Scholarship & Faith - John Gee interview

[hope_for_things]

11 minutes ago, bluebell said:

The bolded is true, and is the main learning point in getting a degree in history.  The underlined part is where Juliann's post at the top of the page comes in.  

Occasionally, what is 'most likely' is obvious.  But a lot of the time, it isn't.  Sincere people, using valid (and most of the time the same) evidence can vehemently disagree about what the 'most likely explanation' is.  One of my history professors loved to tell stories about history conferences where reputable historians almost came to blows arguing whether or not the feudal system actually existed or is a modern day construct. Explanations go in and out of vogue all the time and the way that old evidence is interpreted changes with each generation.

That's because some of the time there really isn't a 'most likely explanation', as we tend to view that term.   The evidence is ambiguous enough that any number of explanations can be right, and can also be wrong.    

I think we agree that there is a level of subjectivity as well as various differing opinions when it comes to the interpretations of evidence.  There will always be differing opinions, but that doesn't make every opinion of equal value.  Some opinions are uniformed, some are illogical, some are agenda driven, some are naive to evidence, some are lacking a rigorous methodology, and some are combination of these various elements. 

There are so many different opinions on every subject, what are we to do?  Should we just throw up our hands and admit that we can't ever have confidence in any explanations for events in the past?  Perhaps we should think that all these explanations are just like the colors of the rainbow, each explanation is just another color, no color is more right than another color, they are all just different waves of light on a spectrum.  

If this is true, perhaps we should move all the history and biography books to the fiction section of the library, its all just a matter of opinion, no opinions are more accurate than another, and they will all change anyway.  Biblical textual scholars, all your speculating is just about ambiguous evidence and any number of your explanations could be right or wrong, none of us can tell the difference with any level of confidence, so there is no point in the scholarship you do, its all too confusing and too ambiguous for us to have any confidence in your scholarship.  

[Danzo]

13 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I think we agree that there is a level of subjectivity as well as various differing opinions when it comes to the interpretations of evidence.  There will always be differing opinions, but that doesn't make every opinion of equal value.  Some opinions are uniformed, some are illogical, some are agenda driven, some are naive to evidence, some are lacking a rigorous methodology, and some are combination of these various elements. 

There are so many different opinions on every subject, what are we to do?  Should we just throw up our hands and admit that we can't ever have confidence in any explanations for events in the past?  Perhaps we should think that all these explanations are just like the colors of the rainbow, each explanation is just another color, no color is more right than another color, they are all just different waves of light on a spectrum.  

If this is true, perhaps we should move all the history and biography books to the fiction section of the library, its all just a matter of opinion, no opinions are more accurate than another, and they will all change anyway.  Biblical textual scholars, all your speculating is just about ambiguous evidence and any number of your explanations could be right or wrong, none of us can tell the difference with any level of confidence, so there is no point in the scholarship you do, its all too confusing and too ambiguous for us to have any confidence in your scholarship.  

 

I think the point everyone is trying to make is that you need to understand the discipline a little better

Perhaps Brother Gee just has a different opinion that we try to understand and not just dismiss it by just saying 

On 10/9/2017 at 9:02 AM, hope_for_things said:

it seems like a completely illogical and even dishonest approach to the scholarship. 

 

Accusing someone of dishonesty just doesn't make a good starting point for having a productive discussion.

[bluebell]

10 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I think we agree that there is a level of subjectivity as well as various differing opinions when it comes to the interpretations of evidence.  There will always be differing opinions, but that doesn't make every opinion of equal value.  Some opinions are uniformed, some are illogical, some are agenda driven, some are naive to evidence, some are lacking a rigorous methodology, and some are combination of these various elements. 

There are so many different opinions on every subject, what are we to do?  Should we just throw up our hands and admit that we can't ever have confidence in any explanations for events in the past?  Perhaps we should think that all these explanations are just like the colors of the rainbow, each explanation is just another color, no color is more right than another color, they are all just different waves of light on a spectrum.  

