FARMS's Smear Campaign Against Signature Books

[_Tom]

I find it odd that in his bizarre rant against Signature Books and the contributors to the Word of God, Stephen Robinson gets so wound up that he even implies that Kevin Barney (!) is disaffected and "ha[s] an interest in attacking or modifying the religion of the Saints."

[_Daniel Peterson]

I find it odd that in his bizarre rant against Signature Books and the contributors to the Word of God, Stephen Robinson gets so wound up that he even implies that Kevin Barney (!) is disaffected and "ha[s] an interest in attacking or modifying the religion of the Saints."

I guess I missed that part of his bizarre rant.

Could you please quote Professor Robinson's comments about my friend Kevin Barney?

[_Tom]

"The uniformity of perspective among the essays, the pervasive use of the straw man, and the absence of any opposing viewpoint identify The Word of God as a work of propaganda. It is designed not to investigate Latter-day Saint thought, but to change it. It certainly would have been more honest to entitle this work The Words of the Disaffected: A Criticism of the LDS Concept of Scripture, but Signature has lately developed a habit of disguising the critical stance of its works with misleading titles. However, three exceptions to this criticism would be the essays by Lancaster and Bush, who have done good historical work apparently without the Korihor agenda, and the essay of Curtis, who, though she takes the naturalistic approach, does not appear to have an interest in attacking or modifying the religion of the Saints."

Did Robinson simply forget to cite Barney's essay as an exception to his criticism?

[_Daniel Peterson]

Did Robinson simply forget to cite Barney's essay as an exception to his criticism?

Probably.

I don't know.

Whatever.

[_Tom]

Since it involved your friend Kevin Barney, how could you allow a personal attack of this type to end up in print? Certainly it merited a "correction or clarification" in the July 1991 issue of Insights.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Since it involved your friend Kevin Barney, how could you allow a personal attack of this type to end up in print? Certainly it merited a "correction or clarification" in the July 1991 issue of Insights.

I see no "personal attack" on Kevin Barney.

Professor Robinson doesn't even mention that name.

It's been nearly twenty years. I can't recover my thought processes from that time with any great precision or certainty. It was probably an oversight to allow that implication to stand, just as it may have been an oversight on Professor Robinson's part to make it in the first place.

[_LifeOnaPlate]

How could an actual answer possibly be any more futile that your refusal to answer to very serious questions, or your "standard responses"? Just the other day, your staunch supporter LifeOnaPlate conceded the merit and significance of the thesis that FARMS has something of a "monolithic" structure. What this means is that you are losing ground.

You make it very unappealing to converse with you when you wrest and distort what people say. I don't recall "conceding the merit and significance of the thesis that FARMS has something of a 'monolithic' structure," and have repeatedly argued that FARMS does not represent one monolithic viewpoint. Don't misrepresent me, Mister Scratch. It is entirely unappreciated.

[_Mister Scratch]

How could an actual answer possibly be any more futile that your refusal to answer to very serious questions, or your "standard responses"? Just the other day, your staunch supporter LifeOnaPlate conceded the merit and significance of the thesis that FARMS has something of a "monolithic" structure. What this means is that you are losing ground.

You make it very unappealing to converse with you when you wrest and distort what people say. I don't recall "conceding the merit and significance of the thesis that FARMS has something of a 'monolithic' structure," and have repeatedly argued that FARMS does not represent one monolithic viewpoint. Don't misrepresent me, Mister Scratch. It is entirely unappreciated.

From the "FARMS H-bombs the Three Nephites" thread:

It would seem that the FARMS monolith concept you wish to portray has some merit.

Thanks.

[_Mister Scratch]

there appears to be a significant allegation that FARMS was complicit with the BYU bookstore in looking to squelch Signature's market. Do you really have no counter to this?

As you know perfectly well, I denied it then. So did the FARMS person and the bookstore official.

I flatly deny it now.

Why didn't you cite the relevant text from the memo? That doesn't make much sense to me--particularly when you happily cited oodles of text from various letters, essays, and editorials.

[_LifeOnaPlate]

From the "FARMS H-bombs the Three Nephites" thread:

It would seem that the FARMS monolith concept you wish to portray has some merit.

Thanks.

I believe it was D. Michael Quinn who once said, “…correlation…is…[great]…”.

But seriously, nice wresting of my comments. I was very specific in what type of "merit" a "monolithic" concept held. Let's try including the whole quote next time. I noticed you also didn't provide a link. Well, I took the extra 20 seconds to dig up my full remarks. I add them below, and again ask you not to misrepresent my position so blatantly in the future.

It would seem that the FARMS monolith concept you wish to portray has some merit. For example, it has a strong bias toward presenting the Book of Mormon as an actual ancient record. There is no attempt to hide this fact, in fact, it is trumpeted. Still, there are rather significant disagreements over what the particular evidence means, as shown by various reviews which do not agree on significant points like method of translation, the plausibility of certain old and new world influences on the Book of Mormon, etc.

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