t know how to take, so thanks, I think, but I’m not sure, Vrider (even though I feel like I need to take a shower now))."

-- Jim West, – September 2010
"I have found your website really valuable as an interpretive filter for Biblical scholarship, especially the origins of Christianity and historicity of Jesus issue. Your clarity of expression, fair comments and personal insights are much valued. I refer to your site frequently as yet more names and publications pop up requiring an academic critique and helpful recommendations for book purchases. So, please continue to delve deeply and share this intellectual sustenance with your grateful readers."

— Mary Booker, – February 2020 (personal email)
"Fantastic. I’m so glad you’re helping to spread these ideas!"

Nancy Fraser - June 2019 (personal email)

Petr Jancar on How to Recognize a Trustworthy Consensus: “(Just my subjective feedback.) I can say that I also have a bad experience in communicating with Richard Carrier. (If…” Jan 8, 14:08
Neil Godfrey on How to Recognize a Trustworthy Consensus: “As for Q — my focus is currently being redirected to a mid-second century provenance for all the earliest NT…” Jan 8, 11:06
Neil Godfrey on How to Recognize a Trustworthy Consensus: “I am fast losing patience with Carrier’s superficial arrogance, especially since he continues to accuse me falsely of saying something…” Jan 8, 10:48
Gordon Rouse on How to Recognize a Trustworthy Consensus: ““This becomes clear in cases like Q Theory (where the consensus is wildly wrong, based on bad argumentation and a…” Jan 8, 09:19
Neil Godfrey on How to Recognize a Trustworthy Consensus: “I’m not arguing that any consensus is “true”. But don’t you think the three parameters set out by Tucker make…” Jan 8, 04:09
Andrew Dabrowski on How to Recognize a Trustworthy Consensus: “Doesn’t this just push the problem up a meta-level? Now instead of arguing directly about whether X is true, we…” Jan 8, 03:28
Neil Godfrey on Jesus Mythicism and Historical Knowledge, Part 4: Did Jesus Exist?: “You appear to have overlooked my earlier request. ….. You wrote in response to a point I made: “I find…” Jan 8, 01:09
Neil Godfrey on Jesus Mythicism and Historical Knowledge, Part 4: Did Jesus Exist?: “It is not logically possible to take the position that “we do not know whether Jesus existed or not” (or…” Jan 8, 00:59
Neil Godfrey on How to Recognize a Trustworthy Consensus: “I used the word “trustworthy” in the title but maybe I should have used “justifiable”. I suppose the simple fact…” Jan 7, 23:56

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