Brant Gardner on Clark and Book of Mormon Historicity

[_Analytics]

I found the link. Dang, I wasted a lot of time on that thread.

http://www.mormonapologetics.org/index. ... 201&st=100

[_Analytics]

Much in the same way that those academics who have made a career of studying any number of fringe/pseudoscientific ideas are almost invariably subscribers to those ideas. Of course, that's because they have an ideological interest in that subject that motivates them to pursue that avenue of study while everyone else dismisses it while not studying it nearly as in depth. You really can take your pick of a wide variety of dubious fields to toss this argument back at Brant so long as you can find a handful of academics in it. I'd go with Reiki healing. Or I might go for some UFOologist stuff.

In my opinion, you are the best debater here, so I'm glad this is what I said,

I don't hesitate to admit that mainstream science is often wrong and that by following them I have no guarantee of being right. Personally, I believe everything mainstream science has revealed, everything it is now revealing, and I believe it will yet reveal many new and important things pertaining to the nature of reality. If it proves that its current ideas are false, I'll happily change. I'm humble that way.

Really, what other options are there? Are you suggesting that my approach is mostly unreasonable? If I don't have the time to become a qualified specialist myself, who should I believe? Should I assume that since the mainstream has been proven wrong many times before, that current mainstream opinion is wrong? Therefore look for truth out of the mainstream? Put every off-the-wall idea into a hat and choose one at random? It's theoretically possible that the random idea I choose could turn out to be true. But would that prove that the best way to make judgements is by random chance?

Mainstream astrophysicists generally don't study UFOs for the same reason that the Smithsonian doesn't use the Book of Mormon in their archeological expiditions: because there hasn't been a credible arguement made that they should. The people who do study it and believe it just haven't convinced the mainstream to take them seriously. A few qualified skeptics have studied it, and they've left unconvinced.

[_Analytics]

Analytics, this is a masterful example of painting someone into a corner.

You are such a ba-a-a-a-a-a-a-ad boy!

Gosh, thanks. [insert blushing emoticon here]

[_Analytics]

Thanks in advance for humoring my self-indulgence as I reminisce about that thread. This was my favorite part part:

Analytics: For the sake of argument, say some gold plates were discovered in Mesoamerica, and a careful analysis proved that they were from 3,000 to 1,500 years old and were from ores that came from that region. A cursory examination of them indicated that it was written in a language that could rightly be described as “reformed Egyptian”. If such an artifact was discovered, do you think only LDS archeologists would have any interest at all?

Brant (12/19, 3:36 p.m.): There would be a lot of interest in that artifact, because it would not only be an artifact, but a text. Scholars are all over texts.

Analytics (12/22 11:51 a.m.): I assert that [experts on ancient Mesoamerica] would be superlatively interested in an accurate translation of an authentic, 600-page ancient Mesoamerican manuscript.

Brant (12/22 1:37 p.m.): Based upon what knowledge do you make this assertion?

Analytics (12/22 3:14 p.m.): A few days ago, I asked an anthropologist if he thought anthropologists would be interested in such a text and he told me, “There would be a lot of interest in that artifact, because it would not only be an artifact, but a text. Scholars are all over texts.” I can’t imagine him being wrong about that. Can you?

Brant (12/22 4:30 p.m.): And I am guessing that you phrased it so that the Book of Mormon was not mentioned. Sadly, that is the critical issue.

[_The Dude]

I really did enjoy Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci tonight, though. And Camelot this afternoon.

It's only a matter of time before Ivy starts growing up one side of your body. .

I ... can't .... stop... laughing.

[_Daniel Peterson]

That's probably true.

You might want to pause for thought, though. Sometime.

Incidentally: When certain people react to attending a performance of Camelot -- Camelot!, for heaven's sake! -- as if mentioning it represented a grossly boastful pretense of elite high culture, that seems to say a lot more about the cultural preferences and status anxieties of the people reacting than it does about the person who attended the musical.

[_beastie]

Analytics,

What a great thread - and also a vivid reminder of why I'm determined to avoid these endless and pretty pointless conversations in the future.

[_Eric]

I really did enjoy Cavalleria Rusticana and I Pagliacci tonight, though. And Camelot this afternoon.

It's only a matter of time before Ivy starts growing up one side of your body.

On the one other message board I participate on, we have a poster who calls himself Osman who does this. He's kind of a board pariah for it, though. You totally remind me of him. It's that not that he isn't going to see I Pagliacci; it's that he has a compulsive need to mention it in questionable circumstances. In fairness, he's even worse about keeping his artistic references to things that sound important to someone with a real stodgy, dated sense intellectual sophistication. A Camelot reference might be a little two low for him without tossing in a random french or pseudo-french expression in the mentioning of it.

Still, over time this comes across as someone trying very hard to name-drop things that make him sound intellectually thuper-therial. You've got important, intellectual things to do. Like writing posts on message boards talking about important, intellectual things you are doing.

[_Daniel Peterson]

LOL. And Eric admired me so much until now. When I lose even his endorsement, I know I'm in trouble.

Incidentally, it's Gandhi, not Ghandi.

[_JohnStuartMill]

Dan, I'm not one of the people here who thinks you're a bad guy, but let me say that it's true that you drop cultural references like nobody's business. I can't imagine that you care what any of the rest of us think about your life, so it really seems as though you're only trying to convince yourself that you live a life of high culture. Take that opinion as you will.