Contra Massimo Pigliucci on presentism

I've disagreed with him for some time on this issue in the headline, going back to this piece of mine five years ago, re St. David of Hume and his racism, but a new piece by him last month leads me back to the issue. 

(It also leads to the sidebar note of him now becoming a pretty hardcore determinist, and also, and at least tangentially related to that, pulling back from anything but a mild version of emergent properties — an issue in both biology and in philosophical issues related to consciousness, I find him less and less interesting as a thinker. And, this doesn't even count his being wrong more than a decade ago on bombing Libya and still being unapologetic for it. It doesn't count him presumably supporting NATO "barking" at Russia via Ukraine and more. It doesn't count him supporting genocide in Gaza.)

Speaking of that last in parentheses? Re presentism, if you’re OK with genocide in Gaza, that means you don’t have to worry about applying that standard to the mythical call to genocide in the Tanakh/Old Testament, from which modern supporters of this particular genocide talk about Amalek, do you?

Back to my main point, though. 

I can both disagree with, and even criticize, an ancient culture from the point of view of “Presentism” but still learn from said culture at same time. Seriously, this is not a zero-sum game, and Massimo, who if he once had a bromance for Buddhism, per the otherwise wrong Doug Bates, surely had a bromance for Robert Wright (wrong on Buddhism not being a religion) that he used to do the TalkingHeads and stuff with. In other words, Pigliucci should know this is not a zero-sum game.

And, on things like racism or sexism, even if far fewer people, as a percentage, were enlightened in Attica of 2,500 years ago than today, a few were enlightened back then, so it’s not really a stereotyped version of “Presentism” anyway, now, is it? It’s not like some genetic mutation produced a gene that coded for a tendency toward higher levels of sociological enlightenment.

So, yes, this comes off like falling hard on the "nature" side of "nature vs nurture." That said, that seems to be of a piece with Massimo backing off broader versions of emergent properties, and being more of a hardcore determinist.

That said, there's more. This?

I will instead propose a third way, a sort of Aristotelian virtue-in-the-middle, that preserves the notion that humanity has made real moral progress and yet that it is fruitless to sit in judgment of earlier cultures.

Did you forget your Santayana, Massimo?

OK, let me remind you.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

So, wrong! It's actually fruitful indeed if we sit in judgment, as long as we move beyond the judgment to the learning. Extending Santayana's comment, I take him to be talking about learning from the past, not just remembering it. (This is one of the reasons I think well-written alternative or counterfactual history essays are worth reading.)

Maybe that's why he remains unapologetic about Libya. 

Pigliucci eventually hits the paywall on his piece, right before he may nuance his thoughts, I can't sa more. That said, since I’ve already indicated I’m neither a moral realist nor a moral anti-realist, I also approach Hume’s “is ≠ ought” which he notes in an old, linked piece, from a different angle. (I am, if anything, in some sense, a moral skeptic, which says “mu” to the “realism-antirealism” polarities.) I also am an eclecticist on schools of ethical behavior, not a virtue ethicist. 

I think it's the first time I've used it for him, but the "philosophism" label — philosophism is to philosophy as scientism is to science — comes out. 

Or, to put it another way, some of his recent philosophical shifts have awakened me from a dogmatic semi-slumber on lack of a critical approach to him. 

Observer asks Leo XIV to show us the money, halfway misses the point

The Observer, reaching way outside Texas, calls on the Vatican to crack open its $73 billion gold mine. The author is triangulating off Leo XIV's recent "Magnifica Humanitas." The problem, or the reality, is several-fold, without excusing Rome. First, not all of its assets are liquid. Second, at $73 billion, not trillion, that's one-tenth of what Elmo Musk or Bozo Bezos are worth, at least on paper. And, that's just the richest of plutocrats, not the whole schmeer. Third is that the author is privileging the United States, and possibly Mexico, when il papa rules Catholics around the globe.

Fourth, you're asking a man who wears ruby-colored, and perhaps ruby-edged slippers while carrying a gold crozier to do this?

Fifth, many of the assets that would be liquified to get to this point would be bought by plutocrats. That said, if the Vatican were to sell, say, the entire ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, that alone would bring more than $73 billion.

Sixth, you're asking a religious leader who runs a body that still opposes women in leadership, still opposes  women's reproductive freedoms and other things, to show the world "magnificent humanity" through money alone? 

And, I didn't even mention the priestly sexual abuse scandal that Leo's predecessor left smouldering. 

The piece seems somewhat simplistic. 

Beating the rush on saying goodbye to John Nelson

 I called out this piece both on the idea that the darkness at Jesus' crucifixion as portrayed by the Synoptics was literal, as well as trying to hook Jesus' death to Passover either the Synoptic way or the Johannine.

Here's what I said in a quote-Stack, after first thinking against it. (I had come across him before, also from Ben the Amateur Exegete, and held off that time. That's another reason for possibly deblogrolling Ben.)

