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 | Tuesday, Mar 15, 2011, at 07:25 AM Squish The Mopologist: Why Mopologetics Is Bad For Mormonism Original Author(s): Beavis Christ APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| In my observing of mopologists over the years, it has become apparent to me that they do not believe their own arguments, at least they do not believe them consistently. This lack of consistency is why Mormon apologetics will be fundamentally bad for the church down the road.
This is most apparent when it comes to mopologists treatment of what they believe to be their "trump card," a testimony of the Holy Spirit. LDS apostle Dallin Oaks provided a good example of this belief in his 1993 speech to FARMS: "I maintain that the issue of the historicity of the Book of Mormon is basically a difference between those who rely exclusively on scholarship and those who rely on a combination of scholarship, faith, and revelation. Those who rely exclusively on scholarship reject revelation and fulfill Nephi's prophecy that in the last days men 'shall teach with their learning, and deny the Holy Ghost, which giveth utterance' (2 Ne. 28:4). The practitioners of that approach typically focus on a limited number of issues, like geography 'horses' or angelic delivery or nineteenth century language patterns. They ignore or gloss over the incredible complexity of the Book of Mormon record. Those who rely on scholarship, faith, and revelation are willing to look at the entire spectrum of issues, content as well as vocabulary, revelation as well as excavation."Thus, according to Oaks, people looking to authenticate the truth claims of the Book of Mormon would do well to combine both scholarship and prayer. Prayer, in the beliefs of the neo-orthodox Mormons, is still the best way to know whether or not something is true. Oaks's statement of belief is fully consistent with Mormon doctrine. Doctrine and Covenants 8:2 states: "I will tell you in your mind and in your heart, by the Holy Ghost, which shall come upon you and which shall dwell in your heart." But do mopologists actually believe this? It is apparent that they do not, at least not in the case of Rodney Meldrum, a paleo-orthodox mopologist who has rejected the Mesoamerican theories expounded by the likes of John Sorenson and his intellectual heirs. He's also different than the Mesoamerican LGT believers in that he does exactly what Oaks urged people to do: combine faith and scholarship. This is utterly unacceptable to the FARMS and FAIR Mesoamerican supporters who have starkly ridiculed and condemned Meldrum for "attempt[ing] to assert revelation for those outside of his stewardship." And yet, Meldrum has actually done nothing of the sort. In fact, he has merely indicated that he has felt spiritual manifestations in support of his "work." In an email sent to his supporters reprinted by FAIR, Meldrum repeatedly speaks of his own "fasting and praying," and how God gave him several "miracles" to encourage him to expand his efforts to prove a North American setting for the Book of Mormon. At no point in the email, however, did Meldrum state that God told him to tell Mormon leaders that they needed to adopt his theories. Meldrum appears only to believe "the Lord is watching out for this project." That is a far cry from him saying that God is endorsing his theories. Perhaps God wants to encourage a multiplicity of theories about Book of Mormon geography in the hopes of encouraging more people to talk about it--and by extension its precepts and the churches who believe in it. Assuming limited humans cannot know the mind of God, how can Mesoamerican supporters deny that this might be the case? They do it by denying the veracity of personal spiritual experiences. In their arrogant dismissal of Meldrum's spiritual witnesses, mopologists are actually acting very much in character for their own intellectual tradition, but also in the tradition of religionists trying to justify belief in their own minds. This pattern of behavior has repeated itself thousands of times throughout world history and is the reason that we have so many religions and sects today. Such religions and sects are entirely the product of single individuals who took a look at existing faith traditions and decided that none of them quite made sense in their minds. Religions in a sociological sense are nothing more than groups of people who agree with a particular set of supernatural beliefs. The one advantage that Mormonism had going for it was its claim that its founder and all of its subsequent leaders have a direct pipeline to God and thus should be listened to. It's a position not operationally different from Catholicism but vastly different from those of other religions such as Islam or Protestantism. It's no coincidence that neither Mormonism nor Catholicism have had repeated episodes of schismaticism aside from the isolated events (Great Schism and the death of Joseph Smith, FLDS is too small to count). Mopologetics is endangering to this systemic advantage that Mormonism has, though. And that is because it is an intellectualizing of a faith. Unlike the efforts of, say, Thomas Acquinas, however, today's Mormon apologists are tearing down their faith tradition as much as they are building it up. By continually discounting official statements and books like the History of the Church or the Journal of Discourses as "just his opinion" or "not doctrinal," mopologists are engaging in a demystifying of their own past leaders. A delightful irony here is that demystification of societal constructs is an obsession among postmodernist writers who are bent on tearing down and destroying belief in traditional religions and their descendant social structures in favor of atheistic socialism. Hugh Nibley and his clueless followers use many of the same tactics to try to build up Mormonism as Runtu and others have written well about. It won’t work in the long run, however. Demystification is useful in the short run because it helps mopologists preserve a version (however tortured) of Mormon beliefs in the modern world of DNA and anthropology but in the long-term, the removal of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, et al. from their pedestals has bad implications for the successors of Thomas Monson. That's because there is no good reason that if lay members can discount or dismiss the General Conference pronouncements of Brigham Young as "just his opinion," they can't also do the same with those of Monson. If I can disregard Spence Kimball's statements about Indians turning white why can’t I decide to ignore Gordon Hinckley’s discussion of earrings or Russ Ballard’s bleatings about reading the Book of Mormon? In the long run, the more this attitude of disregarding the past prophets spreads within the LDS church, the more it will undermine the authority of the current General Authorities. Dr. Shades has called this split a dichotomy between Internet Mormonism and Chapel Mormonism, a distinction which has a lot of merit and is generally appreciated by ex-Mormons. Mopologists vehemently disputed this characterization, saying that it is overly broad. As proof, several offered the idea that when they took Shades’s survey of orthodoxy, they came out as Chapel Mormons. Shades has responded to this contention already but I think an additional response is worth adding that, assuming mopologists are accurately stating that their personal beliefs do correspondent to Chapel Mormonism, this may be more of an indicator in a flaw in the comprehensiveness of the survey questions than in their actual beliefs. The reason for this is that Mormon apologetics, like modern religious apologetics in general, is more about constructing ad hoc rationalizations for beliefs that were created prior to the stunning advancements of scientific knowledge of the past 150 years than it is about building a coherent intellectual edifice which integrates well with the theological tradition which spawned it. It is perfectly possible that a Mormon apologist could answer in the Chapel affirmative for even a majority of Shades’s questions, simply because he/she has not had the emotional need to reach for the ad hoc rationalized answer. The ad hoc nature of neo-orthodox Mormonism makes it inherently unstable. Subconsciously, I believe that the existing hierarchy is aware of this and that many are uneasy with Mormon apologetics. The members certainly are. I've sat in at least 40 different wards' Gospel Doctrine classes and whenever someone started on about how there wasn't a world-wide flood, maybe evolution is true, or how the Book of Mormon did not take place throughout the hemisphere, the general membership reacted strongly in a negative fashion. Some of the Big 15 are more vocal in their suspicion of mopologists. Boyd Packer is their champion. His infamous “The Mantle is Far, Far Greater than the Intellect” is a clarion call against attempting to justify Mormon beliefs through secular means: It is an easy thing for a man with extensive academic training to measure the Church using the principles he has been taught in his professional training as his standard. In my mind it ought to be the other way around. […] If we are not careful, very careful, and if we are not wise, very wise, we first leave out of our professional study the things of the Spirit. [Rodney Meldrum, anyone?] I have walked that road of scholarly research and study and know something of the dangers. If anything, we are more vulnerable than those in some of the other disciplines. […] One who chooses to follow the tenets of his profession, regardless of how they may injure the Church or destroy the faith of those not ready for "advanced history," is himself in spiritual jeopardy. If that one is a member of the Church, he has broken his covenants and will be accountable. After all of the tomorrows of mortality have been finished, he will not stand where be might have stood. I recall a conversation with President Henry D. Moyle. We were driving back from Arizona and were talking about a man who destroyed the faith of young people from the vantage point of a teaching position. Someone asked President Moyle why this man was still a member of the Church when he did things like that. "He is not a member of the Church." President Moyle answered firmly. Another replied that he bad not heard of his excommunication. "He has excommunicated himself," President Moyle responded. "He cut himself off from the Spirit of God. Whether or not we get around to holding a court doesn't matter that much; he has cut himself off from he Spirit of the Lord." The natural progression of things is that Mormonism is headed for schism. Certainly that's what happened with the RLDS church which was in the rationalization business long before the Brighamites were. It will take time, however. My theory is that mopologists will gradually take over the elite circles of the church. I don’t mean to say that Dan Peterson or Mike Ash is going to be receiving an apostleship any time soon but rather that people who believe in a neo-orthodox form of Mormonism will become ascendant within the church hierarchy. There are signs of this already, most famously the insertion of “among” in the introduction of the Book of Mormon’s description of Lamanites being the ancestors of the American Indian. The abrupt and little-publicized renaming of the “Lamanite Generation” dance troupe is another. The continual attenuation of revelatory claims from the heady days of Brigham, Joseph, and Orson talking of angelic beings coming over for lunch are never coming back. Over time, you will see more such subduction of traditional Mormon beliefs (but never apologies for them) and new emphases on metaphorical interpretation of the scriptures, when they are even talked about at all other than to quote Chicken Soup stories from. In following this route, Mormonism is going right along with its Protestant siblings, seeking to find a way to justify non-rational faith in a world ruled by reason. It will work to some degree but to see where it will ultimately end up, just take a look at the mainline Protestant denominations like Methodists, Unitarians, or Lutherans. They still have bigger numbers than the Mormons but they are in their death throes, thrusting about wildly, grasping at such silliness as liberation theology or “social justice” which have nothing at all to do with books written by ancient desert people. And their congregations know it, too, which is why they are leaving in droves for secularism. No one wants to worship a metaphor or hear stories about a people that vanished into thin air. Eventually, far down the road as the church moves further and further into mainstreaming itself, I think you will see a splinter group just like what happened with the FLDS in the 20th century and the Restoration Branches in the 1980s. Tough to say how long all of this will take, especially when it’s difficult to see who will succeed Boyd Packer as the preeminent paleo-orthodox Mormon leader. Regardless of when it happens, I believe it will since people can only take the discarding of important beliefs at the hands of sneering people deriding you as a “fundamentalist.” It’s happening within the Anglican church now over homosexuality, one wonders what the dividing issue will be within Mormonism when that does happen. Luckily for whoever these future rebels are, today's mopologists will have done the work for them in demystifying the prophets. I’m going to need some popcorn in any case. |
| | Monday, Sep 1, 2008, at 10:13 AM The Apologists Are Contradicting Official Church Doctrine Original Author(s): Randy J. APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| The apologists are contradicting official church doctrine when they accept the scientific evidence which shows that the Americas have been populated for at least 12,000 years. Here's how:
*The D&C states that the earth's existence, and therefore human life, is only 7,000 or so years. *The D&C, as well as other statements of Joseph Smith, state that Adam and Eve began human life in the western Missouri area. *The current official lesson manual "Gospel Principles" states that before the fall of Adam, there was no death of any kind upon the earth. *LDS doctrine holds that Adam's descendants continued to inhabit the Americas until the Noachian flood, which destroyed all humans except for the ark's passengers circa 4500 years ago. After the flood, the Noachians landed somewhere in the Middle East (Turkey, if you believe the story) and began re-populating the earth from there. *Shortly thereafter came the Tower of Babel incident, during which God instructed the Jaredites to sail to the "promised land", which is the Americas. Thus, using church doctrine and logical deduction, the Jaredites had to be the first group of humans to inhabit the Americas after the flood (and Joseph Smith specifically taught that the Jaredites were the "first settlement" in the Americas.) Church doctrine simply doesn't allow for any Asian-descended Bering Strait-crossers to have continuously occupied the Americas for 12,000 years. THAT IS WHY THE BOOK OF MORMON DOES NOT MENTION ANY OTHER PEOPLE LIVING IN THE "PROMISED LAND." In fact, the BOM states that the promised land was "preserved for a righteous people" that the Lord would send there, and that the land "was kept from the knowledge of other nations." Therefore, Mormon apologists who accept the evidence of humans occupying the Americas for 12,000 years or more are rejecting church doctrine. And since they don't even believe their own church's teachings, there is no point in them trying to defend it against us critics. |
| | Monday, Sep 1, 2008, at 10:14 AM Another Apologist Crackpot Original Author(s): Simon Southerton APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| The man behind the Yemen discovery is Australian apologist Warren Aston and his wife Michaela. Why is it that when you dig a little deeper into the background of LDS apologists you find crackpots at almost every turn?
