The Mything Link

[Vishnu]

^Indeed, plus at the time of Lewis's conversion, the most influential mythologist on the planet was James Frazer, who sure as hell was no Christian.

[stahrwe]

Frazer may or may not deserve the preeminent position* referred to above but he certainly has since plummeted to oblivion. He may be well known to a circle of people but certainly not at the level of Tolkien or Lewis. And even if he were, it is not relevant to the discussion. The point is that the towering expert on mythology - Tolkien, thoroughly knowledgeable about the origins of myths**, concluded that Christianity was true, and he CONVINCED the second towering expert on mythology that it was true. It is probably fortunate for your argument that Frazer did was not present for the Tolkien presentation to Lewis or you would be casting around for another 'expert' to put forward.

*Wikipedia says he was influential but it says nothing about preeminence. I also scanned the list of books he wrote and none are familiar to me.

** after-all he created an entire world inhabited by creatures with their own histories and complex languages.

[johnson1010]

This is all an argument from authority.

You want us to take it on his word. Because he knew a lot about mythology. That other people agree he knew a lot about mythology. He convinced other people that they should believe as well.

That he's decided one story among the many is the TRUE myth is a statement without content. On what basis did he make this determination?

"He was convinced of it, and convinced someone else." by itself is a statement without content. This is an attempt to get us to bow to the authority of this person. But it doesn't matter WHO believes. What's important is why they believe it. All people have their blind spots, even people who have spent their lives thinking about mythology.

[Interbane]

Appeals to authority are many times legitimate, and not always fallacious. In research, we appeal to the words of authorities quite often.

What it boils down to is that the authority alone is not the source of support. What matters is the argument, the contents of the argument, the logical structure, and supportive evidence. If you attempt to stand on the qualifications of the expert without referencing the argument, then you're committing a fallacy.

There is a rubric for determining if an argument commits the fallacy. One of the questions is whether or not there is adequate agreement within the field. Not unanimous, but close to it. The root determinant is the lack of content(taking the authority only on his word). The way to identify that this is an argumentum ad verecundiam is that there is not adequate agreement. There is a heated debate amongst experts of mythology.

It's an irrelevant conclusion.

[stahrwe]

My position might be an appeal to authority if I were asking you to come to the same conclusion which Lewis did but I am NOT doing that. What I am asking is the question any teacher might pose to his or her advanced placement literature class; Why was Tolkien's argument convincing? or words to that effect.

Your reflex is to dismiss the discussion as irrelevant or fallacious but there is a danger in doing that. It is the same danger which shadows most of the reactions to Christian arguments posted on BT - failure to understand and take the argument seriously.

There was something in the position argued by Tolkien which not only convinced Lewis but converted him. You can't argue that Tolkien's status as a superstar influenced Lewis because it would be decades before Tolkien achieved that status. So, the 'why' remains unanswered and dangerous.

[geo]

There was something in the position argued by Tolkien which not only convinced Lewis but converted him.

Yep. But since we weren't privy to the conversation between Tolkien and C.S Lewis, we can only rely on what C.S. Lewis said about it. And ultimately, this is just one guy converting to Christianity. There's absolutely no significance to it whatsoever (except to C.S. Lewis himself, of course). Many people have converted to Christianity over the years, and perhaps they can point to circumstances in their lives or things people said to convince them. Add C.S. Lewis to that list of people who came to believe something for whatever reason.

What made Michael Shermer go from a Christian to an atheist? If Shermer said he was convinced by something that Richard Dawkins said while the two were having tea, would that conversation then be considered some kind of proof of the truth of atheism? How about the guy who attends a UFO convention and comes to believe he was abducted by aliens? Does it matter what it was or what someone said that convinced him of the truth of his abduction?

I believe you are confusing subjective with objective.

[Interbane]

My position might be an appeal to authority if I were asking you to come to the same conclusion which Lewis did but I am NOT doing that.

It is a fallacy if you think Lewis coming to 'so and so conclusion' is enough to 'destroy the ideas of DM Murdock and her ilk'.

What I am asking is the question any teacher might pose to his or her advanced placement literature class; Why was Tolkien's argument convincing? or words to that effect.

I had a very direct response to this a few posts back. We don’t know why Tolkien’s argument was convincing, because nothing in the text you provided gives an answer that satisfies us. That answer is what matters, it is how you avoid committing a fallacy. If there is something in the text you provided that satisfied you, then provide it. Page after page of spinning our wheels, and you still want to play games. What’s more, you’re accusing others of being evasive!

