DCP, living in the past.

[huckelberry]

If nothing else, I guess this helps highlight that the vested interest in pedestalling witness testimony over evidence is multifaceted, and buttressing the Church isn't the only thing it is important for.

Have we taken time to consider that the 2nd Watson letter was taken by an angel into heaven, because of its divine importance?

I am puzzled, is there some sort of actual importance to this second letter, or is it fax or note lying on the desk?

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ..........the church view of Hill Cumorah kept fluid? Same as before and after.

[I Have Questions]

Since Hamblin is dead I think DCP has decided to just put his head in the sand on the issue. If DCP didn’t see it, then Bill certainly did. And Bill isn’t around to challenge anymore. No one is going to convince him that he and his former best friend were wrong even if there’s direct hard evidence.

Not even Watson himself testifying specifically that Peterson is wrong in his assertions about the communication can convince Peterson he is wrong about what Watson did or didn’t send. Suddenly first hand, eye witness testimony isn’t so important to Peterson…

[Marcus]

Query: If someone were to take another person's written work, and pass it off as their own, would that person be a liar?

Just a random question, totally unrelated to anything in this thread....

Funny, I was thinking exactly the same thing.

...I'm confident that I didn't lie in this particular case because I'm not a liar, in the same way that I'm confident, despite having no specific memory of any visit to a supermarket in 1993 that I didn't ride a unicycle to the grocery store in April of that year because I've never ridden a unicycle in my life... Lying isn't in my character. It isn't in my nature. I don't do it...

But we have objective evidence, repeated, objective evidence, that Peterson is willing to lie about who wrote the things he has published. Even when faced with the literal evidence of his plagiarism, including the many times he re-plagiarized things that had already been caught, he refuses to admit his lies. Instead, he considers himself a victim of the person who documented his plagiarism. He says her documentation was an "attack" on him.

So, lying is absolutely in his character. It is absolutely in his nature. Unequivocally.

[drumdude]

I saw it briefly, once, in his office. It may have arrived shortly before; it was still atop the surface stratum of his book- and paper-strewn work space. That was it. And that's why I say that I'm not in a position to say much more about it.

By the way, one of your fellow cast members over at the Peterson Obsession Board apparently imagines that, in saying that I know that I didn't lie in the matter because I'm not a liar, I'm announcing that truth is relative, that truth is simply whatever I say it is. But, as he typically does, he misunderstands: I'm confident that I didn't lie in this particular case because I'm not a liar, in the same way that I'm confident, despite having no specific memory of any visit to a supermarket in 1993, that I didn't ride a unicycle to the grocery store in April of that year because I've never ridden a unicycle in my life. Similarly, if somebody reports having seen me drunk in 1993 I can firmly reply that the report isn't true because I've never consumed alcohol even once. Lying isn't in my character. It isn't in my nature. I don't do it. And, if anything, Bill Hamblin was straightforward, candid, and honest to a fault. He didn't lie.

Could there have been a mistake? I don't know. Maybe. But Bill is gone, and I have no idea who the proofreader for his article was, thirty-two years ago. Nor would that person, even if located, likely have any specific memory about the "correspondence."

Let me see if my simple brain can parse Dan's argument.

1) Dan asserts X
2) Dan never lies
3) Therefore X is probably still true in spite of all evidence to the contrary

And the only person who can offer any evidence against Dan's position is conveniently dead.

Q.E.D.

This is another really great insight into DCP's worldview. You can believe something to be true, even when Watson himself (The AUTHOR of the dang letter!) says its false, and you're not a liar. This is the reliability of eyewitness testimony folks. Eyewitnesses will continue to assert falsehoods, against all evidence to the contrary.

No one likes to admit they're wrong. Not the Book of Mormon witnesses, not Dan Peterson. And it's on full display here.

