Religion
In reply to the discussion: Ancient Confession Found: 'We Invented Jesus Christ' [View all]struggle4progress
(118,280 posts)By James F. McGrath
Associate Professor of Religion
Butler University, Indianapolis
October 2013
If you arent a scholar but want to pretend to be one, what does it take to get your claims some serious media attention? Apparently all it takes is getting someone famous, Richard Dawkins, to mention your claims ... Richard Dawkins, after all, is world famous for his skepticism, is he not? But the truth is that we all tend to be less skeptical when we encounter claims that we would want to be true. And presumably that is what happened when Richard Dawkins came across the claim by Joseph Atwill that Jesus was invented by the Romans. He saw, he liked, he retweeted with no skeptical questions asked ... Atwills claims are silly nonsense so ridiculous that even Richard Carrier, who is himself rather a fringe figure in the domain of history, regards Atwill as the sort of figure who, through association, gives him a bad name! ... I think that whats interesting about this case is not what Atwill claims. It is just more bunk pseudoscholarship of a sort that has been around for as long as people have been writing down their thoughts on subjects in which they have no expertise. No, whats truly interesting is how a press release which calls someone who has no qualifications, no teaching appointment, no relevant expertise of any kind a scholar can be accepted uncritically and retweeted by someone whose public activity has been aimed at getting people to be more discerning, to think more critically ...
http://www.bibleinterp.com/opeds/2013/10/mcg378011.shtml