Mike Parker: The Ultimate Mopologetic Bootlick?

[Marcus]

The cognitive dissonance echoing in Parker's head has to be immense.

...But even more unsettling is how May quotes the counsel of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to not advocate personal theories about the location of the Book of Mormon “in any setting or manner that would imply either prophetic or Church support for those theories,” and then he immediately proceeds to ignore their counsel by claiming prophetic support from Joseph Smith (via D&C 84:57 and 125:3) that the ancient city of Zarahemla is on the west bank of the Mississippi River.

https://www.nevillenevilleland.com/2020 ... nders.html

Kind of like how he ignored their counsel yesterday?

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Someone named Bruce Lloyd asked Mike Parker a.k.a. Peter Pan why he doesn’t use his real name. Mike had this to say:

Hi, Bruce. Thanks for asking.

It’s not a charade; it’s a pseudonym. Many authors throughout history have used pseudonyms for one reason or another; there’s a long list of these at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_pen_names

I go by the pseudonym Peter Pan for a couple of reasons. The first is that I thought it was funny and tied in with the name of the blog (which was created first). The second is that, to be honest, there are some unstable people in the Heartland movement (Stephen Reed being just one prominent example), and I’d rather not expose myself or my family to being stalked and harassed by them.

That’s an interesting comment coming from a guy who regularly outs Stephen’s online handle:

An open letter to Stephen Reed, a.k.a. “TwoCumorahFraud”

And regularly blasts Mr. Reed on his hate blog, such as:

My last post was an open letter to Stephen Reed, a zealous Heartlander and conspiracy theorist (two things which often go hand-in-hand). Mr. Reed regularly comment-bombs this blog with hateful, petty, immature remarks.

and

Stephen Reed, who goes by the online pseudonym “TwoCumorahFraud,” is a belligerent Heartlander …

and describing faithful Mormons who believe in the Heartland setting as:

Summary of Quotes from Peter Pan

1- “hucksters who are selling the Heartland hoax to gullible Latter-day Saints”
2- “advancing fraudulent pseudoarchaeology”
3- “May’s latest venture is a scheme”
4- “dubious interpretation of D&C 125:3 to find what he insists must be there.”
6- “must have a true and correct belief in Book of Mormon geography, otherwise their faith is misplaced”
7- “According to Wayne May, the Church is “under condemnation” for not believing in the correct geography of the Book of Mormon.”
8- “This is yet another example of the false god of the Heartland Book of Mormon movement:”
9- “with their own message of American Exceptionalism.”
10- “According to them, the United States is God’s promised land, and therefore the peoples of the Book of Mormon must have lived in the United States and the Book of Mormon’s promises must apply only to the United States and its inhabitants.”
11- “explains Neville’s disturbing views on nationalism and racial superiority
directly accuses the Church and its leaders of hypocrisy and teaching false doctrine. Wayne May once again claims that the Church is “under condemnation” for not accepting the Heartland Book of Mormon geography”
12- “He then asks viewers to give him money to help pay for the effort to find it.”
13- “As I’ve previously written, the Heartland movement is an apostate sect that is critical of living prophets and apostles.”
14- “Heterodox Teachings” [Not in agreement with accepted beliefs, especially in church doctrine or dogma.]

Mike Parker is really a nasty piece of work, doing the dirty deeds on behalf of Mopologists who view the Heartlanders as a

… brand of belief [that] is exclusivist, fundamentalist, closed-minded, nationalistic, jingoistic, and deeply lacking in responsible scholarship and science. (See the previous posts on this blog for dozens of examples of this.)

- Doc

[doubtingthomas]

On the other hand, surely he’s read enough of the Mopologists’ unguarded comments to know that they probably think he’s a loser.

My theory is that apologists are people who are very unhappy in life. Happy Mormons only care about their emotions, but unhappy TBMs need "intellectual" reasons to stay in the church.

[drumdude]

On the other hand, surely he’s read enough of the Mopologists’ unguarded comments to know that they probably think he’s a loser.

My theory is that apologists are people who are very unhappy in life. Happy Mormons only care about their emotions, but unhappy TBMs need "intellectual" reasons to stay in the church.

DCP seems very happy to take free vacations several times a year. He's not getting rich, but he's doing something very few people get the opportunity to do that often.

