Daniel Peterson wrote:
I don't want to live in a society where free speech is successfully terrorized by the hyper-litigious.
You prefer instead where free speech and other kinds of freedoms are successfully terrorized by an authoritarian religion, and by Ivory Tower attack dogs, sitting comfortably in their sinecures?
Perhaps people should back off a bit on attempts to enlist the coercive power of the state in order to punish the expression of opinions.
Change "coercive power of the state" to "coercive power of religion," and I'd probably agree with you.
Here's what you wrote:
Now, I really don't know how to make sense of that sentence if it doesn't include Robert Ritner among those wily-anti-Mormons.
Let's break this down.
1. In your "Land of the Lotus Eaters" piece, you said that you hoped for a "better class of anti-Mormons" (or something to that effect). Right?
2. You said this following your remarks on G. Novak's website---a site on which he mocks "anti-Mormons." Right?
3. Obviously, you include Decker, White, and others amongst the "silly anti-Mormons" of Gary Novak's website, right?
4. Part of your hoping for a "better class of anti-Mormons," when read in the context of the "Lotus" piece, involves getting to yuk it up and laugh at this "better class." Right?
5. Presumably, you would include people like Robert Ritner, Simon Southerton, Dan Vogel, and Brent Metcalfe among the "better class of anti-Mormons" whom you'd like to ridicule and laugh at. Right?
Mister Scratch wrote:And, presumably, you do consider Prof. Ritner to be "anti-Mormon," given his apparent opposition to J. Gee's Book of Abraham theories?
No, I don't.
No? Then what? What would this "better anti-Mormonism" look like? Michael Coe? Brent Metcalfe? Which of these people are you hoping to ridicule and laugh at?
Mister Scratch wrote:The gist of what "they" do is attacking others. Plain and simple. And, unfortunately, that is precisely what you do.
That's simply false nonsense. Fourteen volumes in the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative (Islamic, but also Jewish and eastern Christian), scores of comparative religion columns for Meridian Magazine (on everything from Calvinism to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, from Buddhist pilgrimages to Hindu rituals, from Brazilian Pentecostalism to medieval Scholasticism, from Moses Maimonides to Ibn Sina and Thomas Aquinas), my Muhammad biography, my Abraham Divided book, my lectures and classes and articles and encylopedia entries and CDs on Islam, my "trialogues" with Muslims and Jews and other Christians in Europe and the Near East, etc. -- these things are all on public record.
Ask the imam of Orlando whether I spent any time last Sunday evening attacking Islam.
I'm not talking about any of this, Professor P. I'm talking about your apologetics. Which, as I've noted, isn't really any different from what Decker et al. do.
Your perpetual attempt to portray me as a religious bigot is as transparently absurd as has been your recent campaign to portray me as a grimly humorless and insecure zealot.
There's no "portrayal" going on here. Simply observing the facts is no "portrayal." You "portray" yourself in this way, my dear Professor P.
Mister Scratch wrote:I bet you thought it was "hilarious" when Louis Midgley turned up at the Tanners' bookstore in order to very loudly express his disgust that they were carrying books written by "that queer" (i.e., D. Michael Quinn). That's the sort of thing that you and others on l-skinny find amusing, right? (Let me guess: you'll either not respond to this at all, or you'll dispense some extremely half-hearted, "Aw, well, *I* wouldn't have done that!" Even though you probably snickered when you learned of it.)
"Probably"? In other words, you're just making this up.
No, not at all. I read your remarks in the "Lotus Eaters" piece, in which you described Novak's website as "important." And, I've read the content in Novak's website. The disgusting and deeply bigoted remarks that Professor Midgley made are directly in keeping with the overall tenor of Novak's site. Thus, given your approval of the site as "important," it seemed probable to me that you would have "snickered at" or enjoyed Midgley's comments.
All I know about the Midgley incident at the Tanners', which isn't much, is third hand at best. I don't know that your depiction of it is accurate; in fact, I have some doubts.
