Twenty Years Later, an Old Chestnut gets the Review

[_Jersey Girl]

Gad

I'm sorry, but it seems to me you take him very seriously. Very, very seriously to the point of becoming very angry.

Do you think he's "very angry" enough to follow another poster around for 2 years online, intrude on people in a chatroom to sleaze around for information, misrepresent the words on the screen before him, make false accusations/allegations..

and keep score of his "points"?

Just curious.

[_Trevor]

Sort of like what SHIELDS did with The Godmakers?

If it weren't apparent that the producers of The Godmakers took themselves so very seriously, then I would think this was the proto-version of Plan 10 From Outerspace.

[_Doctor Steuss]

[...]
Where, I ask, is the equivalent praise in the articles on critics, such as Quinn, Dr. Shades, or Hauck? No one seems able to provide any evidence for this.

I don't know if these count. Although the review is largely (largely) critical, the reviewer doesn't seem to have a complete aversion to acknowledging what he sees as the strengths of Quinn's work. Overall, the reviewer leaves the impression that the book is worthy of taking up space upon a bookshelf. These are from the FARMS Review 12:2 (2000) [Rhett James]:

D Michael Quinn's revised and enlarged 1998 edition of Early Mormonism and the Magic World View makes its finest contribution as a resource about how selected Americans believed in "magic" within the complex of cultural varieties found in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Quinn shows himself an energetic collector of information, and his magic corpus will be of interest to anthropologists and folklorists.

At the same time, his work also shows exceptional skill and insights backed up by sound documentation.

And finally, I take this comment as quite a compliment (despite the last few words):

These Mormon beliefs suggest that at least some historians should approach the subject of the supernatural through Joseph Smith's eyes rather than through the eyes and language of one who is a skeptic or one who does not believe. Quinn has the background to do the believer's work if he can muster the courage.

[_silentkid]

Scratch isn't the first person to ever point out the underlying bad spirit of much of what constitutes the FROB...

...Scratch isn't really saying anything new, though he's adding significantly to a growing body of literature on the subject.

Since Wikipedia has the final say in all matters of truth, I defer to its article on FARMS (found here) to support Gad's assertion that Scratch isn't the only one critical of FROB. Unless, of course, Scratch is responsible for writing the wiki. ;)

[_Daniel Peterson]

Scratch isn't the only one critical of FROB.

I don't believe that anybody has ever suggested that he is.

That's a distinct proposition, though, from whether the criticisms he or anybody else advances have merit.

Unless, of course, Scratch is responsible for writing the wiki.

Given Scartch's manifest fixation on attacking FARMS and defaming those connected with it, it's surely conceivable that he is responsible -- at least for the negative aspects of the entry. (I can't imagine him writing anything balanced or positive on the subject, so it strikes me as unlikely that he's the overall author.)