Warren Aston runs a travel agency that conducts tours to Arabia. He is also an internationally recognized expert on UFOs!! The Astons ran a travel agency in Brisbane in the 1990s and published the Yemen discovery in 1994 “In the Footsteps of Lehi: New Evidence for Lehi's Journey across Arabia to Bountiful” Deseret Book Company. Aston has a vested interest in promoting his Yemen myths because he manages a tour company called Bountiful Tours that runs tours to, you guessed it, the Arabian Peninsula. His next tour in October 2008 has been promoted in Meridium Magazine 2008 Tour - "In Lehi & Sariah's Footsteps" 13 days exploring Israel, Jordan and Oman http://www.meridianmagazine.com/gospe... Here are some weblinks to his tour company http://www.bountifultours.com/tour.ht... You can read a short bio of Aston here. http://www.bountifultours.com/about.h... But this is what FARMS would prefer you did not know about Warren Aston. Aston is an internationally recognized expert on UFOs. Aston speaking at UFO Symposium http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NikV6Y... Aston describing a UFO encounter in a DVD sold at International UFO Congress http://www.ufocongressstore.com/servl... Aston claiming UFO cover-up at Pine Gap (US military base in Australia) http://www.ufoinfo.com/ufoicq/auforn4... Quote: “Aston examines the duality within the UFO phenomenon, exobiology, “contactees”, and question what is really happening in abductions while suggesting new reasons for government cover up.” Aston lecture to Queensland UFO society http://www.uforq.asn.au/articles/hard... Lecture entitled “Finding the hard answers to Earth's greatest mystery within a scientific paradigm” - Warren Aston's interests include travel (he runs his own travel business in Brisbane), photography, music, theology, feminism and quantum-physics. Quote: “The evidence that something is happening which defies conventional science is abundant, unambiguous, and is readily available in every category imaginable. UFO’s are a long-term, world-wide, multi-cultural reality with much more physical evidence available than most of us realise. The mounting evidence that UFO’s and aliens are real and are part of the future for all of us deserves our most serious attention and best efforts to understand it.” Aston: UFO researcher hunting for truth http://www.helenair.com/articles/2007... Aston: Are Extraterrestrials Already Among Us? A Review of Historical Accounts. Go to page 8 at this link http://www.theblackvault.com/encyclop... |
| | Thursday, Jan 8, 2009, at 08:30 AM Wanting It Both Ways: A Book Of Mormon Apologist's Dilemma Original Author(s): Odell Campbell APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| If the Book of Mormon is an actual record of an actual people, then it will be supported by evidence. Both Book of Mormon apologists and its doubters (the vast, overwhelming majority of mankind) can agree on this concept.
Originally, the early Book of Mormon apologists were church leaders such as Joseph Smith who claimed that the Book of Mormon contained the answer to the question of where the Native American peoples originated. Smith’s views were not, at that time, inconsistent with scientific explanations available. As so for Mormons, and Book of Mormon apologists, the standard thought was that the Book of Mormon contained the history of the principal ancestors of the New World’s native populations, both in South America and North America. Believers of Smith’s claims and in the Book of Mormon firmly assumed that when scientific exploration and understanding furthered, their faith would be confirmed. The opposite has happened. New theories emerged that plainly contradicted the Book of Mormon’s Native American origination being Hebrew. The Bering Straits theory that North East Asians migrated to the Americas is now commonly accepted because evidence supports it. Whereas, emerging evidence has forced even its most ardent believers to redefine their understanding of the Book of Mormon, and even ridicule its “translator” by “explaining away” Smith’s hemisphere opinions as uniformed, misguided and mistaken. What strikes me is how easily believers can change their past “interpretations” as science, not revelation, riddles away the possibilities. The only thing that appears to matter is that at the end of the day that somehow the Book of Mormon must be interpreted in away that lets Joseph Smith be a revelator and seer and not a liar and con-man. DNA, linguistics, population growth analysis, historical records, ruins, text word analysis constant require apologists to reshape the Book of Mormon in order to allow it be a scientific possibility (I think they have long ago even sacrificed probability). In my world view, the plausibility of the Book of Mormon being a record of a real people is reaching the point of near impossibility. And it seems to me, that as I read the strained arguments of Book of Mormon apologists that any more stretching will render the book in two. What will be the last apologist explanation for the Book of Mormon?? That is it the history of five people in Ancient America that lied about everything that happened to them, but god chose a con man to tell the false yet “inspiring” story of ancient con artists? Hey, apologists, could it be that two Mayans living in the Classic Period, found some Etruscan plates washed ashore, concocted an inspired story, called themselves Mormon and Moroni, obvious alias, then drinking well-fermented cactus juice, recorded their story in drunken Classic Mayan, also called reformed Egyptian? Gee, the Lord can work in mysterious ways. You have to admit, that explanation does have some beautiful symmetry to it? But seriously, when does it end? When do the defeated raise the white flag and surrender? Are there examples found in other religions which demonstrate when apologia can no longer keep up with scientific explanations and contradictions? Who will be the last Book of Mormon apologist? |
| | Monday, Feb 2, 2009, at 08:23 AM My Favorites From The Ministry Of Excuses Original Author(s): substrate APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| What are your favorite Mormon apologetics arguments?
Here are mine, in no particular order (and no, I'm not making any of these up): 10. Steel doesn't mean steel. Never mind that the BofM mentions melting down ore to create steel, which was then used to make swords. The book is really talking about wooden clubs with obsidian edges. 9. Horses and chariots aren't mentioned in the context of conveyance, so even though Lamoni says to ready the horses and chariots for his trip to visit his father, the book is really talking about wheel-less platforms (chariots) used to convey miniature ceremonial animals (horses). 8. Joseph Smith didn't actually have sex with those women. Despite the firsthand testimony of his plural wives, who used such words as "carnal intercourse" to describe their relationships, these were just "loose dynastic ties" formalized by sealing. (Not even Emma bought that one.) 7. The Book of Mormon "explicitly" mentions the presence of others in the Americas before the Jaredites and Nephites arrived, even though the book promises the land as the promised land for the Nephites and Jaredites and says the land would be kept from the knowledge of others. The best evidence for others is that the book distinguishes between "goats" and "wild goats," meaning that the former had to have been domesticated. Since people are required to domesticate animals, clearly there were people living there when the Jaredites arrived. 6. Joseph Smith was only joking when he discovered the skeleton of Zelph the 9-foot-tall white Lamanite and Adam's altar while on Zion's Camp. 5. Joseph was a victim of the Kirtland Bank fiasco, not one of the primary instigators of the bank. 4. It's perfectly normal and respectable to find treasure by looking at a rock. Indian mystics see amazing things in their crystals. 3. Given Occam's Razor, the best explanation for the testimony of the three witnesses is the presence of supernatural beings. Naturalistic explanations require a lot of stretching. 2. There is no correspondence between the text of the Book of Abraham and the Joseph Smith Papyrus. Therefore, the real source of the translation must be missing. The Egyptian Alphabet and Grammar, which shows which hieroglyphs correspond to the BofA, was a clumsy attempt by scribes to translate and had nothing whatsoever to do with Joseph Smith. 1. There are only superficial similarities between the temple ceremony and Masonic ritual. Because the exact same signs, tokens, penalties, and phrases are used in both ceremonies but in different contexts, the similarities are coincidental. |
| | Monday, Feb 16, 2009, at 08:11 AM This Is How I Understand The Role Of The Mormon Apologists. Original Author(s): SusieQ#1 APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| This is something new in the LDS Church. I never hard of them in my 30 plus years as a believer.
