Tracer Tong wrote:

Agrippina wrote:I want to put this on record that while I fully support the right of anyone to become very educated without even attending formal primary school, I do not apply this method of learning to sciences that involve the general public's health, security, and right to life. In the sciences, it is vitally important that all learning, and certainly that which applies to treating illness, should be done under the auspices of accredited institutions who then become responsible for validating the student's right to call themselves proficient in their particular field of study.

When it comes to the humanities, anyone who has a brain can educate themselves if they have the willingness and the enthusiasm to become an authority on whatever it is they choose to learn. Despite the reluctance of this member to accept that 50+ years of studying history, I doubt any person within the community of people who make a living out of studying the Bible is going to be prepared to challenge my claim that I know a lot about that particular piece of writing. Especially since he hasn't bothered to even make an effort to read what I've written, since although I do not accept the existence of a deity as explained in the Bible, I do not condemn the writing that supports the explanation, but rather view it as yet another in the collection of writings from the first century BCE.

Tracer Tong, would you care to enlighten us about your own opinion on the existence of the main character in the Bible. Your opinion would help us reach a conclusion about why my claim of being a bit of a "scholar" or "authority" bothers you so much.

I didn't claim that it bothered me.

I merely suggested that it was problematic to be making claims to competence you do not have.

I'll suggest a wise response would have been to admit you merely got carried away when talking about your intellectual journey. Instead, you seem to be attempting to justify your claim, by e.g. appealing to the length of time you've been "studying history". This is regrettable.

My position on the "main character in the Bible", which I assume is a peculiar way of referring to Jesus, is irrelevant to our exchange, and apropos of nothing I've said to you. You're welcome to ask me the same question in the "historical Jesus" thread, mind you.

Tracer Tong wrote:I merely suggested that it was problematic to be making claims to competence you do not have.

Tracer Tong wrote:

Agrippina wrote:

Tracer Tong wrote:

Alan B wrote:That is a very narrow point of view.

There are probably many people throughout history who, without formal training in a particular subject, have set the standards in that subject for other scholars to follow.

I'm sorry, but I don't know how what I said was a "narrow point of view".

Perhaps Agrippina will be setting the scholarly agenda for the foreseeable future; perhaps not. This is besides the point I'm making in any case.

The internet is becoming the place where people will be getting their education. I will respect this because those people will be willingly seeking education, not following courses merely to pick up pieces of paper. In view of the sort of discourse I'm finding on social media, I'm becoming a little skeptical of the value of most of the formal education available today, certainly in the humanities. I had a discussion with a teacher at one of our schools yesterday. He commented that the standard of certainly languages is falling because of the culture of "no child left behind". Children are not allowed to fail today. They have to be passed through the system and penalising them for errors in language for instance, in sometimes language itself, is no longer practised. So children get away with grammar and spelling errors, passing exams despite the fact that they can barely write a coherent sentence. These people find their way into university because of political requirements for population section numbers and so on, meaning that more deserving people don't get places at university. This is happening in my country.

As an example of self-learning and learning for the love of it, something that's a bit of a "thing" in my family. Yesterday, my almost 6-year-old grandson, watched and discussed a youtube video about Newton's second law F=ma, with my son. He understood the concept of Force, mass and acceleration, and how they change with difference values of the variables, this without being still in the pre-primary level of his school. In the education system, this very bright child will be held back to remain with his age group so that he doesn't receive an unfair advantage by being passed ahead to get to university level at a younger age. This is exactly what happened to me. I was doing algebra when I was 6 or 7, yet I had to remain in my school level, and with my dad's narrow outlook, wasn't allowed to learn maths and science at school anyway. I taught myself to grade 12 level maths during my 12-year period of being a wife and mother, then started reading with a view to formal education, again being prevented by misogynistic husbands. Finally with the help of my children, and support of my present husband, (the main support from this child's father), I entered formal education. This child is now being taught by his philosopher dad, a form of home schooling. By the time he gets to go to university, he will be able to take the lectures, let alone be made to go through the courses. Will he drop out, as my second son did when he entered a course to gain a BSc in computer science because the courses he had to follow were easy work he'd done when he was 12? Very likely. However, he will be 18 in the computer age. Possibly he'll be able to enter a career as an engineer without even completing formal school, who knows? We can't see the future, but I'm all for it. Education isn't passing exams, achieving some level set by people in an earlier age. It's an ongoing process we should pursue because we are interested to learn, and we shouldn't be judged as lacking because we don't hold a piece of paper.

All of this is very interesting, I'm sure. But it doesn't go to the issue raised.

I commend anyone who takes an interest in antiquity, whether it pertains to the Bible or not, and whether it's manifested formally or otherwise. But developing such an interest does not entitle you to call yourself a Biblical scholar, since this implies that you've reached a degree of formal academic attainment when in reality you've reached no degree of it at all.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

Tracer Tong wrote:OK. I guess the issue is that you're calling yourself a Bible scholar when you've no academic qualifications in that discipline.

