EAllusion wrote:Regarding the Kevin Christenson types, I think Stak has it wrong. He is very much interested in the incommensurability that Kuhn offers. It's meant to insulate criticism of the Mormon apologetics from mainstream science, though at the cost of something equivalent to epistemic relativism. Fundamental objections to that aside, I think Gad's point is the right one to bring up. Kuhn faults a person for not engaging in "puzzle-solving" within the dominant paradigm. People can't just imagine themselves to be in a hermetically sealed alternative paradigm and call it a day. He's no friend of the crank.
But Professor, why would somebody who is interested in advancing the truth claims of a Church be interested in epistemic relativism?
Over at the hen house, Kevin Christensen had thisto say recently:
Possibly relevant personal experience. I'd just arrived at Sunstone in SLC in 2002, and somehow got involved in a corridor conversation with Brent Metcalfe and Dan Vogel. I noticed an LDS friend from a California, Cupertino ward going by and said Hello. She looked up, recognized me, and said, "What are you doing here?" I showed her a copy of my recently published "Paradigms Regained: A Survey of Margaret Barker's Scholarship and Its Significance for Mormon Studies." She glanced at the cover, and said, "Before you say anything, the Book of Mormon is a 19th Century fiction and nothing you can say will change my mind. I never read anything from FARMS. It makes me mad." I asked whether my JBMS 2/1 essay had made her mad, and she admitted that it hadn't but still went off in a huff, aparently angry with me for being a believer.
I don’t know if “mad” would describe my reaction, but it might describe Thomas Kuhn’s reaction had he read it. So I thought this might be a timely bump for newer readers here.
MrStakhanovite wrote:Over at the hen house, Kevin Christensen had thisto say recently:
Possibly relevant personal experience. I'd just arrived at Sunstone in SLC in 2002, and somehow got involved in a corridor conversation with Brent Metcalfe and Dan Vogel. I noticed an LDS friend from a California, Cupertino ward going by and said Hello. She looked up, recognized me, and said, "What are you doing here?" I showed her a copy of my recently published "Paradigms Regained: A Survey of Margaret Barker's Scholarship and Its Significance for Mormon Studies." She glanced at the cover, and said, "Before you say anything, the Book of Mormon is a 19th Century fiction and nothing you can say will change my mind. I never read anything from FARMS. It makes me mad." I asked whether my JBMS 2/1 essay had made her mad, and she admitted that it hadn't but still went off in a huff, aparently angry with me for being a believer.
I don’t know if “mad” would describe my reaction, but it might describe Thomas Kuhn’s reaction had he read it. So I thought this might be a timely bump for newer readers here.
"This one time, I met an unnamed person who refused to waste additional time reading the latest crackpot theories and ad hoc explanations about how the Book of Mormon might be true. Therefore, I am justified in maintaining my current meta-belief about the Book of Mormon's purported historicity."
To me, the OP seems a fine example of how specialist knowledge in an academic field can be made relevant to non-specialists without playing the silly 'Ha! I can see you haven't read Slurperovitch!" game.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
EAllusion wrote:Regarding the Kevin Christenson types, I think Stak has it wrong. He is very much interested in the incommensurability that Kuhn offers. It's meant to insulate criticism of the Mormon apologetics from mainstream science, though at the cost of something equivalent to epistemic relativism. Fundamental objections to that aside, I think Gad's point is the right one to bring up. Kuhn faults a person for not engaging in "puzzle-solving" within the dominant paradigm. People can't just imagine themselves to be in a hermetically sealed alternative paradigm and call it a day. He's no friend of the crank.
But Professor, why would somebody who is interested in advancing the truth claims of a Church be interested in epistemic relativism?
It is a 2 edged sword. Are some apologists not bright enough to see the other edge?
"And the human knew the source of life, the woman of him, and she conceived and bore Cain, and said, 'I have procreated a man with Yahweh.'" Gen. 4:1, interior quote translated by D. Bokovoy.
