New post added at News Channel 365 - Mythicism isn’t SkepticismSource: patheos - Saturday, December 13, 2014 Josh Rosenau wrote a piece for NCSE, “Standing up for Skepticism.” Much of what it addresses in relation to climate change works equally well for mythicism and other forms of denialism. For instance, he quotes Genie Scott as saying the following: “The term “skeptic” has for several decades meant someone who applies critical thinking and who demands extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims, as Carl Sagan put it. When topics like evolution, vaccination, and anthropogenic climate change have withstood the rigors of extensive scientific testing, it is extraordinary indeed to dismiss that wealth of good evidence. People who do that are not skeptics, but deniers of the scientific consensus. When one considers the extensive skepticism that has been applied to the figure of Jesus by historians and other scholars, the same conclusion naturally follows. Rosenau also quotes historian Spencer Weart, and I will take the liberty of substituting mythicism and history into the quote, to show that it is the same sort of phenomenon: Every novel historical idea must scale a wall of skepticism. First it must overcome the resistance of historians who found the older ideas plausible. Changing the consensus of the experts is only a beginning, however; the public has yet to be convinced. That may never be completed if the new idea contradicts widely cherished assumptions about history. There is yet another barrier if the idea seems to attack estaAll Related
Posted on: Sun, 14 Dec 2014 11:34:00 +0000
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