DiscussMormonism.com

In the summer of 2004, a supposedly well "peer respected" BYU professor of archeaology, John Clark gave, what the apologists from MADB and BYU, declared as a "putting his reputation on the line" speech at BYU exclaiming that archaeology was the only way to prove the Book of Mormon.

Great fanfare was exclaimed by those at the then FAIR board as to how monumental of a speech this was and that "it could reaaly cost Clark" amongst his peers. The inferewnce, obviously, was that Clark was a well known and well respected scholar amongst his secular professional peersm

So what has happened in the past four years in our era of instant awareness internet age? Has there been any interest shown from his (or fellow LDS BYU prof ans archaeologist - John Sorenson) peer group to all thai supposed great scholarship on the civilization rediscovered via the Book of Mormon? I mean an absolute gold mine of a find for historians and archaeologists, supported by such great scholarship of the highly touted Clark and Sorenson, where reputations were put on the line, surely would draw interest by mow,----no?

Has the work by these two generated any interest from the scholars in this area?

Or was the whole thing done by Clark in 2004 merely a staged "faith promoting speech"?

I simply can't imagine, supposedly great scholarship on a restred society being completely ignored by the collegues of two supposed well respected professionals.

Does this make sense to anyone?????

(Pardon my typos - from a bberry!)

Several years ago I emailed SMU anthropologist David Freidel to ask him for his reaction to Clark's address. He was reluctant to comment specifically on the address.

Any text or references to the address would greatly aid in the conversation, I imagine.

Welcome, Tom and Persephone!

I'm thinking that folks are thinking that BYU.. means Butt Younger University..So why go there???

BYU is for elite Mormons anyway...and you don't need to pass the SAT'S if you are in Utah to get in there..So

Several years ago I emailed SMU anthropologist David Freidel to ask him for his reaction to Clark's address. He was reluctant to comment specifically on the address.

I imagine this would be true of most of Clark's peers.

Clark really is respected among his fellow Mesoamerican archaeologists, by the way. His work is often cited.

This does not inoculate him from having strange personal beliefs, of course, like many other well respected scholars before him. I'll never forget reading what Stephen Hawkins said about Tipler's "The Physics of Immortality".... If I recall correctly, he said he would say nothing on the topic, because anything he said might be libelous. ;)

Joey:

My wife and I went to see a musical stage version of Pride and Prejudice tonight. It was fairly good. A few nights ago, we watched the old Laurence Olivier/Greer Garson film of the novel. It was a bit of a disappointment.

I still think the BBC miniseries is the best version, though Keira Knightley's was surprisingly unbad in some ways.

Do you like Jane Austen, Joey? I do. A lot.

Your friend,

DCP

A published version of Clark's address is available here.

beastie wrote:

Several years ago I emailed SMU anthropologist David Freidel to ask him for his reaction to Clark's address. He was reluctant to comment specifically on the address.

I imagine this would be true of most of Clark's peers.

Clark really is respected among his fellow Mesoamerican archaeologists, by the way. His work is often cited.

This does not inoculate him from having strange personal beliefs, of course, like many other well respected scholars before him. I'll never forget reading what Stephen Hawkins said about Tipler's "The Physics of Immortality".... If I recall correctly, he said he would say nothing on the topic, because anything he said might be libelous. ;)

Well said. Freidel thanked me for bringing Clark's address to his attention, but he declined to say much about it.

Oddly enough, Clark made the following comments at the 2005 FAIR conference:

I want to mention a few things to help you understand our presentation. First, it is a coauthored paper with Wade Ardern and Matthew Roper; they will give the last part of our presentation. Second, much of our remarks comes from talks I gave at BYU and the National Library of Congress. After these presentations, I realized my arguments in favor of The Book of Mormon were deficient and that much more must be done before you should take them seriously. We report on a project designed to meet higher standards of evidence, argument, and sampling.