The Prophet's Alphabet

[_Tator]

Tator,

It was online a few seconds ago when I checked at 16:56 EST.

Kevin's response to Hamblin (Post #65) is priceless.

I really like this subject and this thread is so entertaining.

I was trying to go from page 3 to page 4 and was getting a "Website site offline - try back later" message. I don't know what was going on but I was frustrated about not getting to page 4.

It was worth the wait though Post65 and several others are priceless.

Kudos to Kevin and George, very professional dialogue and scholarship.

[_Droopy]

For those interested, I've finally found time to respond to Wade's inane posts about the Grammar and Alphabet of the Egyptian Language, as it pertains to Will Schryver's argument.

http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/564 ... ge__st__40

I'm utterly amazed how many people are paying attention to these exchanges. I've received several emails from scholars who are following it closely, and last week William was so disturbed by the number of views the thread has been receiving, that he felt the need to psychoanalyze the audience and assert that the only reason people are reading the thread is because they want to read his and wade's responses!

Well, when I posted the topic last week it received just over 5,000 hits in the first two days. George and I stopped posting when there were 5,900 views. Over the past four days wade has been the only person posting, as if talking to himself, and the hits had only increased by 600 to 6,500 views. So this morning I posted a response for the first time all week, and then I went Christmas shopping for about 4 hours. When I returned, I saw that I'm still the last person to respond to that thread, and I was expecting the views to have gone up by maybe a thousand or so. Instead, the views jumped from 6,500 to well over 10,000.

This kinda puts a damper on William's belief that people only read my threads to see what he and wade have to say. I thought that was pretty funny.

What utterly amazes me is that anyone with an open mind, who has followed both sides of this argument for any length of time, would take an intellectual charlatan, who's primary contribution to the KEP debate is round after round of the most boorish, self congratulatory demagoguery imaginable, like Kevin Graham seriously.

The critic's arguments have failed. That's the Gorilla in the room, 800lbs or no. There is not a shred of credible evidence that the EA/GAEL were ever intended as tools of translation, or decipherment, for the Book of Abraham, which already clearly preexisted the KEP as a body of materials.

Even without any preexisting bias as the the religious truth claims of the Church regarding the Book of Abraham, the KEP still appears to have nothing more than a correlation with the Book of Abraham, but no causal relationship running in the direction classical agenda driven apostates like Mr. Graham, who appears so obsessed with this issue and so preoccupied with personal invective against anybody who dissents from his beliefs as to have become all but thoroughly unhinged by the whole experience, would like us to believe.

He will not listen to people like Will, or John Gee, or anyone else who actually know what they're talking about and have long experience working with the primary source materials. He feeds virtually exclusively at the trough of anti-Mormon literature and scholarship (which is doubtless why he keeps regurgitating Ashment and Marquardt etc.long after they have been plausibly rebutted) but, as Bill Hamblin recently pointed out at MDDB, is curiously unconcerned with this lack of familiarity with counter-arguments and alternative interpretations.

Setting himself up as the intellectual inquisitor of Dr. Hugh Nibley is literally the equivalent of the Pillsbury Doughboy going up against the Terminator.

Will, Wade, Hamblin, and others have all become completely exasperated with him, and soon, I predict sooner than later, he will be forced into the echo chamber his own abrasive attitude and lack of intellectual discipline is creating where he will be alone with his comrades-in-arms against the restored gospel and talking mainly to himself.

[_Fence Sitter]

I predict sooner than later, he will be forced into the echo chamber his own abrasive attitude and lack of intellectual discipline is creating where he will be alone with his comrades-in-arms against the restored gospel and talking mainly to himself.

That echo chamber had 7000 hits this weekend.

[_Droopy]

I predict sooner than later, he will be forced into the echo chamber his own abrasive attitude and lack of intellectual discipline is creating where he will be alone with his comrades-in-arms against the restored gospel and talking mainly to himself.

That echo chamber had 7000 hits this weekend.

But how do you know that most of those are folks looking primarily at what Will, Wade, Hamblin et al have to say in response to Graham, and not primarily at Graham's self described intellectually scintillating analysis?

