Comments | nonfluffypagans: Healthy skepticism = blasphemy? Scholarship = prudery?

parizadhe in nonfluffypagans

Healthy skepticism = blasphemy? Scholarship = prudery?

Mar 17, 2007 13:10

There have been quite a few recent discussions on dot_pagan_snark and NFP about various types of credibility: research, evidence, and source citation in particular. It’s a sore topic for me, really gets my fur up, so I want to toss it out for discussion. ( clicky clicky )

forensics, scholarship basics, pagan community, drama, equally valid, random idea: discuss

Comments 43

edwarddain March 17 2007, 18:08:23 UTC

It's the standard argument made about qualitative vs. quantitative research... Though, I have to point out that researchers are anything but civil. Lurk on a few list-servs or attend a few conferences, and it has little to do with the field of study.

The bigger issue is not the lack of citation in NeoPagan writing, it's the "circle-jerk citation" that tends to get promulgated.

catsnstuff March 17 2007, 20:49:26 UTC

What is a "circle-jerk citation"?

My first guess: citing as fast as one can, and the last one to publish has to read them all. ;) But it probably isn't this.

edwarddain March 17 2007, 21:26:19 UTC

More the idea that there is a certain "set" of "approved" citations out there that have to be included to be taken seriously (everyone has to cite Hutton, Adler, etc.) - plus the idea that people from a certain school or program or publishing house engage in a circular set of citing each another and end up promulgating each other as "experts."

catsnstuff March 18 2007, 00:21:30 UTC

*nod ( ... )

Thread 11

wibbble March 17 2007, 18:34:52 UTC

It's the whole thing where spirituality and science are to be kept separate and never should the two mix, and that includes the methodologies, too.

Obviously this is nonsense, but it's nonsense that's been around for hundreds of years - and, to be fair, it did allow for the development of science without it being crushed by the Church, so it did at least serve some purpose.

And, of course, the other issue is that a lot of people's personal Pagan practices (say that three times, fast, while drunk) tend to rely heavily on UPG which isn't exactly something you can provide a proper citation for. They then want to back it up as being more than just 'in their head', so they make vague 'I can't tell you' statements since they think that will be seen as more reliable than 'it popped into my head while I was meditating'.

verdecat March 17 2007, 21:05:18 UTC

It's the whole thing where spirituality and science are to be kept separate and never should the two mix, and that includes the methodologies, too.

HA! I'm just thinking about herbalism. Where science should be kept secret....Go ahead...eat that mistletoe berry, it "popped into my head" that it's not poisonous,

jenett March 17 2007, 18:44:51 UTC

My take on it is that I don't care that it comes out of your head - I just want to *know* that's the case ( ... )

kanamidori March 17 2007, 18:46:11 UTC

This seems to indeed be the hot topic recently. I just wrote a post for several of the forums I'm on about the importance of research and backing up claims because, like you, I've seen a serious lack of it and am absolutely disgusted. I've also been reading about this on Witch Forum the past couple of days as it seems to be a topic that has blown up there as well ( ... )

alfrecht March 17 2007, 22:42:50 UTC

I agree with much of what you've said in principle.

However, I think that a good bit of the fluff, nonsense, and baseless garbage I've seen over the past few years has been written in this very forum--and not always by people who were writing the original posts. There are self-styled recons of various stripes who have just as much baseless stuff in their practices as any other eclectic genero-pagans--and I have to say, I respect the latter a bit more, since they're at least being honest about what they do rather than trying to justify their "oogie-boogie-ness" through the recon label.

This is not to critique this forum in general, or to take the moderators nor anyone else in particular to task; but like all matters religious, one can't prevent a certain amount of hypocrisy creeping in under a label that hopes to point toward the contrary.

kanamidori March 18 2007, 02:20:50 UTC

Well really you're going to get a bit of hypocrisy in any forum with a lot of people; but what I was thinking of was the moronic things I've seen pointed out in dot_pagan_snark and in other forums where people who merely ask a few polite questions are attacked and you have people claiming that they're the reincarnation of Aphrodite and that Wicca has been around since prehistoric times. I've never seen that here. I haven't been a member of this forum long so I'm not questioning the validity of what you've said. With so many members I'm sure there's been plenty of garbage. But, for the most part the standards here are higher and no one gets in trouble for calling someone's bullshit if its needed.

kenazf March 19 2007, 17:00:31 UTC

I was on one Yahoo group where a poster claimed that she was a famtrad Pagan: her ancestor was forced to leave Scotland because of a witch hunt in the 19th century. Her ancestors also had "Celtic" tattoos and painted themselves blue for rituals, and many members of her family were short and had very fair skin because of their Pictish heritage.

A couple people who knew something about Scots history pointed out that:

* according to recent archaeological evidence, the Picts weren't all that much shorter than the people who replaced them

* the whole "painting yourself blue" craze at Celtic fests comes from Braveheart, not historical evidence: in fact, the whole "Blue Celts" idea is based on a mistranslation

* ditto the "Celtic tattoos" and the BodyMod craze

* and last but not least: by the 19th century there hadn't been a witch hunt in Scotland for nigh on 300 years.

Her final response was that well, we couldn't prove she was wrong and we should respect other opinions. Otherwise we would be like the meanie fascist poopieheads who ( ... )

Thread 7

misslynx March 17 2007, 18:49:45 UTC

I think you're over-generalizing here -- while certainly what you say is true of some pagans, particularly in a lot of the less well maintained online communities, to try to attribute those qualities to some hypothetical "pagan scene" is overkill ( ... )

wynnen March 17 2007, 19:11:52 UTC

I agree we are starting to see some serious pagan scholarly research coming out ( ... )

alfrecht March 17 2007, 22:48:56 UTC

I agree.

There is nothing like a huge pagan convention, like PantheaCon, to simultaneously reassure one that things are getting better, and utterly upset and demoralize one that things are getting worse.

One small example: "paleolithic druids." Yes, that's right--people who think they're doing the "druidism" (which in so many circles has totally lost any sense of a definition) that the cavemen did in Lascaux and Trois Freres and Malta, etc. But it gets even better, because they have a way of doing gematria that is "pre-Hebrew," that actually gives the real meanings of most words and terms and names out there. Oh yes, it's true. Never mind that there are no linguistic records from any of those periods which anyone has been able to identify and translate, or that the forms of words they use to do their gematria are entirely incorrect linguistically, etc. I had to nod, smile, back away, and occupy myself with writing "CRAP!" in my notebook every time a certain individual of this persuasion spoke at that convention...!

arymede March 18 2007, 05:01:17 UTC

I think there's another subsection of pagans (or anyone) who also resists scholarly citation, and they come from the opposite direction. These are people such as you or I, who have gone through academic training in sciences and social sciences or even just high school, and been rigorously taught that everything must be cited and provable ( ... )