The role of the apologist is to defend the faith by convincing the believers that their testimony by faith (feelings) is valid. This particularly appeals to the average Mormon who can look to someone who has all the answers (often more educated then they are) and knows more than they do. Letters after their name, and/or a PhD is helpful. They use several methods. One is to Discount the Credibility of the author so Mormons won't believe anything they say or write.
Another role is Distraction.
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| | Friday, Mar 6, 2009, at 07:56 AM Return And Report - Went To A Presentation By "Firm" About "Archealogical Evidences Of The Book Of Mormon" Original Author(s): Nor Cal Law Student APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| I doubt many of you have heard of this group, but here is their website:
http://www.thefirmfoundationonline.org/ I arrived right on time, ready to sit and listen to them say their piece, but no one was there, except the presenter. On the table at the entrance were some pamphlets for travel tours and a table full of inane books and films with titles like "Searching for the Great Hopewell Road" (Description: "This one-hour documentary about one of the most fascinating cultures in ancient North America, details the Hopewell mound building people who flourished in this area from 200 BC to 400 AD. It is filled with important information about a people who match very closely to the Nephites of the Book of Mormon.") and "The Eternal Perspective of Zion's Camp." I don't know why I was surprised that they didn't start until 6:50 pm, 20 minutes late, a.k.a. Mormon standard time. Jesus christ. I started reading the Chronicle on my Kindle but being forced to eavesdrop of their sad Mormon greetings about temple schedules as a few people slowly arrived was getting annoying so I excused myself to go get a Diet Coke. Anyway, I came back and they finally started and the gentleman started his powerpoint presentation. I won't bore you at length with the particulars of the man's presentation. It literally was so devoid of any reason or evidence, it bears no merit of repeating. Oddly, these people know exactly where they stand: backed up to the edge of a cliff, right to the precipice of personal annihilation, backed there by a tsunami of scientific proof that disproves Mormonism. He cited the film "DNA vs the Book of Mormon" (available on youtube) and a forthcoming film on the same topic from the Baptist Church, saying that this tide is "going to put a close on the Book of Mormon." The presenter claimed he once was on the faculty of BYU and was hired to be a religion teacher and a "researcher" about archeology and language. He expressed feelings of betrayal by his former BYU associates because he claimed that their arguments rest on "discounting or disdaining" explicit statements made by Joseph Smith about the geography about the peoples described in the Book of Mormon. Through tears, he actually named "Tvedtnes," saying that he (Tvedtnes) published just today, that Doctrine and Covenants 28:8 was not actually inspired scripture, but just Joseph Smith talking as a man. (It reads: 8 And now, behold, I say unto you that you shall go unto the Lamanites and preach my gospel unto them; and inasmuch as they receive thy teachings thou shalt cause my church to be established among them.) He said that the best scholars the Mormon Church has are all betting the farm on the MesoAmerica theory, and that to do so requires them to admit that Joseph Smith was uninspired. He said that "the whole anthropology department at BYU was built on Guatamala." Of this he (the presenter) said: "They've defended something so long that they can't go back on it." How ironic. The criticisms we level at others often are the most appropriate for what WE are doing. He continued: "The best scholars at BYU say that Joseph Smith does not know what he was talking about." No shit, Sherlock. This presenter actually cited the story of Zelph as some kind of proof that Joseph Smith was inspired. OMG. Really? He claimed the Hopewell moundbuilders are fascinating, interesting possible proof of Lehite peoples. Really? *(see below for the real story if you don't know it)* He said there are now about 150 geographical theories for the BoM, ranging from Thailand to the Falkland Islands. He started to make this really stilted analysis of statements of Joseph Smith as to the geography of the BoM. After these mind-numbing contortions for about 20 minutes, one of the guests asked: "So, do you HAVE your own map?" Answer: "{tuh} {pause} Yes and no." Not long after this one of the 10 guests asked for a break and I left. Something so banal is unworthy of my time, but I just had to go see the sausage being made. I don't think I'll be going to anything like that again. Teleological. Vapid. Pathetic. Just sad. People!!!-- false, mindless religious traditions carry forward and there's nothing we can do about it. That's all. * From Simon in Oz's excellent book: "DNA analysis of ancient remains from the Ohio Valley has driven a belated nail into the coffin of the Mound Builder myth and its supposed white inhabitants. The people of the so-called 'enlightened' race that was responsible for the mounds in the Ohio and Mississippi Valleys are now known to be Native Americans belonging to the Adena and Hopewell cultures. Maternal DNA lineages have been determined for 97 skeletal samples obtained from two Adena mounds in Kentucky and Hopewell mounds in Ohio and Illinois (Bolnick 2003, Mills 2003). All of the maternal lineages belong to one of the five founding lines common to contemporary Native Americans. The DNA analysis confirms that the idea of a superior race of Mound Builders was pure fantasy."(Losing a Lost Tribe, p. 99) |
| | Thursday, Mar 19, 2009, at 09:53 AM Louis Midgley On The Purpose Of Apologetics Original Author(s): Mr. Scratch APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| Dr. Robbers, on a separate, highly insightful thread, has begun to unpack and explore the strange arguments of Mr. Boyce. As such, I thought it would be worthwhile to look at the latest FARMS Review introduction, which was written by Prof. Louis Midgley. Many here are probably aware of the fact that Midgley is extraordinarily bigoted against Evangelicals, and that he has published a series of anti-EV essays in the FROB. This latest entry, fresh and steaming from the FARMS sphincter, is intriguing for a variety of reasons. In a bold move, Midgley begins by telling us what might be called an "Origin Story." He explains where his desire to debate and combat Church critics comes from: Quote: My first skirmish with one who might now be described as a "debating evangelical" took place in 1951 while I was a missionary in New Zealand. The pastor of a small Baptist church in Point Chevalier, a suburb some six kilometers west of the center of Auckland, had been surveying my missionary companion and me as we went about our activities, including our travel on the tram then connecting Point Chevalier, where we lived, with Queen Street in the center of Auckland. Eventually he introduced himself and invited us to his home so that he could, he explained, learn more about our faith. I was, of course, delighted. Notice the way that Midgley, now an aging, seasoned Mopologist, delights in painting himself as a naïve, young missionary, who is excited to be doing the Lord's work. Notice also that young Elder Midgley was apparently aware (though he does not explain how or why) that this minister was "surveying" him. In the end, as per this narrative, it doesn't matter, since it's a missionary opportunity! Things quickly take a darker turn: Quote: But his invitation was a subterfuge. I anticipated a civil conversation. I was mistaken. As soon as I began describing the recovery of the Book of Mormon, this fellow launched into a blistering attack on me and my faith. I faced someone barely civil and fully confrontational. I was discombobulated, stunned, and on the ropes, and this preacher knew it. He showed no mercy; he pounded away, even boasting that, unlike him, I had not been properly trained for the ministry. He was not interested in learning a thing about the faith of Latter-day Saints. He was, instead, eager to bash our beliefs, which he was confident he already understood. As I read this, I could not help but snicker. Any poor sap who has naively stumbled onto MAD, hoping for a civil discussion of, say, Blacks and the priesthood, has surely had much the same experience as poor Elder Midgley. Probably, if things got heated enough, the apologists would pull out their trump card, announcing that they have far more education and training than the said sap critic (cf. Gee, and the new review of the Turley et al. MMM book). A further interesting twist is the fact that this narrative is set in New Zealand---home to Rusty "Pahoran" McG. You have probably already correctly guessed that Elder Midgley did not take this abuse sitting down. Sure, he was "discombobulated" at first, but almost immediately, he was thirsting for a counter-attack. Quote: Savoring his triumph, he invited us back for a second bout. Since I suspected that he had been bluffing and wrong on some of what he had claimed, I accepted his invitation. Next, the young apologist-in-training preps for his re-match in quasi-Rocky (or Harry Potter?) fashion: Quote: Though I had earlier, as a student at the University of Utah, encountered secular critics of the faith of the Saints, this was my initial introduction to sectarian anti-Mormonism. In an effort to prepare for the second round in this debate, I visited a large Christian bookstore then located on Queen Street, where I purchased some leaflets and a pamphlet attacking the Church of Jesus Christ. This was my first encounter with sectarian anti-Mormon literature. Since I was already in the habit of looking for information in books, I also visited the little library in Point Chevalier, which is still there, as well as the much larger Auckland Public Library. Presumably, Midgley was using P-day to do this. I have not heard of any missionaries who were allowed to go on rogue Mopologetic missions such as this. But, indeed, young Midgley's Mopologetic zeal was passionate indeed! It makes sense that this was the young man who would one day grow up to verbally assault Sandra Tanner in her place of business; it makes sense that he would scream profanities at the Lynn Whitesides vigil. In any event, you are probably wondering how Round 2 turned out: Elder Midgley wrote: I discovered that our host had made assertions that were flatly wrong. At our second match, I was ready to respond to this preacher, who seemed to have relied on muddled anti-Mormon literature. The debate ended in a draw, and the preacher knew it. With what I had discovered in those libraries, I was able to expose some bluffing and mistakes on several key issues. [Sidenote: Did the preacher announce that he "knew" it was a draw? Or is this Midgley's attempt at mind-reading?] Oddly, Midgley's story sounds remarkably similar to many of the "exit stories" of ex-Mormons: they stumble upon literature which reveals that certain aspects of the Church were "flatly wrong," and they proceed on out of the Church. It makes one wonder: What does Professor Midgley think about the Church's extremely paranoid and protective attitude towards its own extensive collections and libraries? Midgley wraps up the narrative a few more final digs: Quote: I testified to the truth of Joseph Smith's prophetic truth claims and