DCP Admits to "LDS Academic Embarrassment"

[_Runtu]

Beastie,

Don't you know that the real reason the Book of Mormon isn't taken seriously is that scholars have not "seriously engaged" the text and the surrounding LDS scholarship? Come on, you know better than that.

[_beastie]

Don't you know that the real reason the Book of Mormon isn't taken seriously is that scholars have not "seriously engaged" the text and the surrounding LDS scholarship? Come on, you know better than that.

Heh. Part of what irritates me about this statement is that I spent many hours seriously engaging the text within the terms of LGT, and then wrote lengthy essays on my conclusions. I've linked them several times to Charity, who has not read them to this point, as far as I can tell. While I may not count as a "scholar", I certainly have educated myself and am using the words of scholars to make my points. No one can read my essays and pretend that I don't have adequate background knowledge of either Mesoamerica, the Book of Mormon, or current Book of Mormon apologetics. I constructed the essays based on accepting the basic premises of LGT in the first place (although that is arguable).

Oh well. Such is life.

[_Runtu]

Don't you know that the real reason the Book of Mormon isn't taken seriously is that scholars have not "seriously engaged" the text and the surrounding LDS scholarship? Come on, you know better than that.

Heh. Part of what irritates me about this statement is that I spent many hours seriously engaging the text within the terms of LGT, and then wrote lengthy essays on my conclusions. I've linked them several times to Charity, who has not read them to this point, as far as I can tell. While I may not count as a "scholar", I certainly have educated myself and am using the words of scholars to make my points. No one can read my essays and pretend that I don't have adequate background knowledge of either Mesoamerica, the Book of Mormon, or current Book of Mormon apologetics. I constructed the essays based on accepting the basic premises of LGT in the first place (although that is arguable).

Oh well. Such is life.

I thought you were just a "silly person" who considered herself an expert after reading, what, 3 or 4 books? :rolleyes:

Here's what I see as the difference between scholars and apologists:

Apologists pick out some vague "parallels" that, if accepted, make the Book of Mormon slightly more plausible. Believing LDS readers lap this stuff up as convincing evidence that it is true. Hence, charity's repeated statement that each new piece of evidence supports the Book of Mormon even more.

Scholars see a wide and insurmountable gulf between the actual history and culture of Mesoamerica and the civilizations described in the Book of Mormon. There simply is no overlap, no credible match. It would be like trying to prove that a significant culture of robot-worshipping Norsemen lived in 16th-century China.

[_beastie]

I thought you were just a "silly person" who considered herself an expert after reading, what, 3 or 4 books? :rolleyes:

LOL, I forgot about that.

Here's what I see as the difference between scholars and apologists:

Apologists pick out some vague "parallels" that, if accepted, make the Book of Mormon slightly more plausible. Believing LDS readers lap this stuff up as convincing evidence that it is true. Hence, charity's repeated statement that each new piece of evidence supports the Book of Mormon even more.

Scholars see a wide and insurmountable gulf between the actual history and culture of Mesoamerica and the civilizations described in the Book of Mormon. There simply is no overlap, no credible match. It would be like trying to prove that a significant culture of robot-worshipping Norsemen lived in 16th-century China.

The difference between the two is the essence of the difference between science and pseudoscience. Apologists have already determined the conclusion, ie, that the Book of Mormon is an ancient Mesoamerican text, so all of their work is designed not to enhance the knowledge base about ancient Mesoamerica, but instead to increase faith in what they've already determined, for nonscientific reasons, to be true.

Scholars, on the other hand, while they may have a fondness for one theory in particular and try to support that theory, normally are open to evidence that leads them in an entirely different direction. Yes, scholars (not in Joseph Smith time period, as some apologists seem to insinuate) used to believe the Maya were a peaceful people. But when their glyphs were decoded, even the most fervent defenders of the "peaceful Maya" theory accepted the reality of the evidence and adjusted their theories.

