Exposing the Corporation?????s ?????Backdoor????? Approach to Science

[_Simon Southerton]

The LDS Church is in the business of telling ordinary members one thing while quietly paying the salaries of scholars who say something completely opposite. The Brethren know there are many fundamentalist members who are pretty touchy about science, so rather than step on their toes they have used a backdoor approach to science for decades. Publicly they say nothing to challenge young earth creationist views. Privately they fund departments of geology, anthropology and science where belief in evolution and a 4.5 billion-year-old earth is rampant and the universal Flood is ignored. Publicly they support a hemispheric view of the Book of Mormon. Privately they pay the salaries of academics who ridicule hemispheric beliefs and invent twisted limited geography theories.

The trouble with lying in this manner is you run the risk of getting caught out. Heartland crackpots have noticed these backdoor shenanigans and they aren’t afraid to point it out publicly. Thousands of ordinary Mormons are now being told that BYU has been deceived by evil mainstream scientists and is teaching evolution and rejecting the flood and young earth ideas.

It’s been fascinating to watch the rise of the Heartland movement over the last 15 years. Rodney Meldrum has always exuded a friendly confidence that he is a chosen person on a divinely appointed mission to save the church from apostasy. And his popularity, at least among older members (and the money he is making) only adds to his certainty. While Meldrum is mostly known for his relatively harmless Book of Mormon quackery, lurking in the background and providing the scientific bedrock for his Heartland model, is an individual who takes crackpottery to another level.

For many years Meldrum told folks he was involved in writing a university-level science textbook but didn’t give many details away. It’s only in the last couple of years that Meldrum has finally revealed his ties with Dean Sessions. Session’s is the author of the Universal (Junk Science) Model, a new scientific paradigm that proves all modern science is fundamentally flawed. Before a recent prepper fest (Prepare a People) conference in Arizona, Sessions gave a revealing interview where he described his partnership with Meldrum and how he came up with the model.

https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/preparation ... 4_23-08_00

For an excellent review of Session’s model, and his refusal to acknowledge his errors, check out the first customer review on his UM Amazon site. It’s by Barry Bickmore, an embarrassed Mormon geology professor at BYU who has corresponded with Sessions in person.

https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Model- ... merReviews

https://bbickmore.wordpress.com/2017/06 ... sh-gallop/


It turns out Sessions and Meldrum attended the same ward in Tucson back in the late 80s when they were in their early twenties and newly married. Sessions recalls Meldrum introducing himself to the priesthood and instantly knowing (based on feelings) they had been buddies in the pre-existence. They immediately became very close earth friends, well before they got really interested in science and started getting all that revelation.

Meldrum moved away in the early nineties and Sessions then started to develop his Universal Model. Sessions believes that we have six senses, not five, for discovering truth about the world around us. In addition to sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell, he thinks we can learn truth using a sixth sense, intuition, or what Sessions believes is the Holy Ghost.

The first piece of science Sessions focussed his finely attuned sixth sense on was the pesky theory of evolution. In spite of not knowing enough basic biology to even understand evolution properly he scoured the literature and found what he claims is the weakness in all of the research. He thinks scientists have never been able to capture the moment of speciation (whatever that “moment” is). He’s probably expecting to see evidence of a catdog; the frozen moment in time when a cat turned into a dog. There is abundant evidence of gradual changes in species over time, which is actually how evolution works, but that’s not good enough for Sessions so he mocks the science he doesn't understand. Its abundantly clear from listening to Sessions that he works, just like Daniel Peterson, John Sorenson and other apologists, from his fixed conclusions back into the science. He sees only what he wants to see.

Sessions is a strident young earth creationist and claims to know exactly when the Flood occurred (4,362 years ago) and that the Garden of Eden is exactly where Joseph Smith said it was, Adam-ondi-Ahmen, Missouri. He claims that since the earliest stone points found in the Americas, the Clovis culture, are more advanced than later points, they must have been made by Adam’s close descendants before the Flood. This makes perfect sense to Sessions because God had more recently revealed the superior lithic technology. He then claims the technology degenerated after the Flood because only nine people survived the Flood to pass on the technology. (If Clovis points are more advanced, it’s likely the technology declined after all the large game were killed off!) He also believes all fossils were created during the Flood by a process involving very high water pressure and that about a third of the earth’s core is water. Presumably that’s where all the water went after the Flood.

