Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Sep 26, 2022 3:33 pm
Scientists, historians, and Biblical scholars often used "objectivity" as an excuse to sideline and ignore Feminist, Queer, Post-colonial, and other critical approaches to their own field and render them unimportant.
OK I've been trying to avoid this issue because it's a no win for a straight guy. [...]
Yeah all of this just misses the entire point of what I was talking about. And also, I don't know of any PhD Queer Theorist (straight or otherwise) who ascribes to objectivist standards that you describe even remotely. Any Queer Theorist I know of would take you to task for your fragile "manliness" standard of "objectivity" for instance, and definitely would not consider you an objective individual by any means. Don't pretend for an instant that they are on your side on how to do "objective" studies. I also just love a few snippets of this. The "no win for a straight guy" is rather priceless, imo. Not being "objective" by your male-oriented standard does not in any way inhibit the critical field of history. In fact, disavowing male-centric attitudes of objectivity has only led to greater breadth in research from Queer, Feminist, Post-Colonialist, Disability, etc. centered scholarship and has greatly enhanced our views of the ancient and modern worlds.
Like you just seem entirely incapable of actually grappling with what I argued and so have to resort to ad homs like "This is pathetic" and stuff, rather than make any real argument.
Another great example of your inability to interact with or have a rational and calm conversation is this one:
Your 'point.' Like the true professor about to pontificate. What is the 'serious issue' here? The last I checked no one gets emotional over the non-existence of a loved one before. From whence come these heartbroken advocates of the non-existence of Jesus and how as Ehrman 'offended' them? How did this get connected with safe spaces.
Christianity is all about 'the Man.' Jesus for both Justin and Irenaeus is all about the coming down from heaven of a supernatural power called Man from whom Adam derived his existence and origin. So now we're not just going to purge and politically correct modern scholarship ABOUT Christianity but Christianity itself? We're going to make Christianity GENDER NEUTRAL? What's this we're 'studying' now? Jesus isn't a historical person but Christ is some manipulatable 'thing' that we can just shape this way or that? That's the danger of not believing in or accepting the idea of objectivity. We end up just imposing our beliefs on a subject and in your refined way, not feeling any bite of conscience transforming Christianity itself into something it wasn't or isn't.
While it is true that I brought up these terms they are cultural inheritances from antiquity which I still think are valid and noteworthy. I will continue to use them. I think manliness is a virtue. Fearlessness. If someone wants to ascribe fearlessness to women I wouldn't be offended. More power to them. I don't get offended easily.
Just... what are you on about? I have never said we need to force change on Christianity, nor that we cannot study the male-oriented language and religious centers of Christianity, or anything similar. If Christians want to keep up their male-centric religious orientations, then they are perfectly within their rights to do so.
I said that
your subjective opinion on what "Objectivity" is, which centers traditionally male attributes, is just your opinion, and is clearly very fragile and one that you don't even uphold. You are emotionally loaded in everything you say. Your temper shows consistently, you do not act in the traditionally "manly" fashion, etc. All you've demonstrated is how emotionally attached you are to old archetypes of male scholastic authority, male "objectivity" and how fragile both of these are to you, that you see a need to reinscribe them via insults, tangents, and worse.
If you knew the first thing about fundamentalists, you'd know just how eerily similar your defense of Ehrman and "objectivity" are to the way they treat their defense of the Bible. These fragile positions devoted to defending the established, traditional, and comforting. Your inability to focus on the arguments and actually address what is said, and your constant running off on red herrings, ad homs, and scholastic hero worship (seriously, it is not particularly notable that an academic reads newspapers in Arabic and takes notes in other languages... multilingual people do this all the time for practice; I do this, and practically every devoted multilingual first year undergrad I know does this), your complete tangent on "gender neutral" language, "manliness is a virtue", your insulting and demeaning language, etc. all eerily remind me of various fundamentalist Christian scholars. It is, in fact, rather interesting that fundamentalists tend to also be the same ones who also complain about "gender neutral" language and how we need to bring back traditional "masculine" behaviors and manliness.
And more to the point, all of this tells me that your defense of Ehrman and other academics is not rational. It is emotional, and you are using manliness and objectivity as your shield from criticism.
As a final note, old conceptions of manliness that were applied to "objective" analysis also upheld the belief that insults and denigration were unmanly and beneath objective discourse. It was commonly said that: When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser. So if we are to uphold your standard of manliness, we at least know that you have lost virtually all your debates on this forum, by your own standard of objective discourse. That is, unless you are going to concede that manliness is just whatever you need it to be... in which case, it isn't objective. It is just a convenience.
And with this, I'm done with you SA. It is clear that you don't have a position that you can defend. No one needs red herrings, insults, and resent filled tangents on "gender neutral" stuff if they actually had a real argument for their positions.
