Mormon History and Mormon Belief

[Guest]

You are putting words in his mouth that have nothing to do with the argument.

Dr. Wilson is a brilliant man

I know. He's told me that numerous times.

Dr. Peterson,

I would appreciate it if you would either find and show where I have told you (even once, let alone "numerous times") that I was a "brilliant man". If you cannot do so, I would appreciate it if you would admit to the board the fact that I never really said such a thing.

It is okay for you to mischaracterize what others say. Doing so is part of your job as an apologist. It is not okay for you to directly attribute statements to others that they have never made. Doing so crosses the line.

[_Doctor Scratch]

I haven't, on the whole, paid much attention to Joanna Brooks and her opinions, and what you offer above roughly doubles what I know about her views.

I was and am perfectly happy with what she wrote for Mormon Scholars Testify, and I don't research into the backgrounds of those who contribute.

Well, this is an interesting admission. I had dimly suspected that MST had something of a half-hearted quality about it--an attitude of "volume over quality," as it were--and your comment here confirms it. Of course you don't "research into the backgrounds" of the contributors, hence why you wound up getting embarrassed over that guy who published the UFO book, and who purchased his own "Who's Who" entry. It's all about the "crusade" isn't it? It's not supposed to be a nice, quaint little site where people bear their testimonies. It's you gobbling up nearly every Mormon Ph.D. testimony that you can, irregardless of their backgrounds. (Well, except for the FIRM people, of course.) You're like a giant, testimony Hoover, vacuuming up these people's sacred experiences and feelings. You know what else they say about vacuums, Dan? They suck.

She probably represents about the "leftward" limit of what I would be looking for with regard to Mormon Scholars Testify

Meaning that your site is, on some level, ideologically discriminatory. It's *not* just a matter of credentials, as you attempted to argue when confronted with the FIRM/Porter/Meldrum issue.

[_Corpsegrinder]

Of course you don't "research into the backgrounds" of the contributors, hence why you wound up getting embarrassed over that guy who published the UFO book...

Gotta ask--which one wrote the UFO book?

If a UFO nut gets to have a page in MST, then why not Steven E. Jones of Scholars for 9/11 Truth? And how 'bout that other nut job, Cleon Skousen? If Leonard Arrington can testify from beyond the grave, then why not Cleon?

Do you think maybe Dan got the idea for Mormon Scholars Testify from 9/11 Scholars for Truth? That would seen to make sense, because like MST, 9/11 Scholars for Truth is essentially a big wacky appeal to authority.

And while we're on the subject of Steve E. Jones, would you consider the collapse of Mormonism to be a controlled demolition? Or did it kind of fall apart on its own? :)

[_Corpsegrinder]

Apropos my previous post, it would seem that Mopologists and 911 conspiracy theorists have something in common besides Steven E. Jones. This from the Wikipedia article on 9/11 Scholars for Truth:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineering professor Thomas W. Eagar was at first unwilling to acknowledge the concerns of the movement, saying "if (the argument) gets too mainstream, I'll engage in the debate." In response to Steven E. Jones publishing a hypothesis that the World Trade Center was destroyed by controlled demolition, Eager said that adherents of the 9/11 Truth movement would use the reverse scientific method to arrive at their conclusions, as they "determine what happened, throw out all the data that doesn't fit their conclusion, and then hail their findings as the only possible conclusion. (Emphasis mine.)

Sound familiar?

[_Daniel Peterson]

By the way, Thomas Eagar is active LDS.

[_Corpsegrinder]

Interesting. Can't wait to see him on MST!

I'm active LDS too.

[_aussieguy55]

Do you think DCP reminds you a bit like Bill O'Reilly. He talks over people, he must be the centre of attention, calls anyone he dislikes pinheads. I wish some day he would engage in a conversation that excluded comments about where he is going to or been or talked about what a horrible person Scatch and others thought he was.

[_harmony]

J. Reuben Clark was also the founding father of the Brethren’s ultraconservative kook faction…but that deserves a thread of its own.

So... where is this thread?

[_aussieguy55]

"A comparable typology was offered by a liberal Mormon professor of philosophy, who
said Mormon intellectuals consisted of fighters, defenders, and evaders. The fighters were “the
sophisticated, who call attention to the mythology and the stupidities. It requires brains and guts
[to do this], and we need such people.” The defenders were “the apologists . . . ready at any time
to preach sermon after sermon on the fine things in Mormonism. These, too . . . do a service.”
Third were the evaders, “neither aggressively against or for.” He disdained the evaders, for
“evasiveness was the worst sin, that it reflected a lack of character, that such people wanted to
be on both sides, to be nice people.” At the same time, he acknowledged that people’s positions
changed with their moods and circumstances, and that it was difficult to classify people rigidly,
concluding that “[w]e are all guilty of all three at times” (O’Dea 1950i:3–4)."

Finding Oneself Among the Saints: Thomas F.
O’Dea, Mormon Intellectuals, and the Future
of Mormon Orthodoxy
HOWARD M. BAHR
JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION (2008) 47(3):463–484

The more things change the more they stay the same

[_Dad of a Mormon]

I kept reading his testimony and thinking in what meaningful way does he do anything different than "just believe"? I guess he can be overly literal and assume that if he does anything else other than believing (breathing, walking, chewing gum) then the criticism of "just believing" doesn't apply.

What Reeves does is set up two epistemologies and then to the best of his ability tries to mesh the two. One is the epistemology of belief, or more accurately religious experience, and the other is the epistemology of the historian. He provides all sorts of rationalizations why when they clash, what he "knows" from religious experience should Trump what he knows as a historian. Nor does he ever investigate the fact that many people have many religious experiences that lead in contradictory directions. So all he is left with is "just believing".

Maybe he would have been happier if the song had been written to spell out specifically what is meant by "just believing". If Elder Price had sang:

I am a Mormon, and a Mormon just (believes) relies upon an internal feeling that convinces him that his religion is true and is to be preferred to any other form of evidence or logical thinking.

But I think most people understand "just believing" to mean just that. And that is precisely what Reeves is doing, and it is all that he is doing.