Do Apologists Want to Destroy Critics' Lives?

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Doctor Scratch,

I'm sure I won't be able to give the merited attention to such a serious charge as the one you made deserves, for I'm shortly out the door to work with the indigent and otherwise downtrodden in our moderately metropolitan city, but your acuity has spurred a thought within me about the vanguard that protects aged and in some cases senile men who self-invest in power.

A soapbox if I may...

In an article for Slate magazine Mr. Christopher Hitchens quotes an Iranian friend and confidant of his who describes fascism as "Lots of splotchy boys who can't get a date are given guns and told they're special." What a lucid observation! I can only imagine the parallels we might draw between those “splotchy boys with guns” and gentlemen empowered to destroy and discredit anyone who ideologically (and thus financially) threatens their organization.

There exists a vanguard of thugs in every fascistic institution to protect the anointed. This is a standard procedure for every organization or government who is inclined toward totalitarianism. The world was consecrated for and on behalf of the Mormon Church by previous Mormon leaders under divine mandate. Brigham Young had his Danites, and I suppose today’s Mormon Church has its intellectual assassins on call to quell dissent and restore order.

This particularly zealot-y religious organization that fires Brigham Young professors who show political dissent, excommunicates women simply for wanting equality, or dismissing a historiographer for refusing to whitewash his relatively benign findings continues to insulate itself through the use of a cabal of character assassins, rumormongers, and an aggressive members who are intent on obeying their prophet.

I would love to take the time to draw some parallels between the Church of Scientology and the Mormon Church, however inner duty beckons and sandwiches must be distributed on this fair summer night. I most look forward to your continued and pointed observations on this important matter.

Good night.

Very Respectfully,

Doctor CamNC4Me

[_Uncle Dale]

Either I'm totally missing their subtle slings and arrows -- or others are imagining them.

Comments?

Dale R. Broadhurst
The Thinking Mormon's Anti-Mormon

Hi there, Dale. For one thing, I think your tongue-in-cheek "title" (i.e., "The Thinking Mormon's Anti-Mormon") is actually pretty accurate.

I try to only get in fist fights with the eggheads -- they're generally less burly
and less experienced in fisticuffs.

You aren't seen as a threat to "the cause" at all.

Oh, I think you misunderstimate the Utahans -- they just know when to give credibility
and when to avoid giving credibility (by avoiding engagement).

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't your main "anti-Mormon" area of study the Spalding Theory?
If so, DCP has summarily dismissed it is "silly nonsense," or something to that effect.

Only in recent years -- it was a hobby-study for a while -- then I dropped it for several years
and only got back into the subject as a staunch advocate recently.

My "anti" credentials go back to the late 1840s and 1850s -- anti-Political Kingdom, anti-Gathering,
anti-Polygamy, anti-Blood Oaths, anti-Adam/God, anti-Blood Atonement, anti-Danites -- all the
traditional Reorganized LDS crusades.

The bottom line is that the apologists aren't the least bit worried about the Spalding theory affecting anyone's testimony. They are far more concerned---as is probably obvious---with critiques aimed at the Book of Abraham, ala Metcalfe's work.

If that's the case, then they are viewing a deceptive facade. I can live with or without a theory
for Book of Mormon conspiracy authorship; but I cannot live with the joining of Church and State.
If I distract folks with the Spalding side-show, then fine and dandy -- but its only an exterior.

Also: you've never been LDS, right?

Had an LDS Grandmother and Great Grandparents -- LDS uncles, aunts, and cousins beyond
my ability to keep track of. My late father was raised in a 100% LDS environment, but somehow
avoided baptism. As for myself, I took after the "Josephite side of the family."

Folks like Infymus, Metcalfe, Steve Benson, and Mike Quinn all *were* LDS at one time, so apologists treat them with a lot more hostility and venom. Finally: you tend to be a very calm poster. Even if you were being provoked, I rather doubt that you'd finally wind up using profanity, and thus the apologists don't have that sort of "dirt" to sling at you.

