The Origin of FAIR/MAD

[_Mister Scratch]

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

"It" never occurred.

Right. And Mike Quinn's SP never visited his apartment. And he isn't sleeping on a futon. And he is comfortably employed in a Mormon Studies position. And the articles attacking him as a "homosexual demagogue" never appeared in FARMS Review. (And hey---don't you edit that?) And he was never demoted at the Yale Conference. Yep---no smear campaign at all!

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."

You're either not being very honest here, or you are being careless. I compared your "archive" with some of your articles in which you used quotes from either this board or RfM. It turns out that this "archive," which, as you'll recall, you posted the "entirety" of on MAD, was missing some of the quotes in question. (Quotes which went back at least a couple of years.) So, are you being truthful when you say it is "roughly 15-20 quotes...harvested quite unsystematically" (this despite the fact that you just said that you have a dozen or so quotes from me alone)?

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.

Again, you present no evidence.

[_gramps]

DCP wrote:


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

You don't think that in that 28 page thread that you were joining in on the smear of Murphy? Really?

[_beastie]

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."

Exactly!

What????? Is she really a child molesting cross-dresser pretending to be a woman? Is she really a secret agent for Al Qaida? Or doesn't she floss her teeth regularly? Or did she take home a government-bought pen?

[_beastie]

By the way, I should have withheld comments on the "knowing lie" issue until I had reread the entire thread, instead of just the summary. I've only begun, and am beginning to rethink my position on Juliann in particular. So far she's said, about the transcript:

Shades, get a grip. There is a transcription of the lecture. You know...like those court reporter kind of people that take notes in courtroom proceedings? Then you can read it? And no...I'm not posting it.

Only if it wasn't professionally recorded. Unfortunately for you, this one was: research.uvsc.edu/potter/...udies.html

And are you implying that he did not say what he said about Midgley to a room of people? I'm just curious what you think you have to gain by denying what was said.

I gave you the link so that you could get the information from the organizers, Shades. I can see from your response that getting an accurate account is not exactly your agenda right now.

Just to keep the record straight...are you also refusing to admit that he used Prof. Echohawk's name?

Whatever. What does that have to do with an accusation ....witnessed by mulitple people, taped and transcribed....made by Murphy in the middle of an academic lecture? You are denying this statement was made as well?

[_Daniel Peterson]

I think that Craven Farmboy’s only ethical option is to remain silent.

We disagree on this.

He was given information under orders of confidentiality.

I said nothing about "orders of confidentiality." In my own case, certainly, that has very rarely been so. I've made the judgment myself that some things were not for public distribution. When I've been under complete orders of confidentiality, I've said absolutely nothing. And you can't possibly know when that has occurred.

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?"

This is not at all the kind of situation that I was talking about.

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?

That's obvious with certain kinds of discussions. Whether X is a child molester or an anti-Semite or not doesn't matter at all when he asserts that 2+2=5. But when he offers a personal evaluation of someone else, he's not offering an abstract proposition. His entire history, personality, and character come into play in formulating that evaluation. In that case, it is certainly relevant to know that he has a history of personal hostility to the person he is evaluating, or that, the other person being Jewish, he hates Jews.

We don't care about a mathematician's loyalties. We care about his arguments. But when a historian presents to us his thesis, based upon his reading of archival sources that we ourselves haven't seen, his loyalties may be of crucial importance. Even if he has quoted material from the archives, we ourselves can't know -- barring a trip to the archives ourselves, and perhaps many years spent in them -- whethere he has quoted representative passages, in context. We have to trust him in a way that we don't have to trust the mathematician, whose reasoning and evidence are entirely accessible to the public. Knowing that a historian is a dogmatic Freudian or a committed Marxist is useful, not for simply writing off what she writes, but insofar as such knowledge alerts us to potential problem areas.

The rules in such cases are not nearly so clear-cut as, it seems to me, you want to make them.

[_Daniel Peterson]

DCP wrote:

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

You don't think that in that 28 page thread that you were joining in on the smear of Murphy? Really?

Really.

