Blake Ostler Erupts with Rage on Faith-Promoting Rumor

[_Kishkumen]

BYU does not offer tenure. It offers Continuing Status, which can be removed if you break BYU's rules, written or unwritten. Publication record is a flexible category in the BYU prof's overall dossier. One should publish, and there are rising young stars who are going gangbusters, but back in the days when BYU was a teaching institution that had little pressure on it to pretend to any grander things the fact that one was not publishing in peer review journals was not a big problem. Breaking the Word of Wisdom, missing Church too much, or speaking at a Pro-Choice rally. Those are problems.

I took one of my religion classes from a guy who wrote his dissertation on the Pontifex Maximus at BYU. He was a nice fellow and a good storyteller. But he was not really known, even among his research assistants, for being a rigorous scholar by any stretch of the imagination. But, hey, he was teaching Mormon scripture at BYU. He really didn't need to be a rigorous scholar, and that lack probably saved him a lot of headaches.

[_Kishkumen]

Does anyone take Blake Ostler seriously? Midgley dead? Talk about weird and unhinged!

[_Doctor Scratch]

Does anyone take Blake Ostler seriously? Midgley dead? Talk about weird and unhinged!

Oh, it is only getting better, Reverend:

Really you are like a bunch of kids arguing over who has the best popsicle.

I meant that Midgley had passed from the scholarly scene at BYU; Not that he died. I can see how my statement was confusing.

SmallAxe you are wrong about your public speculation about why Gee was not published in BYU Studies. You are wrong that Interpreter does not make changes to published papers or that this is the first time corrections have occurred. You are wrong that other scholarly journals do not disclose the names of authors of papers for review (though we can agree that it is a bad practice).

Rather than write a 20 page critique on blog, let me say that I am largely in agreement with this review by Jeff Lindsay especially related to the errors in dating mss. and failing to take into the account the impact of Joseph’s study of Hebrew.

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.o ... some-gaps/

LOL! And he gets called out for it, too:

Lies. Just admit that you got Louis mixed up with John Tvedtnes and move on. You did not mean that he “passed from the scholarly scene,” that was the topic and that undermines your argument that Scratch was being disgusting. That only makes any sense if you thought he had died.

Maybe it was just a Freudian slip on Ostler's part? Anyways, he goes on:

Yakov — you are just full of crap to suggest that I am lying and did not know what I meant. Let me know who you are so that I can see who I am dealing with you coward. Telling DCP to let Midgely know that he is a terrible human being is beyond the pale. That you sanction such antics is truly sickening to me. I love how y’all act like 2 year olds to gang up on DCP and fuss over the kind of crap that really makes you look pathetic.

Yakov ben Coward: by the way I am well aware that Midgley did not die because I spoke with him recently. If you think that I was thinking of Tvedtnes then you are total dolt. Those of us doing philosophy have our disagreements, but I have never seen such childish antics among my peers.

Does he consider Midgley and DCP to be his "peers"? If so, all he needs to do is mosey on over to the "Comments" section of SeN to witness daily 'gang ups' by Peterson, Midgley et al. on Gemli. And has Ostler not read the "gang-up" attack on Grant Palmer--led by Midgley--that appeared in the old FROB?

Dr. Robbers is correct: it appears that Ostler is clueless about the history of Mopologetics. (And I also wonder if Midgley has been whining to him privately....)

[Guest]

No, Ostler is not clueless. He just suffers from the same debilitating disease of ego that makes Donald Trump take a Sharpie to an outdated weather map and fuels most Mopologetic arguments. In other words, this is what is truly meant by his peers: they are all one implosion away from being fellow patients at a psych ward.

[_Dr Moore]

Given the atomic scale of the Mopologist’s active reader audience, one can at least understand the violent insecurity that produces such embarrassing tantrums.

After all, this IS the internet and the whole entire world has access to witness them being held to account by the vile personalities who dare pay close attention to the details.

[_Kishkumen]

By the way, Ostler was totally lying, and it was a stupid lie to boot. Yakov has his number. Ostler slipped but the world would cave in on itself if, horror of horrors, he should make a mistake like any other normal person.

[_Kishkumen]

Given the atomic scale of the Mopologist’s active reader audience, one can at least understand the violent insecurity that produces such embarrassing tantrums.

After all, this IS the internet and the whole entire world has access to witness them being held to account by the vile personalities who dare pay close attention to the details.

LOL!

I mean, if you’re gonna go, better go all in, eh? Why not throw tantrums? Why not be self-important, rude, and downright delusional? Why not tie yourself in knots scolding anonymous randos online? There is just so much wrong on the intertubes for caped crusaders to combat valiantly!

Huzzah!

[_Philo Sofee]

I used to think Ostler was so good, and now he has degenerated to this? Ayiyi........

[_Doctor Scratch]

By the way, Ostler was totally lying, and it was a stupid lie to boot. Yakov has his number. Ostler slipped but the world would cave in on itself if, horror of horrors, he should make a mistake like any other normal person.

I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt--he may have just been confused. Whatever the case may be, his reaction seems to suggest that he has some sort of close relationship with Midgley, which is a bit of a scary thought.

[_Philo Sofee]

For some reason apologetics now appears to me to being tough, meaning, harsh, meaning mean spirited for most of the time. I guess perhaps they think they come across as being valiant when their peers read them and so its ok to be verbally abusive... What they fail to see is how they look to all others. And until the brethren rein them in, the social problems of people leaving are going to continue. No one wants to be part of a crowd that is so high and mighty arrogant, and so rude and gruff with others. For whatever reason, the apologists simply cannot grasp how they look to the world when they are trying to defend their Gospel.