On "Scholarly Consensus"

[Statler Waldorf]

On the one hand, "appeal to authority" is a recognized logical fallacy and for good reason. Even experts are required to provide reasons for what they believe and why.

This is actually a common misconception. An appeal to authority is only fallacious if the authority is not an appropriate authority on the subject matter, is an outlier, or is unreasonably biased. Ehrman is therefore an appropriate authority to appeal to.

---

We must often rely upon expert opinion when drawing conclusions about technical matters where we lack the time or expertise to form an informed opinion. For instance, those of us who are not physicians usually rely upon those who are when making medical decisions, and we are not wrong to do so. There are, however, four major ways in which such arguments can go wrong:

1.An appeal to authority may be inappropriate in a couple of ways:
◦It is unnecessary. If a question can be answered by observation or calculation, an argument from authority is not needed. Since arguments from authority are weaker than more direct evidence, go look or figure it out for yourself.
…
2.The "authority" cited is not an expert on the issue, that is, the person who supplies the opinion is not an expert at all, or is one, but in an unrelated area. The now-classic example is the old television commercial which began: "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV...." The actor then proceeded to recommend a brand of medicine.
3.The authority is an expert, but is not disinterested. That is, the expert is biased towards one side of the issue, and his opinion is thereby untrustworthy.
….
4.While the authority is an expert, his opinion is unrepresentative of expert opinion on the subject. The fact is that if one looks hard enough, it is possible to find an expert who supports virtually any position that one wishes to take. "Such is human perversity", to quote Lewis Carroll. This is a great boon for debaters, who can easily find expert opinion on their side of a question, whatever that side is, but it is confusing for those of us listening to debates and trying to form an opinion. [Examples removed by SW to reduce length of quote]

---

-http://www.fallacyfiles.org

Generally, when there is a consensus, I tend to accept it unless I find reasons to have doubts.

Except when it comes to the existence of Jesus, then you simply have doubts for no good reason.

Instead he offered, "I can prove it to you, and then I can prove it again, and then I can prove it some more."

I wonder how he did that when science doesn’t deal with proof.

By contrast, when I first started studying Christianity and reading the Bible, I wondered what the "real story" was. I was expecting to find, as most people would expect, that Jesus was a regular religious leader who was deified by his followers after his death

So you began with the assumption that Jesus was not who he claimed to be. Figured as much.

When I did my digging, I found surprisingly little for a man who had led such a large, popular and revolutionary ministry.

Little in comparison to what?

Given the controversy he generated, I was expecting commentary by historians who lived in that century with some details about the ministry from a 3rd party perspective.

Why would you expect that? Historians did not expect that. What first century historians are you even referring to?

I'd heard Philo commented on him but found nothing. The scraps, even those cited by apologists, were late (post 1st century) and oblique. Tacitus is the strongest evidence that there was any man behind the legends at all and his 2nd century reference is so oblique that it doesn't even mention Jesus by name.

In order to discredit Tacitus you’d have to prove there were other supposed Messiah’s sentenced to death by Pontius Pilot whose followers were known as Christians and who were blamed for the fire in Rome by Nero. Tacitus’ mention of Jesus is exactly what I would expect from a Roman historian.

Then I ran across the Jesus myth hypothesis. Intrigued, I started asking questions and found that, when confronted, scholars can't offer much reason for believing in some historical core aside from the assumption that there must be some man behind the legends.

Which historians?

So yes, scholarly consensus does mean something to me but whenever questioned, even scholars need to provide rational reasons why they believe what they do.

And they have.

I am going to read Ehrman's Book, "Did Jesus Exist". Who knows, I may be convinced but I'll need to read more than "the Bible says..."

Why? Do you reject what Roman historians say about ancient Rome? More special pleading.