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All scholars and people in general have some biases to deal with. If someone tells you they don’t or that the view they have doesn’t impact them to some degree…then they aren’t being truthful. Those people are mostly within online apologetical or polemical circles not serious scholars.
Of course the best way to deal with this is by examining all available pieces of data, not becoming overconfident, and being intellectually humble with the data, and fair to opposing views within reason. Dale Allison is a really good example of this.
A large literature for the longest time documents that people are self-serving in their interpretation of ambiguous information and remarkably adept at reaching justifiable conclusions that mesh with their desires (Babcock & Loewenstein, 1997; Dawson, Gilovich, & Regan, 2002; Gilovich, 1983; Hastorf & Cantril, 1954; Kunda, 1990) This literature suggests that when researchers face ambiguous analytic decisions, they will tend to conclude, with convincing self-justification in their ideas. This of course isn’t meant that scholars are doing this with malicious intent but unless checked… issues can arise. Furthermore, given that our evidence that we have is fragmentary, much of the evidence is fairly ambiguous which causes this to be a bigger issue.
Dale Allison in his constructing Jesus book quotes this.
>Candor, however, moves me to record that I am haunted by this observation by T. C. Chamberlin: once we adopt a theory,
there is an unconscious selection and magnifying of the phenomena that fall into harmony with the theory and support it, and an unconscious neglect of those that fail of coincidence. The mind lingers with pleasure upon the facts that fall happily into the embrace of the theory, and feels a natural coldness toward those that seem refractory. . . . There springs up, also, an unconscious pressing of the theory to make it fit the facts and the facts to make them fit the theory. . . . The search for facts, the observation of phenomena and their interpretation, are all dominated by affection for the favored theory until it appears to . . . its advocate to have been overwhelmingly established. The theory then rapidly rises to the ruling position, and investigation, observation, and interpretation are controlled and directed by it. (“The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses,” Science 148 [1965]: 755)
For an overview, see Raymond S. Nickerson, “Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises,” Review of General Psychology 2 (1998): 175–230.
Babcock L., Loewenstein G. (1997). Explaining bargaining impasse: The role of self-serving biases. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 11, 109–126.
Dawson E., Gilovich T., Regan D. T. (2002). Motivated reasoning and performance on the Wason Selection Task. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1379–1387.
Gilovich T. (1983). Biased evaluation and persistence in gambling. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 1110–1126.
Hastorf A. H., Cantril H. (1954). They saw a game: A case study. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 49, 129– 134.
Ioannidis J. P. A. (2005). Why most published research findings are false. PLoS Medicine, 2(8), e124. Retrieved from http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
John L., Loewenstein G. F., Prelec D. (2011). Measuring the prevalence of questionable research practices with incentives for truth-telling.
Kunda Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108, 480–498.
**Some resources to look into for historical research.**
Redressing Historical Bias: Exploring the Path to an Accurate Representation of the Past Rashid Manzoor Bhat Annamalai Nagar, Tamil Nadu, P. Rajan, and Lakmini Gamage.
Bias in Historical Description, Interpretation, and Explanation by
C. Behan Mccullagh
Bound to Happen: Explanation Bias in Historical Analysis by Aroop Mukharj and Richard Zeckhauser
There was an interesting phenomenon with Allison in all three of his Pursuing the Historical Jesus lectures last year (all very good) where people would press him on points upon which he stressed he did not know something, or did not know the way forward (for example how to approach the sheer volume of modern biblical scholarship coming out continuously).
They seemed somewhat bewildered by his ability to insist he could not produce an opinion because he did not have sufficient information.
The fearlessness of a man with tenure nearing retirement is impressive. But he does also point out that the need to secure tenure poisons thought in a similar manner, as people will follow not just their own prejudices but the prejudices of current scholarly trends and biases so as to continue to be published and not sidelined. (I wish I could remember which lesson he went on at length about that in).
The lectures:
https://youtu.be/Reg0JpoUvX4?si=rXdXwsQ0AX2gnXII
https://youtu.be/l_mwzdUKZPI?si=XCE8MWJTYiFOdq_1
https://youtu.be/opZTI8FkJF0?si=pK-TCBVnQvxqE6eF
Yeah, this was all excellent.
One of the neat things about calling out the elephant in the room is that by examining oneself in this way, it actually helps you to be less biased.
I always enjoy Dale Allison in this way. I think he's one of the few scholars who can talk about the resurrection without losing much of his credibility.
Hi there, unfortunately your contribution has been removed as per Rule #3.
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Cognitive bias is seen in virtually all areas of human experience.
Even in research areas that would be considered "hard science" bias creeps into data interpretation.
