Twenty Years Later, an Old Chestnut gets the Review

[_Jersey Girl]

Scratch:

The day that the Good Professor provides an honest, unbiased, non-spin-doctored account of the FROB is the day that I unmask my identity and go to lunch with LoaP.

Why bother?

It's been obvious for quite some time that more than one person from these boards already knows your identity.

According to you that is, or were you lying?

Just clarifying for those who cannot connect the dots over the course of the last two years or so.

Not such a tempting offer when made in light of that, is it?

________________________________________________________________

[_Ray A]

While surfing for some Jefferson quotes, I found this one:

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.

-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp July 30, 1816, denouncing the doctrine of the Trinity and suggesting it to be so riddled in falsehood that only an authoritarian figure could decipher its meaning and, with a firm grip on people's spiritual and mental freedoms, thus convince the people of its truthfulness

It looks humanly inescapable. FARMS will do it, and the opponents of FARMS will do it.

[_Mister Scratch]

the . . . vicious, bellicose manner . . . discussed by Dr. Robbers

Master Scartch still hasn't freed himself from Gad's well-baited hook.

Hey, Mr. Expert-On-All-FARMS-Publications:

Will you supply textual evidence that "friendly" parties have been given the "L-Skinny Treatment"? I'll wait patiently for you to enlighten me, and prove what an uneducated idiot I am. Oh, how I wait! How I yearn to view how wrong I am about the fact that the "L-skinny" crew have never been ripped a new one in FROB!

In any case, I think DCP's logorrhea on this thread demonstrates (yet again) why he cannot be trusted to accurately represent or describe the contents of FARMS.

With which the Scartchmeister is, as he has both expressly admitted and decisively demonstrated, at best superficially acquainted.

Oh, believe me, Professor Peterson. I *know*, too well, that you, and your "l-skinny" friends have never been treated in the same polemical style as any other author being reviewed in FROB. Feel free to prove me wrong with textual evidence. (Hint, hint: You won't do it! D'oh! Tee hee! It sure feels good to act like DCP! Hooteehoo! Professor Dumpty Stumped Again! Wheeee!!!)

His mind has been too thoroughly polluted by the noxiously polemical atmosphere of l-skinny

Of which the Scartchmeister has effectively no direct experience or knowledge, since it's a private e-mail list and he isn't a member.

No, no.... I'm afraid you're wrong about this, my dear, sweet, Professor P. Messages from this listserve are quite available. In fact, you donated them to SHIELDS!

This is further confirmed by his appalling smear campaigns against Mike Quinn, Robert Ritner, Grant Palmer, and GoodK, among others.

At this point, Master Scartch commences ambling nostalgically down Memory Lane, reprising his favorite Golden Oldies.

Oh, my! You areso right. I forgot to add Meldrum to your list. So, have you been to many of his ward "pitch shows"? Please, do tell!

The three-fold mission of the Chuch has been thrown under the bus in order to feed DCP's "hubris-drunken" ego.

Some have doubted that Master Scartch's obsessive campaign of defamation and character assassination over the past few years has been motivated by personal hostility . . .

What positive purpose does LDS apologetics serve?

[_Gadianton]

Their chief strategy, as you point out, involves demonizing "enemy" scholars, and maintaining an intellectually poststructuralist philosophy in which there is no such thing as Platonic "truth."

Yes, I have to wonder if I've been wrong, and if Bob McCue has been right all along? I wonder if by simply taking note of the apologists at FARMS, with hands deep in dirt scraping for Nephite bones, I only saw standard, aphilosophical forms of evidential reasoning at work, no matter how tortured. But I've stumbled forward over a couple eye openers lately. Migdley does lob around accusations of "positvism" quite freely, and now with charges leveled at Chapel Mormons such as McConkie, questioning the entire enterprise of "doctrine", one is reminded of some wise comments made by Trevor a couple weeks ago linking the attempts of apologetics with Michel Foulcault's archaeology of knowledge. It seems that, in order to learn what the word "doctrine" even means in relation with the Book of Mormon, we will not only have to familiarize ourselves the relevant scientific tools, but also the exegetical tools forged by the legacy of Foulcault, Gadamer, and others who in the literature have sometimes been linked to "fog machinery".

[Physics Guy]

Deleted at the advice of _________.

[_harmony]

And DCP's claims are based entirely on rumor and gossip. If that kind of evidence is acceptable for a reputable BYU professor such as DCP, then it sure is acceptable for me.

I'd say you have pathetic standards. Surely you can do better than that.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Hey, Mr. Expert-On-All-FARMS-Publications:

Ho, Mr. Pontificates-On-All-FARMS-Publications-But-Hasn't-Read-Most-Of-Them!

Will you supply textual evidence that "friendly" parties have been given the "L-Skinny Treatment"?

There is no "L-Skinny Treatment." There isn't even a "Skinny-L Treatment."

I'll wait patiently for you to enlighten me, and prove what an uneducated idiot I am.

I've said nothing about your level of education. I don't know and don't care about it.

