Is Robert Boylan Attempting to Profit from Apologetics?

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DrStakhanovite
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Re: Is Robert Boylan Attempting to Profit from Apologetics?

Post by DrStakhanovite »

Doctor Scratch wrote:
Mon Jul 25, 2022 11:59 pm
These are all excellent points. In some ways, I think that Boylan is stuck between a rock and a hard place. It's unlikely that he'll succeed as a "content creator," but if he *were* to find success (and I'm happy to wish him all kinds of luck at that), how much wrath would the old-school Mopologists rain down upon him?
He is very much stuck between a rock and a hard place. This actually reminds me of a story that is relevant to the subject...

Some years ago now, I spent time at Harvard working on ancient languages (Hebrew in particular) and at the time NELC had advanced PhD students conducting these “break out sessions” after regular classes where students like myself could go and basically get extra instruction. They were primarily for the benefit of people attending the Divinity program, but non-degree-seeking people that were enrolled in the same coursework were welcome to utilize them, which I did.

So I made a habit of going to one in particular because the gentleman was good at drilling me on grammatical mechanics and elocution (them verbs ain’t gonna parse themselves). One day I showed up and he asked me, “How do you know David Bokovoy?”. Turns out, my tutor was friends of the Bokovoy family and basically fell in love with Biblical Studies due to David’s influence. He discovered we had a mutual friend because he recognized me arguing with David on his Facebook page. The guy thought the world of David and to be honest, he ranks pretty high on my list of mensches too.

This marks one of the only two times I have ever discussed someone associated with Mormon apologetics outside social media or here. Since before that time or after it, I have never encountered someone who was even aware of who the old Mopologists were. Be they Mormon or otherwise. The only reason the subject was even broached was because we both admired David.

Now if I was Boylan, I’d have been looking at David’s departure from the Apologetic scene with some dismay. Here you have a guy who is fiercely intelligent, absolutely fun to be around, makes friends wherever he goes, and commands a great deal of respect from those outside Mormonism. He is the exact opposite of John Gee in nearly every respect, yet even this gentle soul ran afoul of the Mopologists because he believed in the documentary hypothesis concerning the composition and editing of the Tanakh.

Mopologists have a wolfpack type hierarchy; you need to be subservient to it and put in your time before being given a choice cut of meat. While putting in that time, you need to navigate a shifting landscape where you can end up on the wrong side of someone’s personality disorder for simply having an educated opinion on a subject you’ve spent years mastering.

Even if you want nothing to do with Mopologists, they can still exert their influence to damage you or harass you if it suits whatever dysregulated emotion they happen to be dealing with. How do you peacefully coexist with that? I honestly don’t know. I mean crap, look what Ritner had to put up with from them because Gee fell into his orbit for a brief time.
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Re: Is Robert Boylan Attempting to Profit from Apologetics?

Post by Binger »

DrStakhanovite wrote:
Tue Jul 26, 2022 1:36 am
Mopologists have a wolfpack type hierarchy; you need to be subservient to it and put in your time before being given a choice cut of meat. While putting in that time, you need to navigate a shifting landscape where you can end up on the wrong side of someone’s personality disorder for simply having an educated opinion on a subject you’ve spent years mastering.

Even if you want nothing to do with Mopologists, they can still exert their influence to damage you or harass you if it suits whatever dysregulated emotion they happen to be dealing with. How do you peacefully coexist with that? I honestly don’t know. I mean crap, look what Ritner had to put up with from them because Gee fell into his orbit for a brief time.
Excellent post, DrStak. Well done.

I have highlighted a comment that really stood out to me. This bolded description applies to investment banking, big law, accounting partnerships, cops and firemen.

Everything you are describing seems legit and appropriate for an organization but also extreme for a few reasons.
- Apologists for Mormonism are a micropopulation compared to every other career.
- The widget is a hobby item, not a basic need.
- The widget is founded in fiction if one is a Mormon apologist rather than a theology or divinity professional.

What other factors are there that would make this group unusual or unique from an organizational behavior perspective?
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Re: Is Robert Boylan Attempting to Profit from Apologetics?

Post by Philo Sofee »

Dr. Stak
Some years ago now, I spent time at Harvard working on ancient languages (Hebrew in particular)
Are you still up on the Hebrew? I would LOVE to do some study with you on some things which involve Hebrew! I am entirely self taught, and suck at it, but I have at least a beginning. It is actually Greek I really wanna get off my dead butt and master... I ain't gittin any younger though, gosh dang it! But Hebrew definitely has some great subjects to jump on! I wanna check other scholars who are using Hebrew in the O.T. and if you are up for it, I would love to work through some things...
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Re: Is Robert Boylan Attempting to Profit from Apologetics?

