Talk:Josh McDowell

Statement

"Josh McDowell is an evangelist and an advocate of Jesus who is associated with the Christological argument and with Christianity as the maximal sex."

What does this mean? Jonathunder 18:13, 2004 Dec 31 (UTC)

Should probably be clarified with what "Christianity as the maximal sex" means--70.179.2.77 01:41, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Josh McDowell Lacks Credentials

McDowell does not possess the credentials of a critical ancient historian. As far as I know, he is not a member of the Association of Ancient Historians. He seems unaware of the disciplines of critical ancient history founded by Thucydidies. McDowell makes no attempt to eliminate myth and romanticism. He is an apologist and an evangelist, a crusading preacher. I did not discover one book dealing with higher Biblical Criticism or the development of Christology among his 115 books. Miistermagico (talk) 06:03, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Josh McDowell's Family

Why isn't there more information about his family? Just a brief mention of his wife and the fact that they have four children. Did he meet his wife in college or later in Campus Crusades for Christ? What do his children do? Did his children follow in his path? Are they atheists? Does anyone have this information?76.240.238.156 (talk) 05:00, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

What is Josh McDowell's POV?

Is he a Full Preterist or a Partial Preterist? Since he claims all prophecy has been fullfilled, sounds like he's a Full Preterist.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 75.0.3.172 (talk • contribs) 02:29, 23 October 2006.

I don't think McDowell's a Preterist at all. I believe he supports the Millenialist view of the coming Rapture and Great Tribulation. Agnapostate (talk) 04:33, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

Maybe we should let Josh or his staff chime in on his official viewpoints but as a fan of Josh, his ministry, campus crusade for Christ the layman that I am from reading some of his materials I would think he is more of a Futurist and writes from a historical reformed position. Just my 2 cents!...:-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gbepny (talk • contribs) 17:42, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Proper Image?

The image doesn't look very proper. Should we have a photo of him with perhaps a more professional look to him?

RESPONSE: Maybe a good picture could be taken from any of his recent books? My thinking is if its good enough for his books then its probably good enough for WIKI. - IMO —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gbepny (talk • contribs) 17:17, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

Counterpoint?

I see very little mention of criticisms against the work of Josh McDowell. This article reads like a glowing bio on a dust jacket and I think it would be remiss to not speak to his detractors. Sonoranjohn (talk) 03:17, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

This is true, especially since ever word out of him is total nonsense, including "a," "an," and "the." Maybe real scholars figure anybody dumb enough to fall for this nonsense can't be reached?

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Criticism of scholarship

Samboy deleted a section called "Controversy" as a WP:Biography of living persons violation. The BLP policy applies only to the personal life of subjects and their families, matters for which any average person has a right to privacy. Public interest should not be mistaken for public prurience. I strongly support this policy.

However the BLP policy does not apply to criticism of the subject's published works: only WP:RS applies. So it was certainly valid to delete a statement supported by a tweet, but I question the validity of deleting Professor Hazen's analysis – particularly when he examines McDowell's citations and found so many of them to have {{failed verification}}, cherry picked from sources, or have serious issues of confirmation bias. Prof. Hazen does not question McDowell's faith but only his scholarship: the mistakes are Junior year level. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 14:39, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

There were two bits in the “controversy” section. One was him saying some stuff which was allegedly racially insensitive. Accusing someone of any kind of racism is a very contentious accusation which we only allow on the Wikipedia when reliably sourced as per WP:BLP; the sources (WP:PATHEOS and WP:RSPTWITTER) definitely did not meet the high bar for inclusion of those accusations on the Wikipedia. I would need to see these same accusations in a “green” source over at WP:RSP before including them here. (Note: After writing this paragraph, General Bradley found a WP:WAPO reference to the racially insensitive comments, so they can stay in the article)

