2010-06-27

Politics and religion, questioning the similarity of my positions

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by Neil Godfrey

Julien Benda

I have often questioned myself over a certain kind of similarity of my positions on both religion and politics. The similarity has forced me to ask myself whether I am responding to “everything” from some sort of knee-jerk desire to be different. So I am constantly questioning and testing my own methods, facts and assumptions to see if I am being as fair as I can hope to be. How likely is it that any of my views might be sustainable after I am gone?

My political views are more easily subject to reality checks than my views on the Bible. “Political” can be a confusing term. What I mean by it are my views on human rights and justice. People suffering, being dispossessed of their homes and rights, and being killed, are objective realities that one has to simply say Yes or No to. Surprisingly, most people do say Yes to these things in the real world, even though they say “no” to them in theory. The reasons vary. But for many, it is because their grasp of reality is shaped by their “tribe”, or the larger groups with which they primarily identify.

I witnessed a classic example of the dynamics of this some years back when I attended presentations first by an Israeli and then by a Palestinian expressing their different perspectives on the conflict between them. The Israeli presentation was held in an upper floor lecture room, with security guards posted at several points one had to pass to reach the venue. The identities of each attendee were recorded. The talk spoke of grand sweeps of historical and geographic portraits, and fear and threats. Then after several delays, the Palestinian view was allowed to be expressed. This was held in an open ground-level hall, with no security guards, no recording of identities of those attending, and the talk was all about personal experiences, daily life, photos of people (not maps), harassments and punishments.

One side spoke of fears and a historical view; the other side spoke of daily life and personal experiences.

That is, one side spoke of beliefs; the other of evidence and facts.

And that, I am coming to realize, is exactly the same schizoid dichotomy at the heart of biblical scholarship, too. Facts are replaced by “criteria” in order to manufacture “facts” to support beliefs.

This morning I caught up with a statement by Ken O’Keefe on his P10K website: Continue reading “Politics and religion, questioning the similarity of my positions”


2010-05-31

Aw, gee, thanks guys

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by Neil Godfrey

I have the honour of gaining a mention in two of the biggest biblioblogs in the whole wide internet now. Aw shucks, and they both really do such a thorough job of analyzing my work and studying my personal psychology. I hope I won’t get a bill for their services.

Between “Dr” Jim West and Joel Watts I find I am:

a genuine flinger

a genuine flicker

utterly unacquainted with Crossley’s work

accuse Crossley of playing favorites when it comes to historiographically centered methodological questions (wow, I’m not sure what that means but it sounds like I’ve done something serious or important)

utterly bereft of insight

ramble on about absolutely nothing with such aplomb (irishanglican would no doubt agree with this assessment)

have taken on a stern taskmaster belief system

possibly have a personality defect

appear to be comforting myself in my denial of Jesus’ historicity

absolutely hate my former self

‘need’ Jesus not to be real for my own personal comfort

create conspiracy theories

have refused to acknowledge scholarship that once denied my view of faith
(Baptists? Methodists?

and now deny the same scholars who deny my rejection of faith

forget how history is formed

am angry (part of an angry mob to be precise)

profoundly need there to be no god

leap any logical boundary to this end

but what’s really interesting is my motive in all of this — I know that hell and damnation await me if there is a god!

And all of this on the eve of me birthday too! Well, thanks guys, a good belly laugh is the best way to start a new year! 🙂

Belly Laugh
Image by Tojosan via Flickr

2010-05-24

Why I’m doing this

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by Neil Godfrey

Maybe it is not a bad idea to put on record why I’m bothering with my blog posts about biblical studies. I admit it is surely a nerdy thing to be doing. And I do sometimes get a few raised eyebrows from those who know me when they learn that I have such a blog as this.

After I left religion (both relatively extreme as well as the milder forms of it) and belief in God I had to find a new direction in life. After living “for God and the next life” etc all one’s life, and finding oneself no longer with any belief in that God or after life etc, the first thing one has to decide is “okay, what now, where to from here?”

Well after a bit of option weighing I figured that the most worthwhile direction would be to make use of my past experiences and turn them to something positive. The alternative seemed to be to declare all those years a total waste, and to try to start totally afresh without reference to my past as much as possible. That was one option. But I opted instead to use my past bads for something good.

One of the first things I did was to start up something of a support group for others who had been through the cult experience themselves. Continue reading “Why I’m doing this”


2010-05-23

Hoo boy, I have a headache

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by Neil Godfrey

(Thinks) No, I don’t have a headache, but I feel like I should have one.

I wake up this morning as usual first check my iphone to see how the various media are spinning the Thailand events, check to see if there is any other news worth knowing about, then see if anyone has had a peek at my blog posts overnight. And what is waiting for me there but a very severe public chastising from a woman on the other side of the world — and a fellow Aussie, no less, a potential drinking partner!

