Should the Church apologise for Mountain Meadows Massacre?

[_Buffalo]

What I provided was not a review of the book, but a statement regarding the problems with authors writing the history of their employers.

And yet the authors (whom I know personally, and whom I know to be men of integrity) say that they were unimpeded in their research and their writing, and their book has been, to a substantial degree, well received by historians.

"My bosses are great!"

- paid employee

[_Daniel Peterson]

<snip> irrelevant and sophistic class-envying hostility, rooted in factual error and incomprehension

We've been over this already. Your disdain for President Packer on this point has no legitimate basis.

"My bosses are great!"

- paid employee

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ad+hominem

[_Buffalo]

"My bosses are great!"

- paid employee

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_the_well

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ad+hominem

Your ability to correctly identify logical fallacies has no doubt atrophied by years of closely studying the animal byproducts unloaded down at the FARM.

[_harmony]

<snip> irrelevant and sophistic class-envying hostility, rooted in factual error and incomprehension

We've been over this already. Your disdain for President Packer on this point has no legitimate basis.

Class envy? Not hardly.

And you're right; I had no business complimenting your friends. For all I know, they too have enriched themselves on the tithes of the poor and widowed.

[_Daniel Peterson]

For all I know, they too have enriched themselves on the tithes of the poor and widowed.

Just as much as President Packer has.

[_harmony]

How can one be unimpeded, when one's paycheck is part of the deal and if one's employer has a history of dispensing with employees that get crosswise of the leadership? Surely both those facts may indeed impede (or at least substantially inhibit) one's report?

[_Daniel Peterson]

They could, yes. Obviously.

The question is, Did they?

The product is out, can be examined, and can speak for itself.

It has been well received.

This is a question for empirical study, not for theorizing in a vacuum. Medieval Aristotelianism declared that weights of different magnitudes fall at different speeds. Galileo dropped two such weights from the campanile at Pisa. Modern physics was born.

[_harmony]

They could, yes. Obviously.

The question is, Did they?

The product is out, can be examined, and can speak for itself.

It has been well received.

"While no one doubts the professionalism of Walker, Turley and Leonard, their status as Chruch employees raises deeper doubts for secularists. Historians tend to be reflexively skeptical when a believer writes history of his own religion, or, for that matter, when a historian writes a history of a corporation-in this case, the Church-while being employed by that corporation. Fair or not, few professors beyond Provo will validate the authors’ declaration of academic freedom."

Jared Farmer
http://sunysb.academia.edu/JaredFarmer/ ... rley_et_al

Maybe you missed this one?

[_Daniel Peterson]

Maybe you missed this one?

I didn't.

Maybe you missed my response to it. (See above.)

It's one thing to express concern that X's employment may color his writing and to advise that readers should stay alert for such influence.

It's quite another to allege that X's employment has illicitly and fatally compromised his writing, and especially to do so without having read what he wrote, or even as a justification for refusing to look at it.

Such an allegation requires supporting facts, not mere abstract fantasizing.

***

I need to go. I don't see much value in continuing this conversation, anyway.

[_harmony]

I need to go. I don't see much value in continuing this conversation, anyway.

Hasta la Pasta!