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Post by wraggy on Nov 15, 2015 9:15:46 GMT
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Post by timoneill on Nov 15, 2015 21:34:00 GMT
Though, oddly, the link there leads to a "Sorry, the page you were looking for in this blog does not exist" message even though the address is correct.
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Post by wraggy on Nov 17, 2015 5:41:06 GMT
Though, oddly, the link there leads to a "Sorry, the page you were looking for in this blog does not exist" message even though the address is correct. It is weird. Do you have any clue what has happened?
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Post by unkleE on Nov 17, 2015 21:05:11 GMT
The URL that isn't working is correct if you take off the last "%C2%A0". I don't know what those characters mean or where they came from, but usually such characters pass extra information along with the URL - for example if you are entering information in a form, or if you are going to an address within the page. Somehow James McGrath has added those characters.
I guess all that is obvious, but someone had to say it.
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Post by timoneill on Nov 17, 2015 21:34:38 GMT
In the meantime, Neil "Mr Furious" Godfrey has found my new blog and is much displeased. Apparently I said that the Gnus "happen to get wrong just about any and everything they ever say about history", which is weird, because I didn't actually say that. Apparently I also specifically said that Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett and Harris got history wrong, when what I actually said was that by "New Atheism" I was referring to that school of anti-theistic activism empitomised by those writers. But leaping from that last misapprehension, Mr Furious furiously goes in search of those specific writers making the specific errors that I list. And ... finds several examples of them doing just that. He also misses several others, like Harris saying that Giordano Bruno was "[tortured] to the point of madness for merely speculating about the nature of the stars" or Dawkins calling Pius XII "Pope Nazi" in a speech in 2010. He then hilariously declares "I do find it very difficult to believe that Richard Carrier has gaffed on any of Tim’s “factoids”". That would be the Carrier who perpetuates the idea that there was zero science done in the Middle Ages (largely by redefining most of second half of the period as something called "the Early Renaissance"!) and claims that the institution that preserved and revered ancient philosophy and proto-science did "nothing" to ... preserve and revere ancient philosophy and proto-science. He then loudly declares that I have "falsely accused" the Gnus and indulges in some more sneering and insinuation in the comments section. His commenters also help to confirm what I'm saying with gems like "there weren’t any 'scientists' during the Middle Ages" and the conclusion that the Wicked Old Church made Europe forget how to make concrete. Oh, and I should be ignored because I only have an M.A. in Medieval Lit, which apparently is a hotbed of apologism because C. S. Lewis. Hilarious stuff, as usual, from the Gnu/Myther echo chamber.
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Post by peteri on Nov 18, 2015 1:20:47 GMT
Oh, and I should be ignored because I only have an M.A. in Medieval Lit, which apparently is a hotbed of apologism because C. S. Lewis. Hilarious stuff, as usual, from the Gnu/Myther echo chamber. One thing I have noticed about Lewis is that he tried to be really careful when making statements outside his expertise. Of course this didn't stop him from being wrong occasionally, but I never got the feeling that he thought it was ok to select whatever opinion was convenient for his purposes. Peter.
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Post by unkleE on Nov 18, 2015 9:44:01 GMT
I found the discussion (post and comments) at Vridar quite interesting. I don't think those writing there realise some of the unspoken messages they are sending.
1. Most of the comments, and much of the post, centre on pinning labels on people so they can justify disagreeing with them. Tim is somehow sounding like a christian apologist, perhaps even like CS Lewis (a bit to live up to!) and he quotes James Hannam's book, John Burke is a "rabid fundamentalist" (I'm not sure what that makes me, perhaps it's best they don't know I exist!), James is "the owner of a reasonably well-known Christian and anti-mythicist blog", etc. I think it is always helpful to know a person's background and likely bias, but more important is whether they are well qualified and what their peers think of them, and more important still is whether the evidence points in the direction they are arguing. Yet they don't seem to be much interested in those more important questions. It makes their criticisms very unconvincing.
2. This general, and obvious, observation then must throw some doubt on their own conclusions. Do they use this sort of approach when considering their own conclusions and beliefs? If NT Wright says it, it must be wrong but if Richard Carrier says it, it must be right??
Jesus (I actually think he existed!) is reported to have said that we'll know trees by their fruit. i.e. it's not what people say that reveals, as much as how they behave. On this criterion, are the Vridar crowd evidence-based rationalists or people who base their views on selective authority?
I suppose all this is obvious to those of you who visit Vridar, but I rarely do, so I'm just thinking about what I found there.
