Christ and the Babylonians

I just finished Women in the Ancient Near East, a source book edited by Mark Chavalas.  The book focuses on one aspect of life in the Fertile Crescent (how women are portrayed), good preparation for a book I have been working on for several years arguing that "Jesus liberates women."   It features a sample of non-Jewish texts from the region from about 2400 BC to about 600 BC, which proves interesting for a few other reasons as well.

Suetonius and Jesus

I have long been prejudiced against the Romans, but am glad I finally broke down and read the Roman historian (or biographer) Suetonius.  And not only because he confirms my prejudice!  (Though that is always welcome.)

The 30 best movies ever!

It is an indictment of modern civilization that it deems movies like Elmer Gantry among its best.  Bullfeathers.  Who ever wanted to watch Elmer Gantry again?  That's the test.  Either that, or you are so haunted by one viewing that you don't DARE watch the film twice.

Here are my top 30. 

Hector Avalos vs. Jesus, Round IV

Sigh.  It's Bambi vs. Godzilla, all over again. 

Hector Avalos wants to step back in the ring with Jesus of Nazareth. 

Richard Carrier and Germs

Sometimes it takes me a while, but reading the Mark passage about washing hands this morning on the roof of my apartment, it suddenly occurred to me how I should have answered Richard Carrier's challenge (and on-line argument) on this subject, several years ago when we debated in Huntsville, Alabama. 

Mom and the Bible

The Stream just published a short piece I wrote about Mom and the Bible -- right before Mother's Day!  Happy Mothers' Day to those of you who are.   It made me think about the sort of legacy I would like to leave to my children -- I'm afraid I haven't measured up to my own parents on this score.

"Marshall is a Cowardly, Moronic Atheist."

Those of us who are Christians should care deeply about truth.

That evil Bible, again.

Neither do car repair manuals usually mention the

Makah Indians or totem poles.  What could they  

possibly be for?   

As in most memes, inanity and error battle for supremacy here.

"Great Philosophers" on Sex: A Parade of Lunatics

I often tell students to read original sources.  Hear for yourself from people of a different time and way of thinking.  Every historian is not just a bridge from the past to the present, she is also a pair of gates on either end of that bridge, filtering traffic across it: limiting that traffic first by what the historian has noticed, and second by what she wishes you to notice. 

An anthology broadens those gates, but does not knock them down.  Works are selected for a reason, but they let you meet the original writers more directly than a few quotes in a history book.  Still, the value of an anthology depends in part on whether you can trust the anthologist to select representatively and fairly.  

In History of Ideas on Women: A Source Book, Dr. Rosemary Agonito helpfully offers us the very words many "great thinkers" in the western tradition have written on women.  She seems to think she traces a forward trajectory of history, from the "bad old days" when Christian theology trapped women in misogyny and contempt, fitfully towards a more enlightened state, ending with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Women.  (However badly that document may be ignored.)

But the story Agonito thinks she shows is not what the selections she offers actually give.  A sounder conclusion is that the Christian tradition provides the only basis for sane reform and liberation for both sexes.  Because this is an anthology, Agonito cannot lie about the Christian tradition (as some of those she anthologizes do), she can only selectively misrepresent.  But even so, the Christian thinkers here come off as far more reasonable than the lunatics we have been taught to call "great thinkers," whom I will mainly quote and analyze below: Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Kant, Wollstonecraft, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer (whose insanity we have already chronicled), Emerson, Mill (ditto), Darwin, Nietzsche, Engels, Russell, Freud, De Beauvoir, Friedan, Marcuse. 

What is startling is just how childish the "big thinkers" often seem to become, after they have rejected Christian orthodoxy."

Schopenhauer and Mill fight over women. Everyone loses. Again.

C. S. Lewis famously pointed out that the devil sends errors into the world in pairs.  That way, those who embrace one error can feed off the anger of its opposite, rushing to ever-greater depths of senselessness to avoid the opposing mistake.  Lewis drew this insight from G. K. Chesterton, who in The Everlasting Man wrote brilliantly about the paradox of Christian faith, which does not merely find balance between opposing errors, but positive truth which expands upon, "extreme truth" on both sides.

The history of silly things men say about women (and women say in response) is a wonderful example of errors coming into the world in opposing pairs, and the Gospel threading the needle between them. 

Gullotta, Carrier, and Rank Raglan

In On The Historicity of Jesus, Richard Carrier differentiated between the historical evidence for a claim, say "Jesus lived," and the prior probability that such a claim would be true.  One rightly does this with all claims.  If you say, "I flew to Los Angeles last week," and if I perceive you as a generally honest person, not suffering from dementia, and have nothing particular to gain (say, an alibi in a murder trial), I won't ask to see your ticket stub.  But if you say, "I flew to Mars last week," I'll just chuckle and wait for the punchline.  In both cases the evidence is the same -- your word for what you yourself allegedly experienced in the recent past -- but while lots of people fly to Los Angeles (for some reason), Mars is a long ways off, and I doubt anyone has made the journey yet.  (And given present technology, it would be more than a week if they had.)  So aside from historical evidence per se, we also need to consider prior probability for any claimed event.  

So far, so good. 

A challenge to Robert Williams

Amazon is a fun place, but I wish the natives would wittle up some sharper spears.  Here's a critic, I think an editor in real life, who once wrote a poor review of The Truth Behind the New Atheism which I debunked on Amazon, trying to describe me and my motives to another skeptic.  I then offer a response, encouraging him to think deeper and read better: 

"I'm not sure if you are entirely aware that David Marshall's main occupation and preoccupation, beyond writing non-selling books has been to systematically trash every Atheist writer and book he can lay his quivering hands on, especially those sold here on Amazon. He does this because he is a slobbering jealous malcontent who is completely outraged because books by Dan Barker and Richard Dawkins are outselling his own tomes, ten to one.