to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I came away from that exchange with no information about the grounds or content of that preacher's faith. There was something odd about his mode of "witnessing." I have never lost interest in the literature sectarian critics produce, distribute, or rely upon. I have discovered that some Protestant preachers, especially those involved in or influenced by the countercult movement, have a proclivity for denigrating the faith of the Saints; they operate in a confrontational, attack mode. This is a jumbled and confused paragraph. Midgley says that he "won" the debate by bearing his testimony, and then he immediately goes on to complain that he failed to learn anything from the preacher (except, of course, how to "fight back"), and that he developed a bizarre taste for reading anti-Mormon lit. This narrative is fascinating in the way it describes the gestation and birth of a career Mopologist. Midgley seems to have found his calling in the role of the savagely vicious, revenge-fueled apologist. And, as he discovered, there is always a fail-safe escape hatch: the bearing of the testimony---something which is often used as a last-ditch tactic by Mopologists. Later on, Midgley writes: Quote: My first encounter with sectarian anti-Mormonism was an indication of the proclivity I would later encounter from some Protestant preachers, and also, unfortunately, a harbinger of many later wearisome conversations with sectarian critics of the Church of Jesus Christ. It is clear that debating with our sectarian critics, though amusing or perhaps exhilarating, may turn out to be a mistake. Debating evangelicals may not be a useful way of witnessing either in word or deed to our own faith in the Holy One of Israel and the redemption from both sin and death that he has made possible. And yet I am confident that we must defend the faith. Again, we see the deep conflict in the heart of the Mopologist. Midgley knows that the desire to exact revenge on the "mean" critics is un-Christlike, but he finds it "exhilarating," and thus, he has "confidence" that he's doing the right thing. Elder Midgley's experience in New Zealand caused him to develop a very new sort of testimony---not of the Church, but of Mopologetics. In yet another stunning, revelatory paragraph, Midgley continues: Quote: And when our opinions are challenged, we fight back and may even desire revenge or succumb to the urge to counterattack. We can easily be induced into seeing the Other as a Diabolical Monster and ourselves as a Holy Knight fighting the good fight against evil and error. We also may find it useful to rationalize our words and deeds. Likewise, when we confront those with different opinions, we may end up in verbal or written strife, competition, or combat over our opinions. We may also make the mistake of not really desiring to understand the opinions of the Other. One reason for this is that debates take place before real or imagined audiences and hence in a kind of theater in which points are scored or awarded. The "winner" in a debate often succeeds by the crafty use of rhetoric. The goal easily becomes winning or appearing to win a contest. Clever, quick, confident responses are at a premium in such exchanges. And often biased, poorly informed audiences serve as the judge and presumably determine a winner. This is exactly what I have been saying in several threads, and yet DCP (among others) continues to deny that this is the case. The call for "humble" apologetics has reappeared again here, in the form of L. Midgley's words, but these words seem remarkably hollow. The apologists seem unwilling or unable to let go of their apparently intense, deeply ingrained need for revenge. Just who might Midgley be talking about here? Quote: he desire to thrash an opponent in a debate, especially while drawing on an arsenal of rhetorical or other tricks, could be an indication of the absence of an appropriate and necessary moral discipline. Put another way, until or unless we manifest an appropriate moderation, we do not represent well the faith we seek to proclaim. It is a mistake to fall into anything like the pattern commonly found among our critics who often insist on an essentially abrasive, confrontational mode of discourse. Currently the absence of moderation can be seen on blogs, lists, and boards. In some of these venues, diseases of the soul are nourished and spread, rather than assistance being provided to aid in the recovery of sometimes severely spoiled souls. The essay continues, with Midgley admonishing the apologists for their harsher tactics, and then, shockingly, he lets loose with this disquieting admission: Quote: It is possible for Latter-day Saints to have productive conversations with those not of our faith. If this were not so, few would have become Latter-day Saints. I could be wrong, but it seems that Midgley is saying that the only kind of "productive" conversation that LDS can have with other faiths is a conversation which leads those Others to abandon their faith(s) in favor of Mormonism. Thus, we can observe a subtly diabolical method of destroying other faiths. Midgley's chutzpah is extraordinary. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Midgley goes on to ignore much of what he just said. The 2nd half of the essay is devoted to nitpicking and attacking critics of the Church. Consider this gleeful tidbit on Ron Huggins: Quote: Huggins seems to have imagined that, if he could only find some feature of Nibley's writings about which he could complain, the chief foundation of the Latter-day Saint effort to defend their faith would crumble and the entire edifice would begin to collapse. But Huggins met an obstacle: Dialogue declined to publish this essay. He turned to the Tanner tabloid. His attack on Nibley might be an indication of what he considers "a real dialogue" with Latter-day Saints. Shirley Ricks, in a delightful essay, has demolished the Huggins effort. Is this Midgley's idea of "humble" exchange? Whereas earlier he had seemed to be calling for moderation in the debate, he concludes the essay by placing all of the blame on his opponents: Quote: The anarchy of contemporary Protestantism is such that debates with our more polished and respectable evangelical "friends" have not reduced the calumny directed at the Saints and their faith. Evangelicals eager to debate theology with us have neither the will nor the ability to tame the countercult beast that operates with little or no supervision or discipline on the margins of the larger evangelical movement. Thus, he shrugs his shoulders and gives permission to Mopologists to continue with their revenge-fueled, "exhilarating" assaults on critics (and on Chapel Mormons!). All in all, I enjoyed this essay. I hope that Midgley will write more nakedly revelatory essays just like this one. I believe I have offered up an honest critique of this piece, and I would urge everyone to read it in the original, so that you can see that I haven't distorted it in the least: http://farms.byu.edu/publications/revie ... m=2&id=718 |
| | Tuesday, Mar 24, 2009, at 10:00 AM What I've Learned From Apologetics Original Author(s): Runtu APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| Sometime around 1995-96, I stumbled across the old alt.religion.mormon listserv boards. A few of the usual suspects were there: Russell C. McGregor, Charles Dowis, Randy Jordan, and others.
That was where I first realized that I wasn't alone in having rethought my beliefs in response to new information. A lot of the posters there were what Shades would call "Internet Mormons," people who rejected orthodox teachings because current evidence no longer supports the old views. Back then, I thought we were perilously close to heretical, but these days the views espoused on a.r.m. wouldn't even cause the major apologists to shrug in disinterest. But the anger was always there. I don't think I'd ever met an angry apologist until I met Brother McGregor. Some of us tried to build bridges with secular and religious critics, but he and others of his stripe were having none of it. I could never figure out what made them so damned angry, but it was frustrating to me that they often destroyed whatever good will anyone else may have brought about. I read my posts from back then, and I see a hopelessly naïve believer, someone who thought that, underneath it all, people were basically good. Then I started posting on the old FAIR board. Back when I was posting as a believer on FAIR, my beliefs were pretty mainstream, at least to the group that posted there. Sure there were a few uber-orthodox fanatics, but most of us had adjusted our Mormon paradigm enough to make things work, and we were pretty much on the same page. I had some good exchanges with ex-Mormons, some of whom, like Ray A and Polygamy Porter, became good friends. I learned that, even the "vilest" of ex-Mormon could still be a hell of a good guy. Then I left the church. Suddenly, people who had once been friendly and respectful treated me as if I were the worst kind of degenerate. One poster sent emails around to mutual friends suggesting that I was a sexual predator and perhaps mentally ill. When I reached a suicidal point in my life, one FAIR poster told me I deserved to feel that way, that I really should want to kill myself. It was then that I realized that most of what goes on in the boards has nothing to do with Mormonism or religion at all. It has to do with personality, with group think, and with an us vs. them mentality. A lot of the pettiness, the hate, the sneering, would have come about even if it had been a board about, say, the Simpsons or bird watching. That the boards are about Mormonism dictates the content of the discussion, but other than that, it's the same. What is fascinating to me is not so much that ex-Mormons can be angry and bitter and nasty; I get that. I understand why people would be angry. But it's utterly amazing to see otherwise normal Mormons spew such rage and hatred (and then say, who me?). I've often said that the main difference between RfM and some of the LDS boards is not the level of hate, but rather the absence of overt profanity. Several friends of mine from way back have likewise left the church. One of the founders of a.r.m. left several years ago; and one of my closest TBM friends from back in the FAIR days is now one of my closest exmo friends. Oddly enough, we're not really different, though our views have changed. We're still the same people, even though we're supposed to be wallowing in despair and alcoholism. Anyway, what I'm trying to say in this longwinded post is that discussing Mormonism comes down to dealing with personalities. The wisest people I've met online don't take the religious discussion all that seriously but enjoy the exchange of perspectives and personalities. So these days I'm glad I'm still here. I've met a lot of good people, and some not-so-good people. Thank you to everyone who has made my stay on these boards interesting. |
| | Wednesday, Mar 25, 2009, at 03:02 PM The Miracle Of Apologetics Original Author(s): cinepro APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| I was recently giving my children one of my standard lectures about how they live in the greatest time in the history of the world. They have easy access to more books, movies, music and "information" than any other people in the history of the world. They can know more about any subject they wish than anyone who has ever lived in a time before. Truly, it is a wonderful time to be alive for children who have an interest in such things.
