Response to Hamblin

[_DrW]

Can't believe Hamblin would pick such an analogy when he knows (or should know) that one of his main adversaries in the debate is a professional in Roman history.

Being correct has little or nothing to do with it.

As is the case with pretty much all of Mormon apologetics.

Silly me.

[_Mayan Elephant]

does hamblin think that smith actually reviewed Mormon stories? I think that is what is unclear in his messed up analogy. I think he really believes this was an act of charity and tells anyone who wants to know, everything they want to know about Mormon stories. in his messed up mind, he believes the mantra that if he can prove someone has lost the spirit, you need not look at the facts because they are poison from the source. if, peterson, hamblin and everyone in the circle believe that the original review tells the reader about Mormon stories, then the analogy has some merit. we know it is stupid. they think they have shown the world that dehlin is a rattlesnake, from which one can only extract venom (analogy).

what smith's 100 pages of charmin do not tell us is,

how many podcasts or blog posts has Mormon stories and its affiliates made public
what percentage were authors of lds approved books v. unapproved books
what percentage of listeners are active Mormons
how many changed their activity after listening to dehlin
how many subscribers
most listened to podcasts
where do the listeners concentrate
how old are they
does Mormon stories use a MLM system to get more listeners from utah county
are all the listeners white? (nevermind, we probably know the answer to that)

these hundred pages tell us nothing about Mormon stories. nothing. wiki is more helpful. and, frankly, it is disappointing because the momentum of the noms through this new social media was impressive as hell and there was/is something worth reviewing. with a functioning brain and some ethics, Mormon Stories could have been the subject of a review that would have had value to the business and marketing programs, sociology departments, psych and the arts, to name a few. instead, we just get one dude playing footnote pinata with his perceived nemesis.

the maxwell institute dodged a bullet when they spiked this the first time and fired these dudes.

[_Gadianton]

You can't write a book about Rome's first professional army and spend almost the entire time discussing Marius' personal character and belief system

Yeah, absolutely. The interesting thing to me is on that thread Hamblin started out pleading that it not necessarily "all about" a person's character, but merely that character is relevant, which I'm not so sure is true at all in a peer-reviewed journal, but granting he has a point, it's interesting that as you read the thread, the demand for character assasination gets stronger and stronger.

On this point I disagree. I have read many academic papers that dismiss another's proposed theories and postulations on such grounds. The environmental movement is an example of this. An environmentalist makes a proclamation of a standard we should all live, and then it is found out that such a person lives in complete contrast to their idealistic standards. Academia is well served when hypocrites are removed so that the legitimate scholars can rise up. Hypocrites are liars, and lying makes for bad scholarship.

The thread takes the slippery slope until Freedom finally lets out what everyone at the new MI really wants to say. Let's face it, discrediting global warming is going to be very difficult, but discrediting the people behind global warming? Surely, if we dive through enough dumpsters anyone can be shown to have a skeleton in the closet or an inconsistency in their life, and if we can leverage this evidence, hopefully we can remove them from academia and problem solved.

[_cwald]

Yeah. The "It's not personal" thread sure got "personal" real quick.

[_Kishkumen]

On this point I disagree. I have read many academic papers that dismiss another's proposed theories and postulations on such grounds. The environmental movement is an example of this. An environmentalist makes a proclamation of a standard we should all live, and then it is found out that such a person lives in complete contrast to their idealistic standards. Academia is well served when hypocrites are removed so that the legitimate scholars can rise up. Hypocrites are liars, and lying makes for bad scholarship.

The thread takes the slippery slope until Freedom finally lets out what everyone at the new MI really wants to say. Let's face it, discrediting global warming is going to be very difficult, but discrediting the people behind global warming? Surely, if we dive through enough dumpsters anyone can be shown to have a skeleton in the closet or an inconsistency in their life, and if we can leverage this evidence, hopefully we can remove them from academia and problem solved.

