Apologist Atrocities

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bill4long
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Re: Apologist Atrocities

Post by bill4long »

Last night I listened to Dan Vogel's take down of the Mule-deer (as I call him) over the Book of Abraham documents.

And the utter straw man B.S. of it all.

OMG.

As Brother Kerry Shirts (BYP) says, Brother Dan is a One Man Wrecking Crew.

It's like a pit bull shredding a skunk.

True intellectual bloodsport at it's finest

Thanks Brother Dan!

--Bill
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dan vogel
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Re: Apologist Atrocities

Post by dan vogel »

Thanks for watching and commenting. I appreciate it.
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Kishkumen
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Re: Apologist Atrocities

Post by Kishkumen »

I would say that the greatest apologetic atrocities must be the endless litany of online attacks on doubting and questioning members of the Church that went on for years. Imagine your world being turned upside down when you learn Mormonism may not be what you thought. You look for help from LDS apologists and get punched in the gut repeatedly by them and sent packing. That happened countless times online.

Also, the horrible book reviews of the FROB, which were used to trash decent scholarship and wage ideological war on liberal Mormons. The publication of the FROB on BYU campus was a much worse travesty. Imagine waging holy war from the campus of an accredited modern university! Well, I was not sad to see that come to an end. Interpreter still publishes horrible reviews on occasion, but at least they are not doing so under the aegis of BYU.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
Philo Sofee
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Re: Apologist Atrocities

Post by Philo Sofee »

bill4long wrote:
Thu Mar 17, 2022 3:38 pm
Last night I listened to Dan Vogel's take down of the Mule-deer (as I call him) over the Book of Abraham documents.

And the utter straw man B.S. of it all.

OMG.

As Brother Kerry Shirts (BYP) says, Brother Dan is a One Man Wrecking Crew.

It's like a pit bull shredding a skunk.

True intellectual bloodsport at it's finest

Thanks Brother Dan!

--Bill
I finished watching that one last night as well, again, and got up to episode 7 in his Book of Abraham series. That is the best video series on the Book of Abraham, the papyri and GAEL in existence. Detailed, not boring, educational not pedantic, enlightening not frightening, straight forward not ad hominem. Everything you want in a series of videos all in once package. Tremendously helpful and well done! Bravo Dan Vogel!
Marcus
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Re: Apologist Atrocities

Post by Marcus »

dan vogel wrote:
Wed Mar 16, 2022 4:41 pm
Philo Sofee wrote:
Mon Mar 14, 2022 1:00 pm
For me, since it is the subject most exercising me right now, it is John Gee splicing and dicing the witnesses to the papyri in illegal (unscholarly, unethical) ways in order to get them to look like they are saying something they are not. You cannot take the first half of one witness's description, and the second half of another witness's description and splice them together to mean something that neither witness ever said or meant. That methodology is so wrong it's not even wrong.

The second most heinous thing apologists have done is simply copy the above method in their own publications without looking into what the witnesses themselves said, but just trusting their own scholar associates. The three most egregious guilty are Michael Dennis Rhodes, John Gee, and Kerry Muhlstein. It is or has become inbred scholarship.
"The three most egregious guilty are Michael Dennis Rhodes, John Gee, and Kerry Muhlstein. It is or has become inbred scholarship." I like that. It perfectly describes their method and goals.
I agree completely, and would add Smoot. I read an article a while back, supporting Gee’s nonsense about papyrus lengths. Of course, you always have to check the footnotes and of course the author (muhlstein I think) had chopped up a reference, stringing together different parts that made it seem like the referenced paper was saying something it clearly was not. There is no way that kind of manipulation can happen by accident, and it’s incredibly dishonest. Peer review should have caught that flagrant dishonesty but it didn’t (yes, it was Peterson’s Interpreter). This has happened so many times that I have absolutely no faith that a mopologist paper will be academically honest. What a reputation for Mormon writers to get, but, it has happened too many times.
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Re: Apologist Atrocities

Post by Philo Sofee »

Marcus wrote:
Fri Mar 18, 2022 4:05 pm
dan vogel wrote:
Wed Mar 16, 2022 4:41 pm


"The three most egregious guilty are Michael Dennis Rhodes, John Gee, and Kerry Muhlstein. It is or has become inbred scholarship." I like that. It perfectly describes their method and goals.
I agree completely, and would add Smoot. I read an article a while back, supporting Gee’s nonsense about papyrus lengths. Of course, you always have to check the footnotes and of course the author (muhlstein I think) had chopped up a reference, stringing together different parts that made it seem like the referenced paper was saying something it clearly was not. There is no way that kind of manipulation can happen by accident, and it’s incredibly dishonest. Peer review should have caught that flagrant dishonesty but it didn’t (yes, it was Peterson’s Interpreter). This has happened so many times that I have absolutely no faith that a mopologist paper will be academically honest. What a reputation for Mormon writers to get, but, it has happened too many times.
This is my conclusion as well. And, astoundingly enough we have literally HORDES of MOUNTAINS of evidences to show the Mormon scholars are apologists, not scholars. The difference has become V-A-S-T between the two. And all because they cannot mature enough to get past Nibley's ghost, who proposed the singular most heinous thing of them all, method doesn't matter, just getting the the "right answer" is all that matters.
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MsJack
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Re: Apologist Atrocities

Post by MsJack »

I'm not sure I'd call anything here an "atrocity" but in terms of extremely poor behavior:
BA, Classics, Brigham Young University
MA, American Religious History, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
PhD Student, Church History, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
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