JustMe wrote:beastieGood luck on getting an answer. I've already tried, to no avail. One thing is already becoming clear about justme - he's a font of excuses for why he won't engage in discussions about actual substance.
Until you do what you expect we Mormons to do, publish in bona fide peer reviewed scholarly and scientific journals for credibility and reality, there is no reason to take anything you write seriously.
This is a problematic claim, since some articles in FARMS Review, such as J. Tvedtnes's review of Dr. Shades's site, and DCP's "The Witchcraft Paradigm," dealt with online writings and were, by all appearances, "taken seriously"---seriously enough, that is, to merit comment in FROB.
As a critic once asked me - "If you really believed you had something significant why are you hesitating to publish it after peer review and prove you have faith in what you write?" If I am a font of excuses as you claim, it is only due to my taking seriously the standard your kind of folks against Mormonism have raised, and now applying it back onto you. Until you get rid of the ridiculousness of that standard, you are just going to have to live by it, at least as far as I am concerned. IT SUCKS DON'T IT?
Now, this isn't correct at all. Nothing of a frankly LDS nature has ever, ever been published in a scientific, peer-reviewed journal. Nothing. Not a single thing. Instead, the "scholarly journals" you're referring to consist of junk like FARMS Review, which is not real scholarship in any meaningful sense.
There is another problem as well. DCP once admitted that he is "embarrassed" about expressing his scientific beliefs in pre-Columbian horses, the correct translation of the Book of Abraham, Lamanite DNA, and so forth in secular, academic settings. I think what the critic you described was actually asking was, "Have you ever tested your theories against rigorous, academic peer review?" Yes: to a certain extent you are right to feel this is baiting. Obviously, not a single controversial, frankly LDS article has ever, *EVER* appeared in a scholarly, peer-reviewed journal. So, in reality, what this critic was asking you was, "Have you ever submitted your writings and got rejected?" Because there are really only two realities:
1) LDS scholars have been submitting tons of stuff, all of which has gotten rejected, OR:
2) LDS scholars are too afraid/embarrassed to submit their writings, and thus they have been avoiding peer review.
Of course, if you contrive your own means of peer review, you can avoid all of this, all while maintaining the false patina of credibility, which is precisely what FARMS has accomplished.