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Post by ignorantianescia on Nov 18, 2015 16:22:21 GMT
The URL that isn't working is correct if you take off the last "%C2%A0". I don't know what those characters mean or where they came from, but usually such characters pass extra information along with the URL - for example if you are entering information in a form, or if you are going to an address within the page. Somehow James McGrath has added those characters. I guess all that is obvious, but someone had to say it. It turns out that's the non-breaking space: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-breaking_space I suppose it could have been easily picked up somewhere. Also, good luck with the new blog, Tim, since I haven't wished you any yet. I was also going to express my hope that you will get a significant atheist readership, but I see you're good on that front already.
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Post by timoneill on Nov 18, 2015 19:43:34 GMT
Also, good luck with the new blog, Tim, since I haven't wished you any yet. I was also going to express my hope that you will get a significant atheist readership, but I see you're good on that front already. Though it seems the main readership I'm getting from among atheists is from Mr Furious' blog, where they are lining up to declare me a great big poopyhead. Whereas the most enthusiastic audience I've had so far is from the Intelligent Design morons at Uncommon Descent. Which is depressing. All is not lost though. I have also had positive comments on a couple of sceptic and science fora, where the commitment to New Atheist ideology and Jesus Myther dogma is not entrenched and people actually bother to examine things carefully. Mr Furious' comments are very strange though and seem indicative of his weirdly literalistic and linear ways of thinking (perhaps a product of his fundamentalist background). As I note above, I never actually claim that Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens are themselves specifically guilty of any of the examples of New Atheist bad history that I give (though, as it happens, a couple of them are guilty of minor examples of a few of them, as even Godfrey is forced to admit). I simply define "New Atheism" as the kind of "actively anti-religious activist atheism embodied by Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett and Harris". But Godfrey reads that in the most literal way possible, nuance not being his strong suit, and then charges off to defend Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett and Harris from a charge I never made. His other attacks are similarly wrong-footed and weirdly absolutist. I note that most of the New Atheist brigade - like Coyne and Moran in my second post, for example - are scientists who have never studied history past high school level and so accept many popular myths about history at face value. "Aha!" cries Mr Furious, "But what about the acceptance of the Jesus Myth hypothesis! That's not a popular myth learned at high school! Therefore O'Neill is a big wrong poopyhead!!" Again, a weirdly limited and linear argument, given that I didn't say that popular myths are the only source of their weak grasp of history and give a second major source of it - a crippling ideological bias that leads them to accept fringe positions rejected by most actual scholars in relevant fields. Like ... the Jesus Myth thesis. Then, turning to that second source, Mr Furious notes some New Atheists (like Dawkins and Hitchens) who don't accept the Jesus Myth thesis and so somehow this on its own shows me to be a big wrong poopyhead on this one as well. Which ignores the fact that I didn't say all New Atheist types accepted this or similar fringe theses (eg Salm's non-existent Nazareth pseudo archaeology beloved of Zindler and Randi) and so these exceptions don't disprove what I say or negate the plethora of New Atheists who do accept these fringe ideas out of a warping bias against religion. Finally, Mr Furious produces one of his favourite arguments, whereby he notes that some of the Jesus Mythers aren't anti-theists. As though this somehow makes the fact that a large number of them clearly are. So Mr Furious triumphantly concludes, by these shouty but wonky arguments, that I am a big wrong poopyhead. The comments on his post are hilarious. Various weirdos who I have beaten up in the past are now turning up to declare how wrong I am and how they have bravely beaten me. One guy has been smart enough to note that Neil de Grasse Tyson is not much chop at history and linked to a series of articles at Thony Christie's blog ... including one by, ummm, me. And now Mr Furious has set his sights on James Hannam's book (sorry James) and grandly announced "I will be addressing Tim’s reliance on this popular (by its own admission not for scholarly audiences) book in future posts." My "reliance" on God's Philosophers"? Pardon? I'm sure James won't be offended to learn that far from "relying" on his book, there's pretty much nothing in it that I didn't know from my study of the leading scholars in the field of science long before James' book came out. I recommend it to people without that background as a good summary of the history which is more accessible to the general reader than academic works by people like Lindberg and Grant. But it will be funny to watch Mr Furious get far out of field as he charges off into medieval history. Grab your popcorn.
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Post by wraggy on Nov 19, 2015 12:34:27 GMT
Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
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Post by ignorantianescia on Nov 19, 2015 17:46:28 GMT
Only a Sith deals in absolutes. Odd, there's this totally legit quote on that. That explains why he's so inSidious. On a slightly more serious note, I'm a bit surprised about the size of his readership (larger than I expected, though still what we'd call "anderhalve man en een paardenkop" in my language) and the amount of time he has already spent in research annex cyberstalking.
