Another sad personal attack on Jeremy Runnels

[drumdude]

Jacob Hess continues to demonstrate a lack of any integrity and willingness to say anything in service of propping up the LDS corporation. Yesterday it was lying for the lord, today it is smearing a critic:

https://latterdaysaintmag.com/the-ces-l ... th-seeker/

https://www.publishpeace.net/p/were-the ... -questions

At root, it’s an anti-Latter-day-Saint screed, introduced some eleven years ago on the Internet by Jeremy Runnells, whose purposes are to rob vulnerable readers of their testimonies. It relies on most of the same-old anti-Latter-day Saint arguments that have been used for decades, some of them from the beginning of the Restoration. So why, if the ideas are so old, has this CES letter had any fresh pull and appeal? Why did the CES letter go viral?

The irony is that DCP knows the real reason it went viral. He likes to say the case for Mormonism is not about one piece of evidence. It’s the about cumulative total of all the little pieces when seen and considered together.

The CES letter went viral for exactly that reason. All of the problems with the church in one place, where they can be considered together. Not explained away with narrow mutually exclusive ad-hoc rationalizations like FAIRMormon and Interpreter peddle.

11 years later the best that Mopologists can do is continue to disparage Jeremy. With the same old tired ad-hom attacks they published 11 years ago.

[Marcus]

His argument is like saying,

"So why, if the ideas [of algebra] are so old, has this [algebra requirement for students] had any fresh pull and appeal? Why did [algebra] go viral?"

Arguing that one has been complaining about an issue for a long time, as a substitute for actually addressing the issue, is a feeble excuse.

[Chap]

... it’s [a document], introduced some eleven years ago on the Internet by Jeremy Runnells, whose purposes are to rob vulnerable readers of their testimonies.

Note the rhetorical trick of describing the act of setting out arguments against the positions adopted by the CoJCLDS as "rob[bing] vulnerable [people]" of something.

So, for instance, if I succeed in persuading a person that it is not, in fact, in their best long-term interests to eat a bowl of mud for breakfast every day, I might be described as "robbing" them of their cherished dietary faith in the health giving powers of wet dirt.

In the normal use of the word, one is said to 'rob' someone when one deprives them of a possession which is of acknowledged value. But the whole point of the CES letter is to show that the teachings of the CoJCoLDS are without value, and indeed are harmful. Using the word 'rob' in such a context is a classic petitio principii fallacy (often called in English 'begging the question')* in which an argument purportedly showing that a certain proposition is true has hidden within it the assumption that the proposition is true.

Hess knows this very well: but he hopes his readers are too dumb to notice.

*No, 'begging the question" does NOT mean "implying that a certain question should be asked", although is is increasingly being misused in that sense.

[Marcus]

[eta: I see chap picked up on the same obnoxious sentence.]

Also this:

...At root, it’s an anti-Latter-day-Saint screed, introduced some eleven years ago on the Internet by Jeremy Runnells, whose purposes are to rob vulnerable readers of their testimonies...

Doesn't really match this, does it?

If we have truth, [it] cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not truth, it ought to be harmed.

J Reuben Clark
J. Reuben Clark: The Church Years. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1983, p. 24

https://wasmormon.org/that-which-can-be ... he%20truth.

It could be excused by this editor's note, I suppose. According to a recent reddit thread, this has been attached to certain older content on the LDS site:

Archived Content

Editors’ note: Articles in the archive may reflect practices and language of an earlier time. Find more current information by searching ChurchofJesusChrist.org.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... y?lang=eng

If we searched for 'truth' on the LDS site, would a more current (and therefore currently true) definition come up? /s

[drumdude]

Note the rhetorical trick of describing the act of setting out arguments against the positions adopted by the CoJCLDS as "rob[bing] vulnerable [people]" of something.

So, for instance, if I succeed in persuading a person that it is not, in fact, in their best long-term interests to eat a bowl of mud for breakfast every day, I might be described as "robbing" them of their cherished dietary faith in the health giving powers of wet dirt.

In the normal use of the word, one is said to 'rob' someone when one deprives them of a possession which is of acknowledged value. But the whole point of the CES letter is to show that the teachings of the CoJCoLDS are without value, and indeed are harmful. Using the word 'rob' in such a context is a classic petitio principii fallacy (often called in English 'begging the question')* in which an argument purportedly showing that a certain proposition is true has hidden within it the assumption that the proposition is true.

Hess knows this very well: but he hopes his readers are too dumb to notice.

*No, 'begging the question" does NOT mean "implying that a certain question should be asked", although is is increasingly being misused in that sense.

It also infantilizes the doubting member. These are grown adults, teenagers, not babies. They are capable of searching out answers to the issues raised in the CES letter.

