DCP, living in the past.

[Markk]

My last post.


Dan..."Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. Honestly, I'm just not that interested in Evangelical Protestant anti-Mormonism any more. It seems to me something of a spent force. Certainly not one that is on the cutting edge of criticism of the Restoration. Times have changed, Markk. The more interesting criticisms are on the secular agnostic/atheistic side, and such criticisms are taking a toll on Evangelical Protestants, too."

I think you are more interested than you let onto, which of course is why you brought it up. It was your bane as one of the Mormon apologists leading the charge against the anti's. Remember your statement of sorts that there would an army of apologists against the EV's and anti's from the World Table?

I would also argue that the brethren now understand that they can't win and sadly can't repent, as leaders of those that feel slighted and lied to. The appearance is they shut your (for lack of a better term, mopology) past approach down. The very arguments that EV's championed, in many cases, have been conceded and accepted. Many arguments that folks like yourself, "scholars," said were false are now accepted in varying degrees as true, even if not discussed and taught in the chapel and classes. Even when many members have no idea of these confessions. Arguments that led to excommunications of some, that again have been conceded now as true.

Dan, why do you think that there are many ex-members, or PIMO members, that have had exchanges with you, and frankly don't like you? This is a honest question. Do you regret any of your attacks and or denials, against some of these folks for "debating" truths that are now conceded as truths you once denied? What would you say to these folks that were genuinely looking for truths, that you bullied and belittled by your (mopology) approach? Would you consider saying "I'm sorry" and admit you were wrong?

[Markk]

I just cut and pasted a comment on Dan's blog. The last time I tried to have a conversation with him he cut me off so he could have the last word. I am just curious if he will allow my comment. I honestly do not think he understand that things have changed in the past 25 years of so, especially post Essays and podcasts.

Where is Dan having these conversations? It’s not in his blog comments, it’s not on a discussion board. So where?

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... qus_thread

[drumdude]

Dan’s characterization aside, I think he’s absolutely right about evangelical apologetics. There aren’t any interesting new arguments about Mormonism coming from them.

But Evangelical James White has been calling out DCP’s crew embracing biblical criticism for years. He said it was a double edged sword to use secular biblical criticism to justify parts of the argument for Mormonism, because that same biblical criticism is devastating to Christianity as a whole.

You can see this best with Robert Boylan and Travis Anderson. They will use tiny little parts of secular criticism when it suits them but completely ignore the larger context that undermines Christianity and Mormonism.

See Bart Ehrman for a basic introduction to the kinds of criticism of the historical Jesus that undermine both Christianity and Mormonism.

[sock puppet]

I’m thoroughly unimpressed by the new crop of apologists, if what they’re doing can be considered “living in the future.”

I’m thinking of apologists like Travis Anderson, and Bobby Boylan. Apparently their childish debates with clueless evangelicals on YouTube are popular with missionaries in the field. If that’s the future, the Mormon church is in serious trouble!

I don’t really blame Dan for resting on his laurels. The new Mormon apologists must similarly disappoint him.

Given the 21st Century and the dawning of the post-democratic era, perhaps Mormon apologetics--if their aim is to keep if not grow a fervent following--would be best served by following Kwaku El as an apologetic route. A charismatic demi-god who keeps going as long as the adulation for him keeps up.

[sock puppet]

I just cut and pasted a comment on Dan's blog. The last time I tried to have a conversation with him he cut me off so he could have the last word. I am just curious if he will allow my comment. I honestly do not think he understand that things have changed in the past 25 years of so, especially post Essays and podcasts.

DCP wrote...I can’t count the number of conversations about my own religious beliefs that I’ve had with others, especially with often quite exercised evangelical Protestants, in which they’ve said to me “You believe x!” and I’ve responded not only that, no, I don’t believe x but that, in fact, I’m unaware of anybody in my church who believes x. To which the challenger then responds “But that’s what your church teaches!” To which I’ve replied that, in all of my (now) many decades as a member and a missionary and a teacher and a writer and a sometime leader for my church, and as a long-time resident of Utah and a long-time professor of my church’s flagship university, I’ve never taught or been taught x as Church doctrine.” “Well, that’s still what your church believes!” answers the challenger. And, sometimes, if the challenger is especially well-equipped, he or (very occasionally) she will present me with a decontextualized supporting quotation from Journal of Discourses 14:234 or from an obscure 1950s book by a long forgotten member of the First Council of Seventy or a onetime Institute teacher that seems to endorse x. Seldom if ever, by the way, a passage that the challenger discovered on his or her own via serious research. Instead, it’s typically one that he or she came across while skimming through an anti-Mormon website.

