who is this?

[_The Dude]

http://religion.BYU.edu/sing_fac.php?f=Terry&l=Ball

Looks like he is a "full grown" Dean of Religion at BYU.

[_Trevor]

"The key to proving the Book of Mormon ancient is phytolith systematics. I s**t you not!" -Terry Ball

[_Sethbag]

Nibley wasn't a mental midget. But he was operating with half his brain tied behind his back, because his efforts were constrained by the self-imposed requirement that they support the truthfulness of a fundamentally untrue proposition, ie: that Joseph Smith was really a true prophet, who really translated authentically ancient texts, which were accurate records of people who really existed, doing things that really happened.

Faced with that impossible task, he probably did about as well as he could.

Indeed. He would have been humbled to even stand in your presence, or touch the hem of your garment, sethbag.

There's no need to exaggerate and invent a straw man about me. I'm just telling you that the LDS church isn't true. I'm not setting myself up as anything at all.

Go back to what I said before and ask yourself the question: how would things look if the LDS Church really weren't true and Hugh Nibley were just spending all his energies trying to defend it and support belief in it out of some kind of personal investment that he was unable or unwilling to give up? Would it look any different than it actually does look? I would say no, it wouldn't.

And consider seriously what I said about brilliant Catholic apologists with PhDs. What's really the difference between Nibley and these folks? What if you consider some Catholic PhD apologist with an IQ of like 150+, fluent in a zillion languages, well-read in all of the ancient scriptural documents, etc. How do you think this guy manages to maintain belief, and even work hard to support the belief of others, in the Catholic Church? Isn't it painfully obvious to you that the Catholic Church isn't really true? How come Dr. Joe Genius at Notre Dame can't see that?

Hugh Nibley was one really smart apologist for a manmade religion, from a long tradition and roster of very smart apologists for manmade religions. To deny that it was possible for Nibley to have been so smart and yet to have been wrong about his religion, you really have to demonstrate that this kind of thing just doesn't happen, and far from being able to do that, one could find tons of such people throughout history.

Brilliant Muslim apologists or whatever, don't defend all the same positions Nibley did, as you well know. There are very bright scientists who disagree on things like global warming. This does not show that none of them are correct in their opinions, however, or that one is not closer to truth than another. I'm sure you're aware of this.

Ah, so the true, "big picture" difference between someone like Nibley and a super smart genius Muslim scholar is that they're defending different claims. Ah, I get it - it's so obvious. Actually no, I don't get it. What's your point? Of course they're different. And a genius Catholic scholar defends the worship of the Virgin Mary, and transubstantiation, and Nibley didn't. What's your point? That citing the existence of brilliant scholars who defend or defended manmade churches is meaningless because, after all, Nibley's church really was true, and theirs weren't? You fail to see the whole point.

[_Sethbag]

And I love how believers are always saying something like "there's never going to be a lot of evidence - that will force us to believe". What a crock. Evolution is a fact, but still not everyone believes it. I'd settle for 50/50 evidence at this point, not 1/1,000 evidence.

It is a fact about which scientists are still working out the details, of course. But you knew that.

Scientists are still working out the details of some of the mechanisms by which evolution occurs. But that evolution happened, somehow, is beyond dispute at this time. No credible biologist these days would try to deny that. If you're trying to bring up the fact that scientists are still working on evolutionary theory is somehow holding open the possibility that evolution may yet be shown to be completely wrong, then you should know that this is completely false and baseless. Evolution happened. Evolution explains the diversity of species. This is beyond dispute. At dispute are only some of the mechanisms by which this occurred.

[_LifeOnaPlate]

Scientists are still working out the details of some of the mechanisms by which evolution occurs. But that evolution happened, somehow, is beyond dispute at this time. No credible biologist these days would try to deny that.

Pretty much what I was saying.

If you're trying to bring up the fact that scientists are still working on evolutionary theory is somehow holding open the possibility that evolution may yet be shown to be completely wrong, then you should know that this is completely false and baseless.

I never so much as implied such a thing.

[_Sethbag]

Ok, that's good to know.