"My Witnesses are Better Than Yours!": DCP Attacks the Strangites

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Doctor Scratch
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"My Witnesses are Better Than Yours!": DCP Attacks the Strangites

Post by Doctor Scratch »

Greetings, Friends and Colleagues! I hope you had an enjoyable holiday weekend. I don't know if you caught it, but a post appeared on "Sic et Non" a couple of days ago with a strange title: "What were the Voree Plates?" Oddly, the blog post has virtually nothing whatsoever to do with the plates, though the Proprietor helpfully posted an image of them along with the following caption:
An 1845 broadside depicting “The Record of Rajah Manchou of Vorito,” commonly known as the “Voree Plates,” which were allegedly discovered by James J. Strang and used to promote his leadership of the Latter Day Saint movement.
Obviously, Dr. Peterson doesn't believe the Strangite version of things--and this flies directly in the face of his pet Witnesses project--so this pretty clearly seems to be a kind of subtle swipe at the Strangites: implying in a sense that they are practicing a "false religion." I mean, imagine if, if response to his Witnesses stuff, someone kept posting items about the problematic veracity of UFO witnesses? Actually, we don't have to do that because we already know: he doesn't like it.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a poster down in the Comments inquired into the peculiarity of this blog entry:
FJ wrote:The Strangites have a very culturally rich and interesting history. I’ve recently met two Strangites and they were both very kind, knowledgeable, good and moral people. We share much historical commonalities and scripture with the Strangites.

My hope is that we can discuss their religion while showing their beliefs both honor and respect.

Daniel C. Peterson, I’m not sure if you are aware, but on their Wikipedia page, they are making the below assertion about you. Daniel, do you have a citation for your claim? Are the Strangites mistaken about this?

“Although there is no evidence to support them, several opponents from other Latter Day Saint churches have sought to cast doubt on the witness testimonies by claiming to have heard the witnesses deny their testimonies decades before. LDS Church apologist Daniel C. Peterson claims, without citing a source, that Samuel Graham admitted to helping Strang fabricate the plates.[12] Hearsay testimonies were commonly asserted to discredit the leaders of rival churches, including both James Strang and Joseph Smith.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/...
Huh. Very interesting. So, we've got a case where the Strangites have a "witnesses"-type scenario that in many ways mirrors the LDS version. And yet DCP is attacking this? Without citing any sources, no less? Quite problematic, no? In any case, Dr. Peterson responds:
DCP wrote:FJ: "Daniel C. Peterson, I’m not sure if you are aware, but on their Wikipedia page, they are making the below assertion about you. Daniel, do you have a citation for your claim? Are the Strangites mistaken about this?"

I wasn't aware.

FJ: "“Although there is no evidence to support them, several opponents from other Latter Day Saint churches have sought to cast doubt on the witness testimonies by claiming to have heard the witnesses deny their testimonies decades before. LDS Church apologist Daniel C. Peterson claims, without citing a source, that Samuel Graham admitted to helping Strang fabricate the plates.[12] Hearsay testimonies were commonly asserted to discredit the leaders of rival churches, including both James Strang and Joseph Smith.”

I expect that the reference is to a Deseret News column that I published quite a few years ago. I drew on two or three standard published biographies of J. J. Strang -- but there were no references because, like most newspaper columns, my columns never included footnotes. The biographies in question are in the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU. There's a new one out, though, that I haven't yet seen.
LOL. "The biographies in question are in the Harold B. Lee Library." Yeah, gee: is that the only place where they can be located? Surely one can purchase copies of these books--even if they're out of print. How about telling us the titles, Dr. Peterson? Heck: since you use your blog as a way of "taking notes," maybe this anti-Strangite viciousness can be found in a past blog entry?

Whatever the case may be, it appears that FJ's inquiry riled up Dr. Peterson so much that he put FJ into a "shadow ban" status:
FJ wrote:Daniel,

Have I been shadow banned for some reason?

If I log out, I can’t see my comments. Strange.
For the record--Dr. P. denies that he's done anything, but John Perry adds the following:
John Perry wrote:Here is a link to what is likely some of the references used by biographers regarding possible modern fabrication of the Voree plates:
https://www.fairlatterdaysa...

The main source appears to be Chauncey Lewis, and his claims were reproduced in 1888 in the then-RLDS periodical, The Saints' Herald.

As an aside, I can see FJ's comments when I pull up your blog on my iPad, but not on my laptop computer, which still lists them as "Content unavailable".
Look: if Dr. Peterson is going to be an anti-Strangite, then I think the least he can do is provide the source for his attacks on this faith. Or, he could just acknowledge that, like his own precious "Witnesses," the Strangites also have witnesses that saw miraculous things of their own.
"If, while hoping that everybody else will be honest and so forth, I can personally prosper through unethical and immoral acts without being detected and without risk, why should I not?." --Daniel Peterson, 6/4/14
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Re: "My Witnesses are Better Than Yours!": DCP Attacks the Strangites

Post by drumdude »

I don’t think Dan shadow banned him. I can see his comments just fine. Dan is wrong about a lot of things but he’s telling the truth about Disqus doing bizarre things that are out of his control sometimes.
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Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: "My Witnesses are Better Than Yours!": DCP Attacks the Strangites

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

FJ: "Have I been shadow banned for some reason?"