That can never happen in the world of apologia, because the theory - that the Book of Mormon is an ancient Mesoamerican document - can never be adjusted.

in my opinion - this accounts for all the problems we see in Book of Mormon apologia - the vague, celebrated parallels (which, as you say, could really fit any culture), or the extremely strained connections (the Gadianton Robbers to the Aztec Jaguar Warriors!!), the distortions of sources, the unwillingness to add necessary qualifications.

The greatest problem I see for the Book of Mormon in ancient Mesoamerica actually doesn't have to do with specific anachronisms, like horses or metallurgy. It has to do with the fact that the Book of Mormon describes a very complex polity - really a state level. Now these type of polities did exist in ancient Mesoamerica during the specified time period, but they were the most powerful polities in the area. They were the ones that shaped the entire evolution of the Mesoamerican worldview. Other, smaller polities followed their lead, hence making the Mesoamerican world view so pervasive. So, if the Book of Mormon were truly an ancient Mesoamerican document, we'd have to accept that the most powerful polities of the period were actually Judeo-Christian, and yet the entire evolution of the worldview of that period had absolutely no connection with a Judeo-Christian worldview.

It literally defies reason.

The only future discoveries that could change this cold fact would be if a very high number of state level polities were discovered in Mesoamerica, making the state level extremely common and hence, the Book of Mormon polities were not necessarily be the most powerful anymore. The likelihood of that happening is, functionally, zero.

[_Runtu]

Beastie,

That's absolutely right: science is willing to rethink its assumptions and conclusions when new evidence makes that necessary (see Kuhn, for example). Apologetic pseudoscience can adjust everything but the basic premise: the church is true, so therefore the Nephites really did exist when they were supposed to have existed (see Bokovoy, for example).

When your conclusions are already predetermined, you are not engaging in scholarly activity, period.

[_charity]

:Let me start with the last point first, my lack of qualifying
statements. This was simply not the kind of talk where I could qualify
anything, so the statements are clearer and stronger than scientists are
comfortable with. Minimal qualifications for what I said would take
several days of talking. I think I could do it for each point, so I
stand by my list of assertions." Dr. John Clark

I can empathize with Dr. Clark. I had given a lecture one time to an intro psych class. A student came up to me and said, "You didn't give any citations. So are we just supposed to take your word for it?" I referred him to his text book. I was not going to cut out half the material of the lecture so I could cite every study which the information was based on.

.

by the way, you read Arthur Demarest’s Ancient Maya? Here’s his statement from page 34, 35, in discussing the nineteenth century knowledge about the Maya:

"Some of the writers of the period, such as Augustus le Plongeon and Desire Charnay, were prone to imaginative digressions and drawn to wild speculations on the ancient Maya. Le Plongeon, James Churchward, and many others attributed the origins of achievements of the Maya and other New World civilizations to lost tribes from the Old World or from sunken continents. Unfortunately, such fantastic speculations are very effective in capturing public interest. Just as this epoch of popular antiquarian writings had launched modern scientific archaeology, it also seeded the development of the lunatic fringe of Maya archaeology (who even today besiege archaeologists with letters and emails on extraterrestrial influences, Atlantis, and the lost Semitic tribes!)"

I think his view on the Book of Mormon is clear from that statement.

He is clearly talking about peoplew who are asking/stating that the Maya are the Nephites or Atlanteans. Sorenson or Clark or Gardner don't say that. They talk aboiut a contemporary culture. So Demarest is not talking about them.

You know how apologists like Brant try to get around that clear statement? By saying things such as “well, this wasn’t a LOST tribe”, or pointing out that LGT accepts a pre-existing population, so the Nephites no longer have full credit for building the civilization. This is the best they can do.

Why is the truth put down as "the best they can do?"

People, including many experts, in the nineteenth century did believe that the ancient Americans were descended from the house of Israel when a portion of them migrated here. The Book of Mormon was not debated on that point in the nineteenth century. It said exactly what the population would have expected an ancient American document to say. But ever since the Maya glyphs have largely been decoded, knowledge about the time period has exploded, and eliminated the possibility that those ideas were correct.