If this is true, perhaps we should move all the history and biography books to the fiction section of the library, its all just a matter of opinion, no opinions are more accurate than another, and they will all change anyway.  Biblical textual scholars, all your speculating is just about ambiguous evidence and any number of your explanations could be right or wrong, none of us can tell the difference with any level of confidence, so there is no point in the scholarship you do, its all too confusing and too ambiguous for us to have any confidence in your scholarship.  

None of what I said was meant to convey that all opinions or explanations are valid or equal, only that it's not always clear cut or possible to know what 'the most likely' explanation is.  Sometimes it's just a matter of opinion.

The only way for us to know which ones are most likely is to study more ourselves, and study work from many different people.  Lots of times, someone can present something in such a way that their opinion of it seems incredibly obvious and correct.  But then when you read work from someone who disagrees, they can almost always make a compelling case for the opposite as well.  Most legitimate historians have valid reasons for why they believe what they do.  It can be frustrating but that's just the way studying history goes sometimes.   

[clarkgoble]

41 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

There are so many different opinions on every subject, what are we to do?  Should we just throw up our hands and admit that we can't ever have confidence in any explanations for events in the past?  Perhaps we should think that all these explanations are just like the colors of the rainbow, each explanation is just another color, no color is more right than another color, they are all just different waves of light on a spectrum.  

The typical response is to note predictive power. The hard sciences are considered our best knowledge - especially in well tested theories - precisely because of their consistent predictive power. The very circumstantial arguments and evidence used in source criticism usually don't have very good predictive power (when they can be used to predict anything at all)

That doesn't mean they are worthless. However I think far too many people conflate "best explanation" with "explanatory strength." The two aren't the same at all. This really isn't an issue of subjectivity vs. objectivity at all. Those are frankly terms that probably mislead discussion far more than they help.

Edited October 10, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

.................................................................

I'm not sure where I was out of line with my comments, since it sounds to me like you're also saying that you believe Gee was mistaken about an incompatibility between source criticism and a historically authentic BoA.  If some knowledgeable scholars doubt key parts of the DH that seems different to me than dismissing source criticism as a whole, I'm aware that their are some disagreements about particulars especially when it comes to the dating and determining the specific source origins, but the overarching idea of multiple sources isn't being disputed in any credible way that I'm aware of.  

I quoted the part where you were out of line, and I hope that you are not blind to your own extreme statements:

Quote

On 10/9/2017 at 10:42 AM, hope_for_things said:

Gee is trying to dismiss biblical mainstream scholarship so it seems to me that he wouldn't even be able to have an intelligent argument to start with.  I don't see Bokovoy contesting the mainstream in Egyptology scholarship or something similar to what Gee is doing.  I just don't understand how someone who's trained in a discipline and understands the details of that discipline and the role of the academy can dismiss the mainstream of another discipline and do so with any intellectual integrity.  

Gee was careful and measured in his interview comments, while you went too far -- even into ad hominem country.  After all, the Book of Mormon itself is the result of major abridging and editing of specific sources over a long period of transmission, as is the Book of Abraham (which was transmitted from the time of Abraham down to the Greco-Roman period in Egypt two thousand years later, being recopied, edited, and redacted -- as with any other Jewish document).  Do you really imagine that Gee is denying that?

Edited October 10, 2017 by Robert F. Smith

[hope_for_things]

31 minutes ago, Danzo said:

 

I think the point everyone is trying to make is that you need to understand the discipline a little better

Perhaps Brother Gee just has a different opinion that we try to understand and not just dismiss it by just saying 

 

Accusing someone of dishonesty just doesn't make a good starting point for having a productive discussion.

I admitted earlier that I'm not an expert in the discipline and I'm not claiming to be an expert either.  I'm critiquing what Mr. Gee said in a podcast, precisely because he's dismissing the mainstream discipline of biblical source criticism, and I'm speculating on why he's doing that, and that his motivations may be colored by his religious bias.  (That's what it sounded like to me in the podcast)

If his approach is as I suspect, then I believe this kind of an approach isn't defensible scholarship.  I'm not outright accusing him of dishonesty, though, there is a distinction.  I'm saying that I think what he's doing by dismissing the mainstream perspective from a field of study that he's not personally an expert in, and if his reasons for dismissing this are because of his personal faith beliefs, and not based on the evidence or the weight of the arguments for biblical source criticism, that his perspective on this topic isn't a critically valid perspective.  

