Dude -
If you follow this link you can find the link to the Q/A as well as an actual audiotape.
http://www.tungate.com/murphy.htm
This was a 2004 BYU devotional.
I had a very congenial email interaction with Dr. Clark about this devotional. Perhaps it was congenial because he may not have realized I was an outright disbeliever, but figured I was probably a believer just trying to figure things out. He did not deny making potentially misleading statements in that talk, and said he's had mixed feelings about it. But, in the end, he did not feel it was the right forum to go into these murkier areas. He indicated he was going to write something that would help clear things up. (I haven't seen that yet, if anyone has, please let me know)
I could tell he was really a very nice man. He answered my email so promptly I was quite surprised. But this doesn't change the fact that he made statements he knew would be misleading to his particular audience, and he knew he was doing it. I think this is extremely common in Book of Mormon apologia. Brant and Sorenson do it, as well. Brant knows, for example, that the "linguistic evidence" for metal in the Book of Mormon is actually just referencing the metal everyone already knows existed - the products of simple metal working from outcrops and certain rocks. There is no "linguistic evidence" for SMELTING or the process of metallurgy, and yet they use this to support their contention that there really was metallurgy, after all. We just haven't found the "dirt" evidence yet. This is extraordinarily misleading to readers who don't catch the subtle difference, and who don't realize that it's LONG been known that ancient Mesoamerica engaged in simple metal working.
The Dude mentioned wondering if Sorenson would stoop to the bait and switch tactic. Yes, he would. He's done worse. For example, he listed as one of his (bogus) examples of artifacts from Mesaomerica that had to be the product of metallurgy an example that was actually long past the Book of Mormon time frame. (to say nothing of the reference he used that simply did not say AT ALL what he claimed it did. - I'll try to find links for those threads in which I discussed this abuse of sources).
I'm sure these people feel justified in what they are doing. They believe the Book of Mormon is an actual ancient document from Mesoamerica, and probably believe future evidence will support that contention. So what's the harm of fudging a bit in the meantime, to help people keep believing?
I have no respect for this patronizing, faith-based dishonesty. I don't force this information on anyone, but I do believe that people who are interested enough to
go looking for information on this topic deserve to get unfiltered, unfudged information.
Other people who make misleading arguments most likely are simply doing so out of ignorance. Juliann, apparently, didn't realize that it's never been contested that Mesoamerica engaged in trade with other groups who DID possess the skill of metallurgy long before they did. We can see the artifacts obtained by that trade. So she seizes upon this as if it is some brand, spanking new information that somehow justifies her arguments. I can excuse that, because it is based in ignorance. I cannot excuse what the apologists who are actually educated in this topic do.
Of course, I cannot excuse or overlook her continual use of ridiculous statements she attributes to the mysterious "countermormon". I have never seen a critic either claim "all the discoveries have been made" or "there was NEVER metallurgy in ancient America", only to have to later retract that. I don't believe she is being deliberately dishonest, though. I believe this is how she and other believers like Charity "hear" what we say. It's one more evidence, to me, of how conversations with True Believers is absolutely pointless. As Eric Hoffer says:
“So tenaciously should we cling to the world revealed by the Gospel, that were I to see all the Angels of Heaven coming down to me to tell me something different, not only would I not be tempted to doubt a single syllable, but I would shut my eyes and stop my ears, for they would not deserve to be either seen or heard.” (Luther) To rely on the evidence of the senses and of reason is heresy and treason. It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible. What we know as blind faith is sustained by innumerable unbeliefs. The fanatical Japanese in Brazil refused to believe for four years the evidence of Japan’s defeat. The fanatical communist refuses to believe any unfavorable report or evidence about Russia, nor will he be disillusioned by seeing with his own eyes that the cruel misery inside the Soviet promise land.
It is the true believers ability to “shut his eyes and stop his ears” to facts that do not deserve to be either seen or heard which is the source of his unequaled fortitude and constancy. He cannot be frightened by danger nor disheartened by obstacles nor baffled by contradictions because he denies their existence. Strength of faith, as Bergson pointed out, manifests itself not in moving mountains but in not seeing mountains to move. And it is the certitude of his infallible doctrine that renders the true believer impervious to the uncertainties, surprises and the unpleasant realities of the world around him.
Thus the effectiveness of a doctrine should not be judged by its profundity, sublimity or the validity of the truths it embodies, but by how thoroughly it insulates the individual from his self and the world as it is. What Pascal said of an effective religion is true of any effective doctrine: it must be “contrary to nature, to common sense, and to pleasure”.
