{"id":39312,"date":"2017-01-01T09:33:41","date_gmt":"2017-01-01T14:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=39312"},"modified":"2016-12-31T19:05:33","modified_gmt":"2017-01-01T00:05:33","slug":"creationists-mythicists-judge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2017\/01\/creationists-mythicists-judge.html","title":{"rendered":"Are Creationists and Mythicists Similar? You Be The Judge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I was going to screenshot a Facebook discussion that illustrated the similarity between the two groups, anti-science creationists and anti-history mythicists. But in the end, I decided to just share this comment I made there, which I hope boils down the indistingishable character of some of their claims and arguments at their most basic level, in a nutshell.<\/p>\n

Creationists or mythicists? You judge\u2026<\/p>\n

\n
\u201cThere is no evidence\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\u2013 What about this\u2026or this\u2026or this\u2026?<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\u201cThat doesn\u2019t count, could mean X, Y, or Z.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
(slightly later)<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\u201cThere is no evidence.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\u2014-<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\u201cAll the academics working in universities around the world in this field are like flat-earthers. REAL scholars (of whom there are only a small handful, shunned and excluded from mainstream universities because of the conspiracy to promote an ideology through them) conclude what I conclude.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
__<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cThe vast majority of learned individuals once thought the world was flat \u2013 therefore I am justified in rejecting what the vast majority of experts in a given field conclude today.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The conversation then turned to the question of which is more irrational, mythicist denial of the historicity of Jesus, or Christian belief in the resurrection of Jesus. It is an ironic question, given how Bayes\u2019 Theorem has been used to make the case for both. I said that in my view, denying that which we have adequate evidence for is more irrational \u2013 and more morally reprehensible \u2013 than believing that for which we do not have adequate evidence. Would you agree? I suspect that most who disagree with conservative Christians about both the resurrection and young-earth creationism will find the latter far more objectionable than the former. In my opinion, merely believing the improbable is not as irrational<\/a> as disbelieving the probable.<\/p>\n

A little later in the conversation, someone actually claimed that mythicists are the only ones who have written lengthy treatments of the subject!!! Here is what they wrote to me:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In response, I can only laugh and point to the Handbook for the Study of the Historical Jesus<\/em>:<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re not familiar with it, then I\u2019ll let you click through and see how many pages it is<\/a>. But\u00a0of course, at any rate, the fact that Richard Carrier<\/a> is verbose and capable of writing 600-page blog posts says nothing about whether he is correct or not.<\/p>\n

I decided that the conversation was not a productive use of my time and extracted myself. And so we\u2019ll see whether, just like creationists, the mythicists I was engaging with will claim that getting the last word on Facebook means they \u201cwon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, I should mention that Jerry Coyne<\/a> continues to illustrate that someone who is perfectly capable of recognizing pseudoscholarship in their own field may be downright gullible as well as illogical when venturing into another discipline.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was going to screenshot a Facebook discussion that illustrated the similarity between the two groups, anti-science creationists and anti-history mythicists. But in the end, I decided to just share this comment I made there, which I hope boils down the indistingishable character of some of their claims and arguments at their most basic level, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":39317,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,108],"tags":[7856,14019],"class_list":["post-39312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mythicism","category-young-earth-creationism","tag-mythicists","tag-young-earth-creationists"],"yoast_head":"\nAre Creationists and Mythicists Similar? 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