There must be something revelatory in that last sentence. Jerald Tanner was not prone to
cursing either -- had a wonderfully calm demeanor. But he and his wife always got hit by the
flung mudpies that I side-stepped. So it wasn't "calmness" that separated me from Jerald.
It must have been something else.

I recall the "old days" when Mike Marquardt was barred from the LDS Archives. I'd go in with
a "to-do list" for him, and when I paid my photocopying fees at the end of the day, I'd tell
the Mormons there who it was that I'd be handing over the material to. They just smiled.

I think the Tanners destroyed their own reputations among the Mopologists -- as did Walter Martin,
John L. Smith, Ed Decker, and a bunch of others from past decades. They didn't need the LDS to
"wound" them; because they continually did things to "wound" themselves.

UD

[_Doctor Scratch]

I think it's only fair to point out that Infymus has 42 entries on DCP at The Mormon Curtain, and the correspondence was initially sparked by one of those entries.

Ray---

You're quite right. DCP (If I recall correctly) contacted Infymus in order to request that Infymus eliminate the point that DCP is paid by BYU to do apologetics. This was where The Good Professor, rather famously, declared that "not one dime of [his] salary" came from apologetics. Well, we now know this is a whopper. In fact, over $20,000 of his teaching salary was diverted over to his Chairmanship of FARMS. Retrospectively, then, it was DCP who contacted Infymus in order to try and perpetuate this falsehood about apologists not receiving money.

All that said---you do have a point, Ray. Infymus is an aggressive critic.

It's not as if this is a case of David and Goliath. Did DCP have any other reason to initiate an attack on Infymus?

I'm not sure. My sense is that The Mormon Curtain had begun to draw attention (it covers a whole range of ex-Mormon topics; I think you'll agree that it is among the most in-depth clearinghouses for ex-Mormon-related information), and that's why DCP emailed Infymus. While he (i.e., DCP) used the occasion to try and diffuse the (at base true) claim that he gets paid for apologetics, I'm sure that he was also interested in trying to bait and attack Infymus, perhaps in the hopes of getting material for SHIELDS.

Can he control Google priority? Seriously, Doctor, did you expect DCP to say something like, "I'm really concerned about Infymus' job", "so I'll just let him publicly smear me all he wants"? On a website that had over 7 million hits last year?

A couple of points to make here. First, I don't think that DCP deserves the blame for the Google priority. DCP baited Infymus into an emotional explosion, and he also forked over presumably private emails to SHIELDS. Were these rather rotten things to do? Yes; I think so. As far as the Google stuff is concerned, I think the bulk of the blame for that needs to be laid at the feet of SHIELDS and Stan Barker.

Second: I'm not sure which of the Mormon Curtain stuff you're referring to as "smearing." The material that DCP wanted corrected....turned out to be correct. Their was no smearing at all. In actuality, DCP was trying to get Infymus to alter statements that were true.

Finally, if there *was* legitimate smearing going on (which is arguable) then I think that DCP may have had a point. But, as far as I can tell, he was the one who was responsible for picking the fight. In the end, it is really SHIELDS that is primarily responsible for the job-related stuff, IMHO.

[_Doctor Scratch]

In case anyone needed any more proof of what I've been referring to, the following link was provided by an "informant":

http://content.lib.utah.edu/cdm4/docume ... 8217&REC=3

You'll notice a very interesting anecdote in the footnote of page 131. Here, Tom Murphy relates how John Tvedtnes was apparently dispatched to engage in smear tactics which, if they'd been successful, would have blocked Murphy's bid for tenure. Tvedtnes went so far as to email Murphy's Dean. It just doesn't get any lower and dirtier than that.

As I said: protect yourself.

[_Daniel Peterson]

I can assure everybody that things can get much lower and dirtier than that. I've been threatened by critics of the Church with at least three potentially catastrophic law suits over the past few weeks, for instance. (And they're not my first.) That's arguably worse. And WjExMo's announced intention to stalk me and to post photos of me, my wife, and my children on the web, is arguably worse, as well. Moreover, the e-mail threat that I reported to the Orem Police Department about two months ago, from an apostate in California, was -- trust me -- many times worse.

