Now, our Benevolent Oppressor at the Rah-Rah Board is getting fun. His latest tactic is a bit of a self-deprecating strawman approach: reminiscent of the guy who accused of thinking himself perfect admits he once made a mistake, the time he questioned himself and thought he might of erred but it turned out he was correct all along.
A couple of hours ago, DCP posted (
http://www.mormonapologetics.org/topic/ ... 1208773502)
"Alright.
"It's been more than sixteen years.
"I'm not infallible.
"Maybe my memory is unbelievably faulty.
"Maybe I'm losing my mind.
"Maybe (as one of the more charitable residents of the Compound -- these things are all relative -- has suggested earlier today), I'm suffering from age-related dementia."
Then he explains he in fact has a means of communication with Bill Hamblin (texting to/fro Hamblin's iPhone somewhere around the Mediterranean). DCP asked Hamblin whether the 1993 Watson letter might have been a fax from Carla Ogden. Hamblin replies, "It was a letter from Watson. It was not a fax."
Cleansed of his self-doubt, DCP pronounces--
"I stand by my story.
"It was a letter. Not a fax. From Michael Watson. Not from Carla Ogden."
Even Brent Metcalfe today had been trying to lead DCP to water, but he refuses to drink. Metcalfe offers DCP the out that DCP can admit to fallible memory but not to lying. But DCP's neck cannot be bowed; he will not drink. He will not, but in the most feigning of tones, admit to any fallibility.
Calmoriah, one of the first level sycophants of DCP on the Rah-Rah Board, tries to re-cast the discussion on his own terms. Sort of like teeing up a golf ball for DCP then to hit with his driver. Cal insinuates that the criticisms surrounding the 2nd Watson Letter boil down to unsubtantiated claims that the Carla Watson Fax was forged at FARMS.
Since I've been asked already, no this was a simple error, not intended. Cal attempts to strip away from the discussion two coincidences and one distinction between the Hamblin's 1993 write-up about the Watson-Hamblin correspondence of 4/23/1993 that has conveniently been missing ever since, and the recently surfaced Ogden Fax:
Coincidence #1, Cal says must not be the issue, because it happens all the time in government offices that two people get the identical letter if it is a form letter.
Coincidence #2, Cal says must not be the issue, because it is hardly surprising that two people in the same government office would issued the same agreed-upon standard response.
Distinction #1, Cal says must not be the issue, because it happens all the time in university and store offices that one response might be a 'fax with the usual brevity, by the other snail mail with a more standard salutation'.
Cal then asks why someone would be led to believe the Ogden Fax to be a forgery? and for what purpose was it forged?
My concerns are not forgery, but FARMS certainly had motive enough to do that in the absence of an actual '2nd Watson Letter'. My concerns are about the authority Ms. Carla Ogden had to speak on behalf of the First Presidency, why her position is not identified, and why her fax was not signed (signature block present or not). My concerns also surround why FARMS is so willing to accept this specious Ogden Fax as refutation of the 1st Watson Letter--you know, the one on Office of the First Presidency letterhead, signature block and signature of Secretary Watson showing.
DCP seems to understand what the concerns are, though he certainly does not share them. To DCP's credit, he 'rights the ship' of topic that Cal tried to capsize, by responding in part--
"it seems to be that Bill Hamblin or Brent Hall or somebody received this fax from Carla Ogden, and then, in a deliberate effort to exaggerate its significance, misrepresented it as a letter, on letterhead, from the far higher-ranked Michael Watson. (We [FARMS] should, I suppose, have gone for Ezra Taft Benson himself while we were at it.)"
Indeed, ETB would have been a good source to tap, but apparently was not.
Then DCP steps back a bit from his absolutist statement of this morning (those are at
http://www.mormonapologetics.org/topic/ ... 1208773415), by circumscribing them both in reach of individuals and that this merry band of faith defenders would not be "so brazenly dishonest and so unbelievably foolish as to have attempted such a stunt" as to have "flatly made the thing up
ex nihilo."
It strains credulity for FARMS to suggest that when the Ogden Fax was received on 4/23/1993, ~6 copies were made and circulated by Brent Hall, but when the real, distinct Watson letter arrived by snail mail, it was of so little consequence by comparison that no copies were made and circulated to be found, for example, among Sorenson's files. After lifting a quote from the uncopied original, Hamblin misplaced it in his messy office, not to be found for 16 years now and counting.
DCP, I applaud you for taking the suggestion and contacting Hamblin. Now perhaps you'll jot off a request to the Office of the First Presidency either to provide you with a copy it has in its files of the 4/23/1993 Watson-to-Hamblin letter or for a new shiny one that says that LDS doctrine does not include so specific of geography as to place the Book of Mormon Cumorah in New York state. Not only would that help quiet the dogs here at the old 'pound, but be a reaffirmation that the LDS faithful do not have to choose between the orthodoxy faith and FARMS apologetics. Sixteen years after Hamblin presaged that the First Presidency itself, not just some unknown staffer named Ogden, would do so would add so much to the credibility of FARMS among the LDS faithful.
You can do it, DCP, just put one foot in front of the other, and then the next step...