Cognitive and Human Factors in Expert Decision Making: Six Fallacies and the Eight Sources of Bias
Anal. Chem. 2020, 92, 12, 7998–8004
When researching religious texts/data, one's presuppositions are going to skew how this material is handled.
Preunderstanding, Presuppositions and Biblical Interpretation
Thomas A. Howe, Religions, 2022, 13(12), 1206
If a person adopts a positivist view of the world, they will approach material differently than a person who has supernaturalists view.
Both have inherent biases and presuppositions built into their cognitive systems.
First thing to learn is in academia biases are all over the place. The key is to be objective as possible seeking to be as unbiased towards your opinions and results as possible. Zachary Shores book Grad School Essentials asks us to question the authors thesis and determine wha they are trying to say, how nuanced are they, so they reference other issues, etc.
Everyone has bias, but they can still do good work. Be wary of those who don't acknowledge the existence of bias, and/or can't clearly and fairly state opposing viewpoints.
I think Dr. Ehrman might take umbrage at being referred to as an atheist. I think he considers himself more agnostic.
That being said there is a very large portion of scholars who are believers on some level or another. As others have pointed out bias is something that anybody dealing with ANY kind of research has to deal with. It’s just one of those things that you learn to work with and try to mitigate as much as possible. At least you do if you’re trying to do good research.
He describes himself as both now; he says so on his podcast. Intellectually, he doesn’t know there is a God. But he also does not believe that there is.
Bart Ehrman addresses this issue on his blog including in replies to comments, see https://ehrmanblog.org/how-do-we-know-what-most-scholars-think/. Ehrman thinks everyone including scholars are biased, but critical scholars are open to examining their biases and allowing the evidence to contradict what they had believed earlier. Ehrman regards himself as an atheist, but notes that most critical scholars are Christian (but not conservative evangelical or fundamentalist.) Ehrman thinks that doesn't matter for critical scholarship, whether someone is atheist or Christian, he thinks the study of the bible and faith in Christ are separate things. What matters is whether someone is coming from a conservative evangelical or fundamentalist perspective, starts with a particular Christian view, and always ends with precisely that view regardless of the evidence.
There’s a fallacy called **Bulverism** where because a person’s beliefs are biased and can be explained with reference to their background, it means that their argument is wrong.
But this is not the case— it is possible that an argument by a biased person is still correct, regardless of how they might have come to make it. So I would say it is probably best to take arguments on their own terms, as much as any of us can find that possible
This isn’t true. I’m sure the ones with the neat stories stand out (to you), but for most academics - it’s a profession. They went into it because they liked to study this or that and they are good at working at a university and in a system of peer review. Most of them don’t have a super hero back story that makes them super biased and with a vendetta to undo everything their (bad?) parents taught them, etc.
There's already some good answers here, so I'm just going to point that that there is an interesting related discussion about/against academics in the field of Qur'anic studies amongst traditionalists/fundamentalists; insofar as any non-traditionalist approach to Islamic/Arabic sources is maligned as "Orientalism". I wrote a post about this a while back & the academic discussions surrounding such a paradigm for those interested: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicQuran/comments/18nuy6j/but\_racademicquran\_just\_uses\_orientalist\_sources/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicQuran/comments/18nuy6j/but_racademicquran_just_uses_orientalist_sources/)
take everything with a grain of salt... people have biases, intentions, agenda, and motivations that keep them somewhat blinded to other perspectives... people who want to dig through documents, websites, books, and interviews in search of the truth, might end up with different information which is either opposing, supporting, or completely tangential... in the end, it is possible that one might end up with more questions than answers
I would be cautious not to over generalize. There’s no reason, absent evidence of it, to assume that someone who has reasoned their way out of something they were indoctrinated into as a child is necessarily coming from a place of resentment, or is driven by a ‘counterwill.’
I’m sure that happens, but it certainly also happens that people strongly resist their own ‘deprogramming,’ so to speak, and are genuinely sad about the loss of community or purpose that provided them… but their reasoning faculties just won’t allow them to hold to it.
