The McClellan White Debates

[_Kishkumen]

True, but I specifically referred to the dichotomy, which does not seem to me to exist at all. I think that's artificial enough for the characterization to stand despite the vagaries of our models.

I think you are using the word "dichotomy" to attempt to force your own artificial rigidity on the categories by way of creating a straw man. I don't accept your characterization of the categories.

How are you categorizing "Internet discourse" over and against "chapel discourse" if both kinds of discourse are found on the internet? We have just as many fundamentalist Mormons arguing on the internet as liberal Mormons. Why is the discourse of one categorized as "Internet discourse," while the other is not? Do you mean the style of discourse rather than the degree of liberalness? If so, shouldn't it be recognized that an internet message board is not nearly the same dialogical context as a chapel? Am I an "Internet Mormon" right now but a "Chapel Mormon" on Sunday when I call people "brother so-and-so" and don't bring up the Deuteronomistic history in my Sunday school lesson? Don't both fundamentalist Mormons and liberal Mormons appeal to the same "species of discourse" depending on the context? What of my friends who absolutely refuse to deal with internet discussions at all but have the same approach as me to Mormonism and dealing with its detractors?

New spaces for discourse can give rise to the evolution of new discourse communities. Such is the internet. No one is saying that people whose views hew more closely to the discourse of the chapel cannot use online resources, nor is it the case that those whose views have been shaped by new Mormon discourse communities online cannot go to chapel and participate with everyone else. That does not mean that the internet has not produced new discourse communities that can be distinguished from the usual discourse community of the chapel usefully. The fact that enough people noticed the difference not only to come up with the term, but to continue employing it, suggests to me that there is something both attractive and useful in doing so. It came from observations of things actually going on, and it has in turn been used to discuss those phenomena. As such I say it is useful. Is it used polemically? Yes. Can it be used for other purposes, and is it? Yes.

I simply do not see a circumstance where that dichotomy does anything to help anyone better understand Mormonism.

Your failure of imagination is not a failure of the usefulness of the categories.

[_Kishkumen]

Well, I am not going to go to the effort of reading the entire debate. It seems possible that James White, although he holds the stronger position, is simply an inferior debater and has limited/insufficient knowledge of biblical criticism. The opening of his video seems pretty clear to me:

Mormonism is not Christian because it does not adhere to the traditional standards, doctrines, and boundaries of Christianity.

Topic closed, in my view.

Otherwise, there is nothing to say that I can't declare myself prophet, promote my new scripture in which I reveal that the Jesus of the New Testament is actually a DNA hybrid of Chthulu and Xenu, start my own church, and then demand that everyone call me a Christian because I say I don't really believe in a different Jesus and I do accept the Bible as holy scripture just like other Christians.

And if you don't agree with me calling myself and my new religion Christian, you are obviously a bigot relying on narrow sectarian arguments that are ultimately circular.

[_Doctor Scratch]

I didn't ask you, Mak. I asked Stemelbow.

If you don't want other people responding then put it in a PM.

My, my! Bossy today, aren't we!

He was kind enough to helpfully clarify that he didn't understand what you two were discussing, but that he nonetheless felt (or intuited?) that you'd managed a "landslide" victory nonetheless. Sure is interesting, isn't it? I bet you're thankful to have your "victory" celebrated in this fashion.

Oh, and you've got Simon, too, I suppose. How is it, I wonder, that Simon came to learn about your "battle" with White? Do you think he just stumbled upon it by chance? Or is he a regular reader?

So rather than engage my comments you will engage in your own little meta-argument. You and White certainly do respond the same way to discussions that are over your head.

What's to engage, Mak? All I see you doing is regurgitating old and tired arguments from Offenders for a Word, making appeals to authority, and treating subjective value judgements as if they were objective. Same old, same old.

[_maklelan]

I think you are using the word "dichotomy" to attempt to force your own artificial rigidity on the categories by way of creating a straw man. I don't accept your characterization of the categories.

Then perhaps you can define the categories once and for all. They seem to shift with every person I talk to.

New spaces for discourse can give rise to the evolution of new discourse communities. Such is the internet. No one is saying that people whose views hew more closely to the discourse of the chapel cannot use online resources, nor is it the case that those whose views have been shaped by new Mormon discourse communities online cannot go to chapel and participate with everyone else. That does not mean that the internet has not produced new discourse communities that can be distinguished from the usual discourse community of the chapel usefully.

