{"id":76736,"date":"2020-03-20T05:21:48","date_gmt":"2020-03-20T09:21:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=76736"},"modified":"2020-03-20T07:21:45","modified_gmt":"2020-03-20T11:21:45","slug":"academics-and-skeptics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2020\/03\/academics-and-skeptics.html","title":{"rendered":"Academics and Skeptics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In a blog post about the discovery that\u00a0all<\/em> the supposed Dead Sea Scrolls at the Museum of the Bible are fakes, Steve Wiggins wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Biblical scholars often get accused of taking the life out of things.\u00a0\u00a0Would it be better to believe in something that is exposed as a fake?\u00a0\u00a0Not exactly debunkers, scholars are those who ask pointed questions of unstated assumptions.\u00a0\u00a0If some antiquities dealer claims to have access to material kept out of official hands, and is willing to charge you a lot for it, it\u2019s best to call in the skeptics.\u00a0\u00a0It works the same in most fields that keep our society going.\u00a0\u00a0We need to trust those who\u2019ve studied a subject in depth for many years.\u00a0\u00a0Devoted their lives to it, in fact.\u00a0\u00a0Many museum items around the world are forgeries and fakes.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s not too often, though, that someone specializing in really old stuff gets called in to make an evaluation.\u00a0\u00a0There\u2019s a risk involved\u2014the risk of learning the truth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It is indeed one of the roles of academics to complicate things that people oversimplify, as well as clarify and simplify things that people make unnecessarily complex or don\u2019t understand because certain specialized knowledge is required.<\/p>\n

It often happens that someone gets comfortable with the fact that their viewpoint aligns with what experts have to say, but that alignment had come about lazily or by assumption, rather than by them deliberately and consistently informing themselves. Eventually they embrace something that doesn\u2019t reflect the scientific, medical, or historical consensus. And then suddenly they get pushback from an expert on the fact that in some area or on some subject they are in fact embracing pseudoscience or other pseudoscholarship. More often than not, they respond to this not by correcting their views, but by engaging in the standard denialist tactics that they themselves criticize when used by those with whom they disagree.<\/p>\n

There is this a difference between that popular \u201cskeptic\u201d stance and what scholars do. Even if those who embrace the label \u201cskeptic\u201d tend to align with the views of experts more than others do, it remains the case that not all traditional knowledge is wrong. Saying \u201cno\u201d to everything is easy and the lazy way. Much harder is to look closely at evidence and decide the answer to each question on its own terms, sometimes accepting widely held views, sometimes rejecting them, and sometimes saying we don\u2019t know. The key difference is being able to explain the rationale for one\u2019s stance in terms of the evidence itself, rather than terms of its difference from the views of a certain religious tradition or the mass of humanity as a whole.<\/p>\n

For more on the MOTB DSS see the\u00a0Dead Sea Scroll Fragments Final Report<\/a>\u00a0as well as coverage by NPR<\/a>, The Daily Beast<\/a>, The Guardian<\/a>, and others.<\/p>\n

Chris Rollston offers a detailed look at the case and suggests that the forger is likely a scholar or other expert in the field<\/a><\/p>\n

Paul Barford adds more to the above<\/a>, and also wrote about another forgery, the Marzeah Papyrus<\/a><\/p>\n

See as well Roberta Mazza\u2019s letter to Brill about them in January<\/a><\/p>\n

And on another modern forgery, have a listen to Mark Goodacre\u2019s NT Pod episode on the Gospel of Jesus\u2019 Wife<\/a>. The next episode about how it was shown to be a forgery is also out<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Brandon Hawk told a story of researching manuscript provenance<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Of tangentially related interest see also: Flat Earths and Fake Footnotes<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a blog post about the discovery that\u00a0all the supposed Dead Sea Scrolls at the Museum of the Bible are fakes, Steve Wiggins wrote: Biblical scholars often get accused of taking the life out of things.\u00a0\u00a0Would it be better to believe in something that is exposed as a fake?\u00a0\u00a0Not exactly debunkers, scholars are those who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":39500,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119],"tags":[319,11379,11381],"class_list":["post-76736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academia","tag-academics","tag-skepticism","tag-skeptics"],"yoast_head":"\nAcademics and Skeptics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In a blog post about the discovery that\u00a0all the supposed Dead Sea Scrolls at the Museum of the Bible are fakes, Steve Wiggins wrote: Biblical scholars\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2020\/03\/academics-and-skeptics.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Academics and Skeptics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In a blog post about the discovery that\u00a0all the supposed Dead Sea Scrolls at the Museum of the Bible are fakes, Steve Wiggins wrote: Biblical scholars\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2020\/03\/academics-and-skeptics.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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