onandagus wrote:sock puppet wrote:I have tried over the past 18 months on this board (before 'sock puppet' as 'nimrod') to consider that those defending the LDS Church and its claims to be reasonable, thinking people not completely given over to irrational, emotive driven behavior. But the more I read here (and when I used to also at MAD), the more I am failing in maintaining this consideration.
Is it really the case, sock, that my posts show me to be so far gone mentally that it's only by an act of unmerited grace that you can believe me a reasonable and thinking person?
Don, the shout out was not a single out. Quite frankly, I've read many of your postings, certainly not all, made in the last 18 months. I do not think you are gone mentally, but I think you apply a different (in my view, lesser) standard when it comes to religion than you would in selecting your next car.
onandagus wrote:Or is it, rather, the case that since you don't see how one can hold LDS beliefs in a reasonable and thinking way, I must not be able to either?
Not quite. The point of the OP was basically a 'let's get real, folks'. We can talk about the Greek Psalter incident with Prof Caswall, for instance, until we're blue in the face, but anyone that's read the 6 volumes of History of the Church, cover to cover, and comes away believing must feel there's some overall, global explanation for this charlatan named Joseph Smith Jr, whose chicanery might be the best documented in the history of mankind. Simply nibbling on the crumbs along the edge is not sufficient to save a testimony against the mountain of evidence and the mind's ability to reason.
onandagus wrote:sock puppet wrote:Don Bradley, bless his soul, is going to trot out at the FAIR convention this summer some new observations and maybe a new primary source or two about the Kinderhook Plates fiasco for Joseph Smith Jr. With all due respect, that's nibbling on the fringe of a mountain of damning evidence against Joseph Smith Jr and Mormonism. Here it is, your chance and the chance for other defenders to step up to the plate and swing away at explaining god's charlatan.
Well, I can at least thank you for the blessing on my soul. One can never get too many of these. ;-).
If only they meant something real, outside of our mere psyches' hopes.
onandagus wrote:"Trot out" is, of course, dismissive, rather than merely descriptive, language. I think you'll find my presentation to be some very sound and detailed research, rather than the silly dog and pony show you imply here.
Dismissive, truly. Not so much directed at you, Don, as at FAIR and its conferences. As stained as Will left that podium last year, I must tell you that you will need tremendous reservoirs of redemptive power to help lift that podium out of the mud in which it is mired.
onandagus wrote:While I'm not a frequent poster here and no longer given to the kind of online debate you're inviting here, let me offer a several general thoughts:
First, on nearly any complex and controversial question, there is evidence pointing to divergent answers. So, to list evidences pointing to one's own answer and demand that one address these to one's own satisfaction before one can bring in other evidence may not be particularly reasonable or thoughtful.
Well, that's not really what's going on now, is it, Don? I've given it more than the old college try, reading and pondering defenders' posts here for 18 months, all the while they point to this evidence or that. However, when I look back on those 18 months and take stock, I note that there have been 18 months and thousands and thousands of posts by defenders that are just nibbles on the edge, no assessments involving the mountain of damning evidence. So I have not just sprung onto the scene and asked my grand scope question without having read thousands of posts by defenders, their evidence on the fringes.
onandagus wrote:Think of the Spalding theorists on the board, of which you don't appear to be one. They can marshal considerable evidence for their viewpoint, putting up a stack of evidences, like yours below, that one allegedly "must" account for point by point before proceeding further. But this supposed mountain of irrefutable evidence in practice acts more like a barricade to their own vision, keeping them from seeing the still better positions beyond that limited purview. (My apologies to our resident S-R theory proponents.)
by the way, if you think this is an apologetic dodge, you'll find that search of various message board archives would show me having made the same argument over more than a decade--during most of which I was not a believer.
Second, questioning the rationality of those who disagree with oneself sees to display neither good etiquette nor the kind of openness on which the search for truth is premised.
Do you openly search for truth about the Easter Bunny? Why expect more from others about the Mormon mythologies? But I've been on both sides, as you have too. When on the inside, Mormonism taught elitism and distrust for the 'gentile'. When on the outside, secularism has taught me to question and always look for a better answer. I think it is clear which is a more open search for truth.
onandagus wrote:Third, while I think you've done a good job in some cases in putting your finger on thorny issues, some of the other issues seem to me of doubtful relevance. Take #1, for instance: While there may be a relevant point buried in there, I am at a loss to understand how the legality of glass looking bears on the question of Mormonism's truth.
If god is the author of those 13 articles of faith, I think it is very relevant to inquire as to why his chosen vessel for the restoration would be a scofflaw.
onandagus wrote:Fourth, in some other cases your list simply incorporates a claim that, on strictly historical grounds, is dubious. However much play the Greek psalter incident gets among critics, for instance, it seems to be little relied on by historians of Mormonism, be they of whatever faith persuasion.
I think it is significant. I think sheds significant insight into the character of JSJr and his contemporary sychophants, like John Taylor.
onandagus wrote:Fifth, the characterization of the issues in your list is sometimes strongly stilted. Number 3 is a good example. Calling the seer stone a "magic rock" colors the issue from the start. "Magic" is not a category of LDS belief, and increasingly it is not regarded by scholars as a useful category for such folk supernatural practices. I think you may find Steve Fleming's emerging work on this instructive.
There are a number of FAIR/NAMIRS types that have trumpeted here the breadth of 'folk magic' over and over. You no doubt bristle at the 'magic rock' terminology and connotations, but what specifically do you find misdiscriptive about the term given what JSJr claimed were the rock's attributes and abilities?
onandagus wrote:Sixth, your post chides Latter-day Saints for allowing subjectivity to color their perceptions of their faith, which strikes me as very curious. I'm not aware of many religionists, of any stripe, who claim their religious belief to be as objective as science, with no place for personal experience or faith. So, it sounds like your criticism is not of Mormon apologists in particular but of religion in general.
Why should the question of religion get a bye from the rigors of science?
onandagus wrote:Seventh, you may want to take a minute to consider the believers here for whom you have the most respect, and see if your charge of thoughtless irrationality seems to apply to them. Does it, for instance, apply to Kevin Barney, David Bokovoy, and Nevo? If so, perhaps you have idiosyncratic definitions of the terms "reasonable" and "thinking" that you should share before the discussion proceeds any further.
In them--and in you--I see the struggle with the problems of Mormonism. It is the evidence of thinking and rationality on religious issues, but I do not see them address the totality of the circumstances of Joseph Smith Jr and how it all weighs in the balance.
onandagus wrote:Eighth, individual issues and questions are always examined in the light of a larger perspective, and it is this larger perspective that makes the biggest difference in the meaning and weight they are given. Some issues that are, under one perspective, insoluble, were, under another, never in need of solving in the first place. Einstein once said something like, "The considerable problems we face today cannot be solved at the same level of thinking at which they were created." So it is with the world's problems; and so it very often is, I would argue, when it comes to faith.
Best of luck in your searchings,
Don
Indeed, all questions and all problems were not created equal. However, the tools with which one brings to the decision/solution making process are the real crux of the matter. Why to you apply a different test to the question of religion than to the existence of the Easter Bunny?
What would be refreshing, Don, would be to see a defender present as strong of eight points directed to the substance as you presented in complaining of the OP. But that would be discussion of the topic, substantively, that would not be apologetics.
