Does Jonathan Neville Pose a "potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints"?

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Doctor Scratch
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Does Jonathan Neville Pose a "potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints"?

Post by Doctor Scratch »

It's another day, and so, of course, "SeN" is in the business of linking to Stephen Smoot's pseudonymously-authored attack blog, "Neville-Neville Land." It seems that acrimony is on the uptick with the apologists lately; just look at this latest missive:
DCP wrote:I’m just not interested in Heartlander theories. Truth be told, I’m not overly interested in questions of Book of Mormon geography at all. That is to say, I have opinions — I’m comfortably inclined toward a limited Mesoamerican model, although I’m not wedded to it — but I’ve seldom if ever written on the subject. (Which, by the way, leaves me puzzled as to why I’ve become a principal whipping boy for Mr. Neville, who seems to be obsessed by Book of Mormon geography in general and the location of the Nephite Cumorah in particular.)

Once I noticed Mr. Neville’s propensity to demonize those who don’t share his geographical theories, however, and his urgent need to attack me over and over again, I began to realize that he poses a very unfortunate potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints. I’ve learned approximately everything I know about him from the invaluable Neville-Neville Land blog, which follows his writing pretty closely and quotes him extensively.
Well, now. This is quite interesting. First, okay: if he and the apologists are not interested in Book of Mormon geography, then why all the FARMS and Interpreter publications on the topic? Everyone is interested except for DCP? And remember: if the Book of Mormon didn't take place in Latin America, then it took place exactly where the Heartlanders say it took place. Not caring would effectively be a concession to Meldrum and his comrades.

But there's more here that's strange. Not long ago, DrW referred to Dr. Peterson as having "narcissistic personality disorder," and was upbraided by the good Reverend over this. Well, I'm no expert in psychology, but this sentence is downright strange: "Once I noticed Mr. Neville’s propensity to demonize those who don’t share his geographical theories, however, and his urgent need to attack me over and over again, I began to realize that he poses a very unfortunate potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints." Huh? Why would criticism of DCP equal a "potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints"? Does Dr. Peterson really feel that he's that important?

Regardless, the schism between the Heartlanders and the Mopologists is interesting on all sorts of levels, something made clear by the prescient comments from "Chapstick":
Chaptstick wrote:DanielPeterson, "I began to realize that he poses a very unfortunate potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints."

I think you might be overstating the issue. Do you honestly think frequently posting about Neville is helping fuel the flames or is it helping promote the peace and unity of the Saints?

IMHO, the following has done much more to disrupt the unity of the Saints: multi-year long personal attacks on Gerald Bradford and FARMS, John Gee vs Brian Hauglid, Louis Midgley vs Gina Colvin, John Gee vs Robert Ritner, Bill Hamblin and the "debate" with Philip Jenkins, The Interpreter vs FARMS, FAIR vs FIRM, The Interpreter vs FIRM, The Interpreter vs The Joseph Smith Papers, The Interpreter vs Gays, etc., etc.
And check out the replies:
Jack wrote:Chapstick, many of the examples you cite don't reach the rank and file members of the church-- not to a great extent at any rate -- whereas FIRM does, and by extension, the influence of Jonathan Neville.
What the...??? I'm left shaking me head at this--I guess it's a backhanded compliment? The "malevolent stalking" of Jonathan Neville is justified because he has a large audience, and Interpreter and the Mopologists *don't*?
DCP wrote:CS: "Do you honestly think frequently posting about Neville is helping fuel the flames or is it helping promote the peace and unity of the Saints?"

I think that occasionally sharing links to a site that valuable [sic] chronicles and explains Mr. Neville's errors and false accusations is a service to my readers and, in a very small way, to the health of the Kingdom.

CS: IMHO, the following has done much more to disrupt the unity of the Saints"

It's difficult for me to see that statement as anything other than disingenuous.

Even when they're actually real -- several of them have been inflated and mythologized far beyond actual reality -- none of them has the potential capacity of Mr. Neville's errors and accusations to mislead a large audience.
Is Neville constantly posting NDEs contrary to the Brethren's directives? And can the Mopologists point to anyone who's left the Church over the Heartlanders' activities? We can point to several people on this message board alone who've left the Church thanks to the Mopologists.

And just when you thought things couldn't get any more interesting, here comes Co-Editor in Chief Allen Wyatt:
Allen Wyatt wrote:CS said "Call me crazy..."

OK, you're crazy.

Were what you say even true, do apologists need "authority" to "attack other members?" I'm been called an apologist for decades and I've associated with many other apologists during that time. I've never attacked other members. I have drawn attention to the untruths, fallacies, and sometimes outright absurdities of the ideas of other people, member or not, but that is not "attacking" others.

You raise points here that you feel are worthy of consideration. You are doing the exact same thing -- discussing others' ideas -- that apologists do.
What about Grant Palmer? Was Palmer still a member at the time that Wyatt was engaged in his cybersquatting campaign?
Allen Wyatt wrote:It never ceases to amaze me when people -- invariably critics of the Church -- say that FAIR or Interpreter (or BoMC or FARMS or take your pick) has done more to hurt the Church than anything. Were that the case, I would think that critics would cease their own efforts and back (even monetarily) any one of those organizations because, after all, they hurt the Church more than anything.

