The Origin of FAIR/MAD

[_Mister Scratch]

An additional point, Shades:

1. No Echohawk reference
2. No Midgley reference
3. No transcript

In other words: they lied. They all lied, and when they were caught, instead of admiting it and repenting, they all ran away and have now been pouting for three years. They lay the blame for the demise of ZLMB on my head, but all I did was back Juliann into a corner and force her to admit that she lied.

Yes. One of the most disquieting aspects of the whole affair, in my opinion, is the mob-mentality of it all. They all jumped on this "Let's Smear Murphy" bandwagon, despite not having any evidence. All of them---Pent, juliann, rchivist (a.k.a. Calmoriah), slingy, Jan, and Sharon, FT---were working in-synch, conveniently overlooking the gross lack of evidence, and, in short, perpetuating lies. The notion of this lock-step mentality, at work towards destroying somebody's life and/or career, is truly frightening, in my opinion.

[_Mister Scratch]

You thought it was goodbye forever? No such luck. At least, not yet.

Besides the irony of Peterson making this comment here, the question is why did he say it?

I said it because Scratch has been maligning me for at least a year or two here, (ironically) accusing me of involvement in a sustained and deliberate campaign of character assassination against Mike Quinn (and others),

Prof. P.---you *were* involved in it. The fact that you were peddling your "insider" knowledge (and one always knows when you're doing this, because you preface it by saying, "I have good reason to believe," or something like that) on FAIR proves this beyond any reasonable doubt. However, as I have said elsewhere, I think that you were, at most, only a minor player in all of it.

Was it simply because he holds Scratch in contempt and looks for opportunities to hurl insults?

I do, it's true, hold Scratch in contempt. He's been slandering me pretty diligently for a long time. But I don't "look for opportunities" to "hurl insults" at him. Other than the occasional short insulting quotation about me (of which I've collected maybe a dozen or two), I maintain no file or "dossier" on him.

You do, however, maintain a kind of "RfM Archive," (shoddily kept, I might add) which you use in published articles, such as "The Witchcraft Paradigm" and "Apologetics by the Numbers."

But let's talk about this. You claim that I "twist sources" and so forth. Would you care to provide evidence of this? Your pal "Opie Rockwell" tried to claim that I had done this with the Will Schryver/Dan Vogel tussle, but he failed rather miserably. It seems to me that the best you've got is your assertion that I have somehow "smeared" you or "assassinated your character" via my reporting your gossiping about Mike Quinn. And, since your clarification to Dr. Shades has absolved you of "deep" involvement, I'm not really sure what you're so upset about.....

[_beastie]

DCP -

You stated, on the Murphy thread that:

This will be, I think, a great teaching moment for Mr. Shades.

He needs to hear some of the details. But first he'll need to have a chair and some smelling salts.

In retrospect, would you still hold to this opinion? That Shades was taught something in this thread? Or were other people taught something?

[_Mister Scratch]

What are your thoughts regarding Vogel's "Pious Fraud" theory? Do you think Joseph Smith started to believe his own stories? To me, it seems like its a blury line. If you think about the lie and don't think about the truth, don't you effectually forget what the truth actually was?

But this is a different situation, people were recalling information about who said what. That is more open to problematic memory and confirmation bias, in my opinion. We have one person who was taking notes,

Hold on a sec here. I'm not convinced that Jan really even *was* taking notes, since we have all this talk from juliann and others about this "transcript" being made. (Nowhere in the thread were her notes ever posted....) Their mention of being in on this "transcription" makes me think that Jan decided to jot all of her "notes" down after-the-fact.... (Does that make sense?) I think the bottom line is that they were throwing around a lot of accusations without any evidence at all.

Certainly people made very misleading statements. But was it deliberate?

I *do* think it was deliberate insofar as juliann absolutely and stubbornly refused to admit she had lied. Also, Pentatach's insistence on trying to use the Echohawk "misquote" (and I personally do not think that Murphy's use of the quote was "distorted" at all) to smear Murphy seemed very "deliberate" to me.