[hope_for_things]

36 minutes ago, bluebell said:

None of what I said was meant to convey that all opinions or explanations are valid or equal, only that it's not always clear cut or possible to know what 'the most likely' explanation is.  Sometimes it's just a matter of opinion.

The only way for us to know which ones are most likely is to study more ourselves, and study work from many different people.  Lots of times, someone can present something in such a way that their opinion of it seems incredibly obvious and correct.  But then when you read work from someone who disagrees, they can almost always make a compelling case for the opposite as well.  Most legitimate historians have valid reasons for why they believe what they do.  It can be frustrating but that's just the way studying history goes sometimes.   

I think you're still getting this wrong, sorry, but let me elaborate.  I don't think "sometimes it's just a matter of opinion", that is an overstatement of what we earlier agreed, that there exists a level of subjectivity and opinion in all disciplines.  That doesn't make the conclusions drawn from these scholarly endeavors "just opinions".  Its more than that, the methods they employ are rigorous and through peer review and the scrutiny of multiple "opinions" and testing of the results, the system in place corrects for many of the errors that normally occur with individuals.  Its a collective opinion, and collective opinions following the methods they follow are much more likely to be accurate.  This doesn't make them perfect though. 

Secondly, we can study until we're personally blue in the face, and still never reach the level of expertise on all the available subjects out there, as these institutions have accumulated through collective scholarship on these topics.  This is why trusting in the mainstream scholarship is so important, because we individually can't become experts on every subject and even approach the levels of sophistication needed to have relevant opinions on so many various different subjects.  

We all trust the experts on pretty much every discipline out there, from medical experts, to engineering experts, to computer programming experts, we all rely on the experts and generally don't question the prevailing opinions of those disciplines.  However, for whatever reason when it comes to religion, people start to think that their untrained, highly limited perspectives are somehow of greater weight than the mainstream scholarship on biblical source criticism or history, or archaeology or any other discipline that intersects with a faith claim.  This kind of thinking is common, I encounter it frequently, but hopefully as people recognize what they are doing, they can have their eyes opened to see things differently.  

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, cdowis said:

It gets worse.  Events are often recorded long after the event itself and subsequent records do not always fit with earlier records. We then have the unpleasant duty of sorting it all out.

Look at the First Vision

The First Vision accounts can be harmonized after a fashion, and the same has been done with the various notes on Joseph Smith's important King Follett Funeral Sermon.  However, just imagine that we have no copies of the early versions, but only the harmonized version of each.  How successful do we suppose a good source critic would be in separating out and recreating the earlier versions and notes, and would they see the jointures where the versions were combined? In one infamous case, C. S. Lewis wrote a piece in one sitting.  Source critics later came along and theorized that he had composed it from a variety of sources over a long period of time -- causing Lewis to laugh uproariously at their folly:  http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2011/08/cs-lewis-modern-theology-and-biblical.html .  Theory is one thing, application quite another.

[hope_for_things]

26 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

The typical response is to note predictive power. The hard sciences are considered our best knowledge - especially in well tested theories - precisely because of their consistent predictive power. The very circumstantial arguments and evidence used in source criticism usually don't have very good predictive power (when they can be used to predict anything at all)

That doesn't mean they are worthless. However I think far too many people conflate "best explanation" with "explanatory strength." The two aren't the same at all. This really isn't an issue of subjectivity vs. objectivity at all. Those are frankly terms that probably mislead discussion far more than they help.

This makes sense to me, and I think it has merit.  There are differences in disciplines and the level of confidence we can have in theories presented.  Yet, I have a hard time when people use this an an excuse to dismiss the mainstream scholarship of a discipline.  Would you agree that some people will dismiss scholarship when it doesn't align with their religious beliefs?  I see this all the time, its not unique to Mormonism either.  

[Robert F. Smith]

5 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

This makes sense to me, and I think it has merit.  There are differences in disciplines and the level of confidence we can have in theories presented.  Yet, I have a hard time when people use this an an excuse to dismiss the mainstream scholarship of a discipline.  Would you agree that some people will dismiss scholarship when it doesn't align with their religious beliefs?  I see this all the time, its not unique to Mormonism either.  

