John Gee's book review and thoughts:

[_guy sajer]

What can I say? I'm crushed.

The illustrious Guy Sajer, Arabist and polymath, has carefully evaluated my work on medieval Islamic philosophy, sifted through my efforts in Qur’anic studies, and subjected my writings on the biography of Muhammad to rigorous analysis -- I wonder if his verdict takes into account the article on early legends about Muhammad's pre-existence, of which I sent out the final draft on Friday? -- and he has found it wanting.

Just to clarify, for the illustrious Guy Sajer: I never said that presenting at the AAR/SBL represents the acme of academic life. Neither, however, is it the kind of thing that, say, any random boy from Brazil can participate in after simply walking in off the street. I offered it as an easily accessible illustration of the fact that John Gee is an active scholar whose work is not summarily rejected by his giggling peers. John is perhaps one of the most actively-presenting scholars that I know, in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. (I'm guessing that he offers papers at about eight conferences annually.) And his work is published. But then, the illustrious Guy Sajer undoubtedly monitors all of that, and already knows it.

Jesus Horatio Christ, Dan, you have such a flair for distorting and obfuscating what people say. Show me one thing I've ever said that suggests that I think I am an expert in medieval Islamic philosophy. I am, however, speaking to a topic that I know intimately, and that is how academics in general works.

I say to you, if you are the expert you claim to be, show us your peer-reviewed publications that demonstrate this fact. Anyone can be an expert in his own mind, but the best test of expertise is whether your peers concur, and in academics, peer reviewed publications is the principal method by which peers acknowledge one's expertise.

I have no doubt that Gee is an active scholar, I've concede as much. I'm simply saying that presentating at academic conferences means squat, and I am calling you out on this so as to blunt your transparent appeal to authority and let people know its real significant, lest they be tempted to rely on your obviously misrepresentative (and curiously ignorant) word. Whether Gee received his degree from Yale, is absolutely, totally irrelevant as to the quality of his apologetic arguments. Trying to prove Mormonism true is the religious equivalent of alchemy; no one, not even someone with a Ph.D. from Yale can transform base metals into gold, nor for that matter, transform horse s*** into fillet mignon.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Dan, you have such a flair for distorting and obfuscating what people say.

A bit deficient in the irony category, O illustrious one?

Show me one thing I've ever said that suggests that I think I am an expert in medieval Islamic philosophy.

Precisely. In that subject -- and, presumably, on Qur’anic studies and the biography of Muhammad as well -- you are wholly and utterly clueless.

You wouldn't know a major contribution to the field if it bit you in your incredibly brilliant and distinguished rear end. And the fact that you continue to pronounce judgments on this matter reveals you to be a shameless and complete fool, as well.

Whether Gee received his degree from Yale, is absolutely, totally irrelevant as to the quality of his apologetic arguments. Trying to prove Mormonism true is the religious equivalent of alchemy; no one, not even someone with a Ph.D. from Yale can transform base metals into gold, nor for that matter, transform horse s*** into fillet mignon.

So what we've got here, again, is not so much a judgment based on expertise as a kind of profession of unfaith.

Very moving.

[_dartagnan]

Or, anyway, thinking that they do, as judged by their own amateur selves. They may be right, and they may be wrong, but some of them are never, ever, in doubt.

And the fact that the lot of you always run for the hills whenever these refutations take place… this is supposed to be interpreted by the general public, how exactly?

That is, of course, something I've never said.

Of course not Dan. You’re too smart to just say it. Instead, you keep implying it.

One effective way to win debates, I suppose, is to misrepresent the position of one's opponent and then declare victory.

That must explain why you keep throwing up their resumes. Because it is a straw man to keep saying we criticize them for being incompetent in their respective fields of expertise. I don’t think anyone has said that. But at least you can declare victory, right?

I've simply reacted to the claim that Dr. Gee and Mr. Bokovoy are completely incompetent hacks -- which is the charge that is so routinely made here, by certain persons at least.

Again, when it comes to their apologetics, which is something entirely separate from what they learned at Yale and Brandeis, they can only be called incompetent or dishonest. It would be hypocritical for you to criticize anyone for drawing these conclusions, since it is one you often draw based on “overwhelming evidence.”

I've asserted neither of those things.

Then why do you constantly bring up facts we already know? Nobody here is ignorant of the fact that both are scholars in their respective fields. But Mormon apologetics is not a field of scholarship. So when we criticize them for the latter, it is disingenuous for you to keep bringing up the former as if they were synonymous. One thing has nothing to do with the other.

It's easy to "win" a debate, though, when one completely misrepresents the position of one's opponent.

You’re speaking from experience, no doubt.

Correction: What idiotic positions Kevin Graham has attributed to me here

If you can agree that this is in fact idiotic, then why would you toe the line of idiocy so closely and so frequently? You’re playing the standard Ivory Tower Trump card. You do not respond to any of the criticisms of your protégés with sound reasoning or counter-argument. Instead, you direct everyone’s attention to their alma maters. What other way should this be interpreted?

This is really high quality discourse.

So pointing out your hypocrisy is to be dismissed because it doesn’t promote high quality discourse? Can you defend yourself on this point? I’d like to think you weren’t a hypocrite, but I’m sorry, the “overwhelming evidence” simply points me in that direction.