As I thought more about it, I began to consider the Miracle of Apologetics. In the Church, "revelation" gets a lot of lip service. We talk all about God giving knowledge, restoring this or that, and giving us scriptures so we can understand His plans and feelings on certain subjects. And I'm not arguing the importance (and necessity) of having a spiritual witness of the truthfulness of the gospel and the Church's core claims. But for those who have an interest in the Church, the scriptures, and the "details" behind the stories and doctrines, I think it is easy to overlook the miracle of Apologetics and scholars, and Apologetic theories, and their ability to grant us knowledge that eluded even previous prophets and apostles. Because of apologetic writings, any Church member can do a reading and research and understand more about Book of Mormon geography and peoples than any past prophets had. Twenty minutes on the FARMS website and you could pass up Joseph Fielding Smith without breaking a sweat. Thanks to apologists, future generations will understand the story of Noah's flood (and the subsequent covenant) with far more accuracy than any LDS Prophet or Apostle of the last 180 years. Apologists allow us to better understand the story of Adam and Eve, how they were born from mortal, non-human mortal parents who themselves were the result of evolutionary development. Such knowledge eludes even modern LDS church leaders and curriculum writers. Modern scholars and apologists allow us to understand the true nature and provenance of the Joseph Smith papyri, Kinderhook plates, Zelph skeleton and other "artifacts" to a much greater degree than even Joseph Smith himself. Modern apologists have made known to us the many cultures and peoples not specifically mentioned in the Book of Mormon, who subtley mixed with and effected the Jaredites and Lehites (people who are still unknown and unmentioned by modern and past LDS prophets and apostles). And apologists help us to understand Mormon Polygamy and the priesthood ban far better than any statements from the Church leaders (ironically, apologists even help us to ignore statements from Church leaders if necessary, while apologists never encourage us to ignore other apologists and listen to Church leaders if there is a contradiction.) Critics often complain that the heavens are "silent", and that God has been negligent in His proclivity to reveal knew and interesting things. But if the apologists are correct in their theories and suggestions, then God hasn't been silent, he has just shifted his conduit from the pulpit to the Fair Wiki. |
| | Monday, Apr 20, 2009, at 11:16 AM Three Little Things Original Author(s): Doctor Scratch APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| THREE THINGS IN MOPOLOGETICS THAT, ONCE GONE, NEVER COME BACK 1. THE 2ND WATSON LETTER 2. THE MURPHY TRANSCRIPT 3. WILL SCHRYVER'S CREDIBILITY THREE THINGS IN MOPOLOGETICS THAT CAN DESTROY A PERSON 1. CRITICIZING HUGH NIBLEY 2. CRITICIZING DANIEL C. PETERSON 3. APOLOGIZING (FOR ANYTHING) THREE THINGS IN MOPOLOGETICS THAT YOU SHOULD NEVER LOSE 1. YOUR SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS 2. YOUR SENSE OF OUTRAGE OVER HAVING GOTTEN CREAMED ON YOUR MISSION 3. YOUR MARTYR COMPLEX THREE THINGS IN MOPOLOGETICS THAT ARE MOST VALUABLE 1. CHARACTER ASSASSINATION 2. AD HOMINEM ATTACKS 3. SMEAR CAMPAIGNS THREE THINGS IN MOPOLOGETICS THAT ARE NEVER CERTAIN 1. THE BRETHREN'S APPROVAL 2. WHETHER ONE WILL HAVE TO WORK FOR THE SCMC 3. WHETHER THE PAYCHECK WILL BE $10 OR $20,000 THREE THINGS THAT MAKE A MOPOLOGIST 1. SPITE 2. BITTERNESS 3. GRIM HUMORLESSNESS |
| | Monday, May 25, 2009, at 08:33 AM Top Reasons Why Being A Church Apologist Is A Great Gig Original Author(s): Primus APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| Here are the top reasons why it is a great gig to be an Apologist for the LDS Church
10. All those BYU COEDs and Former Sister Missionaries hanging on your every word to keep their weakening testimonies strong. 09. Apologizing as an Apologist means never having to say 'I'm sorry' or 'I apologize' 08. You can use all your creative juices to be just as creative and fictional as the Prophet Joseph Smith, and then label it as non-fiction. 07. You get quoted in all the top scientific peer reviewed journals such as 'BYU Studies' and 'FARMS Review of Books' 06. BYU pay can't be beat. 05. You can speak in Yiddish and TBMs think your are giving them great 'Pearls of Wisdom' 04. All those cool Church paid for trips to South America 03. Did I mention you get the benefits of Celebrity among the faithful? 02. You get praised for calling people who were molested by Church leaders who then leave the Church because of it..weak and easily offended. 01. When YOU speak, The Prophet's THINKING is DONE. |
 | Tuesday, Aug 11, 2009, at 07:50 AM Apologist Sleight Of Hand Original Author(s): Simon Southerton APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| The sleight of hand of all the FAIR DNA apologetics is that it depends on testimony-shattering reinterpretations of the Book of Mormon history and the arrogant dismissal of 180 years of prophetic declarations.
New Book of Mormon history
And faithful Mormons are expected to swallow all this without the slightest thought that they are being sold another lie to cover the original lie. |
| | Wednesday, Sep 2, 2009, at 12:39 PM Confusing Tradition With Doctrine Original Author(s): joaquin APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| Chapter 4 of Michael Ash's "Shaken Faith Syndrome" is based on the original talk by Ronald Poelman of the 1st quorum of the 70 that was censured by "the brethren".
https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/pdf/... This is true irony. Chapter 4 is based on a talk that the other church leaders didn't like and made Poelman change it when it was published in the Ensign. Not only that, but they had him re-record his new "talk" for the VHS version of the conference that people could check out from the church library. They even went so far as to add the "coughs" and the "hims and haws" in the background to make it appear as if his censured talk was the original. However, some members recorded it on their home VHS tape recorders, which is still currently available online and can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcM7ko... This is coming from a book that is trying to help "cure" people of "their problem" with shaken faith? |
| | Monday, Oct 19, 2009, at 07:54 AM Mormon Times Reporter Michael Degroote Original Author(s): Eric Davis APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| I read the post earlier today re:"Hebrew design in Mesoamerica: Temples match" as reported in the Mormon Times.
see the following link: http://mormontimes.com/studies_doctri... I sent the following message to the author of the article, Mr. deGroote: Now this is what I call “straining at gnats.” Mr. Hauck’s claim that structures in ancient Mesoamerica were “built on the same model” as those of Solomon and Moses, is absolutely appalling, and an insult to modern science. It makes sense that humans in different areas of the world would use similar measuring systems and similar proportions for construction. Almost all construction methods and units of measurement in world history are based on human physical proportions. Humans are all roughly the same size, so it goes without saying that they would build structures that are similarly proportioned, even in far-reaching areas of the world. The fact is simply that most buildings, in ancient times were either perfect squares, or rectangles of 2:1 proportion. This evidence can be seen from the pyramids of Egypt to temples in China, and even structures in Mesoamerica. Does that mean that all of these people are culturally connected? Absolutely NOT. What it does mean is that people all over the world have learned to build structures the most effectively and efficiently, based on technology available to them. What would be good evidence to link Mesoamerica construction to that of the Middle-East, would be use and function of their respective structures. Is there any plausible link between the temple of Solomon and the structures of Mesoamerica? Certainly not. Ancient American religious customs show no similarities to the Abrahamic religions of Palestine. It could be said that the Olmecs and Mayans of Mesoamerica held beliefs that more closely resembled the Egyptians, and their pantheon of deities, than that of Judaism. Temples of Izapa were used primarily for burial tombs and rituals that involved cutting hearts out of living virgins. Where in the Book of Mormon can you read about those practices? Izapa was home to at least two ball courts, a traditional practice associated with the Mayan people, that is not mentioned anywhere in the Book of Mormon. Additionally the stelae of Izapa include pictograms of jaguars, feathered serpents, and violence between multiple deities. There is no such reference to anything resembling these in the Book of Mormon. Furthermore, the people of Izapa used the 260 day Mayan calendar, for which there is also no mention in the Book of Mormon; and there is no evidence of seven day weeks, which was the practice of Judaism and the alleged family of Lehi. Finally, what about the founding of the city of Izapa? Is there any plausible archeological link between the construction of these Mesoamerican cities and the peoples of the Book of Mormon? Again, no. From Wikipedia: “several archaeologists have theorized that Izapa may have been settled as early as 1500 BCE, making it as old as the Olmec sites of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán and La Venta.” Izapa could not possibly be a Nephite city, since there were no Nephite cities in the Promised Land until after 590 BCE. Even then, Nephite cities could not have grown to the size of Izapa for at least a couple hundred years. If the settlers of Izapa founded the city around 1500 BCE, they would have pre-dated both Moses and Solomon. The people of this area would have no knowledge whatsoever of the Middle-Eastern tabernacles and temples, if they existed as the Bible claims. Where did all these Mesoamerican people come from? Certainly not Jerusalem, since they had established their civilizations long before Jerusalem was built. In closing, making connections between ancient Mesoamerica and Palestine is irresponsible and just plain bad science. To claim that there are “Book of Mormon Lands” is pure nonsense. The Book of Mormon is complete fiction and reads more like 19th century Protestant literature than Ancient American history. Just because you or somebody else believes in it, doesn’t make it true; and attempting to make archeological connections that simply don’t exist only weakens the position of Mormonism. The best bet for Mormons would be to simply acknowledge that the entire Book of Mormon was made up by Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Oliver Cowdery, Solomon Spaulding, and Ethan Smith, and leave it alone. You may as well call the “Book of Mormon Lands Conference” the “Grasping at Straws Conference,” or the “Straining at Gnats Conference.” Don’t ignore the elephant, or in this case, the camel in the room. Eric Davis I was surprised tonight when he actually sent a response to me. Any guesses as to how he may have responded? Well here is what he said: Dear Eric, You know, we all struggle with spirituality. That is part of the reason we are here on earth. Sometimes God answers our prayers, sometimes he allows us to run into a brick wall. It is messy down here. But somehow, through that mess we can find beauty. If you look at the fruits of the spirit in the new testament you will recognize the feelings a person has when they are trying to follow God — both in and out of the church. God is ever so much more merciful and loving than we are. He reaches out to us constantly with patience. So often things in life are not either/or. There are multitudes of choices available. I have found great joy and peace in reading the scriptures. I hope you will again soon. It isn’t that your analysis of Hauck’s claims is necessarily off base, I am just worried that you went to so much effort on this response. I’m just a reporter at a newspaper. Don’t waste so much effort on me. President Eyring has said something that has helped me lately. I share it with you, because I think it is a good principle regardless of belief. I also share it because it could, if you desire it, help you drink into that pure intelligence from God that matters much more than where or if the Book of Mormon took place. “I’ve tried to do another thing, both as I read and in prayer: I’ve tried to know what he would do if he had my opportunities. You might try that. If you have had trouble getting answers to your prayers, try asking today, “What is there that you would have me do?” That prayer will be answered if you are sincere and if you listen like a little child, with real intent to act.” (Henry B. Eyring, “Choose to Be Good,” Brigham Young University Speeches, Nov. 12, 1991) “For instance, you can pray and ask Heavenly Father if there's anything he would have you do. You might ask, "What would the Savior do if he were here? Is there anybody he might wish he could visit?" If you ask questions like that, the Holy Ghost will come and you'll feel nudges about things you can do for other people. When you go and do those things, you're on the Lord's errand, and when you're on the Lord's errand, you qualify for the gift of the Holy Ghost. And when the Holy Ghost is with you, he has a purifying effect that changes your nature.” (Henry B. Eyring, “Surrender to Christ,” Ricks College Devotional, Sept. 21, 1993) Kindest personal regards, Michael Interesting, and absolutely nothing regarding my message. Michael seems to be exactly the kind of mindless, duty-bound drone that the morg loves to employ as its spokesmen. |
| | Tuesday, Nov 3, 2009, at 07:41 AM Self Righteous Peter Priesthood Blogs, "To The Wives And Children Of Men Who Apostatize", Advocating Divorce Original Author(s): Infymus APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| Warning: Vomit inducing Mormonism.