Such as? What is ironic, that those "anti Mormon" web sites these days, more often than not, quote history that the church now concedes on LDS .org, or even the interpreter or FAIR.... etc.

How about those that were born and raised in the church, and those that served missions and held callings, in which they taught teachings that the church now concedes as being false or can me shown clearly false with a simple google search? Like the Stone in the Hat, or Joseph actually has sex with many of his wives. How about facsimile 3 and Josephs clear inability to translate Egyptian? Or maybe Lucy Walkers sad existence as a wife of Joseph Smith.

Dan, I would love to see you expound on just what those "exercised evangelical Protestants," who are "skimming through" teachings and doctrines of CoJCoLdS past teachings are today.

Dan, it is 2024, things have changed, big time. The debates have evolved from "Adieu" and the KJV only arguments we used to have 25 -30 years ago. The narrative is today, as Bushman asserted, is a narrative that can't survive today.

Hey, Dan, tell us again the one about holding the 2nd Watson Letter in your own hands, seeing it with your own eyes--since we're going down memory lane.

FYI for those readers perhaps not familiar, in the early 1990s, Elder F. Michael Watson, then Secretary to the First Presidency, an ecclesiastical, "set-apart" position, issued a letter on official First Presidency letterhead to a bishop in Oklahoma, explaining that the drumlet/hill in New York state where Joseph Smith claimed to have gotten the gold plates and referred to by Smith as the "Hill Cumorah" is the same as the "Hill Cumorah" described in the Book of Mormon where hundreds of thousands of warriors died in a battle. Unfortunately for Mormons, there are no artifacts to be found in the vicinity to suggest there was any such battle.

This letter--the (First) Watson Letter--gave Mormon apologists following the Sorenson suggestion that Book of Mormon Hill Cumorah is actually a different one, somewhere south of the U.S.-Mexico border, no end of intellectual indigestion. So, it turns out, FARMS send a non-ordained staffer in the First Presidency (Carla Ogden) an excerpt from Ludlow's Encyclopedia of Mormonism for the Hill Cumorah entry. Ms. Ogden incorporated that language and faxed it from the First Presidency back to FARMS. This is what Dan Peterson claimed was a retraction by Elder Watson for the First Presidency, the "Second Watson Letter", that he, Peterson, held in his own hands and saw with his own eyes.

The late Bill Hamblin took some liberties in an apologetic article he penned, describing Ogden Fax as another letter from Elder Watson. Gullible as he is, Peterson sucked in and over time brain washed himself into believing it was a second letter from Watson, retracting the first--just as Hamblin had written--and even that Peterson had held the second letter from Elder Watson in Peterson's own hands, seeing it with his own eyes. Peterson went on to name 3 or 4 other apologists as there and have so witnessed it too.

Alas, Hamblin had the temerity to set Peterson straight, in public on another board, explaining that the so-called Second Watson Letter was in fact just the Ogden Fax. And so, when Peterson crows about his steadfast days of challenging for decades what others claimed to be Mormon beliefs ("X"), we know how easily Peterson can delude himself into believing damn near anything.

Tis' the season, Peterson, to be jolly! Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la

[Markk]

Dan’s characterization aside, I think he’s absolutely right about evangelical apologetics. There aren’t any interesting new arguments about Mormonism coming from them.

I'm not sure why there would be in regards to EV apologetics, they can only expound as LDS truth claims are "discovered" and debunked, which is mostly done by history, archeology and from within. Today the truth claims are mostly just being refined and organized. The series on race on Mormon Stories is a perfect example.

Another example might be Mormonism Live....more and more their podcasts are not exactly breaking news and exciting. It is not their fault at all, it is that they are running out of ways to dress the pig. The same here, Dr, Scratches year end top ten is not exactly breath taking, they used to be really interesting....and LoL, discussing some mentally disturbed women accusing John Dehlin of sexual misbehavior is the most popular subject here. One of the recent posts here is that the Interpreter is running out of content and repeating their selves.