[_Mister Scratch]

I'm not sure why Prof. P. seems to think that a mere listing of the universities Gee and Bokovoy attended somehow salvages their crummy Mopologetic work. Gee in particular is a truly nasty piece of work, full of hatred and bent on smearing critics of the Church. One of the key problems DCP has glossed over was the fact that Ritner walked off Gee's doctoral committee. If there is a more serious indicator of Gee's problems as an intellectual/academic, I don't know what it could be. It is one thing to say that Berkeley and Yale "approved" of Gee, since, as Prof. P. has repeatedly noted, on the surface Gee seems okay (which is sort of the point---his own agenda demonstrates this amply: get the surface approval of other scholars, and then advance the Mopologetic arguments, so they seem like they've got that patina of real scholarship), but when you get to know him---as Ritner did---the foundation crumbles away.

[_guy sajer]

[You wouldn't know a major contribution to the field if it bit you in your incredibly brilliant and distinguished rear end. And the fact that you continue to pronounce judgments on this matter reveals you to be a shameless and complete fool, as well.

Well, Dan, that may be true, but it's easy judge whether someone has made a major contribution to the field when they've made NO contributions to the field.

List your peer-reviewed publications here and let us bask in your academic brilliance. Show me I'm wrong. Time to put up or shut up, Dan.

[_Mister Scratch]

[You wouldn't know a major contribution to the field if it bit you in your incredibly brilliant and distinguished rear end. And the fact that you continue to pronounce judgments on this matter reveals you to be a shameless and complete fool, as well.

Well, Dan, that may be true, but it's easy judge whether someone has made a major contribution to the field when they've made NO contributions to the field.

List your peer-reviewed publications here and let us bask in your academic brilliance. Show me I'm wrong. Time to put up or shut up, Dan.

What DCP has long refused to admit is that the bulk of his output consists of LDS apologetics. I'm not sure how many people are aware of this, but BYU actually allows publications in journals such as FARMS Review to count towards tenure decisions. It wouldn't surprise me at all if DCP received tenure primarily on account of his apologetic work.

Of course, this whole thing seems very problematic, from an intellectual honesty POV. I mean, does it seem right to grant academic promotions to people on the basis of work that turned up in an LDS journal, that is reviewed almost entirely by other LDS, and which isn't submitted to the real rigors of the larger academic community? It all just seems very nepotistic, in my opinion.

[_guy sajer]

What DCP has long refused to admit is that the bulk of his output consists of LDS apologetics. I'm not sure how many people are aware of this, but BYU actually allows publications in journals such as FARMS Review to count towards tenure decisions. It wouldn't surprise me at all if DCP received tenure primarily on account of his apologetic work.

Of course, this whole thing seems very problematic, from an intellectual honesty POV. I mean, does it seem right to grant academic promotions to people on the basis of work that turned up in an LDS journal, that is reviewed almost entirely by other LDS, and which isn't submitted to the real rigors of the larger academic community? It all just seems very nepotistic, in my opinion.

That may have been true for Dan's generation of professors, but I doubt it's true for the new crop of professors. This, at least, was the case in the Marriott School; an older generation of professors hired under an entirely different set of expectations, many of whom had weak publication records after a decades. When I was hired in 1991, I was told by the Dean, "we like you and want you to succeed, but if you don't publish, we won't keep you." We had a bi-furcated faculty there; an older generation of "non-productive" and less ambitious professors and a younger generation of highly ambitious and productive professors.

I didn't get on the case of the older, non-productive generation, as they clearly were hired under a different set of expectations; that is, as long as they didn't go around strutting and posing as scholarly giants, as is the case with our eminent friend here.

[_Trevor]

I think it would be prudent for critics to quit dwelling on the whole Ritner/Gee angle, just as it would be wise for defenders not to try to reshape it into something that smells the way they want it to. Having enduring the dissertation process myself, and having seen a few others endure it, with all of the vicissitudes therein, I can tell you that interpersonal committee dynamics can be a tricky thing, both between student and professor, and between members of the committee. As the student, you may sometimes feel that you are caught between gods who are throwing thunder bolts at each other that just may strike you dead in the process. Sometimes personalities don't mesh, and the results of that can be damaging without being patently obvious to every onlooker. Great minds don't always think alike.

So, it would seem best, from my perspective, which is one of some small experience, for both sides to quit dragging up Ritner/Gee. We were not there. We do not know exactly what happened. Whether it involved Gee's incompetence, his refusal to sleep with Ritner, or piss on someone's cornflakes, is unknown to us. I have been an onlooker as someone's personality conflict with a prof. became that student's incompetence in the professor's eyes. It happens.

The good news is that the intellectual output of Gee and Ritner, both about Mormon topics and otherwise, can be assessed without attributing everything to mutual ill will. Look at the evidence and arguments. Pee in the cornflakes does not change the antiquity or modernity of the Book of Abraham.

[_The Dude]

Most of what I read in critiques of ID is based on distortions and caricatures.

That's funny, since ID/creationism depends on distortions and caricatures in the first place. It's hard to critique creationism if you don't address their arguments.

The same editor is eagerly awaiting the submission of an article critiquing that article. He doesn't believe in suppressing debate. Presumably you do?

Suppressing debate? Who said anything about that -- you're just trying to change the subject or maybe you're paranoid.

No, it's fine that you want to carry some of the "debate" in your FARMS publication; you know, the journal reflects the interests of its editorial folks. I never accused you of suppressing debate.

Now Dan, you've ignored both my original comment about David Stewart and my follow up question (Q: "has anyone sent you a critique of David Stewart's article (published ~ 1 year ago)?"). Is there a reason for this avoidance? Are you suppressing something here (since you mentioned that), or wishing something would go away, or wishing something had never been brought to your journal in the first place?

[_Daniel Peterson]

Gee . . . is a truly nasty piece of work, full of hatred and bent on smearing

A message board post can't possibly get any richer than the one above.

the fact that Ritner walked off Gee's doctoral committee.

Is that a fact.