You might want to read C. S. Lewis, "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism," online at http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2011/08/cs-lewis-modern-theology-and-biblical.html .  Lewis was a great Oxford scholar who rightly called into serious question various aspects of source criticism.  Unless you understand what he is saying, your carping at Gee and others will be hollow and uninformed.

[Danzo]

17 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

You might want to read C. S. Lewis, "Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism," online at http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2011/08/cs-lewis-modern-theology-and-biblical.html .  Lewis was a great Oxford scholar who rightly called into serious question various aspects of source criticism.  Unless you understand what he is saying, your carping at Gee and others will be hollow and uninformed.

Thanks for the link.  I found the essay fascinating.

[clarkgoble]

35 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Would you agree that some people will dismiss scholarship when it doesn't align with their religious beliefs?  I see this all the time, its not unique to Mormonism either.  

I certainly think that happens. My point is that I'm skeptical John is doing that. Although as I mentioned, that's going partially by fuzzy memories of conversations with him. I don't want to say he's not doing this. Clearly he's writing apologetics which is attempting to justify hypothesis that almost by definition aren't the best explanation in terms of evidence. However I think he's doing so from an intellectually honest perspective - contrary to how many critics attack him.

 

[hope_for_things]

54 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I quoted the part where you were out of line, and I hope that you are not blind to your own extreme statements:

Gee was careful and measured in his interview comments, while you went too far -- even into ad hominem country.  After all, the Book of Mormon itself is the result of major abridging and editing of specific sources over a long period of transmission, as is the Book of Abraham (which was transmitted from the time of Abraham down to the Greco-Roman period in Egypt two thousand years later, being recopied, edited, and redacted -- as with any other Jewish document).  Do you really imagine that Gee is denying that?

 

No ad hominem is intended on my part, I'm not trying to make this about Gee's character, just his dismissal of mainstream source criticism, if that dismissal is motivated by a religious faith conviction rather than rigorous analysis of the scholarship itself.  This is my problem, he's a scholar of Egyptology and knows the requirements of the discipline, yet it sounds to me from his comments that he's not showing the same respect to biblical scholars that he would expect for Egyptologists.  If I'm correct, I don't find that to be intellectually defensible. 

I imagine that Gee would accept your premise for transmission of texts, so I'm not sure how he would square this idea with the idea that source criticism can't be an accurate description of the origins for the Hebrew Bible.  My suspicion is that its his faith in the tradition about the origins of these texts, the idea that Moses wrote the books, even though we have no evidence for that, so its possibly a matter of faith for him, rather than a position driven by the scholarly evidence.  

[hope_for_things]

10 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I certainly think that happens. My point is that I'm skeptical John is doing that. Although as I mentioned, that's going partially by fuzzy memories of conversations with him. I don't want to say he's not doing this. Clearly he's writing apologetics which is attempting to justify hypothesis that almost by definition aren't the best explanation in terms of evidence. However I think he's doing so from an intellectually honest perspective - contrary to how many critics attack him.

 

Fair enough, I don't know him at all, he's likely a very nice person and I may have misrepresented his position, I only had the podcast wording to work from.  I may learn more by reading his book. 

[pogi]

38 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Secondly, we can study until we're personally blue in the face, and still never reach the level of expertise on all the available subjects out there, as these institutions have accumulated through collective scholarship on these topics.  This is why trusting in the mainstream scholarship is so important, because we individually can't become experts on every subject and even approach the levels of sophistication needed to have relevant opinions on so many various different subjects.  

We all trust the experts on pretty much every discipline out there, from medical experts, to engineering experts, to computer programming experts, we all rely on the experts and generally don't question the prevailing opinions of those disciplines.  However, for whatever reason when it comes to religion, people start to think that their untrained, highly limited perspectives are somehow of greater weight than the mainstream scholarship on biblical source criticism or history, or archaeology or any other discipline that intersects with a faith claim.  This kind of thinking is common, I encounter it frequently, but hopefully as people recognize what they are doing, they can have their eyes opened to see things differently.  

