Comment Policy

Since I have received a number of comments lately that I've left aside unpublished, I've decided to publicize the basic criteria I use in deciding whether or not to publish a comment.

1. Unlike Jim West, I don't automatically dismiss ALL anonymous comments, but your chances of being published are severely diminished if you submit an anonymous comment. If you comment anonymously (because of Blogger or whatever), signing off with your real name means you will likely get published. I have occasionally let anonymous comments with a pseudonym slip through but that is at my discretion.
2. Short but complimentary comments that are clearly only posted as "mules" for your embedded links will not be published. For example, "Great post. I loved it. replica watches"
3. Comments that are largely irrelevant to the content of the post or the comment thread will not be published.
4. Comments that are promoting an uncritical perspective on issues or promoting a pet agenda will be deleted.
5. Closely related to #4, any comments from cranks and/or crackpots will be deleted. If you fall under that category, you won't self-identify there, so you can consider your comment deleted per #6.
6. I reserve the right to delete and/or not publish any and all comments without cause based on my arbitrary and subjective whims. Any objections or repeated reposting of comments will be ignored and deleted.

Sherlock Holmes and Working with No Data

I came across this great quote from Sherlock Holmes (via Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, "A Scandal in Bohemia") that aptly describes the dangers of speculating, theorizing, and developing conclusions before we have enough data to base them on. Holmes has received an unusual letter and shared it with Dr. Watson. Here is their exchange:

"This is indeed a mystery," I remarked. "What do you imagine that it means?"

"I have no data yet. It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts...."

Ever read a scholarly argument passionately demonstrating how the data are not, in fact, in conflict with the theory, despite appearances?

Logical Fallacies: Appeal to Tradition

I've decided to start a periodic series on logical fallacies. It's called "Logical Fallacies: How to Argue Like a Fundamentalist and 'Win' Every Time." I'll leave out the subtitle most of the time.

Today's fallacy is the appeal to tradition. In its purest form, it simply means: X is old/traditional, ergo X is better. While not a pure example of such, I found the ongoing comment thread on Art Boulet's recent post to have hints of it from one of the commenters.

In biblical studies, an example of appeal to tradition might be an appeal to theology or an appeal to the divine origin of Scripture. Since this appeal is based on an unverifiable presupposition of the one making the argument, it doesn't really count as public evidence admissible for academic proof. It's a sectarian claim no matter how strongly we might believe it to be true. Here's an example of this sort of reasoning:

The Bible is old, of divine origin, and venerated by generations of faithful Jews and Christians. Therefore the Bible must be true. We will believe the Bible is true unless proven otherwise. The burden of proof is on you to disprove it because so many people have believed it.

And that's a good segue for our next segment in the Logical Fallacies series: The Burden of Proof. I'm also trying to find a name for the fallacy of stringing together assertions without proof and claiming you're right. Minimalists, maximalists, and fundamentalists use that one a lot.