So irritated have I become by repeated accusations that I'm a liar or that I'm losing my mind, that I actually did call the Office of the First Presidency yesterday, and a secretary there was kind enough to search through their records for me. I gave her the 1993 date. This was fine, she said, since the records of their correspondence go back to 1987. When she called back, though, she said that she was unable to find any such letter on that date in 1993, or on any date in the vicinity, although she had looked under Hamblin, Hall, and FARMS. I found this extremely puzzling, and so, she said, did she, because, she told me, the language I had reported to her sounds very much like a standard letter that they have sent out for many years now.

So I wrote to Bill and asked him, again, whether there was any chance that I was misremembering. My memory on certain things was distinct: I knew that I had seen and read and held the letter, and that it was a letter, and that it was a letter from Michael Watson.

As I've said before, though, I wasn't clear as to exactly how Professor Hamblin had made contact with Michael Watson. I had assumed that he had written to him shortly before I saw the letter, but I was always a bit hazy on that.

Now (cue drum roll), Professor Hamblin has just surprised me with something that I hadn't known, and hadn't suspected: "You are senile," he writes from Cordoba, Spain (my emphasis). "I published the letter in 1993. However, I received it while still in graduate school =before 1985."

This will certainly give rise to a whole new flurry of accusations of deception, incompetence, and etc. The Maxwell Institute is about to fall, and blah blah blah. I'm sure I'll be accused of lying, as will Professor Hamblin. We're only in it for the money. We'll say absolutely anything, because we have no integrity, etc., and etc.

I simply report the facts as they are known (or become known) to me.

According to Wikipedia, F. Michael Watson was secretary to the First Presidency from 1986 until his call as a General Authority in 2008, but had served as an assistant secretary to the First Presidency from 1972-1986.

Incidentally, the secretary reported that somebody else had called them and requested a search for the letter about a year ago, and that the office had failed to find the "1993" letter at that time, too. It wasn't yours truly, and, so far as I'm aware, it wasn't Professor Hamblin. My bet is that it was my Malevolent Stalker, or somebody of that ilk. But who knows?

As to why the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies apparently gives the date of the Carla Ogden fax as the date of the letter from Michael Watson, I could not begin to say. I am not, and have never been, the editor of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies.

And why did Michael Watson write something else to Bishop Brooks in 1990? Again, I cannot say. I simply report the facts as I know them or learn them. And then I'm accused of being a lying fool. That's pretty much how it works.

Two or three very vocal critics of FARMS, however, pretend to suspect that we made the letter up, attributing views to the First Presidency that they do not, in fact, hold, and that we brazenly published our forgery for all to see. ... I myself don’t doubt that there was such a letter. I held it in my own two little hands, and read it with my own two little eyes.

https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/46 ... p/page/24/

https://lehislibrary.wordpress.com/2009 ... on-letter/

https://www.mobom.org/1990-letter-on-cumorah

[huckelberry]

This tempist in a thimble is from 30 years ago?

Daniel was snooty to me on the Tanner message board a few times. I feel ok just letting it go.

[drumdude]

I don’t know the date for when critics started questioning the existence of the letter. But once it was known that the letter was “lost” by Hamblin, that started a chain of events to discover what had happened. Most of this seems to go back to around the 2009 period when Dan was still posting in message boards.

[Moksha]

Not even Watson himself testifying specifically that Peterson is wrong in his assertions about the communication can convince Peterson he is wrong about what Watson did or didn’t send. Suddenly first hand, eye witness testimony isn’t so important to Peterson…

The truth of the Interpreter Foundation is predicated on the existence of the 2nd Watson letter, and Dr. Peterson will not let Watson slam-dunk him on this point.

[Markk]

DCP's response to what I thought was my last post to him at his blog. My current remarks are added. I was ready to let the back and forth rest, and even removed a snarky post here. I'll cut and paste this to his blog and see if he allows it.

Dan: For the record, this is now the fourth time that you've thumbed your nose at my entirely civil request that you drop this subject.

Markk: "Fair enough Dan. You are not sure what you saw, if anything at all."

Dan: I'm quite confident that I didn't see nothing.

Then what did you see confidently? After all Dan, you did state rather confidently back in 2009 the following....