This all assumes two things, neither of which are guaranteed: A. That the darkness of the three synoptics is something actual and not a literary trope: B. That Jesus was crucified either on the day of OR, as in this piece, the day before, Passover. After all, the Eucharist, as invented by Paul, is NOT a Passover seder, as such things didn’t exist 2,000 years ago, and Hyam Maccoby, etc etc. No need to be a paid subscriber.

He claimed that he eventually got to the idea of it being a literary trope. I said, why waste your time.

And, actually looking at the last three paragraphs:

Where then does this leave us with the darkness that covered the land? As Humphreys observes, there are genuine reasons to think that a darkness could have a natural explanation, even if it has nothing to do with an eclipse. Yet we must also note that omens of darkness are scattered throughout ancient literature. Thus, if we want to know the meaning of the gospels’ darkness, it is to this that we must take heed. 

In the Hebrew Bible, darkness often has strong apocalyptic edge. In texts like Joel 2 and Amos 5, it is used as a symbol of God’s divine judgement. Perhaps in this case then, it is the judgement over Israel for putting God’s anointed one to death. (For a fuller explanation of this motif with respect to Mark, see The Destruction of Jerusalem). 

For a more direct parallel, however, we might turn to Graeco-Roman literature, where eclipses could portend a King’s death (Philo, Prov. 2.50). This is illustrated by Virgil’s poetic account of the death of Julius Caesar, which precipitated sixteen unusual phenomena, including prolonged darkness (Georg. 1.466-488). On this reading, the darkness that covered the land fits well with Jesus’ death as ‘King of the Jews’. There, it serves to confirm that Jesus truly is – as the centurion says – the ‘son of God.’

No, he doesn't do so much as what he claims, especially since he winds up working back to literal darkness.

On the latter issue, he poo-poohed Maccoby, while saying he himself talked about the crucifixion as being "around Passover." That's not the same as Sukkoth, whether Maccoby is right or wrong. He also poo-poohed the issue of Paul as creator of the Eucharist and pushed for an early date of the invention of the seder, leaving open the possibility of it coming before the First Revolt. 

In reality, per Jonathan Klawans, Jesus almost certainly wasn't engaged in a Passover seder. And, if you know Paul wrote first, he invented the framing of what Jesus did. And, if you agree with me, with my more modern twists on the likes of Joseph Fitzmyer, you know Paul invented the Eucharist, and as part of a cosmic Gnosticizing event.

In addition, per this piece from a Jewish institute, the seder itself may have borrowed from Greco-Roman traditions, like the symposium. (And, riffing on my link above, that's another alternative to the monthly dinners of communal guilds for having influenced Paul. Or, perhaps the seder was influenced by guild dinners. Or both were influenced by both.) That said, yes, argument from silence, but that link notes that neither Josephus nor Philo mentions seders. Personally, I think it dates at least a minimum after the Second Revolt, which really led to Judaism rethinking itself. It was clear, especially after Hadrian planning to create Aelia Capitolina, that the temple wasn't coming back, and that Bar Kokhba thinking along the lines of Jeremiah and 70 years after the First Revolt was just wrong. (Messianism was alive between the two revolts, per the writing of books like Fourth Ezra.)

Otherwise, he strikes me as being a bit like Alan Garrow anchoring the date of Revelation on the eruption of Vesuvius. It's not exactly the same, but it is the same ballpark. 

 

My personal step outside both Academic Skepticism and Pyrrhonism

First, it is NOT that of Doug Bates, who thinks Pyrrho himself was a Buddhist in drag.

And, to the degree Pyrrhonism believed in an epoche, like modern phenomenology, no, I don't believe in that. 

And, I don't think the younger, Pyrrhonist Hume did either, and certainly not the older one.

Rather, I think his version of Pyrrhonism was based on rejecting probabilistic reasoning as untenable. Per his bon mot in later life, when questioned about how he could go to sleep every night, not knowing if the sun would rise in the morrow or not, he said, he simply went to bed.

Elsewhere, contra legends about Pyrrho's behavior, Hume gives every occasion that giving assent to regular, customary natural occurrences is fine. And, he did not "suspend judgment" on human custom, let alone reject it as if he were a good Cynic.

(Stoicism gets the matter of the epoche wrong, by not accepting that everything is sense impressions — albeit sense impressions encoded by a regularly evolved set of perceptual organs into a regularly evolved brain.)

Back to more modern times.

Hume would have rejected the Pyrrhonist emphasis on apatheia. 

My stance is in some ways related to Benson Mates. Suspension of judgment does not lead to ataxaria. That said, is it even possible to suspend judgment? Per other Pyrrhonists rejecting the tales of Pyrrho not following convention about repeating natural world matters, the master himself didn't suspend judgment on whether or not an oxcart was actually coming at him. 

Rather, going back to Hume, I think this could be seen as a subset of the passions. 

I'm not really sure what to call it, as of course, Academic Skepticism had the Sgt. Schultz approach to knowledge, period, and Pyrrhonism said, well, we can't even know that much.

Descartes has been associated with probabilistic skepticism, but I hate to use the term Cartesian skepticism, because, he wasn't really all that. First and foremost, his was a methodological skepticism that laid the foundation for modern science in some ways; he was not a philosophical skeptic.