Yet, having been intimately involved over the years with both FAIR and Interpreter (and at least tangentially involved with the others), I've never seen an outpouring of support from any critics for any of these organizations.

I can only draw from that fact one of two possible conclusions. Either (1) critics are trying to poison the well when it comes to the organizations because they don't know how to actually deal with what the organizations do, or (2) the critics are blowing smoke and don't have the slightest idea of what they opine upon.

What about you, CS? Are you willing to make a donation to help these organizations that are harming (the most! the most!) the Church with which you find fault? I'm sure it could do nothing but good in your eyes.
So, it's about money, then? What a weird chain of logic here. If something is working just fine, why throw money at it? I mean, I know that Wyatt is fishing here, but still. What a dumb argument.
"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: Does Jonathan Neville Pose a "potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints"?

Post by Gadianton »

I’ve learned approximately everything I know about him from the invaluable Neville-Neville Land blog, which follows his writing pretty closely and quotes him extensively.
People say all the time that DCP is such a nice person in real life. I don't doubt it. But I ask that they cease to judge Neville without knowing him in real life.
Huh? Why would criticism of DCP equal a "potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints"? Does Dr. Peterson really feel that he's that important?
Totally nuts. But this is what the Mopologists do. If any random person says anything at all negative about the sacred LTG or other Mopologist doctrine, they are blown out of proportion as a supreme danger to the Church, thereby justifying any force desired in response.

Besides, they don't know what kind of Member Neville is. Perhaps he's a devoted home teacher, or on fire as a ward mission leader?
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Re: Does Jonathan Neville Pose a "potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints"?

Post by Everybody Wang Chung »

DCP now views himself as the Church? Like Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, I fear DCP has gone way too far up the river.

Well, if anyone had any lingering doubts about DCP being a raging narcissist, those doubts are now and forever removed.
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Lem
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Re: Does Jonathan Neville Pose a "potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints"?

Post by Lem »

Doctor Scratch wrote:
Sat Apr 10, 2021 2:21 am
DCP wrote: Once I noticed Mr. Neville’s propensity to demonize those who don’t share his geographical theories, however, and his urgent need to attack me over and over again, I began to realize that he poses a very unfortunate potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints....
But there's more here that's strange. Not long ago, DrW referred to Dr. Peterson as having "narcissistic personality disorder," and was upbraided by the good Reverend over this. Well, I'm no expert in psychology, but this sentence is downright strange: "Once I noticed Mr. Neville’s propensity to demonize those who don’t share his geographical theories, however, and his urgent need to attack me over and over again, I began to realize that he poses a very unfortunate potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints." Huh? Why would criticism of DCP equal a "potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints"? Does Dr. Peterson really feel that he's that important?
Did you notice that there has been a change to that paragraph you quoted?
Once I noticed Mr. Neville’s propensity to demonize those who don’t share his geographical theories, however, I began to realize that he poses a very unfortunate potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints. And his curiously urgent need to attack me over and over again has also been brought to my attention....
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Re: Does Jonathan Neville Pose a "potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints"?

Post by Moksha »

In a heavily Mopologetic vs Not-Us situation, those so-called "Not-Us" must be dealt with by utilizing both strawman arguments and ad hominem attacks.
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Re: Does Jonathan Neville Pose a "potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints"?

Post by Lem »

Moksha wrote:
Sun Apr 11, 2021 6:13 am
In a heavily Mopologetic vs Not-Us situation, those so-called "Not-Us" must be dealt with by utilizing both strawman arguments and ad hominem attacks.
Nah, I think a narcissist just got caught expressing his narcissism in print, and decided it wasn’t in his best interests to be quite so obvious about it.
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Re: Does Jonathan Neville Pose a "potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints"?

Post by IHAQ »

I’m just not interested in Heartlander theories. Truth be told, I’m not overly interested in questions of Book of Mormon geography at all.
...said the guy "headlining" Book of Mormon Lands tours for Cruise Lady.
https://www.cruiselady.com/tours/best-o ... caribbean/
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Re: Does Jonathan Neville Pose a "potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints"?

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

Lem wrote:
Sun Apr 11, 2021 6:33 am
Moksha wrote:
Sun Apr 11, 2021 6:13 am
In a heavily Mopologetic vs Not-Us situation, those so-called "Not-Us" must be dealt with by utilizing both strawman arguments and ad hominem attacks.
Nah, I think a narcissist just got caught expressing his narcissism in print, and decided it wasn’t in his best interests to be quite so obvious about it.
He's such a goddamn narcissist that his Disqus 'hashtags' literally tell you what he's doing despite any sort of lying he does in his vanity blog posts. Take a look, the hubris is astonishing, but understandable because like Trump, he's found his base of supporters simply don't care. An example from his latest Neville hit piece:

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 90803.html

Look at the tags:

Citation Cartel? LOLOL.