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Post by timoneill on Nov 19, 2015 19:36:07 GMT
On a slightly more serious note, I'm a bit surprised about the size of his readership (larger than I expected, though still what we'd call "anderhalve man en een paardenkop" in my language) and the amount of time he has already spent in research annex cyberstalking. One thing Mr Furious seems to have a lot of is spare time. He works as Team Co-ordinator in the Digital Collections area of the library at Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory - one of Australia's smallest universities with only around 10,000 students. I'd imagine that's a job that would leave a chap with a lot of time to fill. And it seems he's filled some of it with some cyberstalking of me, as you say. He's managed to dig out my M.A. thesis and bothered to read its Abstract and Bibliography. If he'd read a little more he would have found that a large chunk of my analysis is based on the New Historicist approach to literary analysis, which involves a very good grasp of history. But, as typical, he didn't bother with that. I was going to ignore his surly spite, but he and his commenters are illustrating some points about New Atheist Bad History quite nicely. So I will write a shortish post entitled "Neil Godfrey is Displeased" this evening.
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Post by gakuseidon on Nov 20, 2015 8:34:18 GMT
I found the discussion (post and comments) at Vridar quite interesting. I don't think those writing there realise some of the unspoken messages they are sending. 1. Most of the comments, and much of the post, centre on pinning labels on people so they can justify disagreeing with them. Tim is somehow sounding like a christian apologist, perhaps even like CS Lewis (a bit to live up to!) and he quotes James Hannam's book, John Burke is a "rabid fundamentalist" (I'm not sure what that makes me, perhaps it's best they don't know I exist!), James is "the owner of a reasonably well-known Christian and anti-mythicist blog", etc. I think it is always helpful to know a person's background and likely bias, but more important is whether they are well qualified and what their peers think of them, and more important still is whether the evidence points in the direction they are arguing. Yet they don't seem to be much interested in those more important questions. It makes their criticisms very unconvincing. Yes indeed. Their criticisms are not just unconvincing, but personal. I used to have a file containing the weird insults that Neil Godfrey and Tim Widowfield made for those who disagreed, and definitely a part of that is trying to stick labels onto people to discredit them. The funny thing is, apart from that, I love the Vridar blog! It covers a lot of stuff I'm interested in, and when they are not trying to smear people (usually it's Dr James McGrath!) the content can be excellent, for example his book reviews. But when you disagree with him, Godfrey becomes "Mr Furious". Apart from the insults, he has to find a reason for why you disagree. And it can't be just because you disagree with him: it has to be some defect in your character. When Tom Verenna started being critical of Godfrey and siding with McGrath, Godfrey accused him of wanting to conform to the scholarly guild, and also calls Tom Verenna a "sociopath" (Godfrey did apologise later): tomverenna.wordpress.com/2012/07/26/it-came-from-godfreys-blog-aggggghhhhh/And: R Joseph Hoffmann expressed it best on his blog: rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/2012/07/12/a-farewell-to-vridar-and-the-gang-of-four
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Post by unkleE on Nov 21, 2015 21:29:47 GMT
That explains why he's so inSidious. Lol!! How is it that you can make better jokes in your second language than I can in my first!!
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Post by fortigurn on Nov 22, 2015 0:56:12 GMT
In the meantime, Neil "Mr Furious" Godfrey has found my new blog and is much displeased. Apparently I said that the Gnus "happen to get wrong just about any and everything they ever say about history", which is weird, because I didn't actually say that. Apparently I also specifically said that Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett and Harris got history wrong, when what I actually said was that by "New Atheism" I was referring to that school of anti-theistic activism empitomised by those writers. But leaping from that last misapprehension, Mr Furious furiously goes in search of those specific writers making the specific errors that I list. And ... finds several examples of them doing just that. He also misses several others, like Harris saying that Giordano Bruno was "[tortured] to the point of madness for merely speculating about the nature of the stars" or Dawkins calling Pius XII "Pope Nazi" in a speech in 2010. He then hilariously declares "I do find it very difficult to believe that Richard Carrier has gaffed on any of Tim’s “factoids”". That would be the Carrier who perpetuates the idea that there was zero science done in the Middle Ages (largely by redefining most of second half of the period as something called "the Early Renaissance"!) and claims that the institution that preserved and revered ancient philosophy and proto-science did "nothing" to ... preserve and revere ancient philosophy and proto-science. You've been Godfreyed! His default state seems to be "furious", so no real surprise there. Making things up and attributing them to other people is also standard practice. So no actual facts then. How surprising!
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