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Permalink Reply by Matt VDB on March 6, 2012 at 9:30am

Acharya S is a fruitcake with no credentials or credibility.

What little there is to learn from her can be learned without intermittent nonsense and New-Age gibberish from legitimate scholars like Bart Ehrman, Geza Vermes, Paula Frederiksen, Maurice Casey and many others.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Schallenberg on March 6, 2012 at 6:12pm

Thank you, Matt_VDB, for such an enlightening response.

Why do you call Acharya S a "fruitcake"? Does she sound deluded or dysfunctional to you?

As for credentials, don't you think hers are as valid as Bart Ehrman's?

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Permalink Reply by Matt VDB on March 7, 2012 at 12:51am

You're welcome.

Why do you call Acharya S a "fruitcake"? Does she sound deluded or dysfunctional to you?

Did the New Age nonsense on her site truthbeknown.com (actually, that title alone is ridiculous) about "super consciousness" not tip you off? What about the fact that she believes in Atlantis and -I'm not kidding- a highly advanced race of primordial pygmies as the basis of civilisation?

What do you think Jeff?

As for credentials, don't you think hers are as valid as Bart Ehrman's?

Since Bart Ehrman has three degrees relevant to New Testament scholarship and "Acharya" has zero, no, her degrees are not as valid.

But more significantly, Acharya holds no academic positions and doesn't peer-review her works, which means that unlike Ehrman she doesn't use her degrees. And that's because the crap she writes wouldn't stand up for two days in a peer reviewed environment; it's more easily marketed to her bunch of fawning acolytes on truthbeknown.com or Zeitgeist adepts.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Schallenberg on March 7, 2012 at 7:56am

Matt_VDB - you seem to be more intent upon shooting the messenger than on receiving the message. It's maddening, to say the least. I don't feel the need to defend Dorothy Murdock or her website. I posted the link to her most recent video because I think it throws a lot more light on the topic of this sub-forum than do any of Bart Ehrman's videos. Plus, she's prettier than Ehrman.

I will take your points one by one, though:

"New Age nonsense" - Can you cite an example? What is nonsensical about the epithet "New Age"? To me, "New Age" simply implies a rejection of old values and a search for new values in ancient and Eastern traditions.

"truthbeknown.com...title alone is ridiculous" - A case of judging a book by its cover. Actually, I agree that the website "smells" of "fruitcake", and I was initially put off by the 1995-vintage design. I persevered, dug into some of the sections, and found some pretty interesting stuff. That's more than I can say for atheistnexus.org, where all I see are rants like yours, Matt.

"Superconciousness" - It's actually an OLD Yahoo! Groups discussion group, dating from back in the days before Wordpress and Blogspot. It really has nothing to do with its title - just a freewheeling discussion, very comparable to the Atheist Nexus rants.

"she believes in Atlantis and...a highly advanced race of primordial pygmies as the basis of civilisation?" - Citation, please? I searched the site, couldn't find it. The closest I could come was the section on "Who are the Annunaki?", where it's a discussion on some of the more outrageous theories about the origins of mythology - before Gilgamesh, and so on. Acharya never exposes her own beliefs, she just writes about the origins of beliefs. Much more edifying than Bart Ehrmann or anything I have yet found on Atheist Nexus!

I will pass on your attack on her credentials. Needless to say, it takes nothing away from her writing skills. She's a popularizer, and she does it very well. I just wish she'd bring that website into the 21st century.

For any of you AN readers still paying attention - please check out the video in the top post, and regardles whether you like it or otherwise, post something about IT, not its author!

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Permalink Reply by Matt VDB on March 7, 2012 at 8:31pm

Matt_VDB - you seem to be more intent upon shooting the messenger than on receiving the message. It's maddening, to say the least. I don't feel the need to defend Dorothy Murdock or her website. I posted the link to her most recent video because I think it throws a lot more light on the topic of this sub-forum than do any of Bart Ehrman's videos. Plus, she's prettier than Ehrman.

No argument on the fact that she's prettier, but she simply isn't as reliable. That she doesn't have the academic experience of an Ehrman or a Vermes isn't just a curiosity, it's noticeable in everything about her, from the thinly veiled appeals to truth to her defiance of peer reviewed scholarship.

So I'm not shooting the messenger, exactly. I'm shooting the message from the author, which happens to include belief in an advanced pygmy race and Atlantis based on the fact that it's poorly researched crap.

I will pass on your attack on her credentials. Needless to say, it takes nothing away from her writing skills. She's a popularizer, and she does it very well. I just wish she'd bring that website into the 21st century.

A popularizer of what, exactly? Whose works? The latest scholarly theories on pygmies and Atlantis?

Acharya S isn't popularizing modern New Testament scholarship, she's promoting kooky theories of her own which as it happens, have little basis in reality.

But if you're looking for criticisms of the video, how about the fact that her criticisms of the gospels are pretty much all irrelevant and don't have any bearing on the (un)reliability of the gospels?

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Permalink Reply by Phil on October 15, 2012 at 5:14am

Cause he don't know any better and obviously is a dumbass when it comes to her work. Theres more history in Little Red Riding Hood than there is in that book of myths written by sheepherders on crack 2000 years ago. Gospel writers wrote what they imagined not what they saw...........

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