Post by Gadianton »

Your point about the "principle of the thing" is well taken, Doctor Scratch. This has been the stern position of the apologists, it's not about the dollar amount. Consider this rejoinder to John L. Smith as archived on Shields:

https://www.shields-research.org/Novak/ ... mith02.htm
Smith wrote:I will trade my income from UMI for half your salary! Are you game?
DCP wrote:Sudden unannounced change in topic.

It is the legitimacy of what you do that I question, not whether you are a financial success at it. It would be at best a weak defense of a prostitute to point out that she never really made much money in the profession.

Besides, this is apples and oranges. I earn absolutely none of my salary for writing on Mormon topics. Zilch. Zero
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Re: Is Robert Boylan Attempting to Profit from Apologetics?

Post by Kishkumen »

DrStakhanovite wrote:
Mon Jul 25, 2022 11:00 pm
Robert, on the off chance you ever check this thread, your 10 dollar tier rewards seem to be missing:

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This guy needs to reflect on the nature of effective incentives. Not only is there *less* incentive to contribute $10 per month, but the $5 gets you exactly the same stuff as the $25 level.
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Re: Is Robert Boylan Attempting to Profit from Apologetics?

Post by cacheman »

Kishkumen wrote:
Tue Jul 26, 2022 1:02 pm
DrStakhanovite wrote:
Mon Jul 25, 2022 11:00 pm
Robert, on the off chance you ever check this thread, your 10 dollar tier rewards seem to be missing:

Image
This guy needs to reflect on the nature of effective incentives. Not only is there *less* incentive to contribute $10 per month, but the $5 gets you exactly the same stuff as the $25 level.
I'm curious to see what incentives Dr. Peterson will be offering for the premium content on his new Vox Nostra blog site (is he leaving Patheos?). Currently, the upgrade link just takes you to a page that says "choose a plan". But no plans are listed. I guess he's still working out the details.

-cacheman
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Re: Is Robert Boylan Attempting to Profit from Apologetics?

Post by Doctor Scratch »

cacheman wrote:
Tue Jul 26, 2022 2:25 pm
Kishkumen wrote:
Tue Jul 26, 2022 1:02 pm


This guy needs to reflect on the nature of effective incentives. Not only is there *less* incentive to contribute $10 per month, but the $5 gets you exactly the same stuff as the $25 level.
I'm curious to see what incentives Dr. Peterson will be offering for the premium content on his new Vox Nostra blog site (is he leaving Patheos?). Currently, the upgrade link just takes you to a page that says "choose a plan". But no plans are listed. I guess he's still working out the details.

-cacheman
My dear cacheman:

Would you kindly supply us with a link to this new site?
"If, while hoping that everybody else will be honest and so forth, I can personally prosper through unethical and immoral acts without being detected and without risk, why should I not?." --Daniel Peterson, 6/4/14
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Re: Is Robert Boylan Attempting to Profit from Apologetics?

Post by Symmachus »

I for one hope that Mr. Boylan, once his marketing skills improve, makes a nice profit from his work. Maybe I will even read it one day. I support his efforts not only because the oligarchs who lord over academia push their vast underclass to scrounge for a buck (or Euro) in whatever way they can; it is also because I cannot see in principle what is wrong with trading one's knowledge and skills for money. That is not what priestcraft is in the Mormon sense is, is it? If there is a such a thing as a priestcraft, I would think it would be more along the lines of using a position in the Church hierarchy for profit or financial advancement. Personally, I don't think there is anything inherently wrong at all with making money from religion.

What people don't like is when religious entrepreneurs claim that what they're doing has no financial benefit attached, especially when they make a show of it; it's hypocrisy people don't like. Mr. Boylan doesn't seem to be doing that at all. I don't think our friend at the Interpreter really does either, however. Yes I know he's literally made more than a dime from apologetics, but there is a different sort of capital he draws from all this, which is the prestige he derives from playing professor, something he so clearly relishes. That's why he says "rawther" rather than "rather." He is so very typical of the loutish sort of academic who glory in being called "Dr."—oh the vulgarity of it all! videri quam esse.