That's a disturbing discovery, Dean Robbers. But, unfortunately, it is not all that surprising. It makes a mockery of both science and scholarship, for sure. Moreover, you have to be leery of the kind of people who propose unmasking "hypocrites" by spying on them and then exposing them in order to destroy them. Of course, this is what we have already seen in the case of John Dehlin. John narrowly avoided disaster by taking unusual measures. As it is we see people like Schryver licking their lips in anticipation that Dehlin will rever to "apostasy" and prove him right. It is a disgusting display and, frankly, frightening.

[_Gadianton]

Yeah, and I just clicked on the most recent page of that thread, and Midgley is talking Palmer gossip, check this:

But the fact is that he was in big trouble in Chico. That is why he was shifted to Salt Lake so that he would no longer be Seminary Coordinator whose job was to supervise early morning seminary, but a teacher in large released-time seminaries. He was soon put on probation and immediately started "New York Mormonism," which was the initial draft of his book that John Dehlin likes so much. Remember "Bushman is worth a Palmer." That is exactly what Dehlin has said about the one he calls "the incomparable Grant Palmer." There is a certain ironic truth in that statement. I would have mentioned the mess Palmer got into in Chico, but I only had interviews with people who were not anxious to have their names brought into a messy situation. If I could not cite a source, I did not mention something. Well, I did mentions things in the first draft, and Shirley Ricks, our technical editor demanded citations to sources, as did the folks who read the essay for CES, which I was told included among other lawyers

yeah, that sounds about right. if it weren't for the lawyers, how much more gossip already in print, in violation of his own standards, would have been published attacking Palmer's character?

[_Kishkumen]

Yeah, and I just clicked on the most recent page of that thread, and Migdley is talking Palmer gossip, check this:

But the fact is that he was in big trouble in Chico. That is why he was shifted to Salt Lake so that he would no longer be Seminary Coordinator whose job was to supervise early morning seminary, but a teacher in large released-time seminaries. He was soon put on probation and immediately started "New York Mormonism," which was the initial draft of his book that John Dehlin likes so much. Remember "Bushman is worth a Palmer." That is exactly what Dehlin has said about the one he calls "the incomparable Grant Palmer." There is a certain ironic truth in that statement. I would have mentioned the mess Palmer got into in Chico, but I only had interviews with people who were not anxious to have their names brought into a messy situation. If I could not cite a source, I did not mention something. Well, I did mentions things in the first draft, and Shirley Ricks, our technical editor demanded citations to sources, as did the folks who read the essay for CES, which I was told included among other lawyers

yeah, that sounds about right. if it weren't for the lawyers, how much more gossip already in print, in violation of his own standards, would have been published attacking Palmer's character?

Sacrebleu! Monstrous. Simply monstrous.

I really don't understand why Greg jumped on that whole Bushman/Palmer exchange idea. It just shows how they really have no concept of how other people think, and are really quite unimaginative. John tried to balance the more critical with the more faithful. They jump on this as though this showed some kind of imbalance on his part. Um, it is obvious that it showed precisely the opposite!

Is Grant Palmer a Richard Bushman? No. Bushman is the better historian by far. That said, Bushman's writing is pretty dry stuff. Rough Stone Rolling is not all that well written, for all its virtues as a work of scholarship. Brodie is a much better writer, and much better at bringing her subject to life. Grant Palmer was the first to write something about challenges in Mormon history that the average person might hope to get through without nodding off or throwing the book across the room. Most Mormon historians are pretty poor prose stylists. If you are John Dehlin, or many of the folks in his audience, Palmer is the kind of guy you will read easily. And, furthermore, it is not as though everything Palmer has written can be easily refuted.

In any case, it is good that I don't go over there and try to participate. The conversation looks absolutely vile.

[_Tom]

Yeah. The "It's not personal" thread sure got "personal" real quick.

Speaking of getting "personal," it doesn't get much weirder than the following exchange between another poster and Midgley:

Another poster: Dehlin made it personal, and Smith, in responding, had to make it personal as well. It is rather disingenuous to say the piece was not personal. Of course it was. it had to be, because it critiques Dehlin's own professed personal journey that he lives out for all the world to see.

Midgley: 1. If I write an essay on a Protestant theologian--Paul Tillich, for example--I just have to mention his name. He was, after all, a person.