Since scholar isn't an academic title in the first place, I fail to see how that's relevant.
More-over qualifications are irrelevant as long as your position is supported by evidence and sound arguments.

I'm not sure what you mean by "an academic title". I haven't commented on any position Agrippina holds; my point is merely that she is calling herself a Biblical scholar when she is no such thing.

Cito di Pense wrote:

Tracer Tong wrote:I merely suggested that it was problematic to be making claims to competence you do not have.

If you're going to have a snit about someone's credentials, especially in a field that involves writing commentaries on the bible, my advice is not to get yourself all confused between 'competence' and 'credentials'. Engineers, of course, can be sued for shoddy work; I can have a little laugh at the thought of holding liable for anything he or she writes (about the bible) someone who produces commentary on the bible.

Agrippina wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:

Tracer Tong wrote:I merely suggested that it was problematic to be making claims to competence you do not have.

If you're going to have a snit about someone's credentials, especially in a field that involves writing commentaries on the bible, my advice is not to get yourself all confused between 'competence' and 'credentials'. Engineers, of course, can be sued for shoddy work; I can have a little laugh at the thought of holding liable for anything he or she writes (about the bible) someone who produces commentary on the bible.

I always find it amusing that theists get onto their high horse about non-theists commenting on their favourite book of mythology. I can only imagine ancient Persians, and even modern Iranians, leaping around in horror at the thought that we point out that the flood that Gilgamesh told of was mere mythology. Wait, some modern Persians are tearing down the symbols of their ancient world in favour of a new book of mythology. In 2000 years will then theists whine about non-theists writing about that book saying "you're not qualified, you haven't attended the university of Tehran's Theology Department's lectures on the holy book!"

What I'm writing about is merely a book of mythology, it's not as if I'm calling myself a scholar of oncology.

Cito di Pense wrote:

Agrippina wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote:

Tracer Tong wrote:I merely suggested that it was problematic to be making claims to competence you do not have.

If you're going to have a snit about someone's credentials, especially in a field that involves writing commentaries on the bible, my advice is not to get yourself all confused between 'competence' and 'credentials'. Engineers, of course, can be sued for shoddy work; I can have a little laugh at the thought of holding liable for anything he or she writes (about the bible) someone who produces commentary on the bible.

I always find it amusing that theists get onto their high horse about non-theists commenting on their favourite book of mythology. I can only imagine ancient Persians, and even modern Iranians, leaping around in horror at the thought that we point out that the flood that Gilgamesh told of was mere mythology. Wait, some modern Persians are tearing down the symbols of their ancient world in favour of a new book of mythology. In 2000 years will then theists whine about non-theists writing about that book saying "you're not qualified, you haven't attended the university of Tehran's Theology Department's lectures on the holy book!"

What I'm writing about is merely a book of mythology, it's not as if I'm calling myself a scholar of oncology.

We lose nothing tangible in assuming it's merely a book of mythology. The high horse is not tangible. It smells like shit, but it's not tangible.

Agrippina wrote:I haven't yet, in my years and years, as I said 50+ years of reading history, come across someone calling themselves a "scholar".

Thomas Eshuis wrote:It's an unprotected title.

VazScep wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:It's an unprotected title.

So is "software engineer", which is why we live in a world where significant amounts of the software we use is written in languages designed for amateurs where sanitizing database inputs is still a "hard problem".

VazScep wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:It's an unprotected title.

So is "software engineer", which is why we live in a world where significant amounts of the software we use is written in languages designed for amateurs where sanitizing database inputs is still a "hard problem".

Cito di Pense wrote:

Agrippina wrote:I haven't yet, in my years and years, as I said 50+ years of reading history, come across someone calling themselves a "scholar".

Scholarship as a technical skill is mainly about managing your citation list in relation to the block quotes in your dissertation. It is often sufficient to quote something without ever having tried to determine if it's appropriate. It's the job of your writing to show that your quotes are appropriate. It also seems to be used commonly among people who study scripture, as in "Islamic scholars".

Thomas Eshuis wrote:

VazScep wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:It's an unprotected title.

So is "software engineer", which is why we live in a world where significant amounts of the software we use is written in languages designed for amateurs where sanitizing database inputs is still a "hard problem".

Like I said earlier, there's a reason creationist, conspiracy theorists and the like, often appeal to 'scholars' or even 'renowned scholars' as their authoritative sources.

Alan B wrote:I had always assumed it was a title given by others to show their recognition of someone else's study.

So, TT, do you have a response?

Cito di Pense wrote:

VazScep wrote:

Thomas Eshuis wrote:It's an unprotected title.

So is "software engineer", which is why we live in a world where significant amounts of the software we use is written in languages designed for amateurs where sanitizing database inputs is still a "hard problem".

I think it might be interesting to ponder the relation between this problem and the one about the difference between news and entertainment and all the junk that's in the web pages you want to load. It's still not a complete non-sequitur in a thread about commentary on the bible. I think the 'high horse' is very much present in issues with sanitizing most databases.

Thomas Eshuis wrote:Again since it isn't a protected term, what does it matter?