User talk:Mrdarcey

Hi Mrdarcey, I'm glad somebody else (and somebody better qualified than me in terms of familiarity with the literature) is interested in getting into the fray. I'm not sure exactly what would be the best way to go about it. There are several editors who are in favor of ahistorical Jesus theories, and I'm not sure how to convince them of the theory's marginality. Maybe it'd be best to just go on the Talk:Historicity of Jesus page and lay out some of the major changes you think should be made, and see what happens. john k 15:10, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with John k, it's good to get input from someone familiar with the literature. I've been working mostly from the main Jesus article, but I want to be sure that we properly represent the historical viewpoint there as well. That article has only recently been stable enough that I felt comfortable nominating it for the Article Improvement Drive.

I am flattered that you would contact me. I'm no expert, but IMHO part of the problem is that the distinction between the Historical Jesus and Historicity of Jesus articles has become somewhat vague. At the very least, it strikes me as odd that the historical Jesus article has a q-and-a format, where I would expect it to explore the various schools of thought on who the historical Jesus was. The least contentious article right now would probably be Cultural and historical background of Jesus. Besides John k, I think the best people to contact right now would be User:Slrubenstein and User:CTSWyneken. Four of us have been trying to work from the middle, including myself, CTS, User:SOPHIA and User:Jim62sch. There have been others who have come and gone who might also be able to help.

As for accusations of overt Christian bias, there is a double blue website which is asserting "Christian abuse of Wikipedia." One of the pages they are watching is Jesus-Myth, so that is the most contentious page at the moment (and it also has a "totally disputed" tag on it at the moment). I'd avoid that page until things settle down.

Finally, I don't know if you know any German, but I've heard that the Jesus article at the German Wikipedia is a former featured article, and includes more of the historical viewpoint than Jesus does. Grigory Deepdelver of Brockenboring^TalkTCF 16:26, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

CTY History

I feel like I've heard your name before, though I could be making it up. Is there a page on CTY oral tradition? That'd could be a place to collect our anecdotes. If not, there's certainly other ones on the web. The cross-dressing is definitely solidly established at LAN these days. I forget what I wrote that prompted your comment, but one story I may or may not have told is that there's always a few "butch" girl students, and one individual consistently dresses "femme" for the cross-dressing dance. It's really cute.  :) --zandperl 02:26, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I never was a student there. I was instructional staff for '04 and second session '05. A number of the other staff had been students though. This summer I'll be teaching somewhere else, but I may go back again in the future. I really like the culture of CTY, how open and accepting it is, even of wackiness in the "role models." --zandperl 14:11, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Hello MrDarcey =

Help me if you could with the articles Gnosticism and the New Testament, Authorship of the Johannine works, Authorship of the Pauline epistles. Please. Thanks. LoveMonkey 05:40, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Sure do, same articles. Also need a Andrew Louth article and a Marcus Plested. Also some help with the q document. And also an article on the Messalianism and please review my articles Neoplatonism and Gnosticism and First International Conference on Neoplatonism and Gnosticism. Maybe some help on the V Lossky page and also some help with the p52 article maybe. And some help getting this article critical of Wicca added and kept in the article 1 and of course if you get time the mess of an articlet Demiurge. Theotokos bless. LoveMonkey 18:08, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Greetings

Its great to hear from you, oh long lost twin. It is nice to find a fellow 'skins fan. These days, if someone is a 'skins fan then he is certainly a true fan, after the past 15 years and all. But Gibbs will bring us back to glory, no doubt, and this kid Campbell looks like the real deal.

What was your thesis on? I would be happy to read it. I love late antiquity and the early medieval period, of course (I am currently doing master's work on Roman influence in early Anglo-Saxon Britain). But for Augustine it is more personal, since he was central in my conversion.

Likewise I really admire Peter Brown. His style of writing is really close to perfect history – its detached enough to provide an overall view, but not so much as to miss "pulling the reader in" to the history. A good example is his description of the emotion an ancient viewer felt when gazing upon a glittering Byzantine mosaic.

The articles on the historical Jesus and early Christianity are a real mess. It's a daunting task to even know where to begin. I have had some experience trying to make some headway on these topics, but sometimes it seems like every move causes consternation from certain circles and the ensuing debates lead me to take a bit of a hiatus and concentrate on more purely historical topics. Articles on "Celtic Christianity" or "Theodore of Tarsus" are far more peaceful to edit than one on the Resurrection. The articles you mention are full of hyper-scepticism and, more dismaying, there are scholars to back up some of the assertions (and a scholar ought to know better). Anyway, the way to go about matters is to come to the table with a great many sources. There are, thankfully, still many faithful scholars with first rate work.

PS, stay warm in NY. Things are a toasty 8C over here in Leeds.