To the limited extent that I recall that thread, and to the fairly limited extent that I seem to have participated in it, I believe that I was commenting on the information presented on the thread. If the information was inaccurate, it wasn't my doing. I seem to recall some people here commenting on purported information presented in threads, too. I don't regard them as being engaged in "smears." I reserve that term for Scratch and his ilk, who actually generate the pseudo-information that others comment upon.

I had, and have, no independent knowledge of Murphy's performance at that conference. I was at a different conference at the same time, and didn't attend.

[_gramps]

By the way, I should have withheld comments on the "knowing lie" issue until I had reread the entire thread, instead of just the summary. I've only begun, and am beginning to rethink my position on Juliann in particular. So far she's said, about the transcript:

Shades, get a grip. There is a transcription of the lecture. You know...like those court reporter kind of people that take notes in courtroom proceedings? Then you can read it? And no...I'm not posting it.

Only if it wasn't professionally recorded. Unfortunately for you, this one was: research.uvsc.edu/potter/...udies.html

And are you implying that he did not say what he said about Midgley to a room of people? I'm just curious what you think you have to gain by denying what was said.

I gave you the link so that you could get the information from the organizers, Shades. I can see from your response that getting an accurate account is not exactly your agenda right now.

Just to keep the record straight...are you also refusing to admit that he used Prof. Echohawk's name?

Whatever. What does that have to do with an accusation ....witnessed by mulitple people, taped and transcribed....made by Murphy in the middle of an academic lecture? You are denying this statement was made as well?

She was clearly lying. This is not a "tie goes to the runner" situation at all. Harmony is dead on. It really has changed my whole opinion of Juliann.

[_gramps]

DCP wrote:

Really.

To the limited extent that I recall that thread, and to the fairly limited extent that I seem to have participated in it, I believe that I was commenting on the information presented on the thread. If the information was inaccurate, it wasn't my doing. I seem to recall some people here commenting on purported information presented in threads, too. I don't regard them as being engaged in "smears." I reserve that term for Scratch and his ilk, who actually generate the pseudo-information that others comment upon.

Maybe you should go back and read the thread again and refresh your memory. I think you started the cosmic rays and a few other stupid jokes and told Shades to sit down and take some smelling salts. You forget all that?

[_Mister Scratch]

DCP wrote:

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

You don't think that in that 28 page thread that you were joining in on the smear of Murphy? Really?

Really.

To the limited extent that I recall that thread, and to the fairly limited extent that I seem to have participated in it, I believe that I was commenting on the information presented on the thread. If the information was inaccurate, it wasn't my doing. I seem to recall some people here commenting on purported information presented in threads, too. I don't regard them as being engaged in "smears." I reserve that term for Scratch and his ilk, who actually generate the pseudo-information that others comment upon.

Come on now, Prof. P. That isn't true at all. What you call "pseudo-information" is, oftentimes, your own posts! Further, I didn't see you chastise any of your fellow TBMs for their really astonishing dishonesty. You seemed, quite honestly, to be having a lot of fun at Tom Murphy's expense.... (E.g., your "cosmic rays" comments, etc.)

[_gramps]

DCP wrote:

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

You don't think that in that 28 page thread that you were joining in on the smear of Murphy? Really?

Really.

To the limited extent that I recall that thread, and to the fairly limited extent that I seem to have participated in it, I believe that I was commenting on the information presented on the thread. If the information was inaccurate, it wasn't my doing. I seem to recall some people here commenting on purported information presented in threads, too. I don't regard them as being engaged in "smears." I reserve that term for Scratch and his ilk, who actually generate the pseudo-information that others comment upon.

Come on now, Prof. P. That isn't true at all. What you call "pseudo-information" is, oftentimes, your own posts! Further, I didn't see you chastise any of your fellow TBMs for their really astonishing dishonesty. You seemed, quite honestly, to be having a lot of fun at Tom Murphy's expense.... (E.g., your "cosmic rays" comments, etc.)

You were having too much fun. That's why ist was extremely disappointing to read that whole thread. I am really surprised that wasn't deleted or "lost" before now. Juliann must now be very embarrassed. Though she probably isn't. Sad!