DCP: No. Not by me, anyway.
Does Dan have more than one person who has admin or mod privileges on his blog?

- Doc
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
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Rivendale
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Re: "My Witnesses are Better Than Yours!": DCP Attacks the Strangites

Post by Rivendale »

It is baked into Mormonism. Whenever a concrete physical source is needed it evaporates. Gold plates....gone. Metal artifacts from ancient wars that had millions of participants ...gone. Horse skeletons....gone. Breastplate and sword of Laban.....gone. Urim and thummin.......gone. Hey Dan where is the biographies? Gone/hidden/ ...... And worse? Dan needs to read The Outsider's Test for Faith by John Loftus to gain a little epistemic humility.
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Dr Moore
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Re: "My Witnesses are Better Than Yours!": DCP Attacks the Strangites

Post by Dr Moore »

I am sure that a good Mopologist knows just where to look in order to invalidate all of the Strangite witnesses. And just what to ignore that supports those witnesses. It’s simple. Just do the opposite of what they’ve done for the Mormon witnesses.
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Doctor Scratch
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Re: "My Witnesses are Better Than Yours!": DCP Attacks the Strangites

Post by Doctor Scratch »

Dr Moore wrote:
Tue Jul 05, 2022 10:35 pm
I am sure that a good Mopologist knows just where to look in order to invalidate all of the Strangite witnesses. And just what to ignore that supports those witnesses. It’s simple. Just do the opposite of what they’ve done for the Mormon witnesses.
Yes: I would say that it’s hard to believe that the Mopologists attack other faiths, given their stated mission, and yet it’s not hard to believe at all. The Mopologists have no shame.
"If, while hoping that everybody else will be honest and so forth, I can personally prosper through unethical and immoral acts without being detected and without risk, why should I not?." --Daniel Peterson, 6/4/14
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Everybody Wang Chung
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Re: "My Witnesses are Better Than Yours!": DCP Attacks the Strangites

Post by Everybody Wang Chung »

DCP wrote:The biographies in question are in the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU.
His source is located in the Harold B. Lee library? Seriously? Good grief. You can't make this stuff up, folks.

It's starting to look like his upcoming film project, 6 Days in August is going to be a hit piece on the Community of Christ and the Strangites.

DCP has publicly attacked Calvinism, Scientology, Community of Christ, Evangelicalism and has made numerous derogatory statements about the Jews. I guess it's par for the course that DCP is now claiming the Strangite faith is fraudulent.
"I'm on paid sabbatical from BYU in exchange for my promise to use this time to finish two books."

Daniel C. Peterson, 2014
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Re: "My Witnesses are Better Than Yours!": DCP Attacks the Strangites

Post by Gadianton »

Here's their website:

https://www.ldsstrangite.com/about-us.html

seem like decent people to me.
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Re: "My Witnesses are Better Than Yours!": DCP Attacks the Strangites

Post by drumdude »

Daniel claims that the reason there are no footnotes is because a newspaper article is not the proper place to include footnotes.

But Daniel chose in 2017 to copy the article verbatim into a larger Interpreter piece about Witnesses. Footnotes are found throughout the piece, as is appropriate for something published in what we are told is a scholarly journal.

But footnotes are again completely absent to back up Daniel's claim.

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.o ... ecularism/

Page XX
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Re: "My Witnesses are Better Than Yours!": DCP Attacks the Strangites

Post by drumdude »

Fortunately Dan did include the footnote the first time he gave this talk, in 2006.

https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp- ... terson.pdf
See Roger Van Noord, King of Beaver Island: The Life and Assassination of James Jesse Strang
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 33-35, 97, 102, 163, 219; Doyle C. Fitzpatrick, The King
Strang Story: A Vindication of James J. Strang, the Beaver Island Mormon [sic] King (Lansing, MI:
National Heritage, 1970), 34-38; Milo M. Quaife, The Kingdom of Saint James: A Narrative of the
Mormons [sic] (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1930), 2-8, 16-19, 92-93, 185-189.
Available for free here:

https://archive.org/details/kingofbeave ... 3/mode/2up
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Daniel Peterson wrote:Another, Samuel Graham, later claimed that he had assisted Strang in the fabrication of the “Plates of Laban.”
Daniel Peterson's citation wrote:According to one apostle, Graham and his family eventually were cut off from the church after he "grew fainthearted when he saw the Saints enforcing the laws of the kingdom." Ironically, Graham testified in Detroit that he had been Strang's assistant in translating the Plates of Laban into the laws of the kingdom. And one former follower of Strang said Graham later claimed that he and Strang had fabricated those eighteen plates.
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