While expert opinion is helpful, I don't think it is a healthy approach for science or religion to just blindly trust the consensus of the experts.  I have worked with too many doctors to know that you shouldn't always just trust the "experts".  And if everyone always simply accepted the popular consensus, then we would fall into scientific stagnation.  There would never be scientific progression.  Sometimes it takes a lone individual to stand up against the prevailing opinions in order to forge new and enlightened ways of thinking about things.

When it comes to faith, I think this is especially true.  I will never simply believe an "expert" when it comes to matters of "faith", that is not how faith works. 

 

[bluebell]

54 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I think you're still getting this wrong, sorry, but let me elaborate.  I don't think "sometimes it's just a matter of opinion", that is an overstatement of what we earlier agreed, that there exists a level of subjectivity and opinion in all disciplines.  That doesn't make the conclusions drawn from these scholarly endeavors "just opinions".  Its more than that, the methods they employ are rigorous and through peer review and the scrutiny of multiple "opinions" and testing of the results, the system in place corrects for many of the errors that normally occur with individuals.  Its a collective opinion, and collective opinions following the methods they follow are much more likely to be accurate.  This doesn't make them perfect though. 

Secondly, we can study until we're personally blue in the face, and still never reach the level of expertise on all the available subjects out there, as these institutions have accumulated through collective scholarship on these topics.  This is why trusting in the mainstream scholarship is so important, because we individually can't become experts on every subject and even approach the levels of sophistication needed to have relevant opinions on so many various different subjects.  

We all trust the experts on pretty much every discipline out there, from medical experts, to engineering experts, to computer programming experts, we all rely on the experts and generally don't question the prevailing opinions of those disciplines.  However, for whatever reason when it comes to religion, people start to think that their untrained, highly limited perspectives are somehow of greater weight than the mainstream scholarship on biblical source criticism or history, or archaeology or any other discipline that intersects with a faith claim.  This kind of thinking is common, I encounter it frequently, but hopefully as people recognize what they are doing, they can have their eyes opened to see things differently.  

I'm just speaking from what I learned, having a B.A. (and a minor) in history.   Have you studied history (not just history, but how to be a historian) extensively?  Maybe we are talking past each other.

 

[Glenn101]

27 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

This makes sense to me, and I think it has merit.  There are differences in disciplines and the level of confidence we can have in theories presented.  Yet, I have a hard time when people use this an an excuse to dismiss the mainstream scholarship of a discipline.  Would you agree that some people will dismiss scholarship when it doesn't align with their religious beliefs?  I see this all the time, its not unique to Mormonism either.  

Hope, did you note three specific reasons that Doctor Gee noted as being at least part of his distrust of source criticism?

(1) No evidence of the existence of the theorized source texts have ever been discovered.
(2) "Actual tests of source criticism – where scholars have used source criticism to predict sources for a text and then the actual sources have been discovered – have usually failed"
(3) On duplication - "The textual presentation of what might appear as two different creation narratives is actually standard in early Mesopotamian accounts of primeval times”

I am not trying to make an argument for or against source criticism, but am merely noting that Doctor Gee is supplying rational reasons for his distrust of source criticism and not his faith. He probably elaborates on those reasons and may actually list some more in his book. He is not dismissing (actually he uses the word distrust) the scholarship because it disagrees with his religious beliefs.

Glenn

[Robert F. Smith]

40 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

No ad hominem is intended on my part, I'm not trying to make this about Gee's character, just his dismissal of mainstream source criticism, if that dismissal is motivated by a religious faith conviction rather than rigorous analysis of the scholarship itself.  This is my problem, he's a scholar of Egyptology and knows the requirements of the discipline, yet it sounds to me from his comments that he's not showing the same respect to biblical scholars that he would expect for Egyptologists.  If I'm correct, I don't find that to be intellectually defensible. 

I imagine that Gee would accept your premise for transmission of texts, so I'm not sure how he would square this idea with the idea that source criticism can't be an accurate description of the origins for the Hebrew Bible.  My suspicion is that its his faith in the tradition about the origins of these texts, the idea that Moses wrote the books, even though we have no evidence for that, so its possibly a matter of faith for him, rather than a position driven by the scholarly evidence.  

