Godfrey's difficult relationship with Murdock

[fortigurn]

Godfrey has written a lengthy and apologetic defense of his approach to Murdock's 'astro-theology' and Mythicism. He starts with half a page of carefully written enthusiasm for Murdock's writings. Without endorsing them without qualification, he avoids criticizing them directly.

...I purchased her book Fingerprints of Christ and have browsed through much of it a few times, but I have not seen anything in it to capture my interest enough to write about. I have no problems with its content. It is okay — nothing new from my perspective, I would not condemn it. There are many basic works on mythicism that have little interest for me mainly because I am so familiar with the sorts of things they say and I have moved on from such things. That’s not to say they would not be of interest to others, of course.

Notes of muted caution over some of Murdock's conclusions are sounded throughout, although Neil avoids actually saying she is wrong.

* 'my initial scepticism'
* 'astrotheology is going way, way beyond those in its claims for Christian origins'
* 'we cannot discuss such speculations without linking evidence'

The enthusiastic support of Murdock by Doherty and Price (to which Murdock points with pride), clearly adds to Neil's discomfort; he's a minority within a minority.

As Murdock and her followers point out, the difficulty Neil faces is explaining why he is so cautious about Murdock's conclusions, when Murdock uses the same methods as Doherty and Neil.

[fortigurn]

These comments are worth reading.

* 'First, it is absurd to assert that this particular topic is “purposely kept off the table” as if through some sort of conspiracy'

* 'But to attempt to leap from any of this across a yawning chasm to Christianity itself originating as a response to beliefs about precession or other astronomical phenomena — and to do so on the strength of finding keyword needles in the haystack of the Gospels — is nothing but hocus pocus phantasmagorical parallelomania'

* 'when advocates of this view start pointing to the lack of reference to Stonehenge in biblical studies as evidence of some deliberate censorship and can provide absolutely nothing more rigorous by way of argument than their own imaginations, they have excluded themselves from any right to participation in scholarly or serious discussions'

* 'Dogmatism and ill-defined correlation are not the basis of a truly intellectually honest inquiry'

* 'There already exist in the scholarly literature very credible alternative explanations that are more consistent with a host of explanations of other data, too'

* 'I reject your above argument as based entirely on ill-defined correlation and in defiance of other more familiar and proven explanations'

Incredibly, these are all comments by Neil. The irony is strong.

[fortigurn]

Neil continues to pile on the irony.

I have since had messages attempting to argue (again) for astrotheology on this thread but I have no interest in allowing them a platform of any kind if they openly reject the norms of valid argumentation and the fundamentals of how evidence works in historiography. They have declared themselves outside the room when it comes to scholarly discussion and debate.

I always suspected that when I did eventually engage with anyone from the astrotheology camp that there would be little real discussion — and that it would come down to the fundamentals of what constitutes a valid argument. But the reaction indicated in the post goes way beyond anything I for a moment expected. I had trusted we would simply agree to disagree and go our separate ways.

The crazy thing is that I have no idea if there is anything at all to their arguments. I simply ignore them because I cannot see any valid support for them. And asking for evidence that directly supports a hypothesis leads to the sort of hostile reaction I thought was the preserve of the apologists and theologian scholars. Crazy, crazy.

[sankari]

This is quality entertainment. Godfrey's contortions are simply breathtaking.

[wraggy]

I just discovered that D.M. Murdock (a.k.a. Acharya S) had passed away earlier in the week.
I found out through Albert McIlhenny's web page.

labarum.net/some-thoughts-on-the-passing-of-d-m-murdock/

[ignorantianescia]

Crud, that sounds like a singularly unpleasant way to leave this world. I'm sorry to hear that she had that.