2nd Watson Letter just found!'

[_beastie]

Scott’s, a.k.a. “folk Mormons are intransigent ignoramuses”:

Perhaps you, being a non-Mormon, can be excused for your unawareness of the fact that it has been a long-standing policy that a personal letters to the First Presidency from Church members are quite routinely referred back to the letter writers' bishops or other presiding local officers for handling. In fact, from time to time, general letters are read in LDS sacrament meetings counseling members to take personal concerns to their own local leaders instead of writing directly to the First Presidency. A reasonable person can readily see why this is necessary; otherwise, the First Presidency would be faced with a virtually impossible burden in personally responding to each and every communication.

Now then, an important role of the secretary to the First Presidency is to relieve them of some of the burden associated with their office. Is it so difficult to see that the Brethren delegated to Brother Watson the general duty of handling letters such as the one written in this instance? Can you not grasp the likelihood that they gave Brother Watson a general instruction to deal with such letters typically by A) referring the matter to the local bishop; B ) giving the bishop helpful suggestions in dealing with the matter; and C) ending on a positive note by conveying the commendations of the First Presidency for the member's diligence in gospel study?

In this instance, however, the matter evidently went a bit awry in that Brother Watson's response was based in part on assumptions that turned out not to be valid, assumptions that necessitated a follow-up clarification/correction. And, as things have developed, we now have at least two other sources that corroborate that clarifying communication: a boilerplate response to a separate individual and similar wording in the quasi-official Encyclopedia of Mormonism.

It's really not all that difficult to grasp, cksalmon. I'm confident it's within your capacity.

What Scott doesn’t seem to grasp is that the first Watson letter, despite coming directly from Watson with his signature was dismissed by the Keystone Cops Apologists as being nothing but his own misinformed opinion. Yet the second fax from Ogden, minus signature, is now seen by the same Keystone Cops as having the authority of the First Presidency.

[_harmony]

What Scott doesn’t seem to grasp is that the first Watson letter, despite coming directly from Watson with his signature was dismissed by the Keystone Cops Apologists as being nothing but his own misinformed opinion. Yet the second fax from Ogden, minus signature, is now seen by the same Keystone Cops as having the authority of the First Presidency.

We see what we want to see and disregard the rest. Or... we see through a glass darkly. Or... there is none so blind as he who will not see.

Scott doesn't get it because Scott doesn't want to get it. So Scott is simply being Scott-as-usual.

And Dan is just being Dan-to-the-max. Makes me think of a high school football game with the cheerleaders (Cal and a few others) on the sidelines leading the crowd (most of the MAD bunch) in "DE--FENSE! DE--FENSE! DE--FENSE!" This may be the only time Dan actually gets to be the nose guard and Scott gets to be the linebacker, both of whom missed their tackles.

Dang, that's gotta hurt.

[Guest]

What Scott doesn’t seem to grasp is that the first Watson letter, despite coming directly from Watson with his signature was dismissed by the Keystone Cops Apologists as being nothing but his own misinformed opinion. Yet the second fax from Ogden, minus signature, is now seen by the same Keystone Cops as having the authority of the First Presidency.

That, beastie, has been the rub of this issue until Brent Metcalfe revealed last night the same passages appear in the Ogden Fax and Ludlow's EoM. Now, the rub seems to have been refined by the added bit of juice from Brent Metcalfe. A boxing analogy seems fitting for this explanation:

In this corner for the Chapel Mormons and Meldrum, an October 16, 1990, letter on letterhead from the Office of the First Presidency by its directly charged agent, Secretary F. Michael Watson, addressed to a downline ecclesiastical authority (Bishop Darrell L. Brooks), that mentions:

1-Watson was asked to respond to a letter of one of Bishop Brooks' ward members sent to President Gordon B. Hinckley.

2-"The Church has long maintained, as attested to by references in the writings of the General Authorities, that the Hill Cumorah in western New York state is the same as referenced in the Book of Mormon."

3-'The Brethren' appreciate Brooks' assistance in responding to this inquiry.

This letter bears a signature of F. Michael Watson, 'Secretary to the First Presidency'.