It only cost him his dignity and reputation, which I'm sure was a reasonable tradeoff for him. Hawaii! New Zealand! Egypt! I'd lie for a living too.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

It should be noted DCP stated there are at least two authors that contribute to Mike Parker’s Neville-Neville Land hate blog:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... -land.html

I have, on a few prior occasions, called attention to an interesting (and, in my opinion, important and timely) blog called “Neville-Neville Land” and bearing the subtitle of “Refuting the errors of Jonathan Neville and the Heartland hoax.”



Mr. Neville has had me in his crosshairs of late and, while I don’t intend to return the favor, I’m happy to pass on a few links to recent articles on the “Neville-Neville Land” site. Primarily because I agree with them and think that others need to see the weaknesses in Mr. Neville’s arguments specifically and, to some extent, in the Heartlander position more generally. I think that the two authors behind “Neville-Neville Land” have been doing very good work, and that what they have to say is of considerable value.

DCP then proceeds to link to four NNL hit pieces - gee, I wonder why the Heartlanders have him in their crosshairs?

Anyway, we know Mike Parker’s hate blog has at least two authors. Could it be one of them is Smoot, and that Dr. Scratch was picking up on his syntax? Is this why Smoot and Mike Parker smugly assessed Dr. Scratch as having messed up his guess that Smoot was the sole author of said hate blog? We know the Mopologists like to play fast and loose with facts and technicalities. See, it’s not lying if there were multiple contributors to Neville-Neville Land so denying Smoot was the author of the blog would be easy to justify a denial.

Note DCP’s blog post above was from June 28th, 2019. Not only did he know who was behind NNL way back in 2019, but he knew of at least two authors. Do these guys ever stop lying?

eta from the same SeN blog entry above:

When some geographical model or other becomes the one note on a piano that somebody keeps hammering, when it threatens to become a cult or a schism, things have gone seriously wrong.

Huh. That’s weird. They’ve been framing the Heartlanders as schismatic while they themselves have been pushing their pet theories as dogma. It’s almost as if the Church is using the Mopologists to push a narrative about the Heartlanders …

eta2 in the comments section from the same blog entry above:

Peter Pan

Thanks for the plug, Brother Peterson. Captain Hook and I are doing our best to warn people about the sloppy thinking of the “Heartland” movement.

Which apologist is Captain Hook?

- Doc

[Dr Moore]

NewNameParker

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

It should be noted that DCP stated who the anti-Heartlanders are in response to being labeled as the M2C cartel by Neville:

But who, you might ask, are these strange people in “the M2C citation cartel” who reject “full and open disclosure” and who oppose mutual recognition and respect? Why, it’s the people at Book of Mormon Central, FairMormon, and the Interpreter Foundation …

Smoot himself attacked the Heartlanders here:

https://www.plonialmonimormon.com/2019/ ... art-1.html

So, for anyone following you have the Book of Mormon Central, FAIR, the MI, Smoot, Mike Parker, and “Captain Hook” regularly disparaging and attacking the Heartlanders all the while claiming to be victims themselves, AND DCP regularly drawing attention to those hit pieces on his own blog.

Huh.

- Doc

[DrStakhanovite]

Make no mistake: the Mopologists’ friendship is conditional. The second that Mike Parker wavers in his role as “cannon fodder,” he will be discarded into the trash bin.

I believe that the fundamental motivation of Mopologetics is to garner an inner sense of superiority by the routine application of casual disdain to others. The price of this instrument is that Mopologists can only ever offer a kind of pseudo-comradery to those who want to actually practice and engage in Mopologetics. I think this is principally what actually allows us to really distinguish Mopologetics as something distinct from religious apologetics in general and the rest of Mormon apologetics in particular.

Parker is the end result of someone taking to heart the lessons that people like Peterson, Hamblin, and Midgely have imparted over the decades: No Half Measures.

• You have a conniption and make efforts to draw donors away from an institution when they finally ask you to step down from a long held position.
• You call someone a butthead via acrostics in a publication seeking to have professional and academic standards.
• You get rousted out of a small Christian bookstore by the owner because you won’t shut up about the homosexual agenda.

Really, we could add twenty more bullet points to the list if we wanted to. Fifty even. Mike Parker is really just a logical and honest extension of Mopologetic practice being honed on Heartlanders.

[Doctor Scratch]

Great post, professor. Yet again, your unbiased academic acumen is on full display to light the world.