Heartland, Heartlander, Heartlanders

Jonathan Neville - Click on that one. Loads of obsessive posts about him.

M2C - Lolol, links directly to a blog post in May, 2020 claiming to seldom think about Neville. "I very seldom think about “Heartland” models of the geography of the Book of Mormon, let alone about Jonathan Neville".

DCP's sociopathy is based in understanding people don't fact check him, and even if they do he's rarely, if ever, held accountable for his crappy behavior. Go ahead. Take a look at the tags. They're a testament, a sort of wagging double middle finger to his own readers. It's actually kind of hilarious.

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Re: Does Jonathan Neville Pose a "potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints"?

Post by Everybody Wang Chung »

Knowing how much the Mopologists claim to hate anonymous attacks, why is Stephen Smoot hiding behind the pseudonymously-authored attack blog, "Neville-Neville Land?” And, why does DCP devote so much space on SeN posting these pseudonymous attacks? Very strange indeed.

Also, why does DCP feel the need to lie when he publicly posts that he doesn’t know the identity of the author of Neville-Neville Land? Is DCP even capable of being honest at this point in his life?

Maybe it has something to do with young Stephen Smoot not wanting his PhD advisors to know he maintains (and spends time daily) an attack blog? It probably wouldn’t reflect too well on Stephen or his PhD program.

https://cua.academia.edu/StephenSmoot
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Re: Does Jonathan Neville Pose a "potential threat to the peace and unity of the Saints"?

Post by Doctor Scratch »

I sense that the whole thing is metastasizing into something potentially explosive. DCP, it would seem to me, is spearheading a smear campaign to get Neville tossed out of the Church, and Smoot/Pan is his accomplice. What's intriguing about all of this is that it's essentially a redux of the whole 2nd Watson Letter fiasco. Neville has apparently launched a campaign in which he is claiming that the Church's Correlation Department has been "duped" by the Mopologsts--whom he rather hilariously has dubbed the "citation cartel." (Perfect, since they don't cite anyone but each other.) No doubt this all sounds very familiar to anyone who knows the history of Mopologetics.

For those who don't: there was an infamous incident knows as the "Watson Letter," a.k.a. the 1st Watson Letter. What happened was that some inquiring, faithful Latter-day Saint in the midwest wrote a letter to the First Presidency asking where the location of the Hill Cumorah was. And he actually got a response! The letter, signed by FP secretary Michael Watson, stated plainly and clearly that the Hill Cumorah is located in New York. Full stop. The trouble from the Mopologists' perspective is that this undermined all their theories about the Book of Mormon taking place in Latin America: they had invested considerable time and effort into advancing that theory. Midgley even went so far as to say that they had to wait for Elder Mark E. Petersen *to die* in order to peddle this stupid theory. And here is Michael Watson, blowing all their efforts to smithereens!

So, they hatched a plan to obtain a Second Watson Letter that would undo the "damage" that was done by the First Letter. Bill Hamblin claimed in the FARMS Review that he had managed to procure a copy of this 2nd Letter and he published some of the text of it in one of his articles. Many critics asked over the years to see an actual photocopy of the letter, as there were suspicions that the apologists were lying. Then, circa late 2009 or thereabouts, some knuckle-headed Mopologist actually found the original copy, which turned out *not* to be from Watson at all, but instead from some functionary named Carla Ogden! And it was not even a "letter" at all, but some boilerplate form letter that was faxed to somebody in the FARMS offices. And to make matters even worse, it was not even an original form letter: the text was cribbed (as Brent Metcalfe pointed out) from the Encyclopedia of Mormonism. This was one of the most defining and significant moments that has ever happened in the history of Mopologetics.

And now, here we are seeing essentially the same thing playing out all over again. What's that garbled Marx quote again? About how history repeats itself--the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce? Well, what about the third and fourth times?

In any case, as you can see from that link to Neville's blog, he's claiming that the Correlation Department has been "duped" by the Mopologists, just like the Mopologists once agonized over the thought that Michael Watson had been duped by...well, who? The Heartlanders weren't around back then--they didn't need to be, since the common wisdom was that Cumorah was in New York. If it hadn't been for the Mopologists, there never would have been any need for the Heartlanders. My advice to Neville is that he work to get a second form letter from Correlation that does a better job of supporting the Heartlanders' views. That way, he can show that DCP, Midgley, and the Mopologists are in a state of apostasy, thus deploying what is known in some circles as "the old switcheroo."

Meanwhile, did you know that there are legitimate professors and/or PhD-holding folks who support the Heartlanders? Check this out. Wow: Dr. Kevin Price appears to have some authentic credentials, including long stints teaching at actual universities. Man, how are Midgley and DCP ever going to respond to that? I can help but be impressed by the Heartlanders' commitment. They are going all in with their use of SENSYS technology to do field research. The Mopologists are pumping millions of dollars into theatrical movies. Why aren't they out there getting their hands dirty and proving that Zarahemla is in the Yucatan?
"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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