{"id":4344,"date":"2013-07-30T07:30:38","date_gmt":"2013-07-30T12:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4344"},"modified":"2013-07-30T07:30:38","modified_gmt":"2013-07-30T12:30:38","slug":"o-tempora-o-mores","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4344","title":{"rendered":"O tempora o mores!"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 525px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nypost.com\/r\/nypost\/2012\/04\/12\/news\/web_photos\/ITALY112158--525x350.jpg\" width=\"525\" height=\"350\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fig. 1: Ancient Roman Historians<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Raising questions about an expert&#8217;s qualifications, motivations, and possible conflicts of interest is\u00c2\u00a0good practice.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0However,\u00c2\u00a0a fundamental principle of argument says\u00c2\u00a0 that time is short and\u00c2\u00a0that one must therefore dispense with the bullshit.<\/p>\n<p>This principle was violated by\u00c2\u00a0Fox News&#8217; religion correspondent, Lauren Green, when she <a href=\"http:\/\/livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com\/entry\/fox-news-anchor-to-religious-scholar-why-would\">spent several minutes<\/a> of an interview with well-known religious scholar Reza Aslan puzzling over why a\u00c2\u00a0Muslim would write a book about Jesus:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a Muslim, so why did you write a book about the founder of Christianity?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This not on its face a stupid question, but that was pretty much the only question the interviewer had for the next several minutes.\u00c2\u00a0 Her implication was that there is something suspect or inappropriate in a non-Christian&#8217;s writing about Jesus.\u00c2\u00a0 This is a variation on the fallacious variety of the ad hominem circumstantial: you&#8217;re just saying what you say about Jesus because you&#8217;re a Muslim out to terrorize Christianity with scholarship and footnotes.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s obviously silly and does not deserve refutation.<\/p>\n<p>Sadly, having watched the interview, I have no idea what the book is about or\u00c2\u00a0whether it is any good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Raising questions about an expert&#8217;s qualifications, motivations, and possible conflicts of interest is\u00c2\u00a0good practice.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0However,\u00c2\u00a0a fundamental principle of argument says\u00c2\u00a0 that time is short and\u00c2\u00a0that one must therefore dispense with the bullshit. This principle was violated by\u00c2\u00a0Fox News&#8217; religion correspondent, Lauren Green, when she spent several minutes of an interview with well-known religious scholar Reza Aslan &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=4344\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">O tempora o mores!<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[346,1708,1710,1709],"class_list":["post-4344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-ad-hominem-circumstantial","tag-lauren-green","tag-o-tempora-o-mores","tag-reza-aslan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4344"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4344\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4345,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4344\/revisions\/4345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}