I skimmed it and decided I needed a long walk. Haven’t had nearly enough exercise lately and I need time to myself to think through some major work projects too, and to appreciate the goodness of sunshine and smiling early morning faces.

Now I’m back reinvigorated and ready to go.

Well, where to start?

Thinking.

Okay — Why do I sometimes pick on certain scholarly works to criticize or share?

Answer: The ones I like to share are those that offer insights from a different perspective that I think is worth sharing. The ones I criticize are those that I have come to understand are looked up to as major contributions to the faith of believers, or are held up as benchmark works that establish and even extend the foundations of the core findings of historical Jesus and early Christianity scholarship.

An example of one widely esteemed as a major “wow” book for believers was Richard Bauckham’s “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses”. Now I know what it’s like to be excited by new findings in research. And I especially can appreciate the thrill of new sensational ideas charging in honour and celebration of one’s own personal beliefs. But I also know that false beliefs, shoddy reasoning, has a lot to answer for. And that public intellectuals have a greater responsibility in this area.

So in the case of Bauckham’s book I felt some obligation to make available to anyone interested what I saw as the flaws in his arguments and methods. It’s good for choices to be made available.

In the case of Crossley, I did not think it worth saying much in any detail until a number of people began to give me the impression that his work was also taken much more seriously than I had expected after reading it for myself some time ago. I thought it was mostly smoke-and-mirror type scholarship with nothing substantial to say at all. Yet I was regularly seeing references to the strength of his case. But I never saw any detailed defence of his arguments.

It was as if people were so impressed by the complexity and depth of his arguments that they could not summarize them themselves, but they could always refer to his books and challenge anyone to deny their import.

One associate professor challenged me in a similar way to take on the way E. P. Sanders had so soundly proven the historicity of Jesus. I began to show in detail how Sanders did no such thing and he went quiet and changed the subject.

So I have shown what I see as the fallacies and shallowness of Crossley’s arguments, and I would expect that if they were really so sound I would have fact after fact fired back at me to show how and where I had misrepresented them, or failed to honestly rebut them.

But no, all I get is how it is impossible to point out where I am wrong in anything less than a full size book, and therefore I have to be content with accepting personal abuse instead. I find this surprising. I have catalogued over the years probably thousands of scholarly works, and I think just about every one of them, certainly most of them, has somewhere what is called an abstract — a summary of the arguments contained in a scholarly thesis, book, article or paper. The only bad and incompetent abstracts I have read are by those who are undergraduates. But everyone has to learn.

Yet no, not even an abstract (of what a book pointing out the wrongs of my critiques would contain) can be mustered against my arguments. Only demands that I explain what my religious background is that has made me supposedly so embittered and hateful of Christianity that I would dare argue against the basic model accepted by mainstream scholars.

Well, it sounds to me as if I have no need to spell out the details of my religious background since I am already being accused of such malicious motives stemming from some warped soul-bending past experiences.

So what is the point of bothering to remind such accusers that my complete religious history has been linked from my blog ever since I started it a few years ago. One only has to click the About Vridar button to access it. But it seems that this is not enough, and I am to be condemned for attempting to hide my past experiences in some nefarious attempt to conceal the root of my evil motives.

Oh, I almost forgot. I have also posted some of my experiences with fundamentalism here — including quite a few positive experiences. But I hide these in a secret place that can only be accessed by scrolling through Categories headings on the right margin on my blog.

I used to think that scholars were paragons of reason and enlightenment. That if I asked them a question they would enlighten me. That if I made an error they would instruct me. That if I disagreed with their conclusions they would point out my mistakes.

Instead, I find myself being painted as someone with an irrational vendetta against Christianity? Woops! Where on earth did that come from? Maybe someone can explain to me that it is impossible to pinpoint any specific evidence on my blog that demonstrates this vendetta, but if pushed they could write a book to explain it, but don’t ask for an abstract summary of that book.

Interesting how scholars who cannot defend their arguments resort to ad hominem. I discussed Craig Evan’s tendency to do this in his book Fabricating Jesus, too. It is truly an amazing way to respond to critiques and exposures of the shoddy reasoning underlying so much that passes for biblical scholarship. I feel these painful responses are really testimony to the truth of the critiques. There is nothing to defend that is based on sound reasoning and evidence.

Sometimes these scholars go on the attack and issue critiques of their own — usually of Earl Doherty’s books. But I do wish those scholars who do this actually demonstrate that they have read either some, or more than a few lines on a website, of what he actually argues.

But now I’m starting to go into a rant of my own. Okay, I’ve been ranting too long.

Will finish this, have breakfast, and maybe when I feel more comfortable see if it is worth responding in the comments section to my chastisement.


2010-05-12

My favourite James blog

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by Neil Godfrey

Two of the things I do not like about my blog are that it is not funny and it always seems to be picking on anyone named James. So to make up a little for both faults I am compelled to give prominent linkage to Dr. Jim’s Thinking Shop & Tea Room. The theology of this particular James is impeccable and his humour divine.


