User talk:Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse statement

Summary of the conflict

A couple of weeks ago a user [[1]] appeared on the article and started to make edits. He has no knowledge of Mithras studies, as he admits himself on the talk page:

As for my being no mithras buff, it should not be a problem as long as my edits and sources are of an acceptable quality. Do I need to get a PhD to edit this article?

The article currently references only Mithras scholars, since there is so much hearsay on the web. CivilizedEducation wants to use lower-grade sources (i.e. the stuff he can find on the web) and has written endless attacks on this policy on the talk page.

He has two main edits in mind.

1. To added a statement by religion scholar Marvin Meyer:

Marvin Meyer argues that "early Christianity ... in general, resembles Mithraism in a number of respects—enough to make Christian apologists scramble to invent creative theological explanations to account for the similarities."[118]

118. Meyer, Marvin (2006). "The Mithras Liturgy". In A.J. Levine, Dale C. Allison, Jr., and John Dominic Crossan. The historical Jesus in context. New Jersey. pp. 179. ISBN 0-691-00991-0. Retrieved 2011-01-20.

Meyer is not a scholar of Mithras studies but of religion (he IS an scholar on the mis-called Mithras liturgy) and the article is not referenced itself, so isn't a reliable source. There is so much bad information about on Mithras that even non-specialist scholars, writing about something else but mentioning Mithras, can be taken in by stuff well known (to Mithras scholars) to be simply a myth.

I find today that he also added around the same time the same statement to the Mithras in comparison with other belief systems article and to the Mithras Liturgy articles, and for all I know to others. Note that the statement is online. He displays no knowledge of, or interest in, Mithras as such.

2. To change the article to make it say that Mithraism existed before the 1st century AD:

The article seems to make out that Mithraism started only in the last quarter of the 1st century. This is a bunkum claim. Mithraism is well known to have existed much earlier.

These two points are commonly-found hearsay on the web, and routinely used for anti-Christian polemic. The belief of these people is

• Mithras predates Jesus
• Christianity copied Mithraism

as well as more outlandish claims. Here they are in their natural form.

• "Hundreds of years before Jesus, according to the Mithraic religion, three Wise Men of Persia came to visit the baby savior-god Mithra, bring him gifts of gold, myrrh and frankincense...
• Christianity derived many of its essential elements from the ancient religion of Mithraism"

You will note that these are precisely the edits that CivilizedEducation wants to make. If you look at his edit history, you will find he is mainly editing articles about Christianity. Since he isn't interested in Mithras, and doesn't know any of the literature, and the professional Mithras scholars do not agree with this stuff, these are precisely the sort of edits that poison any article.

He isn't citing any reliable sources; instead he wants to argue that whatever he has is reliable, and that everyone else is biased.

In order to achieve his end he has tried to change the basis of the article to use non-specialists, to raise as many objections as he can to the way the article currently is, and to start fights and cause as much confusion as he can. Attempts to reason with him merely led to him making attacks on me, and spitefully deleting links to my own website. These links did not contain opinion by me, treated as an authority. They contained translations (with original text) into English of an inaccessible ancient source (Servius) and a bit of Cumont's book is is actually mistranslated by the English translation. My blog is original research, but my purpose was not to push an opinion but to help the reader find sources so he could easily check claims made in the article. Who benefits, I would ask, from making it harder to check sources? Only those whose have something else in mind.

I have not addressed his personal attacks on myself. Let me know if I need to do so.

Another editor new to the article arrived shortly after the first began to get into trouble, [[2]]. He has acted in such a manner as to lead me to suppose that he was a sock-puppet for the first, or acting in concert with him.

Neither editor has ever contributed anything to this article except to waste everyone's time.

Details of the conflict

I am a long-term contributor to the Wikipedia Mithras article. There is a vast amount of hearsay on the web about Mithras, much of it crudely erroneous. I have tried to improve things by checking existing material, adding references, removing rubbish, quoting reliable sources and generally improving the article as best I can, together with whoever is around. I don't sit on it all the time -- I have a life to live. But I don't see how misinformation on matters of fact -- opinions we all have, of course -- helps anyone. My position is to avoid expressing any opinion of my own, and to ensure the opinions expressed are all referenced to professional Mithras scholars. The flood of hearsay even affects scholars who are not specialists, so I have been driven perforce to use only those who are.

A couple of weeks ago a user [[3]] appeared on the article and started to make edits. Attempts to discuss these on the talk page (by myself and long-term editor Tom Hennell) were brushed aside by the user, who then proceeded to make dozens of objections and complaints, about the article and myself. The conflict relates to these edits. Another editor new to the article then arrived, [[4]], who acted in such a manner as to lead me to suppose that he was a sock-puppet for the first.