Make no mistake: the Mopologists’ friendship is conditional. The second that Mike Parker wavers in his role as “cannon fodder,” he will be discarded into the trash bin.

I had a conversation over the weekend with somebody who works in the field of Mopologetics, and we discuss the "one way street" phenomena of a certain key Mopologist blogger. Weird to be treated to your exposition this morning.

Very interesting! So, it would seem that, just like in 2011-2012--just prior to their expulsion from the Maxwell Institute--the Mopologists have a "traitor" in the midst once again! How perfectly fitting.

[Marcus]

if this didn't start some group effort grudge to trash the heartlanders, i don't what would. from the comment section of Smoot's blog, after an entry titled 7 reasons why letter vii is not a heartlander silver bullet.

these entries are dated end of july 2018, about 6 months before the Neville-neville Land blog started up. these are just a few of the comments:

Rod Meldrum

July 28, 2018 at 2:24 pm

Steve [Smoot], you give me much too much credit for the Heartland geography theory “movement.” While it is true that until my dna research Wayne May’s archaeological research wasn’t having much success in getting to the church membership, and my first dvd, DNA Evidence for Book of Mormon Geography had over 100,000 copies that went out, this “movement” has hundreds of thousands of proponents. As just one example, in our last Firm Foundation Expo, we had 91 speakers doing 155 classes with over 7,500 attending the three day event. In contrast, your citation cartel had some 250 attending while 6-7 speakers attempted to uphold the crumbling Meso hoax. Heartlanders include many current and emeritus General Authorities of the Church, and others. So I advise you to be a little more careful at branding all of these good men and women as perpetrators of a fraud. It only makes you look more unhinged and fanatical...

You were only 16 and impressed with the research, as was Richard Holzaphel, but then you let the citation cartel, who spent months of their time formulating ways to take what I had said, and often putting words in my mouth that I didn’t say but that they are sure that I “meant to say,” and compiled them into a series of attack articles to which I was never given an opportunity to reply. Someone mentioned Dan Peterson left FARMS to start Interpreter? That is funny, Dan and all but one of those Meso promoting attackers in the final gasps of the now defunct FARMS Review were summarily FIRED from the Maxwell Institute shortly after those attack articles, wherein they used sacred Church funds to promote their own pet theories, thumbing their collective noses at the Church Leadership who have repeatedly said that they are neutral on issues of Book of Mormon geography. But that it the mantra of the progressive scholars making up the citation cartel. They think they are so much more intelligent than everyone else in the Church, including the prophets and apostles.

For example:
The scriptures and prophets tell us that Adam and Eve were our first parents and we humans descended from them, not apes and slime. The progressivly liberal citation cartel now openly promotes Darwinian evolution at BYU and on other college campuses and in articles that defy the scriptures and prophets, “Interpreter”-ing for the brethren how they should have read the scriptures and telling their students that the prophets are just misunderstanding how the scriptures should have been interpreted, but they are just prophets, and so they don’t know any better....

Book of Mormon Central is about as deceitful as an organization can get. They lied to the Priesthood department telling them that they would follow the church’s lead in being neutral on Book of Mormon geography. With that premise in mind, some church administrators, unfortunately, believed the lie and began to promote BOMC more openly. But it was all a rouge. As soon as they got the church employee’s to promote their organization, they immediately began FARMS 2.0 with the never-ending promotion of Mesoamerica in more than half of their NO-Wise articles. This is not neutrality, it is censorship of the worst kind. You, Steve, are a prime example of this censorship, hiding behind your ‘but Jonathan and Rod are mean, nasty people and therefore I will not lower myself to have a debate with them or publish their responses to our attack articles or meet with them personally to resolve differences. I’d rather just sit at my computer and spew hatred and attacks and call them names.

My friend, you sound amazingly like the unhinged lunatic fringe Democrats who proclaim free speech for everyone unless they disagree with it....

and Mike Parker, to the rescue:

Mike Parker

July 28, 2018 at 3:23 pm

Mr. Meldrum,

I would recommend that you stop repeating the lie that Daniel Peterson’s dismissal from the Maxwell Institute had anything whatsoever to do with that organization’s publications about Mesoamerican theories and Book of Mormon geography. That is a false claim and you have been TOLD that it is false by people who are intimately familiar with the circumstances, and yet you continue to repeat it.

them's fightin' words from Meldrum. Not hard to see a grudge blog coming out of that.