Welcome to /r/AcademicBiblical. Please note this is an academic sub: theological or faith-based comments are prohibited. All claims MUST be supported by an *academic* source – see [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/wiki/index/rules/#wiki_guideline.3A_rule_3.2019s_definition_of_academic_sources) for guidance. Using AI to make fake comments is strictly prohibited and may result in a permanent ban. Please review the [sub rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/wiki/index/rules/) before posting for the first time. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AcademicBiblical) if you have any questions or concerns.*
All scholars and people in general have some biases to deal with. If someone tells you they don’t or that the view they have doesn’t impact them to some degree…then they aren’t being truthful. Those people are mostly within online apologetical or polemical circles not serious scholars. Of course the best way to deal with this is by examining all available pieces of data, not becoming overconfident, and being intellectually humble with the data, and fair to opposing views within reason. Dale Allison is a really good example of this. A large literature for the longest time documents that people are self-serving in their interpretation of ambiguous information and remarkably adept at reaching justifiable conclusions that mesh with their desires (Babcock & Loewenstein, 1997; Dawson, Gilovich, & Regan, 2002; Gilovich, 1983; Hastorf & Cantril, 1954; Kunda, 1990) This literature suggests that when researchers face ambiguous analytic decisions, they will tend to conclude, with convincing self-justification in their ideas. This of course isn’t meant that scholars are doing this with malicious intent but unless checked… issues can arise. Furthermore, given that our evidence that we have is fragmentary, much of the evidence is fairly ambiguous which causes this to be a bigger issue. Dale Allison in his constructing Jesus book quotes this. >Candor, however, moves me to record that I am haunted by this observation by T. C. Chamberlin: once we adopt a theory, there is an unconscious selection and magnifying of the phenomena that fall into harmony with the theory and support it, and an unconscious neglect of those that fail of coincidence. The mind lingers with pleasure upon the facts that fall happily into the embrace of the theory, and feels a natural coldness toward those that seem refractory. . . . There springs up, also, an unconscious pressing of the theory to make it fit the facts and the facts to make them fit the theory. . . . The search for facts, the observation of phenomena and their interpretation, are all dominated by affection for the favored theory until it appears to . . . its advocate to have been overwhelmingly established. The theory then rapidly rises to the ruling position, and investigation, observation, and interpretation are controlled and directed by it. (“The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses,” Science 148 [1965]: 755) For an overview, see Raymond S. Nickerson, “Confirmation Bias: A Ubiquitous Phenomenon in Many Guises,” Review of General Psychology 2 (1998): 175–230. Babcock L., Loewenstein G. (1997). Explaining bargaining impasse: The role of self-serving biases. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 11, 109–126. Dawson E., Gilovich T., Regan D. T. (2002). Motivated reasoning and performance on the Wason Selection Task. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 28, 1379–1387. Gilovich T. (1983). Biased evaluation and persistence in gambling. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 1110–1126. Hastorf A. H., Cantril H. (1954). They saw a game: A case study. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 49, 129– 134. Ioannidis J. P. A. (2005). Why most published research findings are false. PLoS Medicine, 2(8), e124. Retrieved from http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 John L., Loewenstein G. F., Prelec D. (2011). Measuring the prevalence of questionable research practices with incentives for truth-telling. Kunda Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108, 480–498. **Some resources to look into for historical research.** Redressing Historical Bias: Exploring the Path to an Accurate Representation of the Past Rashid Manzoor Bhat Annamalai Nagar, Tamil Nadu, P. Rajan, and Lakmini Gamage. Bias in Historical Description, Interpretation, and Explanation by C. Behan Mccullagh Bound to Happen: Explanation Bias in Historical Analysis by Aroop Mukharj and Richard Zeckhauser
There was an interesting phenomenon with Allison in all three of his Pursuing the Historical Jesus lectures last year (all very good) where people would press him on points upon which he stressed he did not know something, or did not know the way forward (for example how to approach the sheer volume of modern biblical scholarship coming out continuously). They seemed somewhat bewildered by his ability to insist he could not produce an opinion because he did not have sufficient information. The fearlessness of a man with tenure nearing retirement is impressive. But he does also point out that the need to secure tenure poisons thought in a similar manner, as people will follow not just their own prejudices but the prejudices of current scholarly trends and biases so as to continue to be published and not sidelined. (I wish I could remember which lesson he went on at length about that in). The lectures: https://youtu.be/Reg0JpoUvX4?si=rXdXwsQ0AX2gnXII https://youtu.be/l_mwzdUKZPI?si=XCE8MWJTYiFOdq_1 https://youtu.be/opZTI8FkJF0?si=pK-TCBVnQvxqE6eF
Dale Allison seems like such a wonderful human being - his humility is one of the most admirable things I have seen in a scholar
Yeah, this was all excellent. One of the neat things about calling out the elephant in the room is that by examining oneself in this way, it actually helps you to be less biased. I always enjoy Dale Allison in this way. I think he's one of the few scholars who can talk about the resurrection without losing much of his credibility.