http://spamlds.ning.com/profiles/blogs/to-the-wives-and-children-of 
Another self righteous Mormon counseling divorce for spouses of apostates. From his blog: The last step was that he "resigned" his membership in the Church, much to the dismay of a still-believing wife. As his marriage lurched towards divorce, he began to lay the guilt trip on his spouse. "How can you say you're committed to families if you won't stand by me?" This is a common argument that Satan uses to bring down the wife. A woman fears that divorce will leave her without support and leave her children fatherless. She reluctantly leaves the Church she has loved and the Lord she has seved.His blog? "S.P.A.M. - Society for the Prevention of Anti-Mormonism". He goes on to quote in his comments: This article has received a fair amount of traffic today, mostly coming from exMo sites. Good! I can't think of a better, more suitable article for apostate former members to read. The discussions on the boards and blogs that have linked to this seem to focus on the opinion that it is better for a believing wife to dump the apostate husband, when he begins to attack her faith and that of her children at home is the point that seems to elicit their most hostile remarks.Church Handbook of Instruction, page 26, paragraph 12: No priesthood officer is to counsel a person whom to marry. Nor should he counsel a person to divorce his or her spouse. Those decisions must originate and remain with the individual.Looks like this guy is going against Church policy. Discuss this thread at your favorite watering hole: Ex-Mormon Forums: http://www.exmormonforums.com/viewtop... Mormon Discussions: http://mormondiscussions.com/phpBB3/v... FLAK: http://www.thefoyer.org/viewtopic.php... |
| | Friday, Jul 30, 2010, at 12:14 PM Same Old Themes From LDS Apologetics Original Author(s): Korihor's Attorney APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
1) Paint apostates as 'just too stupid' (with a subtle intimidation aimed at the TBM layman: Go back to paying, praying, and obeying and leave 'deep doctrine' to the 'scholars'):
"It should go without saying that people in ancient times thought differently about their world than modern people do. Some customs of ancient Egyptians should make this obvious."2) Lame Excuses dumbed down for us 'stupid folk': "Gee quotes several experts on the placement of drawings within Egyptian religious texts. At some times in Egyptian history, it was common for the drawings to be misaligned with the text. Frequently a drawing was attached to the wrong text - and the correct text was nowhere within the document.3) Failure to acknowledge the bleeding obvious conclusion that Facimile #1 represents a common embalming scene - except for the parts erroneously drawn in by JS (noteably the bald human head where there ought to be a jackel head) "To the modern mind, this all seems odd. But it also helps explain why the papyrus that contains the drawing of Facsimile 1 could be attached to something that was not the text of the Book of Abraham. It also may shed some light on why Facsimile 1, which at first glance may appear like many other lion couch vignettes, "is, in fact, unique."4) A testimony (in case anybody had any illusions of objectivity) " It took a prophet to make the connection and put the drawing back into its intended context" |
| | Friday, Oct 22, 2010, at 09:28 AM The Plague Of Moplogetics Original Author(s): Gadianton APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| Simon Belmont (an amatuer Mormon Apologist) has been trying to figure out why the critics here, who the apologists consider "trailer trash", have such a problem with the apologists, and how it is they define apologetics anyway. Is apologetics inherently bad? Is it mostly just bad in practice, or what? I hope to answer some of these questions.
Simon may find this surprising, but at one time I sided with the apologists quite extensively, not because I was a TBM, but because I had my own ax to grind -- against EVs. That's right, Simon, I had some anger issues with EVs, not Mormons per se. Unlike Simon, who didn't serve a mission, I served in a dense Evangelical area that was on fire with the Pentecostal movement. Thus, I had innumerable run-ins with ministers, lay ministers (in some of these churches, it seems like everyone and their dog is a lay minister), lone warrior born agains, and the whole thing was just so nuts to me. Indeed, anti-Mormon literature was very common and I was "attacked" with it constantly. Not only was I given pamphlets, lectured, yelled at, threatened, and all that, but on occasion I'd even be set up for an ambush scenario where it would be 20+ born agains against me for a "first discussion". Unlike Louis Midgley who admits that he got his ass handed to him on his mission by ministers, I never lost; primarily because I had read anti-lit substantially before my mission and most of the key attacks from EV antis were idiotic and easy to dismiss. So while I've always argued against Mormonism online, I tended to side with apologists against EVs because they had irritated me so badly on my mission and their arguments seemed so ridiculous and hypocritical to me, in general. Not to mention the fact that, while the temple is very cultish, some of those meetings I attended with faith healing, singing and laughing in tongues were far worse -- the charismatic movement is just so insane. My default position in the beginning was most certainly, first to promote atheism, but I would defend Mormonism above most other religions, and certainly against other religions attacking Mormonism. So what happened? to summarize:
It is a logical possibility, but little more, and here's why. The church has no formal way of educating its members on issues that could ever really help the to defend the Church. There are no "students of Aquinas" types because there are no Aquinas figures in Mormonism. There is no education about Mormonism worth speaking of in Mormonism. So those who seek to educate themselves may go the Chapel Mormon route: Skousen, Meldrum etc.. They might become super intellectual and technically Internet Mormons, but in a context of their interest in history, philosophy, religious studies; Times and Seasons and related blogs are excellent examples. Finally, there is Mopologetic, the armpit of Mormon educational pursuits. Pay attention here: because there is no formal Mormon study of critical issues in a structured and academic setting, those who begin to thirst for knowledge but can't buy into the mythos of Chapel Mormonism, who aren't interested in the mere intellectualizing of strictly book-worm Mormonism; they get pulled into the fray from encountering criticism, usually on the internet, and a chord is struck not with merely with their intellect, or they'd be on Times and Seasons which is about 100x more intellectual than MAD, but with their anger and thirst for revenge. Alternatively, the chord might be struck with their anti-social desires to inflict pain on other people. These folks are in it for the fight, for the brawl with critics, Chapel Mormons, or anyone they can feel "gets in their face" to give them a reason to lash out bitterly. Interestingly enough, if you poke around blogs like Times and Seasons, you will find the occasional frustration expressed with apologetics and the antics of the apologists -- the bad name that the luminaries of SHIELDS and FARMS have given to intellectual Mormonism. It says a lot when even someone like Joseph Antley, who is brimming with rage at Doctor Scratch, denies being an apologist because subconsciously, he knows just how horrible the practice of apologetics is. Look at the Narrator, he has no love for Cassius University, but he finds the rage-fueled antics of Mopologetics to be counterproductive and isn't afraid to speak up about it. My guess is that Doctor Scratch a) just picked up on the problems of Mopologetics faster than many of us b) came late to the game after the fallout and it was easier to see the truth in retrospect. Take a Mopologist, no matter how accomplished, drain his anger away, and he will gravitate toward Mormon intellectual venues of other kinds. Mopologetics exists because of the human condition known as anger. |
| | Tuesday, Nov 2, 2010, at 07:32 AM Postmodernism In The Service Of Mormon Apologetics Original Author(s): Jon Adams APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| I’ve written a lot about Mormonism, and often from a more academic and detached perspective. You won’t often find those writings here at this blog, but I figure I’d include this one. This paper concerns the role of postmodernism in Mormon apologetics. It should be of interest to some SHAFTers, as postmodernism and Mormonism are cultural competitors against secular humanism.