What people thought in the 19th century isn't important. This is one of the problems with the critics. They fasten on the interpretation or culturral expectations which were not a part of the Book of Mormon text, and then criticize the Book of Mormon because some people read it wrong.

For instance, some people have read directions given in the Book of Mormon by our cultural expectations of the "north is up, south is down, east is on the left, west is on the right" thinking. It is pretty hard to make the Book of Mormon descriptions fit with that expectation. But when you use the system used in mesoAmerican cultures, with pie shaped quadrants, it fits. So all the years that "map makers" were trying to squeeze the Book of Mormon into a square guadrangle they could not really explain the geography. Does that mean the Book of Mormon was wrong? No. They were.

[_beastie]

I can empathize with Dr. Clark. I had given a lecture one time to an intro psych class. A student came up to me and said, "You didn't give any citations. So are we just supposed to take your word for it?" I referred him to his text book. I was not going to cut out half the material of the lecture so I could cite every study which the information was based on.

You completely, utterly, miss the point.

Were you actually making statements knowing that the experts in the field would not agree with?

Clark made statements, which you repeat, which he knew that his professional peers would not support. He made no qualifications for those statements.

If you did the same thing, your students would be gravely mistaken to take your word for anything.

Clark is not talking to people who have a textbook to refer to, to discover, for example, that the bow and arrow was not in ancient Mesoamerica until around 800 AD.

He is clearly talking about peoplew who are asking/stating that the Maya are the Nephites or Atlanteans. Sorenson or Clark or Gardner don't say that. They talk aboiut a contemporary culture. So Demarest is not talking about them.

First, Nephites and Lamanites HAD to be part of the Maya population. Second, the worldview ascribed to the Maya was a pervasive Mesoamerican worldview that was at the foundation of the other nonMaya groups of people at the time.

That you think that focusing on the word "Maya" resolves the problem is indicative of your lack of adequate background knowledge on the subject.

What people thought in the 19th century isn't important. This is one of the problems with the critics. They fasten on the interpretation or culturral expectations which were not a part of the Book of Mormon text, and then criticize the Book of Mormon because some people read it wrong.

You so completely missed my point I have to wonder if it is deliberate.

And of course what people thought in the nineteenth century is important, if our choice for the origins of the Book of Mormon is either a text originating from 600BC to 200 AD or a text originating from the nineteenth century.

I hope you can come up with some comments that actually address the main points of my posts.

[_beastie]

Adding question for Charity:

What is so fundamentally different about the Maya versus their neighbors, say in the Isthmian region, that would result in Demarest calling the people who associate the Maya with a semitic tribe lunatics, but would think that associating a nearby region with a semitic tribe would be fine?

[_beastie]

by the way, Clark would not agree with parsing over the word "Maya", which he was only too happy to use in his BYU devotional:

The logical challenges with the first assertion, that no cities have been located, are more subtle. Book of Mormon cities have been found, they are well known, and their artifacts grace the finest museums. They are merely masked by archaeological labels such as “Maya,” “Olmec,” and so on. The problem, then, is not that Book of Mormon artifacts have not been found, only that they have not been recognized for what they are. Again, if you stumbled onto Zarahemla, how would you know?

[_harmony]

He is clearly talking about peoplew who are asking/stating that the Maya are the Nephites or Atlanteans. Sorenson or Clark or Gardner don't say that. They talk aboiut a contemporary culture. So Demarest is not talking about them.

Charity, please. This is so embarrassing to watch. Don't you get it? To the real live experts, Nephites = Atlanteans! They have the same status (none)and are given the same respect (none), because there is the same evidence to support their supposed existence: none.

The top LDS apologists have gone toe to toe with Beastie on this over and over again, and have come out on the losing end over and over again. They run from her now. Your dignity, and your argument such as it was, is in tatters. Return and report your defeat and see if Brant has anything new to throw at Beastie. Because right now, the LDS argument on this is pathetic.