In about 2000, Meldrum ditched his salesman job and moved back to Arizona to work alongside Sessions. His job was basically to visit university libraries and photocopy articles, and he did this until 2007. Sessions acknowledges in his interview that they have received financial support from benefactors. It must be very significant money because it supported Sessions, Meldrum and other technical folk for several years. From 2007 onwards Meldrum has been living off the small fortune he is making from selling his Heartland model.

Meldrum’s Heartland model is built on Session’s dodgy creationist foundation. In fact Sessions even admitted to feeling envious of Meldrum’s success (I'm sure he's only envious of Meldrum's fame, not the money he's making). I got the impression he'd be out there selling Meldrum's Heartland theory if he hadn't been so busy discovering how all the world’s scientists are deluded. But with his first volume of the Universal Model published in 2017, his second volume just released and a third on the way, Sessions is about to become a lot more well-known in Mormon circles. And that can only be bad news for the church because he’s totally convinced BYU has been deceived, he’s not afraid to say that in public and he's a complete crackpot.

At a recent FairMormon conference the church called for “independent voices” to step up to defend the church. They ought to be more careful what they wish for.

[_Dr. Shades]

Very interesting insights, Dr. Southerton. Thank you for posting this.

[_Res Ipsa]

Thanks, Simon.

This paragraph of Bickmore's review reminds me of someone, but I just...can't...remember....

3. The main strategy is to win arguments through sheer verbosity. For example, one of Sessions's main points, which he comes back to over and over in the book, is that minerals like quartz cannot be made from molten rock, because nobody has ever made synthetic quartz from a melt. But when I showed the UM Team that some of the scientific sources Sessions quoted to support this claim actually said the opposite in context, the reply was always to bring up a litany of OTHER pieces of supposed evidence. My response was to say, "Sure, we can get to all that, but first can you at least admit that you were wrong about whether quartz has ever been synthesized from molten material?" But they never would. So in other words, Dean Sessions and the gang can't effectively defend against any particular criticism of the UM, so they just try to tire out their opponents by piling on more and more crackpot nonsense.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Simon:

Thank you very much for this update. It really explains so much about the strained relationship between the Mopologists and the Heartlanders. And you can really see how--from a political and business perspective--this puts the Brethren in a very difficult bind. If there is a populist movement that has arisen, and it's helping to retain members, and it draws upon the pronouncements of the prophets of yore, what are you supposed to do? And what if some of your BYU professors are antagonistic towards this group? The normal means of dealing with "splinter movements" (and I would argue that it is a stretch to call the Heartlanders a "splinter" movement) has been to excommunicate the leader: that is what happened with John Dehlin, Denver Snuffer, and others. I understand that the Mopologists--Midgley, DCP, Welch, etc.--have a sort of "backroom" relationship with the Brethren (the image of suit-wearing white guys smoking cigars in a backroom somewhere springs to mind), and I would imagine that at least some of the apostles agree with the Mopologists about the Heartlanders.

But, my, oh, my: what a difficult situation this is. If you're correct, Simon, then Meldrum and others are making a tidy profit off of this. So, why aren't the Mopologists accusing them of priestcraft? (Or, rather: why aren't they doing this more assertively?) I'm sure there's some jealousy involved here: Does a year's worth of free cruises around the globe add up to whatever Meldrum is pulling in? And there are relevant questions to be asked about the 'soul' of the Church. Hamblin and other Mopologists have insisted that they would leave the Church if it were announced that the Book of Mormon was "not historical." And yet they are not confronting a situation where their own Church refuses to take a firm stand on the historical reality of the Church's own origins.

Stepping back, it's pretty clear who's got the upper hand in all this. If you are correct, Simon, about Sessions and his influence, then I wonder what doom awaits the Mopologists. For the time being, their main response has been to link to a blog run by someone who calls himself "Peter Pan" and who posts blog entries devoted entirely to personally attacking Jonathan Neville. They probably ought to up their game.

[_Simon Southerton]

Thanks, Simon.

This paragraph of Bickmore's review reminds me of someone, but I just...can't...remember...