Over the past twenty-five years, there has been a dramatic rise in the volume and sophistication of Mormon apologetics. This rise has been especially pronounced in just the last decade or so. The Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS), the foremost Mormon apologetic outfit, became an official entity of Brigham Young University and now enjoys church funding. Websites like FAIRLDS, SHIELDS, Mormon Fortress, and others have also helped to popularize and make accessible LDS apologetics. John-Charles Duffy, a young religious studies scholar at Chapel Hill in North Carolina, argues in a recent Dialogue article that postmodernism has been incredibly influential in Mormon apologetics and helps account for its ascendancy. To see why, one must know the history of Mormon scholarship. Duffy identifies two dominant schools of thought in Mormon scholarship today: the “new Mormon history” and “faithful history.” The new Mormon history began in the late 1960s, and purports to be a more objective, less sectarian reporting of the LDS Church’s history. This new approach to church history broke with the traditional approaches in that it neither shied away from sensitive topics nor suppressed controversial conclusions. The second school of thought in Mormon scholarship is “faithful history.” This “faithful history” was a response to and rejection of “the new Mormon history.” Scholars in this camp are orthodox Mormons, who believe all histories of Mormonism should be sympathetic and faith-promoting. In other words, Mormons should be engaged in apologetics, not academically rigorous histories. The tensions between postmodern and modern thought exist in many religions. In Christianity, there is a debate between Protestant fundamentalists and liberals over Biblical inerrancy. Protestant fundamentalists are often considered anti-science, but where it concerns the Bible, they are wedded to the modern concepts of “objective knowledge” and “truth.” Liberal Protestants, however, have a more postmodern, metaphorical reading of the Bible. Mormonism is having a similar dialogue about the Book of Mormon historicity and other issues, but the roles are reversed. As Duffy notes, it’s the conservative, orthodox scholars that advance postmodernism against the more liberal scholars of the new Mormon history, who want a dispassionate approach to the LDS Church. The success of the faithful history came with the demise of the new Mormon history during the 1980s and ‘90s. Louis Midgley and David E. Bohn, retired BYU political science professors and contributors to FARMS, were among the earliest and most dogged detractors of the New Mormon history. Midgley and Bohn employed a postmodern critique against the approach. In particular, they argued that any attempt at an objective Mormon history is futile, because all claims originate in an ideology and are “inescapably mediated by language and culture.” And since there is no objective or a priori means by which determine the truth or falsity of an ideology, all perspectives are valid. This philosophy resembles Nietzsche’s perspectivism, which says that we can only know things from our individual perspectives. Midgley and Bohn therefore urged all Mormon scholars to study from their religious perspectives and give up their pretenses of neutrality. Bohn accused reputable Mormon scholars like Leonard Arrington and Lawrence Foster of excluding “non-scientific testimony of the role of God” in Mormon history. Midgley was less diplomatic and boldly indicted such historians of treason against the faith for not actively affirming Joseph Smith’s prophetic claims. These attacks proved devastating to the new Mormon history. So-called “faithful historians” like Midgley and Bohn gained an audience with LDS church leaders. Church leaders were concerned that the new Mormon history scholars were flirting with apostasy by publishing what was at times unflattering research about Mormonism. Apostle Boyd K. Packer conveyed these concerns to BYU educators in an address he gave in 1981 titled “The Mantle is Far, Far Greater than the Intellect.” “There is a temptation,” Packer said, “for the writer or the teacher of Church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith promoting or not. Some things that are true are not very useful.” He also warned that some scholars’ “posture of detachment” was “giving equal time to the adversary.” Later, in 1991, the First Presidency released an official statement cautioning members from reading histories or attending research symposia that were not approved by the LDS Church. And throughout the ‘90s, the church was quick to discipline scholars who challenged the traditional LDS narrative. These actions had a chilling effect on all research into Mormonism that wasn’t expressly apologetic. Mormon scholarship is only now beginning to rebound. So postmodernism was the bludgeon with which Mormon apologists beat down the new Mormon history. And apologists continue to use postmodern perspectivism to deflect criticisms of the LDS Church. There is another way that Mormon apologists employ postmodernism. Duffy writes that apologists use perspectivist language “as the primary rhetorical resource for those who hope to win credibility for faithful scholarship within the academic mainstream.” They play on academia’s postmodern sympathies in order that their faithful perspective will get offered at or respected by universities other than, say, Brigham Young University. Again, their argument is that all perspectives are valid given postmodernism, so on what grounds can a faithful LDS perspective be excluded? LDS literary critic Michael Austin wants to see Mormonism counted among other minority histories. Austin believes that Mormons are hyphenated Americans, like African-Americans or Italian-Americans. He even coined the term “Mormo-American.” Such appeals to academia’s tolerance of differing perspectives haven’t been successful. And noted Mormon historian Richard Bushman is somewhat relieved that they haven’t. “Wouldn’t we prefer,” Bushman asked, “to be taken seriously enough to be directly opposed rather than condescended to?” Postmodernism is a double-edged sword for Mormon apologetics. Many professors at the very conservative BYU do not want to see their school become a bastion of postmodern thought. English professor Richard Cracroft fears that postmodernism will invariably bring with it “the creeds of secularism,” which include “immoralism, atheism, nihilism, negativism, perversity, rebelliousness, doubt, disbelief, and disorder.” What’s more, it seems that orthodox Mormon apologists have yet to internalize the very postmodern philosophies that they use against their critics. On the one hand, the Mormon apologist dismisses truth as a fiction as per postmodernism. But on the other, they affirm that the LDS Church is “the one and only true Church.” These two sentiments cannot easily be reconciled. If the apologists were to fully adopt the philosophies they exploit, then postmodern Mormon apologetics would be a self-cannibalizing project. The orthodox scholars would have to surrender their claims to knowledge and objective, religious truth. It will be interesting to see, then, whether postmodernism will keep its privileged role among Mormon intellectuals for much longer. I suspect it won’t. Postmodernism was not a philosophical commitment for apologists, but a novel convenience. Already, Mormon scholarship seems to be trending back toward a new “new Mormon history.” In Duffy’s words: “…faithful scholars must capitulate to secular ground rules more than they might prefer as the price for participating in the academic mainstream, postmodern challenges to the Enlightenment notwithstanding.” |
| | Monday, Nov 29, 2010, at 09:40 AM Something To Read And Then Questions For Christians And Especially Apologists Original Author(s): Gwylym APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| Christianity and Mormonism requires apologists to shore up the believers when difficult questions are posed in regards to their scriptures. These apologists make it their responsibility to provide answers or explanations on difficult or troubling questions. One of these questions for Mormonism is where are the Book of Mormon lands located? For Christianity, a question might be where is the evidence for the Exodus?
All researchers, archaeologists and historians give their interpretation of the facts. "However impossible absolute "objectivity" may be (and all acknowledge that today), it is still a worthwhile and essential goal for philologists and exegete, specialist in material culture, or historian. Either there are empirical data or there are not; and the historian who opts for the second alternative puts himself out of business, at least as a serious scholar and not a demagogue." (William Dever What Did the Biblical Writers Know & When Did They Know It? pp 87-88) "Simplistic as it may sound, the chief requirements for dialogue may be courage and honesty. By "courage," I mean the individual scholar's willingness to put his or her ego up for stakes; to abandon long-cherished positions when necessary; and to acknowledge how and why one's mind has changed. By "honesty," I mean simply citing other scholars accurately, in context, and crediting one's sources fully; not pretending to an expertise one does not possess; resisting the temptation to indulge in personal polemics that stem from a sense of inadequacy, either in oneself or in the evidence at hand; and refusing on priciple to distort the evidence or another scholar's view." (IBID p 88) It is my experience that apologists typically select only the evidence that supports their beliefs; and they resort to circular reasoning, taking quotes out of context and when these tactics fail they resort to ad-hominem attacks. The following list shows some of the tactics that apologists use. The list was found on the internet (unfortunately I do not have a citation). I have amended the list to include some of my thoughts.