I think it's more likely just an overstatement of one's case out of confidence and hubris. The refusal to admit the misleading statements, after they've been demonstrated as such, and instead blame-shift and divert, is problematic behavior, and I guess it's a sort of lying.

I agree wholeheartedly with this.

Believers like Juliann are very eager to believe the absolute worst about any individual she perceives to be attacking LDS truth claims, so this inherent prejudice makes her memory automatically suspect in any discussion of this sort. Jan and cal are not quite that eager to believe the worst, but likely were influenced by the getting together of the group (and I still don't understand how, why, or even if, this took place).

Yes---again, the group mentality is one of the most disturbing aspects of the whole thing.

[_Daniel Peterson]

I have no expectation that my opinion matters to you in the least.

Owing to a telephone call and a moment of inattention, I just lost a very eloquent, entertaining, and persuasive response to you, and I don't want to take the time to try to recreate it. (I've got a lot that I ought to be doing instead of posting here.)

Let me just say that matters like this involve judgment calls and ambiguity. Suppose that Craven T. Farmsboy knows things that would cast certain public controversies in a very different light, but that his knowledge springs from confidential sources. What should he do? Maintain complete silence and permit somebody to be publicly lionized and celebrated for virtues that he doesn't possess, on the basis of conversations that he has misrepresented, while somebody else is publicly criticized and lampooned on the basis of untruths? Or should Craven Farmsboy blurt out everything he knows, violating confidentiality? Or, alternatively, should Craven Farmsboy try to suggest that there's more to the story than the public celebrants and critics know, but without saying everything that he could, thus opening himself up to the charge that he really is . . . well, a craven FARMSboy?

I do, in fact, take the position that you've expressed very seriously. I've not told all that I know about even the situations where I've made a comment, and, in more cases than you can possibly know, I've made no comment at all regarding discussions on which I could have said a great deal indeed.

I understand that people of intelligence and good will can reach different judgments on such things, and that such people will draw the line at different points. I haven't always been entirely comfortable with the decisions I've made in such matters, but I don't know that other decisions would have made me any more comfortable. Bad situations are bad situations.

[_Mister Scratch]

I have no expectation that my opinion matters to you in the least.

Owing to a telephone call and a moment of inattention, I just lost a very eloquent, entertaining, and persuasive response to you, and I don't want to take the time to try to recreate it. (I've got a lot that I ought to be doing instead of posting here.)

Let me just say that matters like this involve judgment calls and ambiguity. Suppose that Craven T. Farmsboy knows things that would cast certain public controversies in a very different light, but that his knowledge springs from confidential sources. What should he do? Maintain complete silence and permit somebody to be publicly lionized and celebrated for virtues that he doesn't possess, on the basis of conversations that he has misrepresented, while somebody else is publicly criticized and lampooned on the basis of untruths? Or should Craven Farmsboy blurt out everything he knows, violating confidentiality? Or, alternatively, should Craven Farmsboy try to suggest that there's more to the story than the public celebrants and critics know, but without saying everything that he could, thus opening himself up to the charge that he really is . . . well, a craven FARMSboy?

I do, in fact, take the position that you've expressed very seriously. I've not told all that I know about even the situations where I've made a comment, and, in more cases than you can possibly know, I've made no comment at all regarding discussions on which I could have said a great deal indeed.

I understand that people of intelligence and good will can reach different judgments on such things, and that such people will draw the line at different points. I haven't always been entirely comfortable with the decisions I've made in such matters, but I don't know that other decisions would have made me any more comfortable. Bad situations are bad situations.

Well said, Prof. P. Your last paragraph in particular strikes a plangent chord for me. In my "judgment", your commentary on Quinn simply cannot be read in a positive light. In fact, I cannot recall a single instance whereby you've used your "insider knowledge" in a balanced way. This "insider knowledge" seems entirely put to the service of smearing critics of the Church. (Or of defending colleagues of yours who have fouled up---e.g., the Kent Jackson-called-on-the-carpet incident. I believe Kevin Graham has something on his board about Wells Jakeman.)