Wiki has a short piece about probabilism. Based on it and tidbits at Stanford, I could call myself a Carneadic skeptic, I guess. That said, Carneades rejected the idea of actual probabilities.

Because I reject the precision of Bayesian probabilism (as well as rejecting Bayes' backstory of coming up with his equation to try to refute Hume — take that, Richard Carrier!), I would have to tie this with Stanford's article on imprecise probabilities. 

 

Top critical thinking writing of July-September 2026

As I normally do, but quarterly rather than monthly as at my main site, here's a roundup of my most popular writing of the last quarter.

As is normal, not all pieces may have been written in in the past three months, and I'll give you a original date on the evergreen material.

No. 10? Yes, let's continue to Say goodbye to History for Atheists, as I first did in 2017, as long as Tim O'Neill continues to lie about the reality of post-Renaissance Catholic in general and papal in particular antisemitism. 

No. 9? Indeed: What if there were another Bethlehem? Contra the Jesus mythicists, many of whom still claim that Nazareth didn't exist in the first century CE, Bruce Chilton offers good evidence for a second village of Bethlehem, just a few miles away from Nazareth in Galilee, existing then.

No. 8? From 2007, my first, briefer, poetry and not prose callout of Buddhism claims that it’s not a religion.

No. 7 is from 2012 and talks about the true meaning of Hanukkah. Those thoughts spun into several more pieces over the years.

No. 6? From 2017, the 500th anniversary of the beginning of legends about Martin Luther saying or doing all sorts of shit he didn’t actually say or do. (I’ve not kept up post-1521, but may, if I remember, in 1529 dip into the Marburg Colloquy.)

No. 5? From the start of the third-quarter period, FAFO with Leo XIV didn’t work.

No. 4? From 2007, “Patriots, gurus, scoundrels and martyrs” was a Shitter-sized post. Maybe Google thinks its popular because it’s getting botted.

No. 3 was the previous quarter’s version of this roundup.

No. 2 was from 20 years ago, a philosophical reflection, with hat tip to Matthew Arnold, on a recent Pacific Coast-focused National Parks summer vacation.

And No. 1?

ALSO from 2007, like a couple of others, an oldie but goodie:

“More proof the Buddha was no Buddha.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wrong / strawmanning on Gnosticism, Robyn Faith Walsh

Once again, Ben the Amateur Exegete strikes, as from a posting of his, Robyn Faith Ehrman Walsh is flat wrong if she thinks there was no such thing called Gnosticism.  Wiki does note that there is no one religion called Gnosticism, but says it does work as an umbrella term. RFE spoils her case further by citing Karen King as the main source for her argument. See more here from me on the issue of Gnosticism and of King's problematic-ness. See also my well-read "Paul, Passover, Jesus, Gnosticism."

Beyond that, the King book is 20 years old. Plenty of scholars who are not Westar/Jesus Seminar flunkies nor Ehrman flunkies have thought on these issues. Wiki's footnotes reference David Brakke's book, among others, that are newer than King. 

So, if rather, RF Ehrman is saying there's no such thing as what was called "Gnosticism" say, pre-2000, she's strawmanning and leaning too much on the slender reed of King.

Getting back to Wiki. It notes Gnosticism was not entirely a Christian or para-Christian phenomenon. Books have been written about the idea of Jewish Gnosticism, after all. And, a bit about Mandean and pagan Gnosticism.

I quote the first paragraph of the Wiki entry:

It is not a singular, homogeneous tradition or religion, but an umbrella term used by modern scholars to describe different groups and beliefs that shared certain characteristics.

So, yea, RF Ehrman is strawmanning. And I told Ben that, only being more polite than using the word "strawmanning." We'll see if there's any response.

He's getting closer to being deblogrolled, which doesn't matter so much anyway if Blogger doesn't fix its recent problem of not updating RSS feeds. 

Ben the Amateur Exegete has another nothingburger roundup

Here's the link.

Contra Robyn Faith Ehrman Walsh, no, it's not "striking" that the gospels don't describe Jesus' appearance. We don't know for sure Apollonius of Tyana looked like. Many later Cynic philosophers are unknown to us. Within his own tradition, we don't know what John the Baptizer looked like. Etc., etc. Someone more famous in his own time than Jesus and John? We don't know what Josephus looked like, either. No external source tries to describe any of the three and Josephus doesn't try to describe himself. Worse? Walsh did this same schtick last year, per another post by Ben. Worse yet, in that same post, is a piece claiming Jesus was "Ugly," because Isaiah 53 and something Irenaeus said 150 years after Jesus lived. I've had enough of various thoughts of John Nelson to reject that one, too. (And gack, his PhD thesis bled an alleged 100,000 words over that, he says. [No follow on that link enacted.])

The bible doesn't exist, but only as an intellectual formulation? A nothingburger to those who know the formation of the canon of the Christian Old and New Testaments. 

The intertextual bible (giving it a separate link) actually sounds interesting enough that Ben, other than posting Charles Kuffner like snippets, should actually write a post about it. 

 ==

Gack! Going through his posts, he believes in a historical Moses.