As Dever stated, either there is empirical data or there is not. What does it mean if the empirical data does not match the Biblical record? For everyone... Can the Bible still be useful if it is not empirically true? What is the difference between spirituality and religion? Is a church or religious sect necessary for spirituality? What is spirituality and can the Bible help one be spiritual without the Bible being empirically true? |
| | Tuesday, Dec 14, 2010, at 07:31 AM Book of Mormon Archaeological News? Original Author(s): SL Cabbie APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
From http://taleof2nations.blogspot.com/:
Book of Mormon Archaeological News. Supplying Book of Mormon photographic archaeological, textual evidences, that testify the truth of the Book of Mormon. Evidences are supplied by Universities of Oklahoma, New Mexico, Tulsa, Calgary CA. Mexico City as well as National Geographic, U.S. Park Service, Smithsonian Inst.,Museum Natural History and many other reputable institutions of science. Joseph Smith told the truth about the Book of Mormon being an ancient record. Benjamin Franklin provides evidence.That site deserves a huge neon bullchip warning. Seriously... Palenque Mexico, 690 A.D. Tablet of the CrossTwo hundred years after Moroni? Right... And more Wayne May/Rodney Meldrum nonsense with the Newark Holy Stones and The Bat Creek Stone... Both have been irrefutably shown to be forgeries on many separate occasions, and the only time archaeologists discuss them seriously is when they examine the motives of the forgers. I see the promoter isn't one of the Limited Geography Crowd (and probably thinks "DNA" means "Does Not Apply). Ha! I won a bet with myself that mention would be made of the Los Lunas stone... Even Hugh Nibley wasn't buying that one... Oooh! And Frank Hibben to boot! More fun... Wiki is a little too kind to him in saying he was only suspected of fraud... Not that it has any relevance to the Book of Mormon, but... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_C.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandia_P... Frank C. Hibben, a UNM student who had not been involved in the excavation, later worked in the cave. He reported finding a spearpoint beneath a layer of material dating more than 25,000 years old, along with the bones of camels, mastodons, and prehistoric horses. The 25,000-year age suggested by Hibben was erroneous, as the bones were carbon dated from 14,000–20,000 years ago (16,000–14,000 BCE). The published notes of Bliss and others in reference to the poor layer integrity and cross-layer contamination associated with rodent burrowing proved that Hibben's dating of historical sedimentary layers was consistently inaccurate.http://lithiccastinglab.com/gallery-p... Goodness, as I read on further, I see the proprietor is aware of at least some of the controversies... The question, then, is why bother promoting this tripe? Connections between the Incas and Ancient Egypt when the South American civilization didn't emerge until the 14th century, 1300 years after Cleopatra, the last Egyptian Pharoah... Seriously? Even the "Etruscan Gold Wafers" prove nothing since their "provenance" is not given, and they are erroneously identified as plates when they're hardly larger than postage stamps and contain engraved pictures and not writing... |
| | Monday, Dec 5, 2011, at 10:57 AM The Top Ten Happenings in Mopologetics, 2011 Original Author(s): Doctor Scratch APOLOGISTS - SECTION 2 -Guid- | ↑ |
| At a certain point in mid-autumn, the skies begin to dim a little earlier, and a nippiness threads through the air. One can smell a hint of cinnamon and cloves, and perhaps, if one listens hard enough, the tintinnabulation of sleighbells are audible in the distance. Of course, this can mean only one thing: it's time for the annual summary of Everything that Was of Especial Note in the World of Mopologetics. Certainly, 2011 saw its share of epic upheavals and dramas. So, on we go with this year's countdown:
10. The Nehor is Booed Off of MDB. After racking up well over 10 thousand posts, the space-cadet TBM poster dubbed "The Nehor" finally called it quits. His career, as several noted, was marked by a very slow decline: from earnestly naïve perpetual missionary, to increasingly cynical uber-nerd, to fist-shaking lunatic. By the end, The Nehor was probably irredeemable as a poster. In a "farewell" thread launched by Liz, Mr. Stakhanovite perhaps summed up The Nehor's MDB posting career succinctly: Mr. Stak wrote: I was holding back, given how much Nehor sucked both as a person and as a poster, I could say a lot more. I'd rather have Nehor waste his brain cells huffing glue than rolling that pallid face across the keyboard to share his version of "the gospel" here.9. Kerry Shirts is "Absent" from the FAIR Conference. The 9th most significant "happening" in the world of Mopologetics in 2011 was actually a non-event: Kerry Shirts failed to cinematically document that all-important Mopologetic gathering, and thus we were deprived of all the goofiness, back-slapping, consumption of high-sugar beverages, and general bloviation that we've all come to love so much. Indeed, the absence of a new entry in the Shirts oeuvre led some to wonder if the image-conscious FAIR board had actually barred him from attending, which would make this at least the second time that FAIR has gone out of its way to make an enthusiastic TBM defender feel unwelcome. (The other being jskains.) 8. Droopy Shows Even More Signs of Insanity. Well, there you have it. That and the fact that, per him, he seems to have been "welcomed" into one corner of Mopologetics' "Inner Circle." In a staggering post, he suggested that he has been receiving emails and/or PMs from Will Schryver, which speaks volumes about the state of amateur Mopologetics in 2011. 7. Leonard Arrington is Given the "Frankenstein" Treatment on MST. The Daniel Peterson vanity project known as "Mormon Scholars Testify" reached its nadir position when the Administrator in Chief cobbled together a plagiarized/manipulated version of LDS scholar Leonard Arrington's published works in order to make it seem as if the late, revered and venerable Arrington had given his endorsement to the Website. This signified an important change in policy at MST: whereas earlier deceased "testimonies" featured clear indication that permission to reprint materials had been gotten from the deceased scholars' significant others, there was no such indication for Arrington. Furthermore, given the propagandistic nature of the site, along with the deeply problematic nature of the reputations of the people involved, there is extremely good reason to suspect that Arrington would have had major problems with seeing his name associated with this endeavor. Nonetheless, Daniel Peterson continued to stubbornly insist that he'd done nothing wrong (this despite the fact that he and his editorial team swiftly went in to make edits to the entry). Indeed, his locked-out profile here at MormonDiscussions still contains a pithy dismissal from him that's a direct reference to this incident. 6. SeattleGhostWriter Issues a DMCA Takedown Notice. MormonDiscussions.com--the beacon at the center of online Mormon discussion boards--was briefly shut down in June of 2011 after a TBM called "SeattleGhostWriter" went ballistic. The normally very low-key and congenial Chris Smith posted a thread inquiring about SGW's odd Mopologetic Website, and he (i.e., Chris Smith) wondered how and to what extent the Website/blog constituted a legitimate "academic" endeavor. What ensued in the wake of this OP were a series of astonishing events, the most notable of which, perhaps, was the discovery of SGW's purple-prose-laden erotica. Seething with rage over the notion that anyone would dare mock his epistolary efforts, SGW flew off the handle and began plotting a kind of legal revenge. Rather than contacting Dr. Shades, or calling for level heads, SGW immediately hit the Lawyer Button, and before anyone knew it, MDB had gone dark. Key posters were forced to regroup at The Foyer and The Ex-Mormon Forums while Dr. Shades ascertained what had happened. Before long, the board was restored, but the SGW Incident remains notable as a case where an angry TBM used legal threats to stifle discussion. 5. The Birth and Death of "The Cafeteria". Some time in July, the well-liked MDB moderator Liz3564 launched her own, "private" messageboard dubbed "The Cafeteria." The purpose of the board, as Liz later explained, was to provide New-Order Mormons with a place to discuss Church-related issues "in peace." Her board ran quietly up until The Nehor packed up his things and left, at which time Liz launched her "Nehor Has Left the Building" thread, and the existence of The Cafeteria was revealed on a wider scale. This immediately led to Liz utterly locking down her messageboard so as to prevent the public from seeing what was discussed there. Suspicions swirled about Liz's motives: Did she really support Shades' vision of a free-speech environment? Was her board merely an invite-only means of gossiping about MDB? Was The Cafeteria really for NOMs, and if so, why had DCP and ttribe been invited? In spite of some strong words that were exchanged, every thing was smoothed over, and Liz continued to run her board underthe cover of darkness. Then, in late October, the board imploded after Dr. Peterson began a series of threads complaining yet again about his various obsessions. This irritated a number of the members of The Cafeteria community, who began "leaking" word of DCP's "Meltdown of Epic Proportions." Unsure of what to do, Liz first re-opened her board for public viewing (after deleting several key threads), and then deleted the board entirely, apparently in order to put out the fires of a "board war" (which are wholeheartedly encouraged per Dr. Shades's Doctrine). Several posters noted in the wake of all this that Liz's intentions were noble: it's admirable and understandable that one would want a messageboard "safe haven" to discuss Mormon-related issues. On the other hand, near-unanimous opinion indicated that the biggest mistake Liz made was in inviting DCP to the party. 4. DCP is Caught Mis-Using Quotes In a stunning thread entitled, "Questions for Dan Peterson," Mr. Stakhanovite very carefully and clearly demonstrated that Daniel Peterson had totally and completely mis-used a quote from Camus. Mr. Stak posted scans of the Camus text in question, and DCP was shown to have completely warped the quote in order to score a rhetorical point. After he was repeatedly confronted with this gross and unprofessional misrepresentation, DCP shut down his MDB account and skulked off into the shadows. To this day, Dr. Peterson remains effectively "hidden" from the public eye, so shamed was he by Mr. Stak's devastating critique. Further, it remains unclear just why, exactly, DCP made this "error": Was it simple carelessness? Deliberate misappropriation of the quote? Or, perhaps even more disturbingly, did he simply assume that his TBM audience would be too dumb to notice? 3. Gee and Roper Verbally Assault Mike Reed. Over the summer, Mike Reed gave a powerful presentation at the Gold Plates Seminar, which was headed up by Richard Bushman. During his talk, several Maxwell Institute "scholars" showed up with the apparent intention of heckling him. They could be heard whispering and sniggering as he spoke. During the Q & A session, the lobbed a series of increasingly aggressive and mean-spirited questions at him. John Gee, in particular, raised his voice in apparent frustration and anger, while Matt Roper insisted that he had a text that would seriously undermine/challenge/disprove Reed's central argument. When pressed on this, however, Roper went completely silent. Speculation swirled over the motivation behind these MI Senior Mopologists' behavior, with many wondering whether this "attack" had been staged in advanced, behind the drawn curtains of FARMS's inner sanctum. 2. The Rise of Mr. Stakhanovite. No person defined the world of online discussion of Mopologetics better than the irrepressible, brilliant, pipe-smoking, Rat-Pack-loving, Socratic gadfly known as Mr. Stakhanovite. 2011 saw him fully emerge and blossom into a formidable messageboard participant, with his deft philosophical evisceration of everyone from Bill Hamblin to poor, hapless mfbukowski. Mr. Stak, in 2011, demonstrated more than any other poster how vibrant, exciting, illuminating, and entertaining the world of online Mopologetics can be. In some respects, 2011 was The Year of the Stak. 1. Schryvergate. Really, what more can be said about this? The key Mopologetic event of 2011 was the "defeat" of erstwhile Mopologetic here, William Schryver. After the unfortunate failure of his KEP FAIR Presentation, Schryver was continuing to lick his wounds until MsJack delivered a series of hydrogen bombs which blew his credibility to smithereens. In post after withering post, MsJack demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that Schryver is a terrible liability for any publishing venue that wants to maintain a shred of respectability. The thread left no doubt as to Schryver's deep-seated misogyny, vulgarity, and duplicity. So profound and thorough was MsJack's critique that it led two concerned, Melchezidek priesthood-holder MI apologists to voice their issues to the Maxwell Institute "powers-that-be," and as a consequence, Schryver's supposedly upcoming MI publication was "canceled," due to fears of negative publicity. While Will Schryver continues to try and rescue his tainted reputation, and while he continues to insist that his KEP work (now allegedly in the 500-page range) will one day see publication, the fact remains that MsJack dealt what may very well turn out to be the most devastating blow of the decade. If Schryver does indeed wind up convincing a venue to accept its work, it will spell certain shame and doom for whoever takes the bait. And with that, another exciting year of Mopologetics comes to a close! Who knows what 2012 will bring... |