An Insiders View Of Mormon Origins...

[_jon]

Just a gentle reminder that this thread is about the content of the book. Not the authors credentials, nor the title relevance.

Okay.

I've read Der Goldne Topf.

Q: What's the connection between Archivarius Lindhorst and Moroni?

A: Why, that they were both salamanders.

Q: How do we know Lindhorst was a salamander?

A: It says so in the book.

Q: How do we know Moroni was a salamander?

A: Martin Harris wrote a letter in which he described him as such.

Q: But that letter is a proven forgery; how can it be relevant?

A: But it wasn't a proven forgery back in the day when the first drafts of Insider's View were being circulated. Those early drafts clearly show that the salamander match-up was the key connection.

Q: So what's left of the argument?

A: Just a few very weak "parallels" that had to be exaggerated almost beyond recognition to gain even the surface appearance of plausibility.

Regards,
Pahoran

I think this is a fair criticism of that part of the book.
Any others?

[_Buffalo]

Could you provide something from a serious, scholarly, credible source?

Sorry. I think your response to this is silly.

James Allen's biography is here:

http://mormonscholarstestify.org/1830/james-b-allen

Davis Bitton's biography is here:

http://mormonscholarstestify.org/442/davis-bitton

Louis Midgley's biography is here:

http://mormonscholarstestify.org/432/louis-midgley

Mark Ashurst-McGee's biography is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Ashurst-McGee

Steven Harper's biography is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_C._Harper

These are serious, accomplished scholars. If you're simply going to brush them aside because they published with the Maxwell Institute, I see no particular reason to waste time attempting a conversation with you.

FARMS is the online equivalent of a gossip rag. Whatever these gentlemen do in their lives otherwise, their involvement with FARMS is a stain on their credibility.

The Discovery Institute also manages to drum up a few cranks with degrees - that hasn't made them into a credible organization.

[_Buffalo]

In what way is Signature Books a more "professional" publisher than the Maxwell Institute? Better peer review? If you believe that, can you outline their system of peer review? They may well have one, but I haven't heard anything about it, if they do. They are not an academic press.

Are you claiming that the peer review process at Maxwell goes beyond the good old boy network standard?

[_Buffalo]

Apologetics is not a scholarly endeavor, no matter who is doing it

St. Thomas Aquinas, Richard Swinburne, Peter Kreeft, John Henry Newman, Alvin Plantinga, William Lane Craig, N. T. Wright, Steven Davis -- these are all apologists, and they're all scholars and very good ones.

But you? I rather doubt it.

I never claimed to be a scholar or an apologist.

The problem with Mormon apologists is that their moplogia extends into the study of history - a field much less tolerant of BS than philosophy or theology.

[_Buffalo]

They are inevitably advocates of a philosophical position -- and the better ones are very self-aware and upfront about it.

You seem to be arguing for something like "objectivity" in history. Too bad. It has come in for some well-deserved criticism over recent decades, largely because it's an incoherent idea and utterly unworkable.

That's dishonest and you know it. Mopologetics does not conform to the historical method.

[_Daniel Peterson]

FARMS is the online equivalent of a gossip rag. Whatever these gentlemen do in their lives otherwise, their involvement with FARMS is a stain on their credibility.

Such inane remarks destroy yours and argue eloquently that you should be ignored from now on.

Are you claiming that the peer review process at Maxwell goes beyond the good old boy network standard?

Of course it does.

[_Buffalo]

The residents of Dogpatch think their likker distillery is a purty tall buildin. What would residents of Manhattan think of it?

Finally, an outsider's view of Mormon studies. :)

[_Buffalo]

FARMS is the online equivalent of a gossip rag. Whatever these gentlemen do in their lives otherwise, their involvement with FARMS is a stain on their credibility.

Such inane remarks destroy yours and argue eloquently that you should be ignored from now on.

Explain to me, if you'd be so kind, how the "scholarship" at FARMS rises about the "scholarship" at the Discovery Institute?

[_Simon Belmont]

I guess, according to Themis, I am an insider of the Revolutionary War (I'm American, after all!)

[_Buffalo]

I guess, according to Themis, I am an insider of the Revolutionary War (I'm American, after all!)

Derp