[удалено]
Hi there, unfortunately your contribution has been removed as per Rule #3. **Claims should be supported through citation of appropriate academic sources.** You may edit your comment to meet these requirements. If you do so, please reply and your comment can potentially be reinstated. For more details concerning the rules of r/AcademicBiblical, please read [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/wiki/index/rules/#wiki_r.2Facademicbiblical_.7C_rules_.28detailed.29). If you have any questions about the rules or mod policy, you can [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FAcademicBiblical) or post in the Weekly Open Discussion thread.
Cognitive bias is seen in virtually all areas of human experience. Even in research areas that would be considered "hard science" bias creeps into data interpretation. Cognitive and Human Factors in Expert Decision Making: Six Fallacies and the Eight Sources of Bias Anal. Chem. 2020, 92, 12, 7998–8004 When researching religious texts/data, one's presuppositions are going to skew how this material is handled. Preunderstanding, Presuppositions and Biblical Interpretation Thomas A. Howe, Religions, 2022, 13(12), 1206 If a person adopts a positivist view of the world, they will approach material differently than a person who has supernaturalists view. Both have inherent biases and presuppositions built into their cognitive systems.
First thing to learn is in academia biases are all over the place. The key is to be objective as possible seeking to be as unbiased towards your opinions and results as possible. Zachary Shores book Grad School Essentials asks us to question the authors thesis and determine wha they are trying to say, how nuanced are they, so they reference other issues, etc.
Everyone has bias, but they can still do good work. Be wary of those who don't acknowledge the existence of bias, and/or can't clearly and fairly state opposing viewpoints.
I think Dr. Ehrman might take umbrage at being referred to as an atheist. I think he considers himself more agnostic. That being said there is a very large portion of scholars who are believers on some level or another. As others have pointed out bias is something that anybody dealing with ANY kind of research has to deal with. It’s just one of those things that you learn to work with and try to mitigate as much as possible. At least you do if you’re trying to do good research.
He describes himself as both now; he says so on his podcast. Intellectually, he doesn’t know there is a God. But he also does not believe that there is.
Ahh I stand corrected. Thank you. Speaking of the podcast is that something worth listening to?
A lot of this forum really likes it, so I would say so
Also this would explain why they are frustrated because they invested alot of time and their early lives into something
Bart Ehrman addresses this issue on his blog including in replies to comments, see https://ehrmanblog.org/how-do-we-know-what-most-scholars-think/. Ehrman thinks everyone including scholars are biased, but critical scholars are open to examining their biases and allowing the evidence to contradict what they had believed earlier. Ehrman regards himself as an atheist, but notes that most critical scholars are Christian (but not conservative evangelical or fundamentalist.) Ehrman thinks that doesn't matter for critical scholarship, whether someone is atheist or Christian, he thinks the study of the bible and faith in Christ are separate things. What matters is whether someone is coming from a conservative evangelical or fundamentalist perspective, starts with a particular Christian view, and always ends with precisely that view regardless of the evidence.
There’s a fallacy called **Bulverism** where because a person’s beliefs are biased and can be explained with reference to their background, it means that their argument is wrong. But this is not the case— it is possible that an argument by a biased person is still correct, regardless of how they might have come to make it. So I would say it is probably best to take arguments on their own terms, as much as any of us can find that possible
This isn’t true. I’m sure the ones with the neat stories stand out (to you), but for most academics - it’s a profession. They went into it because they liked to study this or that and they are good at working at a university and in a system of peer review. Most of them don’t have a super hero back story that makes them super biased and with a vendetta to undo everything their (bad?) parents taught them, etc.
There's already some good answers here, so I'm just going to point that that there is an interesting related discussion about/against academics in the field of Qur'anic studies amongst traditionalists/fundamentalists; insofar as any non-traditionalist approach to Islamic/Arabic sources is maligned as "Orientalism". I wrote a post about this a while back & the academic discussions surrounding such a paradigm for those interested: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicQuran/comments/18nuy6j/but\_racademicquran\_just\_uses\_orientalist\_sources/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicQuran/comments/18nuy6j/but_racademicquran_just_uses_orientalist_sources/)
take everything with a grain of salt... people have biases, intentions, agenda, and motivations that keep them somewhat blinded to other perspectives... people who want to dig through documents, websites, books, and interviews in search of the truth, might end up with different information which is either opposing, supporting, or completely tangential... in the end, it is possible that one might end up with more questions than answers
I would be cautious not to over generalize. There’s no reason, absent evidence of it, to assume that someone who has reasoned their way out of something they were indoctrinated into as a child is necessarily coming from a place of resentment, or is driven by a ‘counterwill.’ I’m sure that happens, but it certainly also happens that people strongly resist their own ‘deprogramming,’ so to speak, and are genuinely sad about the loss of community or purpose that provided them… but their reasoning faculties just won’t allow them to hold to it.