I have little argument with Price's own methods of argument. But despite what he says it is evident that Acharya is promoting more than a simple scholarly hypothesis. She certainly is not doing so in a scholarly manner when she accuses anyone critical of her work of being bigoted etc.xplosion wrote: you're probably already aware of this, but Robert Price has changed his mind about Acharya S and now considers her a developed and decent scholar even though she has not moved away from her astrotheological views
"To me, the most interesting aspect of Acharya’s work is her pursuit of old, now ignored theories by comparative religionists and mythologists suggesting that Christianity embodies a perennial theology of the heavenly bodies, their motion and the common reflection of this astrotheology in the myths of all nations. "
All of this is beside my own point. If Acharya - or Robert - were prepared to argue their hypotheses as hypotheses according to normal methods of logical principles and what is described as the hypothetico-deductive method (that Robert insists they do) then there would be no controversy. I would find such an engagement rewarding. But that's not how any of this is argued. We have logical fallacies and errors of fact and insults spat at us when we point these out -- suddenly we are "persecuting" or writing "hate" messages attacking them personally. And then we have this dogmatism that she/Robert "will be proved right". That's not how one approaches a scholarly investigation.xplosion wrote: though I doubt she has ever heard of Acharya S, a "renegade" Israeli historian gives some indirect support to Acharya S hypothesis about Jesus being invented by northern israelites:
So who were the real authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls? Elior theorizes that the Essenes were really the renegade sons of Zadok, a priestly caste banished from the Temple of Jerusalem by intriguing Greek rulers in 2nd century B.C. When they left, they took the source of their wisdom — their scrolls — with them. "In Qumran, the remnants of a huge library were found," Elior says, with some of the early Hebrew texts dating back to the 2nd century B.C. Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the earliest known version of the Old Testament dated back to the 9th century A.D. "The scrolls attest to a biblical priestly heritage," says Elior, who speculates that the scrolls were hidden in Qumran for safekeeping.
http://content.time.com/time/world/arti ... z2xJiQcrCS
Robert has clearly expressed his view that someone such as myself is "wilfully" stubborn and blind to his "Truth". That's fundamentalism. That's cultism. It is not the way to engage in scholarly discussion. He persists in logical fallacies -- at least what the rest of the world agrees are logical fallacies. That makes a nonsense of his arguments.
It makes no difference what Price says about someone who has become a personal friend. His friendship only explains why he would want to backtrack on what he said before. It doesn't justify anything in relation to the fallacies and personal attacks on those who disagree or criticize her views.