Edits in question

• He removed a reference to a primary source and its footnote, discussing the work of Ernest Renan. But he said on the talk page that he had never read Renan, and demanded that I translate it for him.

• He added a statement by religion scholar Marvin Meyer:

Marvin Meyer argues that "early Christianity ... in general, resembles Mithraism in a number of respects—enough to make Christian apologists scramble to invent creative theological explanations to account for the similarities."[118]

118. Meyer, Marvin (2006). "The Mithras Liturgy". In A.J. Levine, Dale C. Allison, Jr., and John Dominic Crossan. The historical Jesus in context. New Jersey. pp. 179. ISBN 0-691-00991-0. Retrieved 2011-01-20.

(I find today that he also added around the same time the same statement to the Mithras in comparison with other belief systems article and to the Mithras Liturgy articles).

• He then deleted two links from footnotes to sources not otherwise available. These were translations made by me on my research blog. The first is a translation of a portion of Servius; the second to a discussion of an error in the English translation of Cumont. I made these translations to give people access, and added the links so that they could use them. The action on the talk page suggested that these deletions were made out of spite, since it cannot help anyone to stop people looking at sources.

• His next edit was to demand a quotation of a source. But at the same time on the talk page he was complaining about the quotations in the references as being "possible copyvio".

• His next edit was an attack on the whole article and all the references, by adding POV and Cite tags.

• This was followed by three formatting changes, which are not in dispute.

Talk page

I responded to this in [Opinion by Meyer on Mithras and Jesus]. His reply was:

I know Meyer is not a Mithras specialist. Did I say he is? He is not talking about Mithraism only. He is talking about both Mitraism and Christianity. And he is a specialist on Christianity. So, his expertise is established.

There was then some discussion, which ended when I queried whether Civilized Education was actually interested in Mithras. A rather ill-tempered response arrived:

As for my being no mithras buff, it should not be a problem as long as my edits and sources are of an acceptable quality. Do I need to get a PhD to edit this article?

I then queried whether the article he was referencing was actually scholarly, since it contains no footnotes. His response was to start making a large number of complaints, and to try to argue that non-specialists could be used.

• we find that it is published by PUP, which is an academic publisher. That should settle the sourcing, and the issue of Meyer's expertise.
• you may consider whether the specified rules on top of the talk page need modification/removal
• I am not sure if it is proper to quote such large amounts of text. It may become a copyvio. I am also becoming concerned about some large amounts of texts from some other sources in the refs
• Regarding footnotes and all, his academic publisher sees no problem. Are we more qualified than academic publishers. It is not necessary that we agree with the results of his study. We can have ten different RS's saying ten different things. It is not necessary that any of it be true. As long as they are reliable sources, and we take care that our material does not go beyond what the sources say, we should note all ten sources
• I just discovered that Meyer was already being used as a source in this article

This was followed up by the first of many attacks on me: "Roger Pearse an RS?"

At this point the tactics used degenerated into making as much of a fuss as he could, on as many different issues. Bear in mind that he knew nothing about Mithras, on his own admission.

The next of these was [Article is making bunkum claim.

...

• Long ago I added this to the top of the Talk page:

"PLEASE READ THIS, BEFORE MAKING CHANGES TO THIS ARTICLE.

Please make sure any material you add is one of the following:

• Referenced precisely to a statement in the ancient sources
• Referenced precisely to a monument, with publication details
• Referenced precisely to a book or article by a modern professional Mithras scholar like Roger Beck, Manfred Clauss, Boyce, Merkelbach.

If it does not fall into that category please do not add it. It may be true, it may be attractive. But there is so much hearsay rubbish going around on the web, which keeps finding its way in here. Please do not add any more."

When his edits began, it was pointed out that his edits did not pass this test. He didn't seem to know anything about Mithras. He didn't reference any source except the Meyer article. So he then added this underneath:

Please also note that Wikipedia has specific sourcing policies like WP:V, WP:RS, and also WP:NPOV, WP:OR. Please refer to them to get an understanding of what constitutes a reliable source, etc. It is undesirable that articles should revolve around a few authors only. We also have policies like WP:Bold. Please feel free to edit this article if you think there is some way of improving it. It is acceptable that one may make some mistakes. Mistakes can be fixed. That everyone should be free to edit on Wikipedia is foundational to the ethos of Wikipedia.

On the whole, you are encouraged to edit this article, as long as you think you have some way of improving it.

Potential areas of compromise

• Evidence of removing referenced material unhelpful to his POV

After encountering objections, CE has raised something like 50 objections or complaints to the article or myself.