2010-04-02

Biblioblogs again

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by Neil Godfrey


Alexa rankings are listed here on the Free Old Testament Audio Website Blog.

Anyone interested can check out traffic and stats on any website at the Alexa site.

According to the demographics page of Alexa (searching by blog url), if you read this blog chances are you are

  • American
  • Either 35-44 or 55-64 years old
  • Male
  • Without children at home
  • Have a graduate education
  • And just as likely to be reading it at work as at home

But there’s also a chance you are Finnish, and a few with kids at home do get a tiny bit of time to read this.

And the “time on site” stats say you will average 19 and a half minutes on the site, the same time as the Mormons spend on the Joel Watts’ site 🙂

(Given the recent exchanges with James McGrath’s, maybe it is not out of place to note that readers of ExploringOurMatrix are far more likely to be between 45 and 54 years old, much more likely to be American — with a 0.8% likelihood you are from Singapore of all places, have children at home, and be reading his blog at work — but only for a minute with each visit. Well there ya go! We are from different planets 🙂

Not found in the Alexa data, but the one that I have to live with from my own stats, is that the most popular Vridar post of all continues to be my whimsical Venus of Willendorf resurrected 100 years that has attracted an embarrassing 11,612 visits since it appeared in August 2008.


2010-02-01

Other biblioblogs

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by Neil Godfrey

Looks like someone keeps a monthly list now —

http://www.freeoldtestamentaudio.com/Blog/New.php/?p=1387


2010-01-08

Biblioblogs

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by Neil Godfrey

Just discovered a list of “Biblioblogs” — maybe I’m the last to know.

http://biblioblogtop50.wordpress.com/

Continue reading “Biblioblogs”


2009-05-14

posts and comments

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by Neil Godfrey

Notice some comments from way back that included urls did not get through — am belatedly correcting that now.

Have finished writing re Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God. He relies heavily on Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, and I have already addressed that in more than enough detail. He also draws on N.T. Wright often enough, and he has been, and will be addressed, enough in other posts. It is also too tedious to be reading Keller’s ignorant and arrogant insistence that there is no such person as a real “in their heart” atheist, and straw man insistence that nonbelievers are moral relativists, and that it is moral arrogance to think one can judge as inferior the cruder standards of the bible, including its endorsement of slavery. (He comes close to even writing a panegyric of biblical slavery, almost conveying the impression that apart from a few rotten apples it was the best thing that ever happened to any society.)

And I simply can’t bring myself to take the time to address his convoluted and frequently fatuous arguments that confuse metaphors with realities to rationalize the need for a spirit man in the sky to actually give his son over to be butchered for us to be forgiven and have a personal relationship with him. Not to mention his tortured assertion that by submitting totally to a book’s precepts we are engaging in a meaningful “two-way” personal relationship with a deity! (I have addressed a little of the damage all this has inflicted on too many in a few of my posts in my Fundamentalism category and in my notes on Marlene Winell’s Leaving the Fold.) His explanations of how faith changes lives is also a non-starter and reminded me of what I discovered when I began to think about my own faith — how faith is a mindgame, a very useful and positive one for many, but not one to judge others over.

Also want to finish off my Josephus section with a discussion of the James (brother of Jesus called the Christ) passage in Josephus’ Antiquities 20, but that involves a bit of organization work to prepare and edit.

Also I have fallen way behind in collating and editing my years old notes from earlier studies that I would like to revisit and think through again by posting here. — including my notes on Old Testament studies and archaeology. It’s all probably out of date by now and I’ll have to do more catch up reading before I can revisit those.

And I’m bemused by the fact that the most hit-on post on my blog (4000 in 9 months) is an incidental notice re the Venus of Willendorf.


2008-07-02

Vridar makes it to the God Fearin’ Forum

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by Neil Godfrey

As an atheist and social-political activist I’ve long had a soft spot for Catholics when it comes to social justice causes, so it was a flattering surprise to see a nice commendation of my recent series on Luke-Acts in relation to Marcionism in the Patristic Carnival XIII section of The God Fearin’ Forum [scroll over the blog page to restore colour settings for a readable page], a blog for Catholic theology, philosophy and apologetics etc.

A companion recommendation listed with mine is Ben C. Smith’s commencement of “a thought provoking thread on the same subject: Which Came First, the Gospel of Luke or that of Marcion?” — The iidb/frdb discussion is attached below….. Continue reading “Vridar makes it to the God Fearin’ Forum”


2008-05-15

Creative Commons Licence

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by Neil Godfrey

Have recently noticed that some users have copied entire posts of mine without attribution and some partial posts in contexts I am not comfortable with. That’s the internet I guess, but I’d prefer anyone wishing to copy in whole or part to do so in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons licence I have just taken out for this site.

Creative Commons

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Based on a work at vridar.org.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at /permissions/.

Thanks