Lostcaesar 09:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

About the 'skins defense, we know Williams can coach a good defense, so the question seems one of personnel. Injuries were a problem, but that's partially because some players on the roster are injury prone guys. Also, we signed Arhculeta, which didn't work out so well at all. I would not be surprised to see some off season moves to get a safety and a corner, and a possible corner could be N Clements from Buffalo. But I do feel a lot better about this roster than so many teams in the past. At least we don’t have a QB who will give himself a concussion by head butting the wall in celebration.

As for the matter of Pagels, the JS, and the like – where to begin? Part of the trouble is that they present themselves as preeminent scholars questioning the orthodoxy of the field (which they portray as fraught with the bias of latent religious axioms) by employing the latest scientific scholarly methods. Of course, this is a myth carefully cultivated by those involved, but one that an innocent public is only more than willing to accept. This leads to the real point, which is that an audience exists that wants to hear this sort of message preached. And it also humbly reminds us the limits of reason; if the heart is not properly disposed then reason is of little avail. But our difficulty is in establishing grounds to exclude the scholarship of what we know to be academically irrelevant. I wont say there is a clear answer here, but I will say that it is possible to introduce more pertinent scholarship by simply including properly sourced information. It is possible to significantly improve articles in this way, as I have seen happen. So, while some points of view are ignominiously indulged, in the same sense there is room for more legitimate points of view, and eventually we have to trust in the capabilities of the ordinary man to discern truth amidst a cloud of information.

I am studying under professor Ian Wood for a postgraduate degree by research.

Lostcaesar 20:47, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh yes I have heard the argument likewise, that, essentially, a Christian shouldn't be trusted to do real academic work, especially concerning God or the faith, since agnosticism is a prerequisite for real scholarship. This position permeates many an argument, and even some Christian scholars (so it seems) feel the need to express some form of doubt simply in order to convince a skeptical audience of their own legitimacy. But this is part of the Christian life, seeking approval in the eyes of God and not men.

Its perhaps most insulting because it ignores the historical and scholarly contribution of Christians (and Christendom) to virtually every academic field, but especially history, and this is due to two principal beliefs: God as the Logos, and Jesus as fully human and fully divine. On the first, belief in the Logos is a commitment to reason, indeed an understanding of reason as a divine gift and inseparable from knowledge.

Obviously, faith is not merely the end produce of a didactic chain of reasoning, but (all the same) one has faith because he has reasons to believe. Faith divorced from reason is about as useful as reason divorced from faith; i.e., not particularly useful indeed.

The second belief, the incarnational belief, is just as important. Christians have always been interested in history because they understood God to have entered into human history in a definitive act, thereby reconciling mankind (and thus human history) with himself. Early Christian historians, like Eusebius and Bede for example, saw their writing of history as a continuation of scripture. That doesn't mean they thought they were inspired, but it does mean that they were recording the work of the Spirit amongst men. Hence, Christians have always been willing to use a historical approach to understanding Jesus, confident this is possible in part because of the belief in the incarnation. Likewise with the scriptures, they were written by men inspired by God, and hence an approach to the humanity of scripture is a real avenue of gaining knowledge.

All this said, there are real problems with modern biblical research, with the JS and Pagels being really just the most extreme example. Scholars are not required by historical methods to employ assumptions that entail that Jesus was not God, or that he was. Doing so is the importing of a philosophical axiom on a historical method that needs not presume either way. However, historical methods can assume either that Jesus was or was not God if they like, but then their conclusion will only be a conditional: if Jesus was God, then my work follows (or vice versa). I am not against either the conditional approach, or in the attempt to approach the historical evidence with an openness concerning the identity of Jesus. But, what I personally find frustrating is when a particular scholar will employ assumptions that exclude the divinity of Jesus and then simultaneously uphold that his conclusions show that Jesus was not divine, as if he has done anything more than a tautological dance.

My own personal view is that, on the one hand, historians should be very humble concerning just what they expect history to be able to conclude, and they should be very frank about the limitations and assumptions present in the methods they use. On the other hand, I am not opposed to using history to understand either Christ Jesus or the Scriptures.

I am not well disposed to the strict (but trendy) dichotomy of the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith. It strikes me as an artificial way to protect beliefs from reasoned analysis and investigation, and in doing so, rather than protect beliefs, it imprisons them – they become the property of the irrational and hence lose their ability to speak to people. If we wish to actually take seriously the possibility that God entered human history (i.e. if we wish to investigate the claim), then we must be open to history having a thing or two to say about the matter.

In short, I think history gives reasons to believe (perhaps even every reason to believe), and that's really all we can ask from it. Its not going to give absolute certainty (and really, no amount of reasoning can do this). But, if we accept these reasons to believe and do indeed believe, then history (now working with these new assumptions) can open up a huge range of wisdom.

