DCP Admits to "LDS Academic Embarrassment"

[_the road to hana]

I will say it again: Legit and secular are not synonymous. You obviously cannot tell the difference bewteen the two, and until you can there is no point in even discussing it with you.

Perhaps you'd be safer confining your comments to two topics, Charity--the weather (Chinese smog excepted), and everyone's health.

[_Sethbag]

Charity, Education Week speeches at BYU don't count. ;-)

[_charity]

Charity, Education Week speeches at BYU don't count. ;-)

I thought you guys operated pretty much in the dark. This proves it. Book of Mormon Lands Conference. The FAIR conference always includes some Book of Mormon topic. And you really should repeat over and over until you undertatnd the concept--"Legitimate and secular are not the same thing"

[_the road to hana]

I thought you guys operated pretty much in the dark. This proves it. Book of Mormon Lands Conference.

The one where they give out the "Father Lehi" and "Mother Sariah" awards?

[_beastie]

Charity,

The point is that embedded within LDS truth claims are secular claims that have nothing to do with religion. For example, the claim that the Book of Mormon is an ancient Mesoamerican text. These are claims that the larger world would have intense interest in due to the incredible knowledge a 500 plus page text would reveal about that world.

Another secular claim is that one can use a stone to see buried treasures. Again, if true, this would be of remarkable interest to the larger world.

These are rightfully called secular claims because, while they are involved with religion, they are claims that are completely within the realm of secular academia.

Another example - the claims of some EVs that the world is 6,000 years old is a secular claim that can rightfully be analyzed by the secular community.

[_charity]

I thought you guys operated pretty much in the dark. This proves it. Book of Mormon Lands Conference.

The one where they give out the "Father Lehi" and "Mother Sariah" awards?

And you know, they even had lunch. But that wasn't what the conference was about. Take a little nap on your hammock and when you wake up you won't feel so mean and grumpy.

[_Mister Scratch]

Oh, really? When was the last time you received an issue of even, say, National Geographic containing an article by DCP which discussed the validity of the Book of Mormon as a historical document? When was the last time Bill Hamblin, or any other Mopologist, presented this kind of stuff at a legit academic conference? (No: FARMS/FAIR does not count.)

Just becauseyou can't recognize a legitmate academic conference from a walnut doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

??? C'mon, Charity. You know nothing about my academic status. Further, I am still waiting for you---or anyone else---to provide evidence that frankly LDS positions have been advanced in legit academic venues.

I will say it again: Legit and secular are not synonymous. You obviously cannot tell the difference bewteen the two, and until you can there is no point in even discussing it with you.

This is all beside the point. Some claims forwarded by LDS apologists are secular in their implications. For example, claiming that vast hordes of Nephites and Lamanites once roamed North America, is, in effect, a secular claim, and it should therefore be subject to scrutiny in what I have referred to as "legit" academic venues. This has never happened, though. (At least not so far as I know.) There is nothing fundamentally "religious" about the claim that Nephites lived in North America.

[_Nomomo]

DCP

Mormons themselves have historically entertained all sorts of folk notions about the Book of Mormon that are not sustainable from the text. (Look at Arnold Friberg's paintings, for example. Try to deduce that cyclopean wall on which Samuel the Lamanite stands from anything in the Book of Mormon itself.) If one compares an expert knowledge of Mayan studies with a hasty reading of the Book of Mormon, coupled with some folk ideas about how to read it -- Mike Coe grew up in Wyoming, knowing Mormons -- one's comparison will suffer to that extent.

DPC isn't insulting Coe here, he's insulting the simpleton Mormons Coe grew up around... the ones who actually believed the same things about the Book of Mormon that the simpleton Joseph Smith believed.

I would beg to differ as delusional as Joseph Smith was I do not for one minute believe that he was unaware he was lying his butt off.