[_Daniel Peterson]

Prof. P.---you *were* involved in it.

"It" never occurred.

You . . . maintain a kind of "RfM Archive" . . . which you use in published articles, such as "The Witchcraft Paradigm" and "Apologetics by the Numbers."

Roughly 15-20 quotes (usually one sentence long, but, occasionally, up to four or five sentences in length) harvested quite unsystematically over the past 2-3 years.

Some "archive."

But let's talk about this.

Let's not.

It seems to me that the best you've got is your assertion that I have somehow "smeared" you or "assassinated your character" via my reporting your gossiping about Mike Quinn.

No, that's the worst that you've got. Your unsleeping malice has, thus far, only managed to slander me by means of fictions, innuendo, false attributions of motives, and baseless mind-reading.

[_Tarski]

I have no expectation that my opinion matters to you in the least.

Owing to a telephone call and a moment of inattention, I just lost a very eloquent, entertaining, and persuasive response to you, and I don't want to take the time to try to recreate it. (I've got a lot that I ought to be doing instead of posting here.)

Let me just say that matters like this involve judgment calls and ambiguity. Suppose that Craven T. Farmsboy knows things that would cast certain public controversies in a very different light, but that his knowledge springs from confidential sources.

Maybe it centers around these "confidential sources". I hope these souces are better than some of the sources about what happen in the Murphy lecutre. Maybe you are too trusting of other peoples renditions of what happened.
Unless you had direct personal experience then perhaps comments that cast critics in a bad light should be foregone.

The formula to be avoided would be something like
"My Mormon apologist source X informs me that something unseamly about critic Y is true."

It's kind of like
"My sources at Carl Rove's office assure me that something unseamly is true of Nancy Pelosi but I can't go into details."

[_beastie]

DCP -

Thank you for taking my comment seriously.

I think that Craven Farmboy’s only ethical option is to remain silent. He was given information under orders of confidentiality. When Craven instead chooses only to drop hints about insider knowledge, implying the knowledge would entirely discredit the individual, people are free to imagine information that is actually far more problematic than the actual truth. What? Is he/she a known fraud, under charges in court? A child molester? Someone bereft of any moral character? Or, perhaps, something as innocuous as having written information under a pseudonym?

Craven knows the exact nature of the information, but no one else does. And the range of moral decrepitude between being a child molester or a known fraud under charges in court and writing under a pseudonym is so vast that the “hints” have such potential harm that Craven should just keep his mouth entirely shut.

Besides, when Craven was told to keep the information confidential, do you think that the individual sharing the information really meant “Go ahead and insinuate to people you know something awful about this person, just don’t tell what or where you heard it?"

Of course it’s frustrating in life to see someone “get away” with something we think they ought not to. But life is full of such frustrations. Besides, the vast majority of time the information eventually comes out, anyway.

Besides – someone could actually be an immoral monster and still argue correct and valid points about a particular issue. Why not just demonstrate how faulty his/her argument is, rather than try to make people disregard the argument because the originator is morally suspect?

[_Daniel Peterson]

In my "judgment", your commentary on Quinn simply cannot be read in a positive light.

I don't recall ever indicating any respect for your "judgment."

In fact, I cannot recall a single instance whereby you've used your "insider knowledge" in a balanced way.

I'm a believing Latter-day Saint. (Are you perhaps just noticing this?) I defend my friends.

I speak up only on some issues, and my choice of the issues on which I speak up will reflect my loyalties. On the whole, I would prefer not to speak up. I do so only when I feel some obligation.

This "insider knowledge" seems entirely put to the service of smearing critics of the Church.

I don't "smear" critics of the Church. "Smearing" is your specialty.

Or of defending colleagues of yours who have fouled up---e.g., the Kent Jackson-called-on-the-carpet incident. I believe Kevin Graham has something on his board about Wells Jakeman.)

It's true. I confess it. I have defended Kent Jackson and Wells Jakeman. And, if the situation warrants, I'll willingly defend them again.