Lostcaesar 09:43, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

historical Jesus

"Yes, the majority of the scholars are Christians. No, that does not affect their ability to be professional historians/critics anymore than being a materialist would affect one's ability to build a bridge."

It's not being a Christian that makes one ill-qualified to address Jesus historically. It's believing that the New Testament is something other than a fallible, human-created document subject to standard historical analysis. Jonathan Tweet 20:15, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

" The vast majority of scholars find literalism as irresponsible as they do the JS."

Literalism? Who said anything about literalism? Look, I'm sorry but if you and I are so far apart that you think I'm talking about literalism when I never mentioned it, then we're too far apart to have a meaningful exchange on this topic, unless we are both willing to work at it to some considerable length. I do entertain ongoing discussions with believers on my discussion boards[1], but not on WP talk pages. So it's up to you whether you want to take it there or drop it. Jonathan Tweet 14:55, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Looks like I ticked you off. Sorry. I pegged you as a Christian, so if you're not, my apologies. On the Internet, I've been mistaken for a Bible-thumper, so I guess that's karma. As for literalism, I never broached the topic. Literalism isn't the only way to believe "that the New Testament is something other than a fallible, human-created document subject to standard historical analysis." I literally never brought up literalism. As to articles that need help, early Christian history needs help. The early Christianity article is OK, but there's no article for the next stage or era in church history (post Nicea). Jonathan Tweet 15:06, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Lostcaesar

Hi, Mr. D. I'm just wondering if, since you seem to have been one of his friends, you've kept in touch with Lostcaesar. I love the guy! But it seems he's been poached by this Conservapedia, via discussion on wikipedia talk pages, and he's been contributing to articles there for about a month.

I can see how a conservative, or even an academic in general, would feel frustrated with WP. But many articles, including many on Christian history, have been of surprisingly good quality due to being primarily of interest to people like LC or other academics. (Besides, I was pretty shocked that he would leave for CP; it's anything but Catholic, and as an academic reference its vices make WP look like something peer-reviewed by Oxford dons.) In any case, it would be cool to get him to spend time here too; but it seems like contacting him on his CP talk page would be equally illegitimate. Any way you could help that you know of?205.212.74.252 23:20, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

I only briefly communicated with him, and I'm not particularly active in WP myself, as can be extremely aggrivating. His leaving WP is indeed a loss.

Conservapedia sounds horrible by any standards.--Mrdarcey 01:55, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

SSRIs & Suicidality

I'm surprised you'd question this when the FDA forced SSRI manufacturers to disclose as much on their pill bottles. 208.181.100.25 00:55, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

First, the black box warning is only for children and adolescents, not adults. But there is significant evidence that this was also a misreading of the data that came from methodolgically questionable studies. [2] [3] [4] It can also be hypothesised that SSRI based suicidality is rooted in a triggered dysphoric mania, and is therefore a bipolar, not MDD trait. [5] [6] This would make sense given what we know about bipolarity as a progressive disorder, its relationship to neural plasticity, the inherently more plastic brains of youth, and the fact that bipolar depression develops earlier than MDD. If SSRIs are unmasking bipolarity (yeah, yeah, you don't believe that...), then it isn't the drugs directly causing the suicides.

But if you really want the logic behind the statement in regards to depression: 1) Those who suffer from MDD are at least 8-10x more likely to commit suicide than the regular population; 2) Many with MDD are prescribed SSRIs; 3) Some people with MDD prescribed SSRIs commit suicide. To say that 3 leads to 4) Therefore SSRIs are responsible for suicidality is a logical fallacy.

What is known, however, is that untreated depression certainly does lead to suicide. And that when SSRIs are used, there is a significant decrease in suicide rates. [7] [8] [9] And now it is known that the FDA black box warning has directly led to significantly reduced rates in the diagnosis of pediatric depression since 2004. [10]

Now there is a syllogism for you.--Mrdarcey 23:42, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Survey request

Hi,
I need your help. I am working on a research project at Boston College, studying creation of medical information on Wikipedia. You are being contacted, because you have been identified as an important contributor to one or more articles.

Would you will be willing to answer a few questions about your experience? We've done considerable background research, but we would also like to gather the insight of the actual editors. Details about the project can be found at the user page of the project leader, geraldckane. Survey questions can be found at geraldckane/medsurvey. Your privacy and confidentiality will be strictly protected!

The questions should only take a few minutes. I hope you will be willing to complete the survey, as we do value your insight. Please do not hesitate to contact me or Professor Kane if you have any questions.

Thank You, Sam4bc (talk) 17:05, 24 July 2008 (UTC)