"I myself don’t doubt that there was such a letter. I held it in my own two little hands, and read it with my own two little eyes. Those for whom this is an issue, however, are entirely free to investigate, ..." cited in Lehi's Library blog, (18 April 2009). Cut and paste from FAIRLDS.

When we go to Lehi's Library Blog, we read in greater context:

William Hamblin obtained the original copy of this letter, and quotes it in an article he authored for the FARMS Review. Unfortunately, the original copy of this second letter has been lost. Some anti-Mormons believe that Hamblin and the other witnesses to the letter are lying about the existence of the letter. Dr. Daniel Peterson recently responded this way:

…Professor Hamblin and the FARMS Review source checker and the FARMS publications director and the FARMS Review production editor and I all saw it during the preparation of the article for publication. Two or three very vocal critics of FARMS, however, pretend to suspect that we made the letter up, attributing views to the First Presidency that they do not, in fact, hold, and that we brazenly published our forgery for all to see.

If they don’t believe that the letter ever existed, they should blow the whistle on the conspiracy down at BYU. What a triumph that would be for them! We would presumably all lose our jobs and maybe even our membership in the Church, and be forever discredited.

I myself don’t doubt that there was such a letter. I held it in my own two little hands, and read it with my own two little eyes. Those for whom this is an issue, however, are entirely free to investigate.

So we know you confidently wrote:

1. You held it in your hands as a "letter."
2. You read it as such, with your own eyes, as a "letter."
3. That confidently Professor Hamblin had in his possession an "original copy" of the "letter." You had no "doubt" that the "letter" existed.
4. Professor Hamblin quoted from a "letter" in the review.
5. That (5) people from FARM's, including you and Bill, saw the "letter" during the preparation process.
6. That you wrote a confident challenge to those that questioned the existence of the "copy" of the "original letter."

Yet as soon as yesterday, 12/27/24, you wrote on your own blog:

"Professor Hamblin's footnote refers to "Correspondence from Michael Watson, Office of the First Presidency, 23 April 1993." Was it long? I don't recall it being long. Was it an actual "letter"? Maybe. I recall a sheet of paper. Maybe a computer print-out."


You seem to have a better memory in regard to the reason why you "jokingly" added multiple K's to my forum name, than that of an original copy of a letter by the Secretary to the First Presidency, which supported a new and growing theory by FARM's of where the peoples of the Book of Mormon dwelled. in my opinion, I find that odd and very unlikely.

__________

https://lehislibrary.wordpress.com/2009 ... on-letter/

https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/ans ... battles%3F

{edit} I pasted the above at Dan's Blog....here is the receipt. Markk DanielPeterson a few seconds ago Hold on, this is waiting to be approved by Sic et Non.

[Doctor Scratch]

You deserve credit for hanging in there despite DCP’s repeated, bullying demands that you shut up about the topic.

Look: the issue is simple. He, Hamblin, and the other Mopologists maintained for years that they had a “2nd Watson Letter.” They did not. They never did. And critics were 100% correct to question the veracity of their assertions. Hamblin’s assertion in his footnote was, at best, a colossally incorrect error, and, at worst, a brazen and spectacular lie. And remember: DCP has always said that he “saw” the document that Hamblin was referring to.

[drumdude]

I looked at the "letter" in question for about a minute or less, roughly thirty-two years ago. It wasn't anything earth-shattering and it never occurred to me that I would need to carefully note every aspect of the document for precise recall during a cross-examination to be conducted a third of a century in the future. How well do you remember very brief and not especially important incidents from nearly a third of a century back? What did you have for lunch on, say, 23 April 1993? If you can't answer, are you lying? Are you engaged in a cover-up? Is your feigned lack of memory motivated by your pride and arrogance? (I'm borrowing from your vocabulary here.)

DCP doesn’t even trust the eyewitness testimony of DCP.

Why can’t he just refer back to his earlier, much stronger statements? He doesn’t know if it was even a letter now.

I guess this makes sense, Joseph Smith couldn’t even remember if God and Jesus were one person or two. So similar to not recalling what I had for breakfast 30 years ago.