What Dan is arguing, I guess, is kind of like Bill Buckner going back and analyzing why he lost the game for his team. At some point (after it happened) he just had to accept the loss. Maybe that is a lame example, but for me, having lived through Mormonism, all those early debates and discoveries about the skewed truth claims, the old forums, the fall of the FARMs type of Mopololgy, the rise of the internet and instant answers to just about anything Mormon, it makes perfect sense to me. They lost, and he was the captain. I totally understand why he would not be interested in watching the game film, just like Bill Buckner not wanting to look at this....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18caPNisP2U

[drumdude]

I think that’s exactly right. But I also keep in mind Mormonism is a relatively new religion, so I think there is still some meat left on the bone to discuss. The speed of the internet makes more information available, but also speeds up the dissemination and discussion of that information.

We are basically at the point of diminishing returns compared to 20 years ago when Mormonism was just beginning to confront the Internet age.

[Philo Sofee]

With the caveat that no Orthodoxy anywhere has ever arrived at the truth, I would agree here.......maybe not even an established Christianity as a formal religion per se. Is there such a thing as "spiritual Christianity"? Heck I dunno........ formal religions in my mind have lost the war, but has spirituality? I'm mulling it over.........

I am talking purely in terms of being the original Christianity. I am someone who believes that Jesus did not start a church, and that there really was no Christian (proto-)orthodoxy of any kind until the second century CE.

Fair enough,. I am with ya on this.......

[Doctor Scratch]

Some devastating posts, Markk. I’m struck by the fundamental hypocrisy of his response to you: on the one hand, he is cracking self-deprecating jokes about how “unlikable” he is, but in the other, he’s denying your very reasonable assertion that people dislike him because of the way he has treated them. I can’t help but wonder: what does he imagine the reason is why people dislike him so much? I’m genuinely curious about this.

On a side note: how nice that he’s had time to spend with his precious granddaughter. I wonder though: how would he feel if his granddaughter was “stalked” by a Louis Midgley-esque person? Let DCP look into his young granddaughter’s face and understand that his Good Pal Lou did something to someone who once was his granddaughter’s age.

I mean, what does he think or say to this? If he has integrity, then he would have to admit this his own innocent granddaughter would deserve the “smear treatment” if she dared say anything negative about the Church. Either that, or he needs to admit how misguided he has been.

[Markk]

My most recent reply. I have a major head cold hopefully it reads okay.

Markk:"I think you are more interested than you let onto"

Dan: I'm not. (Sorry.)

There are some interesting Evangelical Protestant thinkers out there whom I try to follow -- William Lane Craig, for example, and Paul Copan and Peter Enns and a number of others -- but I'm unaware of any very interesting Evangelical Protestant anti-Mormons.

Markk: Your answer here is exactly one reason why folks don't like you. I doubt you realize how pompous it comes across. If one reads your posts as a Thurston Howell III, it fits. I don't mean that in a way of trying to be funny, but as a reason you are not respected in the ex-Mormon community.

Dan: No, it isn't. I brought it up to illustrate the actual point of my post, which was a response to people who try to tell other people what they believe. The impetus for my post, the point of which appears to have sailed right past you, was a recent instance of someone purporting to tell Muslims what they believe.

Markk: Dan you need to focus here, your delivery is very condescending and the perception is that because you have a degree, you are superior to all the "little people" out there. You have had a long history of telling folks what they really believe, you did it often on the old boards telling folks that said they were Christians, correcting them and telling them "what type of Christian" they are.

Your post is a perfect example, you even wrote a book about it if I recall. "Evangelical Protestant anti-Mormons." You tell me, what is that. I fellowship most often in a Evangelical setting of fellowship. I am certainly not anti-Mormon, I Love my Mormon family and friends. And, right or wrong, I believe I am a Christian based on how I interpret the Bible. And I believe core LDS theology is not Christian theology, not remotely. In other words you want to define and categorize a group of people and label them as uninteresting. We all do it Dan, claiming by perception you are a victim of this by others, when you do it yourself.

Markk:"Remember your statement of sorts that there would an army of apologists against the EV's and anti's from the World Table?"

Dan: No

Mark: Let me remind You

..." Now, that was a very long and incompetent lead up to what I’m trying to introduce; which is something I’m quite excited about, something that some of us have been involved with for a while now called “The World Table.” You can see it up here on the screen. This is a chance; I’m calling upon members of the Church to become an army of apologists, to go online as Elder Ballard has asked us to do, to bear testimony, to share videos from the Mormon video series the Church produces and other places. There are all sorts of resources we can use. ..."

It seems to me that would be fairly hard to dis-remember. Do you remember that you had one of the lowest scores and that the folks there suspended you? It is not so much for what you wrote, but more of how you wrote it.