"Curiously, one might conclude that this is due in part to the recent rise in popularity of New Atheism, however, this would be incorrect because even half cracked biblical twits like Lee Strobel and Ken Ham have no difficulties peddling their own books by the thousands, perhaps even millions. The real reason for this disparity is because David's books, although having some really good ideas, cause the reader to stop half way through and ask himself, what in the world is this guy talking about? The unsuspecting reader quickly becomes lost and awash in a bewildering trail of convoluted rhetoric, profusely speckled with the names of every important person David has ever heard of. Reality fades and quickly dissipates together with all logic, sensibility and reason .

"David also defends his own works like a hungry mastiff guarding a greasy bone and viciously attacks anyone and everyone who dares to discredit his love for Jesus naritive with a single one star review. But that's the nature of religion."

Robert: You say you "always try to give Marshall the credit he deserves," but then in this very thread, you tell the most ridiculous falsehoods about me.  (Again.)

"I'm not sure if you are entirely aware that David Marshall's main occupation and preoccupation, beyond writing non-selling books has been to systematically trash every Atheist writer and book he can lay his quivering hands on . . . "

#1 No, my "main occupation," actually, is to run a school.  Amazon is a hobby.

#2 I have, indeed, posted hundreds of book reviews on-line over the past twenty years.  But only a small minority were by atheists.  Despite my wretched writing, those reviews have garnered some 14,000 "helpful" votes so far, even occasional comments like "Best.  Review.   Ever."   I enjoy this hobby very much, and try to give readers a truthful anticipation of what they will find in the books I recommend or censor. 

#3 SOME books by atheists I reviewed favorably, when they deserved it, such as Bertrand Russell's autobiography, and Phil Zuckerman's fascinating account of secularism in Scandinavia.   Also Richard Dawkins' beautiful book on evolution comes to mind. 

#4 I only post negative reviews of books I find poorly written, poorly-argued, tendentious, dishonest, fanatical -- in short, more or less the kind of book you seem to like.  (Except the poorly written part -- let me try to be fair.)  So no wonder we disagree on specifics. 

"especially those sold here on Amazon. He does this because he is a slobbering jealous malcontent who is completely outraged because books by Dan Barker and Richard Dawkins are outselling his own tomes, ten to one."

#5 A lot more than that.

#6 But your psychobabble is self-evidently absurd, because I give five stars to many books, MOST of which are best-sellers, or at least sell better than mine.  Of course that includes Russell's book.  And I EVEN posted a positive review of Dawkins' beautiful book on evolution.  So your psychological acuity leaves something to be desired.  That's two bad guesses about my motives.

"Curiously, one might conclude that this is due in part to the recent rise in popularity of New Atheism, however, this would be incorrect because even half cracked biblical twits like Lee Strobel and Ken Ham have no difficulties peddling their own books by the thousands, perhaps even millions. The real reason for this disparity is because David's books, although having some really good ideas, cause the reader to stop half way through and ask himself, what in the world is this guy talking about?"

# 7 I accept your report that you often failed to get my point.  My working class parents, however, and my carpenter brother, also other working-class readers, generally seem to understand.  My own suspicion is that ill-will explains the frequent failure of determined skeptics to follow even easy contrary arguments -- as when after our debate, Richard Carrier posted a "review" of Jesus is No Myth that misrepresented almost every single facet of the book that he mentioned, even its main point, while calling me lots of nasty names and wishing a premature death upon me.  The bias is often father to the misreading.   

"The unsuspecting reader quickly becomes lost and awash in a bewildering trail of convoluted rhetoric, profusely speckled with the names of every important person David has ever heard of. Reality fades and quickly dissipates together with all logic, sensibility and reason."

#8 Odd, then, that so many reviewers have commented on how well-written my books are.  But I try not to talk down to people: I think most readers like to see arguments framed in their larger contexts.  As an historian, I make no apology for appealing to that bigger picture, and the names of people associated with it.   

#9 I also think the reason survives just fine, even if it escapes many atheists.  (They are often sloppy jail-keepers.)

"David also defends his own works like a hungry mastiff guarding a greasy bone and viciously attacks anyone and everyone who dares to discredit his love for Jesus naritive (sic) with a single one star review. But that's the nature of religion."

#10 It seems to be the nature of the New Atheism that its defenders will tell even the most taudry and absurd falsehoods to defend it. 

Again, I have given positive reviews to works by Dawkins, Russell, Loftus (he even asked for a blurb, which I gave), and Zuckerman, among other skeptics.  Susan Jacoby's well-written history of American secularism also comes to mind. So your accusation is just false.  Therefore your reading of my psychology is as false as the mistaken premises on which it is based. 

But yeah, I am inclined to refute lame rebuttals of my arguments.  Is there something wrong with that? 

The solution, were you to avail yourself of it, and which would make me growl and snap less, would be for you to read with a more open mind, and then make better and more sincere arguments for whatever point you find yourself unconvinced about.  The world has enough over-generalizations, poorly-evidenced premises, flat-out falsehoods (such as that you try to give me fair credit), and psychobabble, already.  I gather you can write.  I have yet to see much evidence that you can read well, but I'd be delighted to encounter it.