[_guy sajer]

Charity, Education Week speeches at BYU don't count. ;-)

I thought you guys operated pretty much in the dark. This proves it. Book of Mormon Lands Conference. The FAIR conference always includes some Book of Mormon topic. And you really should repeat over and over until you undertatnd the concept--"Legitimate and secular are not the same thing"

Now here you are, Charity, the person who assumed the air of expert on statistical methods and lectured us about the difference between correlation and causation, but who a day or so later demonstrated that she actually had no clue as to the real difference was; here you are again pretending you know didly squat about academic scholarship? I guess your MA in psych and the assorted Master’s Thesis committees you sat on in make you an expert on academic scholarship?

Give me an f'n break.

The point about presenting works at a Mormon conference, regardless of from where the participants might have earned their Ph.D.'s is that no one there will question the underlying framework of the papers--that there was a rather good sized, advanced, steel-forging, horse-riding, Christ-worshiping, wheeled technology, barley growing, elephant taming Hebrew civilization in the Americas circa 600 BCE to 400 CE. A "legitimate" scholar would not be afraid to subject this underlying framework to experts in the relevant scientific disciplines and to present the evidence he/she has in support of this framework. That those who hold this framework only present papers, research, ideas, theses, etc. to others who hold the same framework, and who therefore will not question it, is not the work of "legitimate" scholarship. It is counterfeit scholarship.

A real scholar with real evidence to back his/her theories, research, and conclusions, will expose it to the light of day of academic critique via legitimate and mainstream peer reviewed outlets so that experts in the relevant field can subject the framework, and its conclusions, to informed scrutiny.

If I am an "expert" on alien abduction, but I write solely for others who also believe in alien abductions, and I present only at venues where everyone is sympathetic to alien abductions, and even though I am smart, write well, and make great arguments based on the underlying framework that alien abductions are real, but I avoid mainstream scientific journals and venues like the plague, and I encase myself in a bubble of like-minded persons who will not ever critique my framework, although they may critique other aspects of my work, how the hell does this make me a legitimate scholar?

Charity, you are clearly out of your league here.

You really should repeat over and over until you understand the concept, “I know squat about academic scholarship.”

[_ludwigm]

Oh, really? When was the last time you received an issue of even, say, National Geographic containing an article by DCP which discussed the validity of the Book of Mormon as a historical document? When was the last time Bill Hamblin, or any other Mopologist, presented this kind of stuff at a legit academic conference? (No: FARMS/FAIR does not count.)

Just becauseyou can't recognize a legitmate academic conference from a walnut doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

??? C'mon, Charity. You know nothing about my academic status. Further, I am still waiting for you---or anyone else---to provide evidence that frankly LDS positions have been advanced in legit academic venues.

I will say it again: Legit and secular are not synonymous. You obviously cannot tell the difference bewteen the two, and until you can there is no point in even discussing it with you.

To introduce myself: I have no credentials in egyptology, history, acheology and a lot of others.
I have diploms/diplomas (take Your pick) in microwave technology, radar systems, communication technology, digital technology, operation systems, and pedagogy. I was teacher in the army's high school (called college in US), academy and university, and one of the three highest radar-expert in Hungary. (OK, Hungary is a little country and air-defence is not the most important area of the life. Only for the records: in the Manhattan project was more hungarian than any other nation, and the first radar echo from the Moon was produced by my fellow countrymen.)
I have no PhD, I'm only a docent (It is equivalent to reader in the UK and the associate professor in USA.)
In my life I did'New Testament collect titles but knowledge.
1.
No scientific institution - which take itself seriously - will deal a document, which
- was produced by angelic guidance (was it Nephi or Moroni?)
- was translated by seer stone or by Urim-Thummim (nota bene what is it exactly?)
- was brought back by an angel (to where? how?)
Of course, in a country, where state and church are independent, and the president prays for rain, everything is possible. (If he were african, he may dance around the fire.)
Book of Mormon scientists of BYU may find one forum outside of their campus.
2.
"... recognize a legitmate academic conference from a walnut doesn't mean it doesn't exist"
Yes, walnut exists. It is in that advantageous status.