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IlyaShpitser comments on Litany of a Bright Dilettante - Less Wrong
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Good post. Experts on X are usually right about X. What's worse, if an expert in X and an expert in a closely related Y disagree about Y, the latter is usually right (or has a stronger position).
It's not easy being a small fish in a big intellectual sea, but that's how it is for us all, even the most brilliant.
That's true in many fields but not others. Experts in "New Testament studies" are usually wrong about whether Jesus had magical powers.
Here is a series of papers from the journal of new testament studies:
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=NTS
Not a lot of mention of actual magical powers in here. Note the language:
"Drawing on the book of Job, we show that the disciplinary practice Paul advocates in 1 Corinthians 5 is a spiritual practice that aims to remove the spiritual protection enjoyed by the incestuous man while he remained in the body of Christ, thereby exposing him to Satan's attacks. Paul's hope was that the affliction suffered by the man at the hands of Satan as a result of this exposure would lead to his repentance and ultimate salvation."
Paul's hope.
I'm saying that if you took a poll of everyone at one of the major New Testament Studies conferences, the majority would say that Jesus had magical powers, and they'd be wrong.
I'm not sure it's actually true that the majority of such scholars would say that Jesus had magical powers. Now admittedly my priors on this are mostly Catholic, and most of those Jesuit, and I don't know a lot of evangelical new testament scholars; but it still appears to me that serious Biblical research is one of the best ways of convincing believing Christians that the religious world is not as they thought. Case in point: Bart Ehrman.
The poll would have to be anonymous to have any validity. There are a lot of priests, reverends, and theology professors who know how much they can and cannot say. Pay very careful attention to subjects an individual scholar does not talk about. Notice how many of them never mention the resurrection or the virgin birth, for example. OTOH they will talk about loaves and fishes and walking on water and Lazarus because they can get away with explaining those parts of the New Testament as understood by modern scholarship without being fired.
Is that based on observation of people at major New Testament Studies conferences? Because as expressed, that gives me the impression of being a prior, rather than a posterior.
I am sure there exist New Testament scholars who are religious, and I think some who are not. Serious study of the New Testament as a historic text has a way of destroying faith in at least some people.
The point though is that experts on 'New Testament studies' aren't experts on Jesus' magical powers, they are experts on the history of the text and the people described in the text. On those topics (those on which papers in journals are actually written), their beliefs are more accurate than yours or mine or a typical Christian faithful's. On Jesus' magical powers they aren't speaking as experts, regardless of what they say. No one can be an expert on that because it's not a scientific topic.
All the magic events get explained away as symbolical, typical embellishments for their time, allegorical or something other.
Except the bodily resurrection. There is no large Christian tradition I know of which does not insist that the bodily resurrection did actually happen.
Which is why all the backpaddling on all the other magical events doesn't matter. If you need to explain one ghost, you're in as bad a spot as having to explain all the ghosts.
You know, Kawoomba, for once I'm going to actually ask you to provide your source for this sweeping generalization/attack on theists.
Seriously. What do you think you know and how do you think you know it?
(The comment format breaks when a link isn't properly formatted, corrected now.)
Let's go through the list of Christian denominations by members, which would be, from the top:
Catholicism - 1.2 billion
Protestantism - 600–800 million: mainly Baptist, Lutherian, Methodists
Eastern Orthodoxy - 230 million: mainly the Russian Orthodox Church
Anglicanism - 85 million
Oriental Orthodoxy - 82 million
Restorationism - 49 million: e.g. Mormons, Jehova's Witnesses
I'll go through them, if any one of them in their doctrine believe that Christ did not actually live and did not get bodily resurrected, I'd concede my "sweeping generalization/attack on theists". What's the largest bet you're willing to make?
For full disclosure, "The belief in Jesus' physical resurrection remains the single doctrine most accepted by Christians of all denominational backgrounds."
If you want to stand by your charge of "sweeping generalization", let's bet.
Edit: Also, nothing special against (personal) theists. I abhor motivated cognition in favor of ludicrously contrived stupidity equally whereever I see it. (I myself think there is a case only for general theism, and only if counting simulationism in general in that category, which would be a non-traditional interpretation of general theism.)