It wouldn't be our favourite parallelomaniac would it?

[Guest]

Simon,

Thanks for posting this. My first response to Sessions' nonsense as I read was amusement. This soon turned to anger. And finally, after reading Bickmore's commentary, to sadness.

It is astounding to me that there are (supposedly) educated adults in the US that can sincerely believe the young earth creationists' narratives. I consider science deniers, in general, to be a danger to civil society.

Science denial by anti-vaxxers, young earth creationists and religionists in general, can be annoying, or even give rise to localized epidemics of infectious diseases. Refractory anthropogenic climate change deniers, in sufficient numbers, represent an near term existential threat for many poor or geographically vulnerable populations. And perhaps a long term threat to us all. No matter what one believes the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration tipping point to be, common sense tells us its out there and approaching fast.

Due to sea level rise, spring and fall "king tides" here in South Florida now regularly flood some of the most expensive business and residential property around with a foot or two of brackish water. The water gains access to the more inland areas through an extensive system of canals in the most expensive parts of town. The canals are open to the ocean and the water gains access to multi million dollar residential properties by moving through the porous limestone on which the streets and buildings stand.

It pains to say this, but one of the comforts I take from being of a certain age is that I will not personally be on Earth when things get really bad. I do have great concern for my children, and especially my grandchildren. I'm doing what I can can to help them have the knowledge and financial resources they will need to adapt.

Unfortunately, it seems that the LDS Church functions to diminish both through the demand for tithing and actively or tacitly promoting doubt of mainstream science when it conflicts with religious dogma.

[Guest]

Simon:
Stepping back, it's pretty clear who's got the upper hand in all this. If you are correct, Simon, about Sessions and his influence, then I wonder what doom awaits the Mopologists. For the time being, their main response has been to link to a blog run by someone who calls himself "Peter Pan" and who posts blog entries devoted entirely to personally attacking Jonathan Neville. They probably ought to up their game.

Sessions has a growing circle of Universal Model scholars, some of whom are starting to speak at conferences. If you listen to the interview, Sessions comes across as a gentle, bumbling genius and he's quite engaging. He's been starved of the limelight while Meldrum has been getting all of the kudo$. My guess is he is about to dramatically increase his profile in order to make the bucks.

Meldrum brags about selling 15,000 copies of his Heartland annotated Book of Mormon for $65 a copy. That's pretty close to a million bucks in a little over a year. Meanwhile he is still selling plenty of other books and DVDs. Meldrum is doing quite nicely.

The two-faced apologists are in a bind. If they do nothing then Meldrum and Sessions take over the airwaves and the Church goes full nutjob creationist. If the apologists fight back it will only add fuel to the fire by exposing them as evil evolutionists. I guess that's the price the church pays for its deceitful backdoor approach.

A month ago I met a bunch of Community of Christ folk in Sydney. They just laugh at the mess the corporation is in.

[_Simon Southerton]

Science denial by anti-vaxers, young earth creationists and religionists in general, can be annoying, or even give rise to localized epidemics of infectious diseases.

I share all of your concerns DrW.

Downunder we have witnessed first hand the consequences of the science-denying anti-vaxxer lies. Sixty children lie dead in Samoa because of these arrogant deluded idiots. My mother is 90 and grew up when polio, measles and whooping cough were rampant. She has turned into an anti-vaxxer and infected my LDS siblings and several friends with these lies. It is more than embarrassing.

In spite of what's going on I remain optimistic that this is a phase the world is going through. The Silicon Six (Facebook, Twitter etc) will be brought under control, because they are the ones that allow this anti-vax propaganda and lies to spread. Thankfully in Australia the government has a "no jab no pay" policy when it comes to child allowances that are paid to all families. This is a significant amount of money for poorer folk. As a result our vaccination rates are over 95%.

[_Dr Moore]

Fascinating.

Would it be a logical leap to guess that Sessions claims Satan is behind all of the mistaken science out in the world? Has he ever made that claim?

[_Res Ipsa]

Thanks, Simon.

This paragraph of Bickmore's review reminds me of someone, but I just...can't...remember...

It wouldn't be our favourite parallelomaniac would it?

That would be a good fit, but I'm thinking of a new fella you probably haven't met yet.