The "usual discourse community"? I've attended church in three different continents, five different countries, and six different states, and I'm not aware of a "usual discourse community." The discourse has differed greatly in style and substance in each and every ward I've been in. By way of example, when I taught Sunday school in the Oxford ward I had to use a completely different method than when I taught Sunday school in Utah, which was itself different from how I taught it in Texas, which differed from how I taught it in Washington. Each of these discourse communities differed more from each other than any "Internet discourse" I'm aware of differs from "chapel discourse." In the UK there was even an older member of the church who had a PhD in Egyptology from Oxford. He would come to Sunday school to pick fights with me, and he would appeal to the same kind of discourse I find on the internet, but of course he'd been doing the same thing for thirty years and got all his information from books, not the internet.

The fact that enough people noticed the difference not only to come up with the term, but to continue employing it, suggests to me that there is something both attractive and useful in doing so.

Useful as a rhetorical tool is not the same as heuristically useful.

It came from observations of things actually going on, and it has in turn been used to discuss those phenomena. As such I say it is useful. Is it used polemically? Yes. Can it be used for other purposes, and is it? Yes.

Then you can explain what species of discourse, specifically, arose after, and because of, the advent of the internet? Every time I've asked for such an explanation I've been given one that actually predates the internet by a long, long time.

Your failure of imagination is not a failure of the usefulness of the categories.

I've been accused of many things in my life, but a lack of imagination has never been one of them.

[_Kishkumen]

The "usual discourse community"? I've attended church in three different continents, five different countries, and six different states, and I'm not aware of a "usual discourse community."

I would say the one that is shaped, to a great extent, by the effort to conform to a Correlation curriculum. I really don't see what is so difficult to understand about this.

Useful as a rhetorical tool is not the same as heuristically useful.

Squares and rectangles, eh, mak? Give me a break. Rhetorical tool is just another slick way of trying to demote these terms without offering an argument.

Then you can explain what species of discourse, specifically, arose after, and because of, the advent of the internet? Every time I've asked for such an explanation I've been given one that actually predates the internet by a long, long time.

So now we are going to argue over whether life began at conception or birth? Just let it go, mak. There are lots of us who find these categories useful. We get that you do not. Your attempt to define them out of existence is not going to be successful. If elements of the discourse communities predated their evolution online, it does not negate their distinctness. I think a fine example of this is the "Middle Way." Sure, it existed in some form before, but the internet has made it into something new.

I've been accused of many things in my life, but a lack of imagination has never been one of them.

Maybe you have lots of imagination. That doesn't mean your imagination can't fail you.

[_Simon Belmont]

Oh, and you've got Simon, too, I suppose. How is it, I wonder, that Simon came to learn about your "battle" with White? Do you think he just stumbled upon it by chance? Or is he a regular reader?

I read LDS blogs, especially blogs of people I've interacted with.

Why is that so strange?

[_Aristotle Smith]

Oh goody, we have to use the word "category" for mak to give us credit, can't possible use the related word "heuristic." Let the word games begin.

I honestly don't understand what your comment here means. Both words are perfectly acceptable.

My apologies, I misread the point you were making when you wrote this: "Categories are tools for understanding. If the tools mislead us or fail to help us understand they are heuristically useless, irrespective of how much they are used."

I was reading too fast in between work I was doing. I should have read more carefully.

Which say a lot about what company you keep, and very little about the value of the heuristic/category.

You know absolutely nothing about the company I keep, so leave the assumptions out of this.

I wasn't assuming anything. You said yourself that it is amongst people who you associate with that the heuristic has no meaning and is perceived as a de facto attack meant to stop debate. To say that this makes the heuristic invalid/unhelpful to other groups is a false generalization on your part. The only valid assumption is that you hang with people who don't find it helpful. While I see that my remark could be seen as offensive, it was not overtly so and was not intended to be such.

What the distinction is driving at is actually something quite unique to Mormonism. Essentially apologists are driving the doctrinal bus inside Mormonism now. I am unaware of this happening in any other religion, usually apologists follow and defend the theologians. This really isn't an attempt to stop debate, it's an attempt to describe a phenomenon. That apologists tend to react so vehemently against the idea is some sort of minor evidence that it's hitting a raw nerve. Mind you, it doesn't prove anything, it's merely suggestive.

If anyone is trying to stop debate it's those apologists who love to wield the "that's not doctrine" tool to avoid having to deal with issues that the vast majority of Mormons believe, that the vast majority of GAs have believed and talked about, but which are difficult to defend.