Peterson's real entrepreneurial skill has been in increasing his intellectual and cultural status ex nihilo. Literally nothing. He has never made a contribution to his field or to any other. His one book, written long after he got BYU's version of tenure, was not original research in the least. His greatest academic accomplishment is publishing other people's work. Nothing wrong with that: it's the alternation between roles that he never fully plays that's the issue. It's a kind of robbing Peter to pay Paul: "I am not a professional apologist; I'm really a scholar of Arabic" we can imagine him saying whenever he does one of his apologetics tours, but "My life's work has been defending the Church," he must tell himself when he sees the tumble weeds blow across the barren page of his desiccated academic publications list. Whatever role he plays at a given moment, he will find a way to remind you that he is merely but kindly perching down from some other, loftier space to play it, as the situation demands. When you try to catch a glimpse of that loftier space, he switches roles and perches on another one, just out of view.

And here I come to Stak's observation: that despite all the students that BYU has funneled into Assyriology programs or Classics or whatever, it has no Biblical scholars. Everyone who publishes on such topics is really a professor of something else. I'm sure that's not accident, and it's not hard to see why it would come to be that way at a place like BYU. It's also not hard to see why BYU never did anything with all of these PhDs they were indirectly encouraging, but it is a pity: that a place with an "Ancient Studies" library that has sent many of its undergraduates into top-tier programs could not find a way to become a center of ancient studies. I kind of admire how BYU would hire a lot of its former undergraduates post PhD, but I consider a serious failing that people like Daniel Peterson, an impresario above all else, could never do anything with them unless or until they went into the FARMS game. BYU could have become a place for epigraphers, papyrologists, linguists, numismatists, and textual critics in all kinds of areas. I mention these subfields for two reasons: 1) they don't directly implicate traditionalist Mormon claims at all and so aren't much of a threat to apologetics and 2) they are as close as you get to "hard sciences" in the so-called humanities. FARMS could have done some real "ancient research" had it not emphasized the "Mormon studies" exclusively, and the Maxwell Institute could have become a springboard for some really great scholarship and a stepping stone for some very talented scholars, giving them a chance to perfect their craft, teach a few classes, and build up a CV, all while raising BYU's respectability without threatening traditionalist claims. There was a rich vein or opportunity there, and probably not much more money than went into "Witnesses" could have funded this, and I think this would have done these fields a great service, because so few places even teach their PhDs this material anymore, or even can. In their hiring choices over the past two decades, the retiring baby boomers across the country have left behind them an incentive structure that rewards scholarship of little long-term value.Peterson and the FARMSians are a variation of that theme: it is a signal failure that Peterson didn't deploy his considerable impresarial talents to exploit Nibley's legacy and the many capable students BYU sent out towards building up BYU as a real center for ancient studies.

With a focus on a more material topics, it would not, I say, have been a threat to apologetics and would probably have helped it in some ways, but of course John Gee, speaking on the value of Egyptology as he sees it, gave the game away: whatever cannot be used for apologetics is by definition useless.

You see, what we really need are more and longer book reviews of niche-published evangelical tracts and more acerbic take downs of Christopher Hitchens.
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Re: Is Robert Boylan Attempting to Profit from Apologetics?

Post by cacheman »

Doctor Scratch wrote:
Tue Jul 26, 2022 3:05 pm
cacheman wrote:
Tue Jul 26, 2022 2:25 pm

I'm curious to see what incentives Dr. Peterson will be offering for the premium content on his new Vox Nostra blog site (is he leaving Patheos?). Currently, the upgrade link just takes you to a page that says "choose a plan". But no plans are listed. I guess he's still working out the details.

-cacheman
My dear cacheman:

Would you kindly supply us with a link to this new site?
https://ourvoice.blog/tag/dan-peterson/
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Re: Is Robert Boylan Attempting to Profit from Apologetics?

Post by Everybody Wang Chung »

DCP is really trying hard to monetize his new for profit blog. So far, all DCP is doing is cutting and pasting his SeN articles and trying to sell them to subscribers. I’m sure SeN would have a huge problem if they knew DCP was selling SeN content on his personal blog.
Content Types
We have three kinds of content on Vox Nostra:
Free
Free, but for subscribers-only
Premium (but worth it!)

If you subscribe, you will be notified when new content is posted— no more worrying about whether you've missed something because of an algorithm or fast moving news feed.

It looks like DCP has already lined up a couple of sponsors:

Use the code "VoxNostra47" with any of these sponsors to get a Pioneer Day discount.

Celestial Ringdom - Fine Jewelry for the Latter-day Saint Market

Fine Jewelry for the Latter-day Saint market

BlueBrit Crafts - Fabric, quilts, quilter supplies, custom pillow cases, etc.
https://ourvoice.blog/tag/sponsors/
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Daniel C. Peterson, 2014
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