You ought to be very hesitant to attribute such a shallow approach to Gee.  My experience with Gee is that he is a hard line scholar who knows better than to base his views on faith alone.  Any critique which you wish to bring to bear ought to be based on his actual statements, not on wild suppositions.

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, pogi said:

While expert opinion is helpful, I don't think it is a healthy approach for science or religion to just blindly trust the consensus of the experts.  I have worked with too many doctors to know that you shouldn't always just trust the "experts".  And if everyone always simply accepted the popular consensus, then we would fall into scientific stagnation.  There would never be scientific progression.  Sometimes it takes a lone individual to stand up against the prevailing opinions in order to forge new and enlightened ways of thinking about things.

When it comes to faith, I think this is especially true.  I will never simply believe an "expert" when it comes to matters of "faith", that is not how faith works. 

Realistically, I don't know very many people that actually question the consensus on other subjects like medical decisions.  I know people that get a second opinion from a different doctor, and if that opinion confirms the first, then they proceed.  For those people that turn to homeopathy or pseudoscience for medical procedures(dismissing the mainstream of medical science), they are taking their own life into their hands, this is not a wise approach.  

While you are correct that it sometimes takes a lone individual to stand up against the prevailing opinions, it is through the strength of their arguments that they are able to change the consensus, not just a dismissal of the consensus.  Their new arguments would then be tested and tried for their strength in the arena of ideas, and if found to be better than the old paradigm through battle testing, then a new mainstream paradigm would emerge.  This is very different than just being skeptical of an area of study based on some religious bias, this is the point of the scientific method, the most persuasive ideas rise to the top.  

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

I'm just speaking from what I learned, having a B.A. (and a minor) in history.   Have you studied history (not just history, but how to be a historian) extensively?  Maybe we are talking past each other.

 

No degrees in history, just a business/finance guy here.  I think what you're saying as far as differing opinions go, probably applies more closely to the discipline of history than it does to the discipline of biblical scholarship, however I still think there are general mainstream opinions end up being widely accepted even in the discipline of history.  For example the idea that Joseph Smith used a seer stone to translate the BoM was disputed for many years by many Mormon historians, but as the evidence for this continued to grow a consensus opinion has emerged to the point that even the LDS church has openly published evidence to support this somewhat inconvenient truth. 

I'm sure that there are various degrees of applicability for this principle of differing opinions depending on the discipline.

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, Glenn101 said:

Hope, did you note three specific reasons that Doctor Gee noted as being at least part of his distrust of source criticism?

(1) No evidence of the existence of the theorized source texts have ever been discovered.
(2) "Actual tests of source criticism – where scholars have used source criticism to predict sources for a text and then the actual sources have been discovered – have usually failed"
(3) On duplication - "The textual presentation of what might appear as two different creation narratives is actually standard in early Mesopotamian accounts of primeval times”

I am not trying to make an argument for or against source criticism, but am merely noting that Doctor Gee is supplying rational reasons for his distrust of source criticism and not his faith. He probably elaborates on those reasons and may actually list some more in his book. He is not dismissing (actually he uses the word distrust) the scholarship because it disagrees with his religious beliefs.

Glenn

He didn't get into these particulars in the podcast that I listened to, so if you're referring to his book or the book review that FAIR posted earlier, perhaps these are points that Mr. Gee makes, I don't know.  I also am not interested in debating whether Mr. Gee's critique of source criticism has any merit, since I'm no expert on the subject myself.  I admit that I'm just following the mainstream scholarship myself, its those outside the mainstream that should have the burden of proving that the mainstream opinions are false.  

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

You ought to be very hesitant to attribute such a shallow approach to Gee.  My experience with Gee is that he is a hard line scholar who knows better than to base his views on faith alone.  Any critique which you wish to bring to bear ought to be based on his actual statements, not on wild suppositions.

