Podcast Episode 5 Available
The fifth episode of the OpposingViews.net Podcast is now available right here.
In this episode, we have the second Don Johnson interview as his debate with Dr. Robert Price on the resurrection of Jesus gets into full swing. The interview is prefaced with some of my thoughts on this format as it is developing so far. Look for more from Dr. Price sometime next week.
Please post comments or send to paul@opposingviews.net.
3 Comments on “Podcast Episode 5 Available”
Thanks for this Paul, understand its quite a complex debate, but really like your thorough approach.
Here’s my personal take so far…
On Dons part, I think its fallacious to keep trying to frame the authors in one category, there’s nothing to say that they each approached the topic from different angles and motivations, just like people today. Just as Don would write his own impression of what happened and how it all fits based on his experiences and logic today, I dont see why people in that era, 50-100 years after the event, couldnt have been doing the same thing.
And I think Dr. Price’s argument falls down because he is trying to frame what is claimed to be a once off event in terms of every day events. I think it would really interesting if Dr.Price was made to address the argument from the extreme of his view at some point…
For example, he agrees that it is POSSIBLE, so therefore, if he was to assume it really happened, then looking at the evidence and records, would he agree that they then check out or seem reasonable.
In having heard both the debaters arguments in the past for me that would uncover the freshest perspectives.
Look forward to next episode.
Thanks
Nice debate, thanks.
The good thing is to get to learn much scholarly stuff from Dr. Price, and also something about debates in terms of personality/world view clash. The worst thing in this debate is that the title doesn’t seem to get a definite answer, but that’s not too bad actually.
Both do a great job defending their position, but fail in handling each other’s personalities. It also seems that Don Johnson’s categorization of literary genres, which I think Dr. Price broadly accepted, caused some unnecessary additional misunderstanding, because for Don Johnson it seemed to apply a genre per book, whereas for Dr. Price it seemed that each book could consist of a patchwork of genres. A genre per passage maybe, which could be more accurate because Bible writers certainly had a totally different idea of the genre notion.
As Don Johnson points out, Dr. Price really seemed to debate an evangelical fundamentalist apologist at times, which is Dr. Price’s biggest weakness in the debate, IMO. However, Don Johnson had major difficulties defining the skeptical world view of Dr. Price, and therefore he couldn’t catch and answer all the opponent’s argumentation. You can’t demand positive statements from a person who is in the negative side of the debate (Resurrection or not), moreover, when he has a skeptical world view. A skeptic, which I think one can clearly see Dr. Price is, by definition is quite satisfied to believe only what is proven beyond a shadow of doubt. A skeptic can live peacefully while acknowledging he has no positive answers to give to any questions that worry the rest of humanity, knowing only a host of learned opinions on matters.
Thus they fail to handle each other’s personalities.
All-in-all, these were good shows in terms of education. The sound quality was OK.
Again, i thought this debate format was excellent and shows a lot of promise.
I was disappointed by Johnson. I know that most X’n apologists have to resort to disingenuous tactics but I was hoping that Johnson would at least address the specifics of the claims by Price, which is why I think Ehrman would have been a better debate partner.
I found, also, Johnson’s categorizations woefully inaccurate and rather ham-handed. He said that the Non-Literal History was not a common genre today. That is just so untrue that I wonder what alternate reality Johnson lives in. The market is saturated by this genre. Any hollywood movie on a historic event, the biography that is embellished (e.g., Burr by Gore Vidal), etc.
I just have to wonder if Johnson’s “worldview” position is really just an excuse so he can make wild supernatural assertions and not have to be held accountable.