And in this corner for the FARMS Apologetics, the upstart intellectuals who have suffered many, many years from chronic cognitive dissonance that can produce to justify their continued existence only a fax of April 23, 1993 that anemically--

A-Is from a complete unknown, Carla Ogden (who herself did not sign the fax)

B-Does not purport on its face to be authoritative from the Brethren or President Gordon B. Hinckley.

C-Makes no mention of why the fax was being issued (i.e., nothing specified about what prompted the issuance of the fax).

D-Lifts phrases from Ludlow's EoM without attribution and for which Ludlow (a FARMS apologist himself) merely quotes three other FARMS apologists (rendering the authority for Hamblin's 1993 assertion that LDS doctrine does not specify the geography of the Book of Mormon Cumorah to be nothing more than a mere circular reference back to FARMS own intellectual surmises).

Spinning doctrine out of no revelation, no ecclesiastical claim, nonetheless audacious enough to pronounce the 1990 Watson letter trumped by this circuitous, self-serving referencing that culminated in the Ogden Fax.

From a scholarly perspective, knock out in the first 10 seconds of the first round.

[_DaniteDan]

"I had never, until yesterday, even thought of the possibility that Brent might be connected with my Malevolent Stalker, let alone seriously considered it. It hadn't occurred to me."

I find that hard to believe.

[_harmony]

"I had never, until yesterday, even thought of the possibility that Brent might be connected with my Malevolent Stalker, let alone seriously considered it. It hadn't occurred to me."

I find that hard to believe.

I can't believe he thought of it at all. Talk about grasping at straws! He's desperately seeking a red herring to take some of the heat off, so he doesn't have to address what is shaping up to the be the LDS Apologetic Debacle of the Century.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Hello Everyone,

So. We have Mormon apologists quoting one another and then attributing their self-quoting to the First Presidency as official doctrine.

They have, beyond pale, crossed some serious ecclesiastical boundaries.

If I were Elder Packer I would be summoning some professors to my chambers for an explanation.

Very Respectfully,

Doctor CamNC4Me

[_Doctor Scratch]

Holy smokes---this is incredible. Let me try to deal with one thing at a time. First, DCP's suggestion that Brent and I are one and the same:

"I had never, until yesterday, even thought of the possibility that Brent might be connected with my Malevolent Stalker, let alone seriously considered it. It hadn't occurred to me."

I find that hard to believe.

DCP hates me, and he hates me primarily for what he characterizes as "peering," or in his phrasing, "malevolent stalking." What I have always taken this to mean is that he doesn't like me---or anyone---looking closely at apologetic materials, looking for flaws or ethical problems. I'm not the only one who has done this, of course: Joey and antishock were both pretty persistent in their efforts to learn the truth about the 2nd Watson Letter, but the basic psychological explanation is the same. DCP is transferring his hatred of me onto Brent because Brent has delivered a devastating blow to apologetic credibility. Others pointed out the apparent desperation of DCP's inquiries:

Who is Scratch? Do you know? Do you two exchange off-board messages? What is the nature of your connection with Scratch, if any?

This is motivated purely out of a spirit of revenge. It has nothing to do with the Watson Letter, or the issues it raises. And I'm sorry, Dr. Peterson, but you do not deserve to know whether or not (if at all) Brent and I have exchanged messages.

*********

Apart from all that, there are two separate, highly problematic issues for the apologists:

(1) The authority of the text which turns up four different times: in the purported Watson Letter, in the Ogden Fax, in the EoM entry, and in Hamblin's article. For what are perhaps obvious reasons, the apologists are sticking to this issue. They are going to argue tooth and nail that this whole hullabaloo establishes the primacy and authority of their views---i.e., a victory for Internet Mormonism. (A sidenote: the fact that Oaks and Maxwell were involved in overseeing the very first version of this text only adds more material to the growing body of evidence in favor of the Packer-Meldrum/Oaks-FARMS divide.)

To me, the above is kind of a moot point. For me the real interest lies in:

(2) The way that the text has been used, handled, cited, etc. The amount of questions this raises are both mind-boggling and staggering. There is literally no way for the apologists to truthfully account for this without also admitting that they: plagiarized, incorrectly cited text, brazenly lied, sought to change doctrine, and so on and so forth.

