BYU's John Clark -- Five year anniversary of being "ignored"

[_Joey]

Wow! Looks like John Clark has gained more notariety in two days on this thread than he has in the past 5 years since his speech that "could really cost him" according to his supporter who was really "in the know" then but conveniently out of touch now!
(He is a predictable cuss!)

But for those who deem it their responsibility to show up and defend Clark on this thread, can he answer the simple and obvious question:

If John Clark is the acclaimed and respected mesoamerican archaeologist scholar that certain Provo supporters would like to convince us he is, has he attracted or convinced any of his professional peers to show interest in his Book of Mormon archaeology works? If not, why?

[_beastie]

If John Clark is the acclaimed and respected mesoamerican archaeologist scholar that certain Provo supporters would like to convince us he is, has he attracted or convinced any of his professional peers to show interest in his Book of Mormon archaeology works? If not, why?

Joey -

I can assure you that John Clark really is an acclaimed and respected archaeologist. He's cited in many works, including experts like Michael Coe. There is no doubt about that claim.

By Clark's own admission he has not been able to convince any of his peers that the Book of Mormon is an ancient Mesoamerican document.

Many intelligent and respected scholars in many fields have eccentric hobbies and personal beliefs. I'm sure his peers view his belief in the Book of Mormon as one example of that.

[_Gadianton]

By Clark's own admission he has not been able to convince any of his peers that the Book of Mormon is an ancient Mesoamerican document.

Had the senior Mopologists not spent their entire lives as Mormons, they wouldn't have been convinced either.

[_JohnStuartMill]

The methodology is simple: don't investigate topics that make the Church look bad unless critics are making so much hay of it that damage control is necessary.

I'm not sure that I would describe that as a "methodology," even if your bizarre and hostile caricature were accurate.

A useful discussion of the meaning of the term methodology occurs here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodology

No need yet to get into Gadamer or Popper or Feyerabend. That, I think, would be intellectual overkill.

I can't believe you just brought up Popper to defend FAIR. He would be the first person to recognize that FAIR's "Oh, it could have happened this way! Look at all these 'coincidences'!" dance number is not legitimate inquiry.

Again, I ask: why couldn't there exist a FAIR for Scientology?

[_EAllusion]

I'm not sure that I would describe that as a "methodology," even if your bizarre and hostile caricature were accurate.

It's a simple procedure and therefore a methodology. One wonders how you might have planned to obfuscate a relatively simple, acceptable use of the term with Gadamer and Feyerabend of all people.

[_EAllusion]

Had the senior Mopologists not spent their entire lives as Mormons, they wouldn't have been convinced either.

Well, most of them. Maybe all of them in reality; I don't know. But there's always a few random nuts out there with advance degrees capable of doing solid work in an academic field who end up converting to oddball views. And we might want to add "or converted to Mormonism for unrelated reasons."

[_Daniel Peterson]

Dr. Dan owes Runtu an apology.

But hey, Newbies, you will never, ever, ever see that happen.

Newbies, watch and learn:

At 1:40 this afternoon, in this very thread, more than four and a half hours before Pokatator posted the comment cited above, I addressed the following to Runtu:

If . . . you feel that I misrepresented you . . . I apologize.

Of course, it's scarcely surprising that my little apology was lost amid the constant apologies of critics to believers on this board, drowned out by the critics' continual admissions of error, their never-ending vocal revisions of their opinions, their ceaseless expressions of openness to Mormon viewpoints, their never-failing charity, their invariable attempts at sympathetic understanding.

That said, though, I confess that I can't see where Runtu has justified his claim that "just about everything [Professor Clark] said has been debunked." Nor can I really see much "convergence" between Runtu's description of what Brant said and what Runtu quotes Brant as having said:

[Clark] listed roughly a dozen points of convergence of what we know now with what Joseph Smith had claimed. He said that Joseph's claims were extraordinary but had been vindicated. The talk was posted on the FARMS web site, and I responded to it.

It took me two hours' work to find that none of the supposed "wild claims" (I think those were Clark's words) were exceptional at all but reflected widely held beliefs of Joseph's day. I could look up my little response, but you read it, and even Brant Gardner said that he couldn't vouch for what Clark had said.

I am learning that the most dangerous thing I can do is try to defend someone else's logic or evidences if I haven't done the work to confirm them. John Clark will have to defend his statements that certain things were not known. From my experience, that is an all-too-common shorthand phrase that gets tossed out without sufficient support.

As for "the apologist is dismissing the mound builder parallels as aberrations. . ." I assume you mean me. I still have a hard time wearing the apologist hat because I probably spend as much time poking holes in some apologetic assumptions as I do in dealing iwth the Book of Mormon text.

I don't dismiss the parallels, however. There is quite a bit of evidence that the Book of Mormon fit very well into a popular idea of who the mound builders were. If we were dealing with a novel, it would be clear where the novel got its ideas, because the ideas about the mound builders were popular, but incorrect. That would mean that the Book of Mormon, which would have copied them in this scenario, would also be historically incorrect. That would be pretty easy to demonstrate and the case would be over.

That isn't the case, however. The very kinds of historical evidence that could show that the parallels to the mound builders match text but not history find parallels to Mesoamerica. A very simplistic example is the dating of the text which places the Book of Mormon way earlier than the mound builders, but coincidentally (?) right in the Mesoamerican context.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Dr. Dan owes Runtu an apology.

But hey, Newbies, you will never, ever, ever see that happen.

Newbies, watch and learn:

At 1:40 this afternoon, in this very thread, more than four and a half hours before Pokatator posted the comment cited above, I addressed the following to Runtu:

If . . . you feel that I misrepresented you . . . I apologize.

Yes. I'm sure we all carefully noted how many ellipses you needed to use. I know that I sure am impressed with the sincerity and contrition of this apology.

Meanwhile, I'm still left wondering why so many BYU professors have a poor opinion of FARMS, despite their never having read any of FARMS's publications.

[_bcspace]

Well five years have now passed and the academic world, Clark's peer group, and apparently even the LDS apologetics continue to ignore Clarks statement and works in this area. No surprise as I told Peterson back then that this outcome was very predictable.

I am an apologist and I believe that the Book of Mormon has to be historical or it is false.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Yes. I'm sure we all carefully noted how many ellipses you needed to use.

The original sentence is easily available for inspection, on this very thread. If I've fundamentally distorted what the original sentence said, my knavery will be readily exposed.

I know that I sure am impressed with the sincerity and contrition of this apology.

I looked and looked and looked throughout your posts for one of your numerous apologies on which to model my own. Oddly, though, I couldn't find any of them. (Must be a bad search engine.) So, alas!, I was left to my own devices.