Luke's claim was about "everyone at one of the major New Testament Studies conferences", not every self-avowed Christian. I don't doubt that most Christians believe Jesus had magical powers. I'm a lot less certain that even a majority of attendees "at one of the major New Testament Studies conferences" believes Jesus had magical powers. In fact, thinking back on all the New Testament Scholars I've known (more than a few, though not necessarily representative of the entire field) I can't come up with a single name of one I'm confident of saying, "yes, this person believes Jesus had magical powers." I'm sure they're out there, but I'm not sure they even make up a majority of New Testament scholars.
I can think of one such scholar who professed a belief in the resurrection but when he was asked to explain what exactly he meant by that, it became clear that he had "faith" that Jesus was there and resurrected even though no one could actually see him post-resurrection. That's pretty flimsy. Serious Bible scholarship (or, for that matter, Church history) is really, really faith-killing. Many scholars went into school committed Christians and came out the other end, well, not. I already mentioned Bart Ehrman. Karen Armstrong is another well-known example. I think they're both still theists, but neither is close to a conventional Christian. I'm not sure either would actually call themselves Christian any more.
Recall Bismarck's famous quote that "Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made." I'd add religion to that list. The most effective way to deconvert a Christian may not be to teach them science. It may well be to teach them more about their own religion.
(My claim: There is no large Christian tradition which does not insist that the bodily resurrection did actually happen. I agree with your comment in general, although there are plenty of Schools of Divinity at respected universities whose staff still believes in the usual fairytale. Many atheists know their bible quite well, yet I wouldn't count that as Christians not believing in the bodily resurrection.)
Believing in no bodily resurrection was the heresy of Docetism and a common belief of various Gnostic sects. Since these sects were rather effectively stamped out in the first Millennium, it's certainly true today that this isn't a common belief of orthodox, Nicean Creed Christians. Almost by definition if you don't believe in the bodily resurrection, you're not a Christian; or at least not a Christian as defined by the Nicean Creed.
Within schools of divinity and theology departments, there are indeed likely many faculty who believe in Jesus's magical powers. My claim is that amidst the subset of those faculty who specialize in the New Testament and the history of the early church, you will find a much smaller percentage who believe in Jesus's magical powers than in the general population of Christians, or even than in the general population of divinity school faculty.
Kawoomba, I'm a Christian, I don't see accusing Christians of Christianity as an attack. (Should I?)
I was referring to this:
That said, I think I pattern-matched your comment to "Kawoomba attacking theists again", probably because I was primed by "PawnOfFaith" and "Silent M". So I'm sorry for that. Pretty damn hypocritical on my part, too.
Unless of course you meant it as an attack, I guess.
Aww, no bet then? Apology accepted.
I myself hold contradictory, irrational beliefs. I like many of them, even though part of me knows of the contradictions. I also know that if I streamlined my values to be coherent, I wouldn't be myself, and it's not a realistic endeavor anyways, psychologically. I very much doubt that my beliefs are especially contradictory, if a supposed rationalist were telling me he/she held very few contradictory beliefs/aliefs that would be mostly amusing.
My problem is taking a clearly irrational belief (and I suspect many smart theists deep down know this) and abusing all of one's wits to put lipstick on that pig. It's such a waste, and such an unnecessary self-delusion ("trying to make it seem rational", not even "believing in it"). That's what gets me going, the waste of potential.
I'm not concerned with the Christian version of the Categorical Imperative. Not with Christian ethics, there certainly are worse kinds. Not with having a group identity, so do fans of Vernor Vinge novels (just finished A Fire Upon The Deep).
Not even with the First Cause musings, although those often get more into the motivated cognition area. (I also think Krauss is trivially wrong when overstating his "nothing" in "a universe from nothing".)
My problem is with the absurd epistemic claims such as "a bodily resurrection took place", "Jesus was tortured to death so I can be saved from my original sin". In a way, it's as bad as Creationism. There isn't all that much difference between saying "the devil planted the dinosaur skeletons", and saying "eyewitness testimony of a few dozen shepherds and partly biased people thousands of years ago, in a book full of allegories and symbolisms suffices to establish that it in fact Jesus was bodily resurrected".
Sure, Creationists make many more such claims, but really, does it matter how many risen dead you believe in, as long as the number is greater than 0?
You know, it does. Making less mistakes = rationality.
Not much more for me to reply to here.
I don't think experts in "New Testament studies" are studying whether Jesus had magical powers. More along the lines of textual analysis.