Posted: Mar 29, 2022 10:03 am
This is the standard 'atheists are angry at God' nonsense we hear from fundamentalists all the time.
Stein wrote: It’s not their black or white approach that bugs me most though. It’s their insistence that they are rational vs. their refusal to apply their black and white approach to other sources from Antiquity. About all authors mixed fiction with fact. Separating the two is an obsession developed last couple of centuries. The task of historians of Antiquity is exactly to develop reliable methods to do that. But JMs don’t care. I find that appalling.bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, uses methodology for more bullshit, bullshit, bullshit
The rest of your commentary is eccentric red herrings ie. essentially more bullshit
Ironically, Law's paper does talk about how to separate fact from fiction, but the author of Stein's blog is too dumb to notice.
P2 Where testimony/documents weave together a narrative that combines mundane claims with a significant proportion of extraordinary claims, and there is good reason to be sceptical about those extraordinary claims, then there is good reason to be sceptical about the mundane claims, at least until we possess good independent evidence of their truth.
When dealing with materials contaminated with bullshit the way to reduce scepticism about the plausible bits is to use corroborating evidence.
What an elegant solution to a problem that has stymied Bible scholars for centuries!