2. And I may or may not find it relevant to whatever I may wish to examine in his published essays to mention that he was a torrid womanizer, which was the charm he had for many of his followers. Some of his disciples made a big fuss about this aspect of his life, and some even argued, as did his wife, that one fails to understand the basic thrust of his 500+ books and essays if one neglect to see the relationship between his being a womanizer and his understanding of both human and divine things. Now all this is again also in some sense personal.

3. And some writers have seen virtually nothing worth commenting other than his inordinate passion for orgasm with a variety of ladies, and his related passion for photographing their private parts. His wife wrote a book calling attention to this very thing. I met both his secretary and his archivist in Gottingen, Germany, and both in different ways found his sexual obsession to be one of his most attractive features. Again, this is in some sense personal. Much of what his biographer, who was himself a famous theologian, gathered much of what he had to say about Tillich from his various lady "friends." His wife was also obsessed with orgasm. She even wanted an open marriage but Paulus thought this was far too confining. And Tillich and his wife, when they first arrived in the USA when the fled from Hitler, visited brothers [brothels?] and paid to watch blacks fornicate. All this is juicy true tabloid type stuff, but not necessarily relevant for all purposes And I never even hinted at any of it in any of my own very personal essays about Paul Tillich. It was simply not relevant for what I wanted to write about.

4. I have written a dissertation, and published several essays on Paul Tillich's theology in which I never once even hinted at his passion for the ladies. Though I new about and met and discussed Tillich with several of his lady friends,I simply did not think his erotic proclivities were relevant to the kinds of things I wished to examine and criticize. See my essay entitled "Religion and Ultimate Concern: An Encounter with Paul Tillich's Theology." Dialogue 1/2 (1966): 55-74. My essay was very personal for me, and it was about and directed explicity to a famous person.

Conclusion: anything one writes can be personal in some sense, and if one deals with the opinions or actions of a person, then an essay will be in some sense personal. Claiming that a person's essay about a person is personal is obvious, but also insignificant. If an essay is in any sense personal and false, then we have an issue worth considering. But one must provide textual evidence to justify the claim that an investigation of the opinions of another's opinions is personal in a negative sense, or one is simply using a slur to avoid confronting the contents of the essay. And tossing in the word balance without carefully setting out what that word might possibly mean and exactly how the absence of whatever someone thinks it is ends up being a flaw. In none of the examples I provided above would mention of a lack or presence of balance be a relevant and hence meaningful comment.

I have had people insist that I must never ever even mention the name of an author who is even only a nominal Latter-day Saints and who holds a certain position I wish to examine. I have been told that doing so would be calling their testimon into question, and/or would be a personal attack. I have been advised to deal only with the persons arguments but without mentioning their name. When I did just that, I was then scolded for thrashing a Straw Man because I could not even name one author who held the ridiculous opinion I had demolished.

[_Gadianton]

Holy cow Tom. Yeah, how to get your head around that one? Fortunately, Tillich wasn't an anti-Mormon or we'd have learned all of that long ago and in far more detail.

by the way, I think you're too generous with your brackets.

[_Cicero]

Yeah, and I just clicked on the most recent page of that thread, and Midgley is talking Palmer gossip, check this:

But the fact is that he was in big trouble in Chico. That is why he was shifted to Salt Lake so that he would no longer be Seminary Coordinator whose job was to supervise early morning seminary, but a teacher in large released-time seminaries. He was soon put on probation and immediately started "New York Mormonism," which was the initial draft of his book that John Dehlin likes so much. Remember "Bushman is worth a Palmer." That is exactly what Dehlin has said about the one he calls "the incomparable Grant Palmer." There is a certain ironic truth in that statement. I would have mentioned the mess Palmer got into in Chico, but I only had interviews with people who were not anxious to have their names brought into a messy situation. If I could not cite a source, I did not mention something. Well, I did mentions things in the first draft, and Shirley Ricks, our technical editor demanded citations to sources, as did the folks who read the essay for CES, which I was told included among other lawyers

yeah, that sounds about right. if it weren't for the lawyers, how much more gossip already in print, in violation of his own standards, would have been published attacking Palmer's character?

Good Lord Lou, would you leave the man alone already.