Of course you have doubts. Being sure about it would put you (yet again) in the unfortunate position of having to try and defend yet another of your friends' screw-ups. Why not err on the safe side and condemn Midgley's appalling comments?
But, in fact, I wouldn't do it, didn't do it, haven't laughed at it, and, actually, haven't heard much about it, on Skinny-L or anywhere else. Truth be told, I only hear about it (and that quite rarely) from critics like yourself.
What do you think about Louis Midgley doing such a thing?
Mister Scratch wrote:Instead, I am arguing that this "sense of humor"--if you want to call it that--completely vanishes when it comes to certain "close-to-the-heart" Mopologetic topics. So let me ask you again: Do you find it funny that well-respected academics find many of your arguments laughable? Does knowledge of this fact sit well with you? For example, Michael Coe, in The Mormons, could hardly restrain his laughter as he discussed LDS archaeologists' failure to find any significant Book of Mormon evidence in Meso-America. The smirk on his face was unmistakable, in fact.
Your question is misconceived. (It's also, I think, a Trojan horse. As it were.)
Things that are funny are funny. The fact that X thinks Y is funny isn't, itself, funny.
A Seinfeld joke is a completely different thing than the statement "Many people find Seinfeld funny." The first draws a laugh. The second is merely an observation. It isn't, in itself, funny.
No, my question isn't "misconceived." It was meant to illustrate a point---namely, that you are indeed "grimly humorless" when it comes to defending the cause. And you're right: a "joke" about the Book of Mormon being real history *is* completely different from someone saying, "Many people find it funny that the apologists think the Book of Mormon is real history." We agree entirely on this point---i.e., that you fail to find it humorous in any way whatsoever that scholars such as Michael Coe would find this sort of thing laughable.
Mister Scratch wrote:Do you like that, Prof. P.? Or does it bother you?
Why would I "like" it?
You wouldn't. Of course. That was my point.
To the extent that it's true, I see it as a challenge.
Anybody who argues for a position is likely to regard convincing those not yet persuaded as a challenge. That's part of the fun of academia.
Fair enough. But, then again, I think you'll agree that merely "convincing those not yet persuaded" is a good deal different from convincing those who are laughing at you. Dare I note here how fond you are of the Voltaire quote which says something along the lines of, "Please make all our enemies ridiculous!" After all, I know how fond you are of irony.
Mister Scratch wrote:Further, how might you explain the endless (and needless) self-deprecating "humor" from yourself and Bill Hamlin on the subject of how you and he are "laughingstocks"? Why, I have to wonder, would you feel the need to do that?
Speaking for myself, I do it occasionally because a few people like you insist that we actually are laughingstocks.
Wait a second here. Are you saying that you are a "laughingstock," in some regards? Do you think that you are the butt of jokes from people such as Michael Coe? I know that you are very tempted to try to craft a straw man out of what I'm saying, by trying to divert attention to RfM, and that sort of thing, but the question remains: Do you think that serious academics such as Coe regard your Mopologetic views as "laughable"? And, to return to the issue of the OP, does this affect the way that you and others engage in Mopologetics?
Why, just today, during my roughly weekly excursion into the so-called "Recovery" board, I ran across a post by someone there who wondered why I still allow myself to be called a "scholar," since I'm obviously such a moron and a joke. To which an obvious response is that at least I've been cunning enough to have fooled the editors at the University of Chicago Press, E. J. Brill, Oxford University Press, Macmillan, and several other such places, as well as the leadership of the Middle East Studies Association, etc.
This is a red herring (and an appeal to authority), Prof. P. We are talking about Mopologetics, and not your work in Middle Eastern Studies. But, since you brought it up: What do the editors at the University of Chicago Press, E. J. Brill, Oxford University Press, Macmillan, and several other such places, think about the Limited Geography Theory, or the notion that chariots were pulled around by tapirs? I assume that you know this answer to this question, because otherwise, why would you have brought up the names of these reputable presses in the context of a discussion on whether or not respectable people consider Mopologetics to be "laughable"?