I can assure anybody and everybody out there that nobody that I know "dispatched" John Tvedtnes to do anything at all regarding Tom Murphy. (The Scratchites won't believe this, of course, but normal people might consider it at least a plausible option.)

Interestingly, by the way, when I clicked on Scratch's link, it took me instantly to page 111. When I read the first two complete sentences on that page -- I read no further there -- it amused me to find that they were absolutely, wholly, completely false. Not an especially confidence-building introduction to Scratch's source.

[_Trevor]

You'll notice a very interesting anecdote in the footnote of page 131. Here, Tom Murphy relates how John Tvedtnes was apparently dispatched to engage in smear tactics which, if they'd been successful, would have blocked Murphy's bid for tenure. Tvedtnes went so far as to email Murphy's Dean. It just doesn't get any lower and dirtier than that.

As I said: protect yourself.

OK. That is just plain wrong. Good thing Tvedtnes got wise and decided not to make an ass out of himself by making that trip to Murphy's school. What an asshole.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Interestingly, by the way, when I clicked on Scratch's link, it took me instantly to page 111. When I read the first two complete sentences on that page -- I read no further there -- it amused me to find that they were absolutely, wholly, completely false. Not an especially confidence-building introduction to Scratch's source.

Oh?

Now a word about DNA as a 'Galileo event.' That phrase has been commonly bandied about. I rather like it; I think it's probably true.

http://www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences ... Scene.html

Sounds like an "endorsement" to me! Not an especially confidence-building attempt at whitewashing from The Good Professor.

[_Trevor]

Interestingly, by the way, when I clicked on Scratch's link, it took me instantly to page 111. When I read the first two complete sentences on that page -- I read no further there -- it amused me to find that they were absolutely, wholly, completely false. Not an especially confidence-building introduction to Scratch's source.

Of course, you could have gone to the page number Scratch referred you to. But I guess you chose not to. Is that his fault somehow?

[_Daniel Peterson]

Now a word about DNA as a 'Galileo event.' That phrase has been commonly bandied about. I rather like it; I think it's probably true.

http://www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Conferences ... Scene.html

Sounds like an "endorsement" to me! Not an especially confidence-building attempt at whitewashing from The Good Professor.

LOL. Anybody who wants to read on beyond your quotation will be able to see what I meant by that.

Interestingly, by the way, when I clicked on Scratch's link, it took me instantly to page 111. When I read the first two complete sentences on that page -- I read no further there -- it amused me to find that they were absolutely, wholly, completely false. Not an especially confidence-building introduction to Scratch's source.

Of course, you could have gone to the page number Scratch referred you to. But I guess you chose not to. Is that his fault somehow?

I said nothing about not going to the page number Scratch referred us to.

I said nothing about choosing not to do so.

I said nothing about it being his fault.

Are you having a bad day, or something?

Scratch is accusing me and many of my friends and colleagues of actually seeking to destroy the lives of other people and that slips right past you as unobjectionable while, instead, you attack me for something that didn't even happen?

[_Doctor Scratch]

LOL. Anybody who wants to read on beyond your quotation will be able to see what I meant by that.

What, you mean your long-winded re-envisioning of the history of Galileo, in which you try to gloss over the persecution he faced? The bottom line is that there was nothing inaccurate whatsoever about Murphy's characterization of your comment. You *did* endorse the DNA work as a "Galileo event." End of story. You can complain that Murphy didn't also support your weird, Mopologetic reinterpretation of Galileo's accomplishments, but that's pretty much it. As far as your remark that the sentences were "absolutely, wholly, completely false," well... I think you'd be best advised to retract it.

Scratch is accusing me and many of my friends and colleagues of actually seeking to destroy the lives of other people and that slips right past you as unobjectionable while, instead, you attack me for something that didn't even happen?

That's because, in the above example, John Tvedtnes *was* pretty clearly out to destroy Murphy's professional life. That, coupled with the other examples I've pointed out, kind of makes you wonder just how widespread this sort of thing is.