Be DIRECT Stahrwe. Make the point you're hoping to eventually make. Use a single post and state it clearly and directly. Stop pretending to be an educator, because I for one don’t see you as that. You’re presuming you’re educating us on something that you have a firm understanding of. I challenge that. I don’t think you fully understand the reason Lewis was convinced. But before we can even reach that point, you’re requiring US to give YOU an answer that requires having Lewis sitting in front of us in person for an interview, as geo rightly points out.

What’s more, the condescension that you convey in assuming the role of educator is arrogant. Many people here at BT don’t take your position seriously enough to role-play as a student. If you want to be taken seriously, then take us seriously. Don’t presume we’re students in need of educating(perhaps we are, but to presume that is arrogant). Personally, I believe you're the one in need of educating. Save the Sunday School tone for Sunday School.

[youkrst]

Your reflex is to dismiss the discussion as irrelevant or fallacious but there is a danger in doing that.

stahrwe, i heard it coming a mile off, the ONE TRUE MYTH chestnut.

my first post in this thread.

i saw the title of the pdf "the true myth" and immediately remembered from all my CS Lewis reading how he was hot on the "one true myth" apologetic.

i thought "oh no, dont tell me stahrwe is going to run with that"

sure enough heres some ludicrous re-enactment of the JRR CS conversation that reads like a mormon evangelism script...

i think it is obvious why the one true myth line is bogus but just in case here is a rebuttal:

imagine if you will, i take you to a car yard and say, see all these things with four wheels an engine, chassis, steering wheel etc etc well they are cars.

great you say, they look nifty i'd like to buy one.

NO! i say frantically, you must not, for i have the one true car!

and i'll sell it to you!

so you look at the car i'm selling later and say, but it's just like the other cars, it has four wheels an engine, chassis, steering wheel etc etc

ah yes but those were just echoes of the one true car, by the way - it's a honda civic!

you say, but that maserati looked nice and the girls really seemed to dig it....

tut tut i say, it's the honda civic for you.

weeks and weeks later you break down in the privacy of your study and realise you must buy the civic, the one true car.

___________________________________________________

likewise you can line up all the ancient mythologies and see the parallels (if you have spent the time to study them) and it will be obvious, painfully obvious that every facet of the christian story is contained in one or another of the competing mythologies. usually several motifs at least.

virgin birth
death and resurrection
miracles
healings
buried in the earth
three days
etc etc etc

so you buy that honda civic if you must but i have studied way too long to be taken in by such a stupid line as christianity is the truth and all the others are just myths, ours is a myth too but it's TRUE!! Jesus really literally was born of a virgin and he shed his blood for our sins and he rose from the dead for our justification!!!

puhleeeese!!

it's a common mythological motif, common to a multitude of mythologies, for god's sake do some reading and catch up!

once you have experienced what the myths are metaphors for, then you realise it doesn't matter which metaphor you embrace you will have to transcend it through experience. once the whale has swallowed you, you must go through the process (three days) and be thrown up on dry land.

Though riddled with logical flaws and misrepresentations the writings of Murdock, Wright, Campbell and others were preferred and defended.

still waiting for one single logical flaw or misrepresentation in anything Joe Campbell ever wrote!

put up or shut up!

see stahrwe that's the thing, you say stuff like that then get challenged on it, then go silent on the matter, then show up talking like we're all simpletons and you have.... wait for it.... THE ONE TRUE MYTH

if i didn't care about you i wouldn't get so frustrated

earlier in this thread you say

it is a terrible thing to live in fear; to duck and cover; to hide.

but stahrwe, perfect love casts out fear, you are supposed to know that experientially according to your "one true myth"

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

1 John 4:18

back in my personal dark ages when i too had the "one true myth" i used to get puzzled when i would meet people who didn't have the one true myth but seemed more christ like than i did!!! how dare they
now it makes perfect sense, they zoomed past my honda civic in their maserati

so here we sit on the side of the highway, you leaning up against your civic, me sitting on the maserati... then suddenly WHHHOOOOOOOOOSSSHHHHHHH!!!!! bloody hell what was that?!?!?

someone just flew by in a brand new F-22 Raptor and didn't even stop to say hello

[Vishnu]

Frazer may or may not deserve the preeminent position* referred to above but he certainly has since plummeted to oblivion. He may be well known to a circle of people but certainly not at the level of Tolkien or Lewis.