An example of how she "hears" something completely different than what is actually there can be found on the thread I previously referenced on this thread. On that thread you can see several critics, including myself, trying - yet one more time - to help juliann "hear" what we are really saying, and it is NOT "all the discoveries have been made".
Juliann said:
The discovering has been done. There will be no more discoveries in South America that change anything. Surely we have learned that much from the countermos.
Tarski replied:
I am on post number 4482 and I can't recall a countermo saying anything like that. Of course, I'm sure you would not just say something like that, so there must be many such cases. Could you please give a few references to places where countermos say that there will be no more discoveries in South America?
I always thought that the point was that the certainty of future dicoveries does not provide warrant for unsupported theories with no current evidence.
And I said:
I will correct your distortion one more time, realizing that it will have no affect on you due to the fact that distorting what others say is habitual with you. I also note the irony is that you demand that nonbelievers allow believers to explain for themselves what they believe and say, yet you resist granting that right to others.
I am not saying no new discoveries will be made. I am saying that new discoveries that could validate the Book of Mormon are as unlikely as a new discovery validating aliens building the pyramids. This is not ridicule, but the attempt to demonstrate how extraordinarily unlikely it is. When someone says that archaeology proves that aliens did not built the pyramids, they are not saying no new discoveries can be made. They are saying that so much information about who built the pyramids has already been accumulated that the chance of suddenly discovering something that validates the ideas that aliens built them is so infinitesimally small that it is reasonable to say the chance just doesn't exist.
That is the reason that Book of Mormon apologists who know enough about Mesoamerica to realize this fact concentrate on finding Mesoamerica in the Book of Mormon instead of the reverse. If there were any chance of still finding the Book of Mormon in Mesoamerica, they would not be encouraging believers to abandon that particular approach.
Has she "heard" us yet? Of course not. And, predictably, she is the worst offender in terms of use of the very tactic she decries in others.
And look how she "heard" my statement about the connection between pottery technology and metallurgy. I was painstakingly clear on page 5:
No, it is absolutely not. You have brutally ignored the entire point. To smelt metals, one must have an understanding of advanced pyro-technology, which is what pottery is built on. But since it's a more advanced understanding of pyro-technology, it doesn't work in reverse. Ie, someone who knows how to control fire well enough to smelt metals already knows how to control fire well enough to make advanced pottery, but someone who knows how to make pottery without the controlled heat required for ceramics isn't going to be able to smelt metal. Did you read the citations? They made that clear.
Juliann then shares this quote she admittedly simply googled:
http://www.geology.ucdavis.edu/~cowen/~GEL115/115CH3.html
There are two plausible pathways for the discovery of smelting, both of them involving pottery kilns. For most of the classic Stone Age, sites are without pottery. The discovery of pottery for beakers and bowls was made in Western Asia perhaps around 9000 BC, and it is probably not a coincidence that pottery-making was followed relatively quickly by the use of metals. Firing clay into useful pottery demands the careful production of high temperatures inside a kiln. Pottery kilns can reach much higher temperatures than open fires, and they operate somewhere near the boundary between sufficient oxygen and oxygen starvation. Loaded properly, kilns can maintain temperatures above 1000° C for hours, in an oxygen-starved atmosphere. Firing to about 450° C makes pottery hard and waterproof: firing to 1400° C makes the pot shiny and even harder, and this temperature can smelt metal out of an ore.
as if that "caught" me in some fundamental error. I painfully demonstrated how her citation actually supported my assertions and own citations, and invited her to demonstrate how her googled quote so fundamentally contradicted me. She couldn't do, so, of course, said it wasn't worth the effort, but wondered why I couldn't admit it when I was caught making a mistake.
?????!!!!??????????????!!!
It's bizarro land! It's opposite day!!!
It is conversations like this - and this is just one of many examples, another notable one was her insistence that her Schele quote stating that "there is no evidence that WINNERS were sacrificed in ballgames" meant that there was no evidence ANYONE was sacrificed at all. It took me PAGES to get her to understand Schele was NOT saying that NO ONE was sacrificed in ballgames, but rather the LOSERS were. I later obtained the book from which she pulled that quote and was stunned that she could have so fundamentally misread the text. The context of the entire chapter made the meaning clear, even if the specific quote confused her.
So having this history of watching Juliann, time after time, "read" a meaning completely different than what my words actually said, is why I have to shake my head when she opens up our "interaction" again by talking about what a silly person I am, to actually think that reading a bunch of books (over thirty, Juliann) on a subject somehow means I know a little bit about it.
It's funny. She either criticizes critics for talking about subjects they don't have adequate background information about, or she criticizes critics who have taken the time to obtain some background information for talking about it, and "pretending they know more than experts".
The human capacity for self delusion is amazing.