If I were writing for publication of some kind, instead of just posting a message on a message board, I completely agree with you.  But I was attempting to have a discussion in a very informal way in this kind of medium.   His comments on the podcast made me think he wasn't able to reconcile his faith in the historicity of the BoA, and the scholarship of biblical source criticism and I got the impression he was conflating faith claims with empirical evidence.  This is why I started the thread, because I see this same thing happening frequently enough, and I'm wanting to better understand how a trained scholar can do this.  Thankfully Gray answered my question by reminding me that many scholars, not just Mormons, do this kind of thing.  I guess it shouldn't be a surprise to me.  

Is this shallow?  I don't know, perhaps I thought it was shallow at first, but upon further reflection, perhaps its just how we're wired as humans to defend the traditions and paradigms that we value, and to look for evidence to support these paradigms, and compartmentalize the way we conduct scholarship and distinguish it separately from the way we conduct our personal convictions.  I'm only speculating here, but I think its interesting to consider how inconsistent we humans can be.  

 

[Robert F. Smith]

3 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

If I were writing for publication of some kind, instead of just posting a message on a message board, I completely agree with you.  But I was attempting to have a discussion in a very informal way in this kind of medium.   His comments on the podcast made me think he wasn't able to reconcile his faith in the historicity of the BoA, and the scholarship of biblical source criticism and I got the impression he was conflating faith claims with empirical evidence.  This is why I started the thread, because I see this same thing happening frequently enough, and I'm wanting to better understand how a trained scholar can do this.  Thankfully Gray answered my question by reminding me that many scholars, not just Mormons, do this kind of thing.  I guess it shouldn't be a surprise to me.  

Is this shallow?  I don't know, perhaps I thought it was shallow at first, but upon further reflection, perhaps its just how we're wired as humans to defend the traditions and paradigms that we value, and to look for evidence to support these paradigms, and compartmentalize the way we conduct scholarship and distinguish it separately from the way we conduct our personal convictions.  I'm only speculating here, but I think its interesting to consider how inconsistent we humans can be.  

What I have been trying to get through to you is that it is a copout to claim that somebody is using faith in a discussion, rather than accepting that he may simply disagree on a scholarly basis.  You seem here to be claiming that Gee is falling back on faith tradition and conflating it with empirical evidence.  In cases of this kind, I prefer all parties to stick to the scholarly debate and not inject casual faith considerations as a straw man.  At the doctoral level, scholars are not so much interested in which position one takes as that the position be well articulated and based on reason.  Your injection of faith considerations is out of order.

[hope_for_things]

11 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

What I have been trying to get through to you is that it is a copout to claim that somebody is using faith in a discussion, rather than accepting that he may simply disagree on a scholarly basis.  You seem here to be claiming that Gee is falling back on faith tradition and conflating it with empirical evidence.  In cases of this kind, I prefer all parties to stick to the scholarly debate and not inject casual faith considerations as a straw man.  At the doctoral level, scholars are not so much interested in which position one takes as that the position be well articulated and based on reason.  Your injection of faith considerations is out of order.

Except in the podcast he gives that impression that its about his belief in a historical BoA, and vs. the scholarship on biblical source criticism.  If he has a rigorous enough argument to critique mainstream biblical source criticism, I haven't heard it, and he didn't give that impression.  If I remember the interview correctly he actually said he was hoping someone would come up with a theory to reconcile the two positions, which also gave me the impression that he's invested in the BoA historicity claim so much that he's not willing to consider it to be not historical based on evidence, but that he assumes its historicity as a faith position.  

This also makes me question his rigor as an scholar in general, because of his willingness to disagree with a mainstream position from another discipline.  Now I'm less likely to trust his opinions on Egyptological topics.  Consistency is important and rigorous approach to scholarship is important as well.  

Edited October 10, 2017 by hope_for_things

[juliann]

1 hour ago, hope_for_things said:

 

This also makes me question his rigor as an scholar in general, because of his willingness to disagree with a mainstream position from another discipline.  Now I'm less likely to trust his opinions on Egyptological topics.   

Good lord. Gee could be the biggest pseudo-scholar in the history of mankind but it still doesn't explain your bizarre phobia against disagreeing with a "mainstream position" in a profession that depends upon innovation. 

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Consistency is important and rigorous approach to scholarship is important as well.