And they can decide if DCP and his friends have good rationalizations or laughable ones.

No one leaves the church immediately after reading the CES letter. Nearly ever story I have read involves members furiously doing their own research on these issues only to find that the apologist answers are so lacking as to leave no room to continue believing.

[Doctor Scratch]

Quite an intriguing comment from the Afore over on "SeN":

Obviously, I realize perfectly well that some will respond to the research of Brothers Peterson and Hess by denouncing it as ad hominem and as ignoring the actual issues raised in the “CES Letter.” However, this will itself be a fallacious attempt to distract attention elsewhere; the issues cited by the “CES Letter” have been addressed many times. Maurine Proctor actually lists several of them. (Heck, even I undertook to examine the thing — whereby hangs a tale. But my examination of it was deeply exasperating: So many errors, so little time!) And examining the biographical background of the author of a text or a theory or a composition is entirely legitimate. (To compare a small thing to much greater things, we are the richer for having lives of Mozart and Einstein and Austen, and studies of the genesis of Darwin’s theory of evolution and of the novels of Hemingway and of the compositions of Handel. This is intellectual history)

Really? Good to know, I suppose. It helps to explain the legitimacy of pointing out that a young Daniel Peterson once ridiculed the Jewish wedding ceremony during a youthful trip to Israel, and also that he tortured a cat via "water-bombing." It's also "entirely legitimate" to inquire into the circumstances surrounding his receipt of over $20,000 while acting as "Chair of FARMS," and "intellectual history" to examine the strange appearance of Grand Theft Auto 3 on an Amazon Wish List bearing his name--and his subsequent eruption of rage when this fact was pointed out to him.

I wonder if Jeremy Runnels finds it "extraordinarily weird" that Mopologists have been picking at him essentially nonstop for close to 15 years?

[Dr Exiled]

(To compare a small thing to much greater things, we are the richer for having lives of Mozart and Einstein and Austen, and studies of the genesis of Darwin’s theory of evolution and of the novels of Hemingway and of the compositions of Handel. This is intellectual history)

And these were judged and continue to be judged by their works, not by their politics or religious beliefs, etc. Incidentally, none that lived after Joseph Smith were enlightened by the shining star of Mormonism. Go figure.

Judge Runnells by what he wrote, period.

[drumdude]

Judge Runnells by what he wrote, period.

I think you’d be hard pressed to find a more pilloried critic of the church. His story about being a questioning Mormon and not getting answers from his church absolutely infuriates MoPologists.

They have a seething hatred for Jeremy Runnels, because he is the ultimate apostate.

[Rivendale]

[eta: I see chap picked up on the same obnoxious sentence.]

Also this:

...At root, it’s an anti-Latter-day-Saint screed, introduced some eleven years ago on the Internet by Jeremy Runnells, whose purposes are to rob vulnerable readers of their testimonies...

Doesn't really match this, does it?

https://wasmormon.org/that-which-can-be ... he%20truth.

It could be excused by this editor's note, I suppose. According to a recent reddit thread, this has been attached to certain older content on the LDS site:

Archived Content

Editors’ note: Articles in the archive may reflect practices and language of an earlier time. Find more current information by searching ChurchofJesusChrist.org.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... y?lang=eng

If we searched for 'truth' on the LDS site, would a more current (and therefore currently true) definition come up? /s

It should be noted Clark backed off on that famous truth comment.

he later wrote to his non-Mormon friend. "I have always rather worshipped facts," he continues,"and while I thought and read for a while, many of the incidents of life, experiences and circumstances led, unaided by the spirit of faith, to the position of the atheist, yet the faith of my fathers led me to abandon all that and to refrain from following it.... For me there seemed to be no alternative. I could only build up a doubt. --If I were to attempt to rationalize about my life here, and the life too come, I would be drowned in a sea of doubt

[Marcus]

[eta: I see chap picked up on the same obnoxious sentence.]

Also this:

Doesn't really match this, does it?

It could be excused by this editor's note, I suppose. According to a recent reddit thread, this has been attached to certain older content on the LDS site:


If we searched for 'truth' on the LDS site, would a more current (and therefore currently true) definition come up? /s

It should be noted Clark backed off on that famous truth comment.

he later wrote to his non-Mormon friend. "I have always rather worshipped facts," he continues,"and while I thought and read for a while, many of the incidents of life, experiences and circumstances led, unaided by the spirit of faith, to the position of the atheist, yet the faith of my fathers led me to abandon all that and to refrain from following it.... For me there seemed to be no alternative. I could only build up a doubt. --If I were to attempt to rationalize about my life here, and the life too come, I would be drowned in a sea of doubt

That's too bad, but really, it's no surprise. You'd have to back down from "truth" in order to remain Mormon, given the notoriously insupportable foundational beliefs.