Now, the contention that Evidence that Demands a Verdict has a bunch of really sloppy scholarship is a very different ball game, so the level of sources needed to include that information in the article are lower. A personal web page at a university can very well meet the external links guidelines as per WP:ELMAYBE and I feel linking to a detailed criticism of Evidence that Demands a Verdict is in the general interest of Wikipedia’s readership and should stay. Putting this information in the main article is a little more iffy; I would like to see a more reliable source than a personal webpage (and, yes, I remember when a version of this same information was circulating in Usenet in the early 1990s), and a quick Google Books and Google Scholar search only shows Evangelical sources sympathetic to McDowell’s work. A news search shows a moderate to liberal Christian criticism that Evidence advocates Fundamantalism/Biblical Inerrancy and a bunch of stuff from, again, mainly Evangelical sources.

Point being, I’m not seeing mainstream reliable sources criticizing McDowell’s scholarship, so putting anything but a single external link is questionable. It’s the same reason we can only give the extensive accusations made against Richard Carrier a passing mention; they made a lot of noise in the skeptical and atheist communities, but have only been mentioned once in a single short paragraph in reliable sources (as well as fairly extensive commentary in WP:BREITBART which of course does not belong in the Wiki). Samboy (talk) 16:31, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

First, I agree completely with your first paragraph: that was an unambiguous BLP vio. The only reason I have this article on my watch list is because of hunting down a hate site that was being falsely cited.

I can't see any serious scholar risking their professional standing by getting bogged down in this sort of nonsense, same as few bother to take apart silly conspiracy theories. It is hard enough to get published in a reputable journal and many academics are measured not just by their publication count but also by the citation scores of those publications. So it doesn't at all surprise me that this has not left the University file store. But my concern is that the article as it stands is a hagiography; other editors have already made the same point above: the article fails NPOV; the criticism of his inaccurate reporting of Scripture and his false citations of other authors really should not be ignored. I'm not really convinced that is is enough to just Hazen's analysis as an external link. But I do see merit in your point that his should not be the only voice to say so, if it is not to risk overcompensating. I don't intend to pursue but perhaps someone else will? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 19:09, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Another thing to keep in mind is that the level of sourcing needed to make contentious claims is lower over at the RationalWiki, which does have a Josh McDowell page. In terms of WP:NPOV, Wikipedia has to be neutral as per what reliable sources say about the subject, and if reliable sources are generally positive about someone, that’s how the Wikipedia article should look. That said, General Bradley did find high quality sourcing for the racially insensitive remarks, and there is that Christian Post article I dug up which points out that Evidence that Demands a Verdict advocates Biblical inerrancy. I encourage editors to find other high quality sourcing.

Personally, as a devout Christian who goes to Bible study every week, I always felt McDowell’s method of thinking was questionable, and was frustrated, in the days before widespread internet access, that I could never find any literature which took on his questionable arguments, only pamphlets and what not from conservative Evangelical sources which praised him as a great thinker. Once I got online and found refutations to McDowell’s lines of reasoning on the early Internet (Usenet and being passed around in email, before the World Wide Web was really a thing), I was amazed at how a lot of intelligent commentary was being made on the Internet, commentary which did not make it in to the local library. With contentious content, it’s overall best that the Wikipedia only reflects what can be found at the local library; with this rule, we avoid hosting a bunch of nonsense like anti-vaxx conspiracy theories. That also means the Wikipedia isn’t the place to refute Evidence that Demands a Verdict -- unless we can find stuff which would make it in to a library doing so. Samboy (talk) 23:52, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Which is all very idealistic except that your local library has purchasing policies too, which are politically determined. If you live in a fundamentalist Christian or Muslim area, your access to ideologically suspect material will be restricted at best: your usenet discoveries could be regarded as samizat. The minimum standard would be a good University library, online as well as in print. Rather more of a challenge is to determine what is WP:DUE and it must be fair to say that one commentary by one academic in an unrelated field [except to the extent that all academics have a strong interest in demanding reliable citations] doesn't meet that test and the External Links section has to be as good as it gets. Frustrating but that's life. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 10:06, 22 September 2021 (UTC)