An Insiders View Of Mormon Origins...

[_Simon Belmont]

That, or your drawers are sticking to your sphincter again. What a waste of bandwith ...

Yet you post on this thread anyway....

[_Baker]

That, or your drawers are sticking to your sphincter again. What a waste of bandwith ...

Yet you post on this thread anyway....

I'm not a bandwith conservationist.

[_Themis]

I hope you're not actually this stupid, and are just trolling as usual.

No one really knows. Lets hope it is just the ladder.

[_Dan Vogel]

So it all comes down to a quibble about wording that is both irrelevant and uninteresting and an unfounded accusation of dishonesty.

Yes. The title is misleading and wrong. It's dishonest, and paints a picture of credibility that doesn't exist.

I think we have established that your interpretation is not the intended meaning of the title and that Palmer’s claim to authority is not as you assert. We are now trying to decide about your intentions and honesty. It’s not looking good for you, Simon!

[_Simon Belmont]

I think we have established that your interpretation is not the intended meaning of the title and that Palmer’s claim to authority is not as you assert. We are now trying to decide about your intentions and honesty. It’s not looking good for you, Simon!

I'm going by the standard, most common English interpretation of the title. It doesn't matter what its intended meaning is if no one understands it (i.e. thinks he's really an Insider with respect to Mormon origins and can therefore hold such a view).

[_Doctor Scratch]

I think we have established that your interpretation is not the intended meaning of the title and that Palmer’s claim to authority is not as you assert. We are now trying to decide about your intentions and honesty. It’s not looking good for you, Simon!

I'm going by the standard, most common English interpretation of the title.

You mean the definitions that have already been cited, and which stand in rather embarrassing contrast to your assertions on this thread?

Look: we're all proud of your recent graduation from the U. It doesn't mean you have any expertise vis-a-vis linguistics or exegesis, though (i.e., don't give up your day job at the Salt Palace). But you're flat-out wrong on this. It's time to admit defeat, Simon.

[_Dan Vogel]

I think we have established that your interpretation is not the intended meaning of the title and that Palmer’s claim to authority is not as you assert. We are now trying to decide about your intentions and honesty. It’s not looking good for you, Simon!

I'm going by the standard, most common English interpretation of the title. It doesn't matter what its intended meaning is if no one understands it (i.e. thinks he's really an Insider with respect to Mormon origins and can therefore hold such a view).

Simon,

Yours is only one definition, and by the dictionary it is the third informal definition. More importantly, it’s not the one intended by the publisher or author. Why do you continue to use the fallacy of question-begging definition? Didn’t they teach you logic at the Y?

Another form of this fallacy, known as a question-begging definition, defines a term or phrase in such a way that, when used in an assertion, it proves the assertion true by the very way the term is defined. Any objection to the assertion is silenced by appealing to the definition. …

The test is whether the definition establishes a conclusion automatically and unfairly or whether it is a reasonable definition and clarification of a vague or loose term. http://tfout.com/lnotes.htm#Begging%20the%20Question

Palmer, according to his own definition, is a scholarly insider to current research on Mormon origins—which includes both interpretations and new sources of information—and outsiders are members of the church who (either through intellectual laziness or under the influence of church authorities) are unaware of what is known about Mormon origins.

Simon, it is you who misrepresents and misleads the public about Palmer’s book. You are using the wrong definition to level an ad hominem attack on Palmer.

[_why me]

Palmer, according to his own definition, is a scholarly insider to current research on Mormon origins—which includes both interpretations and new sources of information—and outsiders are members of the church who (either through intellectual laziness or under the influence of church authorities) are unaware of what is known about Mormon origins.

Simon, it is you who misrepresents and misleads the public about Palmer’s book. You are using the wrong definition to level an ad hominem attack on Palmer.

I can understand just where simon is coming from. Palmer can not be an insider because he wasn't there when Mormonism began. Now Cowdery can be an insider and lets face it, if he would have written a book after Joseph Smith was murdered with the same title, all concerned at that time would have read the book and none of us would be LDS since the LDS church would have collasped, espeically if it were an expose of the orgins. The LDS church would not have survived such a book.

But Palmer is not Cowdery. The most that we can get from him based on current research is his own interpretation of Mormonism's orgins. Thus, technically he is not an insider. Now as I understand it, he had a different name for the book but it was the publisher who believed that the name change would give the book an extra kick.

[_stemelbow]

I"m going to chime in here and say, I think its been well argued that the critique that Palmer's book has a misleading title is a poor ineffective critique. I have every reason to wish it was a deceptive title, but I don't see the reason for making a fuss over it. When I first saw it years ago, I did not think it was a deceptive title. Can't this stupid point die?

[_why me]

If one can have an insider’s view of Mormonism, one can certainly have an insider’s view of Mormon origins, which is a subset of Mormonism. You think there is only one Mormon origins—the one that happened more than 100 years ago, which no one has access to anyway. The only “Mormon origins” that exists is the one we create now, which everyone has access to. This “Mormon origins” has insiders.

Get it?

I think that you are mistaken. Speer wrote a book called: Inside the Third Reich. Now of course, he was an insider and thus the title can be taken literally. Now of course, Kershaw could have entitled his book: Inside the Third Reich too. But for Speer the meaning was clear: as an insider he can write about what exactly happened.

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

So Speer was an actual insider and could have written a book entitled: An Insider's View of the Third Reich.

See the point?