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Yes, I meant Connie Willis. For some reason I have often misremembered her name, I think because when I first read her books I was also reading some by Martha Wells and trying to remember that she was not Welles. Evidently I underestimated the difficulty of keeping these people straight and the poor little handful of neurons to which I assigned the job were overwhelmed by their task and despaired.

Mr. Stak wrote:I am of the opinion that Daniel and the rest of the Mopologists are utterly dependent on Evangelical apologetics. Think about all the issues Daniel touches on that are relevant to Mormon apologetics and just about every single example is a wholesale appropriation from the Evangelical apologetics industry with occasional use of non-Christian materials.

Strike added by me for the part I don't agree with. Granted, it's a little murky because C.S. Lewis is a big General Conference name also. I totally agree with you on D and your list of examples, I've even made the same link between his 'witnesses' and eye-witness of the resurrection apologetics. but who else?

“I was just merely posting snippets from a book I found interesting, I didn’t say I fully endorse soandso because I thought that was implicit, now if you’ll excuse me I got a plane to catch.”

lol, indeed. And everything you said is on target for D. But I just doing see it applying to the other Mopologists.

I doubt Daniel has any meaningful beliefs about the afterlife because he isn’t a particularly religious person

Again, hard to disagree. I just am not seeing this with the other Mopologists as a behavior pattern. One-offs for the sake of agreeing with their leader, maybe.

The other part I question is NDE's as an extension of EV apologetics. I know that it is, some of that is really classic stuff, like "Return from Tomorrow", but the EV literature can get pretty intense. Have you ever read one of those "20 minutes in hell" or "42.5 minutes in hell" books? The stuff DCP likes most is the pseudoscientific stuff that as you point out, is pretty vague. He also is fascinated with water dowsing. Now, my born-again right-wing friend also believes in water dowsing, and so there is a connection between the occult world and the Christian world, and recall that Dan has spent hours in his office tracking the flow of water in the pipes below his floor with a forked stick. I think the occult impulse comes from his unhinged libertarian beliefs, and that is a shared impulse for Christians also. So I've tended to put dowsing/NDE together, and would they have been transmitted to him from Evangelical apologetics? Maybe I'm wrong and they don't go together; well, you see what I mean at least. There's an open question here.

Physics Guy wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 10, 2021 9:51 am

Yes, I meant Connie Willis. For some reason I have often misremembered her name, I think because when I first read her books I was also reading some by Martha Wells and trying to remember that she was not Welles. Evidently I underestimated the difficulty of keeping these people straight and the poor little handful of neurons to which I assigned the job were overwhelmed by their task and despaired.

No problem. in my opinion, neurons don't need to be assigned to anything you can quickly look up. By my count, we've spelled Hofmann on this board at least 5 different ways. (including this one by me. I have no clue at this point which way is right.) Save the neurons for the fun stuff!

I was just excited to think someone else had read and enjoyed Connie Willis.

NDE = blathering superstition.

I'm not superstitious. Maybe a little stitious. But not enough to believe NDE crap of any sort. If it isn't supported by science (meaning, something more than anecdotes about individual experiences) then it is horsecrap. For this type of stuff, the law would require multiple anecdotal accounts of the same experience or statistical proof.

Bought Yahoo wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 10, 2021 10:47 pm

NDE = blathering superstition.

I'm not superstitious. Maybe a little stitious. But not enough to believe NDE crap of any sort. If it isn't supported by science (meaning, something more than anecdotes about individual experiences) then it is horsecrap. For this type of stuff, the law would require multiple anecdotal accounts of the same experience or statistical proof.

And you get to believe or disbelieve in whatever you want. Yes, you can believe whatever you want.

A brilliant and extremely helpful post, Dr. Stak. Thank you for those trenchant observations.