Out of curiosity, I looked back at some of the old threads in which myself and others tried to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding the 2nd Watson Letter. Here's an interesting quote:

Because they're trying to defend themselves against potential attack -- protesting a bit too much, in my view, since nobody that I know has ever accused them of actually forging evidence -- and also because they favor a manner of presentation (rather like that of Robert and Rosemary Brown on the other side) that often includes photocopies of documents.

By contrast, like the standard academic journals and books that form the background of its editors and publishers and the large majority of its writers, the presentation-style or format of the FARMS Review virtually never features photocopies of documents. (If we've ever included such a photocopy, I can't remember it off hand.) Moreover, in the world in which the Review's editors, publishers, and writers live, while books and articles cite correspondence from time to time, the presumption is always that the cited correspondence actually exists and has been accurately transcribed. Accusations of gross transcription errors or deliberate falsification are extremely rare; accusations of deliberate wholesale forgery are virtually unknown, and the career of any scholar who would do such a thing would come to an immediate, catastrophic, and humiiating end.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6994&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&start=273

and they have pretty obvious motivations for wanting to bury it and keep it hidden away from critics.

How have "we" buried it and hidden it from "critics"? (You're the only critic, so far as I can recall, who's ever demanded to see it.)

I simply don't care to reminisce with you about it. I think I saw it once, somewhat more than fifteen years ago. It wasn't a big deal. Nothing memorable about it. My memory of it is pretty hazy. And you've already decided that it's bound to make us all look bad "in some way," so anything I say can only add fuel to the flames of a fire that you yourself have already lit -- which would lead to an interminable conversation about . . . what, exactly? My vague memories (which you'll constantly demand that I specify and expand as you look for something self-contradictory or damning) and your predetermined negative conclusions?

This is the best one, though. I guess that friends of DCP can only hope he was just exaggerating here:

Unless one presumes us to be conscious deceivers who didn't scruple at forging a letter to support our ideological position and then falsely attributing it, publicly and in print (and, it must be said, at considerable potential risk to our employment at BYU and our membership in the Church), to the Office of the First Presidency -- or, alternatively, unless one views us as so staggeringly incompetent or partisan that, even pooling our efforts, we were unable or unwilling to quote a brief letter (two sentences long) without introducing changes that grossly distorted its intent -- the reasonable response to the appearance of the letter in Professor Hamblin's edited and source-checked article would be to assume that it was real and that it said what it was quoted as saying.

Man, oh, man.

[_Nimrod]

Brother DCP,

Now is the time. Send a letter on your Maxwell Institute letterhead to the First Presidency. Ask them point blank to

1-make and send you a copy of that Office's file copy of the letter (not fax) from Watson (not Ogden) dated 4/23/2009 to Hamblin, or

2-send you a new letter with the 'boilerplate' response that is found in the Ogden Fax of 4/23/2009.

This is your only scholarly way out of FARMS' circuitous referencing of authority that merely leads right back to FARMS, with no ecclesiastical input. (Kind of reminds me of a dog chasing its own tail, round and round, or perhaps the more graphic, a dog returning to his vomit.) Regarding the incestuous referencing and to paraphrase your patron saint, 'No, Sir, That's Not Scholarship'.

Without #1 or #2 above, I suppose that this sordid tale of the '2nd Watson Letter'--now unquestionably and rightly dubbed the 'Infamous 2nd Watson Letter'--will be front and center in the next published critique of Mormon Apologia (maybe by Bob McCue), and the topic of a Sunstone Symposium presentation.

Do this now before you leave the Maxwell Institute and BYU with a black eye to remember for decades.

[_Uncle Dale]

...to paraphrase your patron saint, 'No, Sir, That's Not Scholarship'.

chuckle

the topic of a Sunstone Symposium presentation.

Absolutely no doubt about it -- with a response from Carla Ogden
and a Deseret News exposure of the third Watson letter as a
remnant from the trove sold by Hoffman to Ken Sanders, before
being mysteriously lost among the personal effects of Melvin Dummar.

The "Newer Mormon History" begins the second season of its sordid chronicles...

UD


.

[_zzyzx]

Paul Dunn did it. It is really a parable. Would you like to buy into a great company and have your investment blessed by God too?