How are we to take D. Michael Quinn's writings?

[_Daniel Peterson]

But instead of using the words "magic" or "occult" to describe these activities, you argue for the use of "religion," "poplular religion," or "folk religion." Don't you think that a bit of a stretch?

There is, as I believe I've noted more than once in this very thread, a large literature making much the same case with respect to analogous phenomena quite apart from Mormonism.

You are welcome to read a representative sample of that literature and to come to your own view about whether it's a "stretch" or not. Professor Ricks and I agree with the emerging consensus of serious scholarship in this area. You're welcome to dissent.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

But instead of using the words "magic" or "occult" to describe these activities, you argue for the use of "religion," "poplular religion," or "folk religion." Don't you think that a bit of a stretch?

There is, as I believe I've noted, a large literature making much the same case with respect analogous phenomena quite apart from Mormonism.

You are welcome to read a representative sample of that literature and to come to your own view about whether it's a "stretch" or not. Professor Ricks and I agree with the emerging consensus of serious scholarship in this area. You're welcome to dissent.

Care to share citations to this "emerging consensus of serious scholarship in this area"?

[_Daniel Peterson]

Care to share citations to this "emerging consensus of serious scholarship in this area"?

No. I write and publish articles for a reason. They include citations. It's not all on line, so you might actually have to enter a library and look at a book or consult a journal.

Some people I would be inclined to help. You, I'm not. Do your own research. I've mentioned Gager. There's much else. John Gee has published things with FARMS (and elsewhere, including several Egyptological venues) on this very topic. Likewise, mutatis mutandis, Stephen Ricks has published various items on this topic. They all offer references to the wider literature.

Have a good time.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

Care to share citations to this "emerging consensus of serious scholarship in this area"?

No. I write and publish articles for a reason. They include citations.

You didn't include said citations in your review of Quinn's book. Hmmm ....

Some people I would be inclined to help. You, I'm not.

Oh, darn.

Do your own research.

Clearly you've done little yourself ... just as I suspected when I read that blanket "consensus" statement in your review.

[_Daniel Peterson]

You didn't include said citations in your review of Quinn's book. Hmmm ....

It was a two-page review in a magazine for a popular audience.

Do your own research.

Clearly you've done little yourself ... just as I suspected when I read that blanket "consensus" statement in your review.

The fact that you draw such a conclusion from so little data demonstrates at least two things: (1) Your negativism toward me is reflexive, and (2) you're not intellectually serious.

Which is why I choose not to waste time on you. As it is, I've already wasted too much with you today.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

Do your own research.

Clearly you've done little yourself ... just as I suspected when I read that blanket "consensus" statement in your review.

The fact that you draw such a conclusion from so little data demonstrates at least two things: (1) Your negativism toward me is reflexive, and (2) you're not intellectually serious.

You were the one who declined to give any citation simply because it was me who asked for it. This sure sounds like "reflexive negativism" on your part. And the fact you refuse to give any citation to back up your "consensus" statement made in 1988 strongly suggests you are the one who is not being "intellectually serious" on this issue.

Which is why I choose not to waste time on you. As it is, I've already wasted too much with you today.

As you wish. If you're not willing to back up blanket statements such as in your review of Quinn's book (which you cited in this very thread), then why bother wasting your time (and ours) posting on this thread at all?

[_Daniel Peterson]

The question was why I don't trust Quinn. I suggested some publications that explain why.

I never agreed to participate in what would certainly prove to be an endless and pointless exchange with you on the current status of the term magic in comparative religion, anthropology, classical philology, the sociology of religion, and/or related fields, which would inevitably come down the matter of my alleged personality flaws and character defects. I never agreed to engage in yet another endless and pointless exchange with you (or your master) on any subject whatsoever.

My answers leave you unsatisfied.

I don't care.

(Nothing I'm willing to do would ever satisfy either you or your master, anyway.)

Your master invited me to leave earlier, and, now, you've implicitly reiterated his demand.

Again, I don't care.

You'll have to learn to live with disappointment.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

The question was why I don't trust Quinn. I suggested some publications that explain why.

Agreed, but the particular publication you cited included no back-up for your "consensus" statement. Ergo, my reason for asking.

I never agreed to participate in what would certainly prove to be an endless and pointless exchange with you on the current status of the term magic in comparative religion, anthropology, classical philology, the sociology of religion, and/or related fields, which would inevitably come down the matter of my alleged personality flaws and character defects.

