https://www.nevillenevilleland.com/2023 ... m.html?m=1
Parker objects to the Heartlanders’ preference for the idea that Joseph Smith translated the golden plates with the Urim and Thummim. Just look at this passage from his latest post:
My reaction to this is: And? The Mopologists have invested *decades* to supporting *exactly* the idea that Smith was so much of a “country bumpkin” that he couldn’t possibly have produced the Book of Mormon himself. And now Parker objects to this? I thought I had seen it all, but Parker must be the most vendetta-driven, desperate Mopologist of all time. In the same entry, he’s complaining that a Heartlander has a custom-made hat that disses the “rock in the hat translation.” You have to wonder what Parker thinks about Bill Hamblin wearing a “Beavis and Butthead” T-shirt to a FARMS meeting at BYU. If that’s what passes for “scholarship” amongst Mopologists, then why does Parker think he’s got grounds to complain?Mike Parker wrote:The phrasing in that description sadly follows the same polemical approach to Church history that Neville has almost made a career out of. It refers to Joseph Smith’s seer stone as “a magic rock” and implies that those who believe that Joseph translated with a seer stone think he was “a near illiterate country bumpkin.”
The final lines of his blog entry are so stupid and ignorant and un-self-aware that they are worthy of Daniel Peterson himself:
Lol!!All of this once again demonstrates that, if Heartlanders wish to be taken seriously, they need to act seriously and present their evidence and conclusions in a more objective manner. Perhaps Lucas and Neville’s book does this—I haven’t read it yet—but their public statements manifest that for them, this an us-versus-them battle against historical evidence that they reject wholesale because of their zeal for traditional narratives that no longer hold up.