Debate him? How could you possibly debate him, when you're incapable of engaging in debate without misdirection, heaping on rhetoric and ad hom's?
I have never done this with people I intellectually respect, and who intellectually respect me, and engage me in that manner. Call it a character defect (yes, I should, as an LDS and a serious intellectual, be less aggressive and ad hominem), and it certainly is, but I do not engage serious critics who are serious, sincere, and substantive in there criticisms in any other manner but serious, sincere, and substantive.
Those who do not receive this treatment are those to do not deserve it, and they are they to do not engage me in a serious, sincere, or substantive manner.
I'm working on this character defect even as we speak.
The "standard EV shibboleth's" are being delivered by a person who was active LDS for 40 years.
This, however, fails to change their nature as standard EV shibboleths (you Mormons have been deceived by "religion" as opposed to a personal relationship with Jesus etc.).
It is typical of apologists, when their intellectual back is to the wall, to shift focus on to attack of the person instead of the issues being raised.
The LDS who was debating this guy had his back against the wall because he placed it there. Either bc or myself, or rc, or Wade, or Charity could have stuck pins into this doll at will. This isn't bragging at all. Intellectually, this individual was a juicy target who, as juicy targets do, believed he was scoring substantial points when what he was really doing was throwing himself under the bus philosophically. He didn't know it because his opponent didn't know it and didn't make him aware of it.
The Tanner site is filled with church produced material. John's defensive statement that he refused to look at material that was "not church approved" is absurd in light of the fact that the material on the Tanner site IS church product.
Yes, it was absurd--to a point. When you want to understand a doctrine, philosophy, or belief system, you go to the primary sources
and critiques of those doctrines from outside. Hence, if you want to understand Roman Catholicism, you study it. You also study critiques of it. This will provide different prespectives in different senses. Our "Bishopric" is right that if one wants to understand LDS doctrine and practices as
LDS themselves conceive of and understand them, one needs to study the doctrine at its source, not the Tanners. Then, if one wants to understand LDS doctrine as understood by a Protestant, Catholic, secular humanist, Feminist, etc., one reads analysis from those areas. This does not necessarily get one closer to the truth than a serious immersion in the primary texts and sources of the belief system one wishes to comprehend, but it does provide perspectives from outside (which, if anything, allows one a window into what those perspectives believe about themselves and there position in relation to the belief system in question). One of the major reasons for the importance of the Nag Hammadi library is precisely that, before it, all we had was the hostile witnesses in the Church Fathers. Not that all of their observations and reports were inaccurate. It isn't necessary to believe in wholesale dishonesty to understand that bias colors perception and accuracy.
One of the great open sores of the EV counter cult has always been the arrogating of EVs to themselves the idea that they know LDS doctrine (the "real" doctrines", unknown to most unsuspecting members) better than LDS themselves. This is a major legacy of the populist demagoguery apologetic school of Mr. Martin, and has been a traditional part of EV apologetics for decades. The problem with it, of course, is that most of its assumptions and claims are whole cloth creations that have no actual relevance to the Church, and hence, are diversions from substantive discussion.
The problem here, Jersey Girl, is that the EV counter cult is has long been known as the stomping ground for intellectual hacks, populist bigots, and academic poseurs. We can name them. The Tanners have long ago been exposed as detailed and meticulous, as well as tendentious and simplistic thinkers. No mystery here.
When John is confronted regarding his testimony of the church with mention of other religious groups (JW's in the broadcast) also have a witness, his only defense is that "it's true", "the church is true".
The claim that other religions have a "witness" in any sense comparable to the LDS understanding of testimony is a can of worms indeed. I've known many who claim a personal witness of Jesus Christ, to which LDS theology concurs is not only possible but assumed within a Gospel context. I've never met a Christian who could answer me directly that he knew his Church/denomination/sect was true, in the sense meant in the Restored Gospel, nor that he had a sure knowledge, by revelation, that specific doctrines, such as the doctrine of the trinity, total depravity, salvation by grace alone etc., were true.
Always, in each and every case, this turned to the text of the Bible for interpretational wrangling.
Whatever the case, the LDS in this discussion did not, at least from a strictly intellectual standpoint, do well.
I wonder what people like John will think when it's made clear and apparent to them that the foundational text of their church is proven a fraud? What will his defense be then, I wonder? How will he realign the dominoes to keep them from collasping?
The Book of Mormon cannot be proven a fraud, any more than the Bible can be proven a reliable religious text. The evidence needed to accomplish that feat does not exist, either in Archeology or in philosophy. We could specify what would be needed (a Rosetta stone for ancient American languages, for an example in the Book of Mormon case), but we don't have that. We have a great many absence of evidence arguments, but they are bound and limited both by time and by inferential weaknesses.