You directed readers of this thread to your Sunstone review of Quinn's book. I read the review. I noticed that you failed to provide any citation for your blanket "consensus" statement in the review. I simply asked for that back-up. You are the one who somehow turned that into an attack on your character. You seem to have a serious martyr complex, my dear professor.

I never agreed to engage in yet another endless and pointless exchange with you (or your master) on any subject whatsoever.

I never asked you to -- I simply asked for you to provide the back-up for your "consensus" statement.

My answers leave you unsatisfied.

You have yet to provide an answer.

I don't care.

Obviously. You didn't in 1988 and you don't now.

Your master invited me to leave earlier, and, now, you've implicitly reiterated his demand.

I was simply responding to your repeated statement that you felt you were wasting your time. My point was that if you felt all this was wasting your time, then why did you cite your Sunstone review in the first place, and then refuse to provide any back-up simply because it was me who asked.

Again, I don't care.

Still very obvious.

You'll have to learn to live with disappointment.

With you I got used to it long ago.

[_Jason Bourne]

Anybody interested in the FARMS Review articles should read them, and anybody unwilling to read them would probably be well advised to withhold comment on them.

Seems reasonable.

You certainly didn't see any use in that dictum when you commented on the Dawkins book. Besides, this is just more of your typical evasion. Tell us what you think of Quinn directly, or stay the h*** out of the discussion.

You don't rule this thread so for DCP I will tell yuo kiss off. He can post whatever he wants.

[_Jason Bourne]

Have you read the sermon? The references you make are from one Joseph was giving on why he wanted to be buried near his friends and relatives so that on the day when they arose they could arise and embrace in joy. If you see a man embracing a man in the excitement of the resurrection being part of the sliding scale of homosexuality then.....wow.

Nehor,

I'm not sure what you're talking about.... Certainly, there are those in the Church who see *any* passionate embracing between men as belonging towards one end of the "sliding scale of [homo]sexuality." I'm not really sure what you're getting at in your post. You seem not to have understood anything I said.

A passionate embrace is one filled with passion. Passion does not denote sexual attraction....at all.

YES. And that is precisely Quinn's point. The problem is that the institutional Church seems to reject these kinds of feelings. Does it not?

No it does not at all. Why would do you think it does?

I've passionately embraced friends I haven't seen for a while or my brother when I haven't seen him for a while. To read any support at all for homosexual activity in Joseph's sermon would bring into question the person's sanity. I've read it, never once did it cross my mind that it could mean such a thing. The only way I think the passage could even be noticed is if the person doing the reading is desperately looking for homosexual references in everything they read.

Let me ask you this: When would it cross over into "homosexual" meaning, as you say? What is the difference? How would we tell? Who gets to decide? [/quote]

When is becomes erotic and sexually arousing, passionate in the context of romantic love, etc.

The Homosexual passage from the History of the Church:

"I will tell you what I want. If tomorrow I shall be called to lie in yonder tomb, in the morning of the resurrection, let me strike hands with my father, and cry, "My father," and he will say "My son, my son," as soon as the rock rends and before we come out of our graves.

And may we contemplate these things so? Yes, if we learn how to live and how to die. When we lie down we contemplate how we may rise in the morning; and it is pleasing for friends to lie down together, locked in the arms of love, to sleep and wake in each other's embrace and renew their conversation.

Would you think it strange if I relate what I have seen in vision in relation to this interesting theme? Those who have died in Jesus Christ may expect to enter into all that fruition of joy when they come forth, which they possessed or anticipated here.

So plain was the vision, that I actually saw men, before they had ascended from the tomb, as though they were getting up slowly. They took each other by the hand and said to each other, "My father, my son, my mother, my daughter, my brother, my sister." And when the voice calls for the dead to arise, suppose I am laid by the side of my father, what would be the first joy of my heart? To meet my father, my mother, my brother, my sister; and when they are by my side, I embrace them and they me."

From this Quinn reads homosexual attraction. Anyone else read it that way

Not in the slightest at all.

As I recall, Quinn does not read "homosexual" attraction into this passage. (If anything, the final portion of the speech you've quoted is orgiastic in nature---I.e., with multiple people "embracing". And by the way: I think you neatly overlook the fact that "embrace" was often a euphimism for "sex".)

It was? When? Why do you think this? Evidence?