It is statements like this that display your ignorance on the field of mythological scholarship. Hell, that's probably why you're so quick to seize on Tolkien- because you don't know of any other notable names in the field, and why you are so quick to emphasize the popularity of his fictional works- because you don't know any of his academic works to cite. Frazer is hardly in oblivion, and that "circle of people" who well know his works are the scholars of the field. And when it comes to that "circle", the circle most relevant here, when it comes to who has left the bigger impact on the field of mythological scholarship, Frazer blows Tolkien out of the water. Where Tolkien left his most significant mark is, as you admit, the world of popular fiction. That 'wider circle' of people who know of Tolkien rather than Frazer are the laymen.
The Golden Bough was the most monumental work on comparative mythology in the 19th & early 20th centuries, rivaled only by the works of Carl Jung and slightly later by Joseph Campbell. It would remain the standard until the 1960's when Jonathan Z. Smith's works rendered Frazer officially outdated. And even then it has still been of great use in the field and still commonly referenced by modern scholars (they just know which parts are outdated and which are still valuable). For example, I know in my Teaching Company vids, Professor Elizabeth Vandiver refers to Frazer's work often (and as I said, she does preface it with pros and cons).
The Golden Bough's influence far outreaches Tolkien's commentary on Beowulf or any other of his academic publications on myth. (And that's actually to be expected, he was more of a Middle-English philologist anyway.)

Hell, you mention that Wikipedia fails (as it does at many things) to mention Frazer's preeminence in this field, yet Wiki's article on Tolkien fails to mention any preeminence of him as a mythologist either. Where it does mention preeminence is, again, his fiction. Not his academic scholarship- his fiction.

Tim Lahaye and Dan Brown are much more widely known and adored than Bart Ehrman, but the "circle of people" who do know of Bart Ehrman's work hold it in much higher regard in the field of biblical scholarship than anything Lahaye or Brown have had to say on the subject. And that includes the actual academic scholars of the field.

The level of popularity of Tolkien's fiction with the lay-masses has no bearing on the credibility of whatever arguments he might have used on Lewis.

And btw, Lewis was a big fan of Frazer's works.

“Sir James Frazer, the most eminent scholar in the comparative study of primitive superstition and religion, is happily still with us. His classic work The Golden Bough (2nd ed., 1900; 3rd ed., 1911; followed by other volumes; abridged, 1922) remains the standard authority on this subject. It is as up to date today as it was yesterday in all that is essential.” – Vivian Phelips, Concerning Progressive Revelation. Watts & Co. Ltd., 1936.

“…the most monumental anthropological work of the late nineteenth century, The Golden Bough.” – Dr. Ian C. Jarvie, The Story of Social Anthropology: The Quest to Understand Human Society. McGraw- Hill, 1972.

“… The Golden Bough, the most influential study on myth and religion, …” – Dr. Margarita Carretero-Gonzalez, “When Nature Responds to Evil Practices: A Warning from Ents of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-Earth,” in Truth, Reconciliation, and Evil. Ropodi, 2004

“Sir James Frazer’s collection of folklore in The Golden Bough remains one of the most influential works of this phase of the culture-civilization dialectic.” – Dr. Michael M.J. Fischer, Anthropological Futures. Duke University Press, 2009.

“The comparative method was famously used by James Frazer in one of the most influential works of modernist anthropology, The Golden Bough.” – Dr. Rachel Teukolsky, The Literate Eye: Victorian Art Writing and Modernist Aesthetics. Oxford University Press, 2009.

[stahrwe]

If this is a duplicate post, please forgive me but it appears to be waiting for submission so I am submitting it .

My position might be an appeal to authority if I were asking you to come to the same conclusion which Lewis did but I am NOT doing that. What I am asking is the question any teacher might pose to his or her advanced placement literature class; Why was Tolkien's argument convincing? or words to that effect.

Your reflex is to dismiss the discussion as irrelevant or fallacious but there is a danger in doing that. It is the same danger which shadows most of the reactions to Christian arguments posted on BT - failure to understand and take the argument seriously.

There was something in the position argued by Tolkien which not only convinced Lewis but converted him. You can't argue that Tolkien's status as a superstar influenced Lewis because it would be decades before Tolkien achieved that status. So, the 'why' remains unanswered and dangerous.