But the simple fact is that Skinny-L is a private list of which you're not a member. There have probably been tens of thousands of posts on Skinny-L over the years of its existence -- I receive dozens every day -- and you haven't seen 99.999% of them.

You simply don't know what you're talking about.

Your silly and baseless allegations wouldn't be worth the time it would take to rebut them, even if I could. Which I can't, because, so far as I'm aware, there is no Skinny-L archive, and because I've deleted the vast majority of the Skinny-L posts that I've ever received. (I simply don't need to maintain a library of posts about Midwestern winters, Oregon blueberries, Aotearoa, climbing Mt. Hood, reading Leo Strauss, or most of the other vicious and sinister topics that are the routine daily fare of Skinny-L.)

D'oh! Tee hee! It sure feels good to act like DCP! Hooteehoo! Professor Dumpty Stumped Again! Wheeee!!!

Oh my.

[_Mister Scratch]

Hey, Mr. Expert-On-All-FARMS-Publications:

Ho, Mr. Pontificates-On-All-FARMS-Publications-But-Hasn't-Read-Most-Of-Them!

The fact of the matter is that you have no idea how much of them I have read. I haven't told you, and you are just guessing.

Will you supply textual evidence that "friendly" parties have been given the "L-Skinny Treatment"?

There is no "L-Skinny Treatment." There isn't even a "Skinny-L Treatment."

This sidesteps the main point. You asserted earlier that "friendly" authors (e.g., yourself) have been given harsh treatment in the pages of FROB. I defy you yet again you prove that this is so. Dr. Robbers carefully culled a set of quotations from Bill Hamblin which are clearly aggressive and vicious in nature.

So, are you going to demonstrate that "friendly" authors---such as yourself---have also been written about in this fashion, within the pages of FROB? Or are you going to throw in the towel, thus forfeiting yet another point?

Your silly and baseless allegations wouldn't be worth the time it would take to rebut them, even if I could. Which I can't, because, so far as I'm aware, there is no Skinny-L archive, and because I've deleted the vast majority of the Skinny-L posts that I've ever received. (I simply don't need to maintain a library of posts about Midwestern winters, Oregon blueberries, Aotearoa, climbing Mt. Hood, reading Leo Strauss, or most of the other vicious and sinister topics that are the routine daily fare of Skinny-L.)

LOL! What an embarrassing slip up for you! Here, you state that you have no problem deleting "posts about Midwestern winters, Oregon blueberries, Aotearoa, Mt. Hood" and so on, and yet when I've asked you about your "archive" of emails in the past, specifically in regards to messages from critics---SusieQ and Infymus, for example---you claimed that you saved *ALL* of your emails! Well, clearly, that just isn't so! It is as I suspected all along: you vindictively hang on to messages from critics in the hopes of someday being able to use their own words against them. "Creepy dossiers" indeed, Professor P.! What an embarrassing slip-up. I expect you'll be reeling all day.

[_LifeOnaPlate]

So when are we going to lunch, Scratch?

[_Daniel Peterson]

The fact of the matter is that you have no idea how much of them I have read. I haven't told you, and you are just guessing.

I tested you on the Novick/Midgley matter. You floundered for a while, but you plainly failed the test. And, in the course of your floundering, you acknowledged that you hadn't read it all -- which, it seems fairly obvious, is putting your unfamiliarity mildly.

You asserted earlier that "friendly" authors (e.g., yourself) have been given harsh treatment in the pages of FROB.

I didn't assert that we had been treated "harshly." I don't grant your accusation that we give "harsh treatment" to anybody.

I defy you yet again you prove that this is so.

All of the reviews are up on line. All of them have been published in hard copy.

It's not surprising that you're unfamiliar with this, since your knowledge of what we've published is obviously quite superficial and spotty, but that's not our fault. The reviews are all easily accessible.

Dr. Robbers carefully culled a set of quotations from Bill Hamblin

Indeed he did!

which are clearly aggressive and vicious in nature.

LOL. No they're not.

LOL! What an embarrassing slip up for you!

In your fevered and fantastical dreams, Scartch.

Here, you state that you have no problem deleting "posts about Midwestern winters, Oregon blueberries, Aotearoa, Mt. Hood" and so on, and yet when I've asked you about your "archive" of emails in the past, specifically in regards to messages from critics---SusieQ and Infymus, for example---you claimed that you saved *ALL* of your emails!

I absolutely don't save all of my e-mails. My computer would no longer run if I'd saved all of them from the past decade or two. I receive hundreds daily.

But I save -- or, rather, fail to delete -- many if not most of them. My in-box alone contains more than ten thousand e-mails at the present moment.

It is as I suspected all along: you vindictively hang on to messages from critics in the hopes of someday being able to use their own words against them.

The standards of proof in Scartchworld have always been remarkably low.

"Creepy dossiers" indeed, Professor P.!

Yes, Scartchmeister, "creepy dossiers," indeed.

You have them. I don't.

What an embarrassing slip-up. I expect you'll be reeling all day.

What a loon.