Graham makes it sound as if all these people are showing up at this thread to hear him pronounce upon the KEP, when it may very well, and much more likely, be that people are there to take in and reflect upon the entire debate underway, and the counter-arguments from Will, Wade, and others, and not because Kevin Graham is there posturing as the expert in the room among the neophytes.

[_Chap]

I predict sooner than later, he will be forced into the echo chamber his own abrasive attitude and lack of intellectual discipline is creating where he will be alone with his comrades-in-arms against the restored gospel and talking mainly to himself.

That echo chamber had 7000 hits this weekend.

But how do you know that most of those are folks looking primarily at what Will, Wade, Hamblin et al have to say in response to Graham, and not primarily at Graham's self described intellectually scintillating analysis?

Graham makes it sound as if all these people are showing up at this thread to hear him pronounce upon the KEP, when it may very well, and much more likely, be that people are there to take in and reflect upon the entire debate underway, and the counter-arguments from Will, Wade, and others, and not because Kevin Graham is there posturing as the expert in the room among the neophytes.

From the OP:

I'm utterly amazed how many people are paying attention to these exchanges. I've received several emails from scholars who are following it closely, and last week William was so disturbed by the number of views the thread has been receiving, that he felt the need to psychoanalyze the audience and assert that the only reason people are reading the thread is because they want to read his and wade's responses!

Well, when I posted the topic last week it received just over 5,000 hits in the first two days. George and I stopped posting when there were 5,900 views. Over the past four days wade has been the only person posting, as if talking to himself, and the hits had only increased by 600 to 6,500 views. So this morning I posted a response for the first time all week, and then I went Christmas shopping for about 4 hours. When I returned, I saw that I'm still the last person to respond to that thread, and I was expecting the views to have gone up by maybe a thousand or so. Instead, the views jumped from 6,500 to well over 10,000.

This kinda puts a damper on William's belief that people only read my threads to see what he and wade have to say. I thought that was pretty funny.

He's lying, of course.

[_Fence Sitter]

But how do you know that most of those are folks looking primarily at what Will, Wade, Hamblin et al have to say in response to Graham, and not primarily at Graham's self described intellectually scintillating analysis?

Graham makes it sound as if all these people are showing up at this thread to hear him pronounce upon the KEP, when it may very well, and much more likely, be that people are there to take in and reflect upon the entire debate underway, and the counter-arguments from Will, Wade, and others, and not because Kevin Graham is there posturing as the expert in the room among the neophytes.

You have a point Droopy, I am sure most of those hits, the 5000 or so that hit between Kevin's post #46 (note that the last post before that was three days previous) and when Wade finally shows up this afternoon sometime were really interested in reading Will & Bill's bibliography requests. I know I found those two posts riviting.

[_Droopy]

I predict sooner than later, he will be forced into the echo chamber his own abrasive attitude and lack of intellectual discipline is creating where he will be alone with his comrades-in-arms against the restored gospel and talking mainly to himself.

That echo chamber had 7000 hits this weekend.

But how do you know that most of those are folks looking primarily at what Will, Wade, Hamblin et al have to say in response to Graham, and not primarily at Graham's self described intellectually scintillating analysis?

Graham makes it sound as if all these people are showing up at this thread to hear him pronounce upon the KEP, when it may very well, and much more likely, be that people are there to take in and reflect upon the entire debate underway, and the counter-arguments from Will, Wade, and others, and not because Kevin Graham is there posturing as the expert in the room among the neophytes.

From the OP:

I'm utterly amazed how many people are paying attention to these exchanges. I've received several emails from scholars who are following it closely, and last week William was so disturbed by the number of views the thread has been receiving, that he felt the need to psychoanalyze the audience and assert that the only reason people are reading the thread is because they want to read his and wade's responses!

Well, when I posted the topic last week it received just over 5,000 hits in the first two days. George and I stopped posting when there were 5,900 views. Over the past four days wade has been the only person posting, as if talking to himself, and the hits had only increased by 600 to 6,500 views. So this morning I posted a response for the first time all week, and then I went Christmas shopping for about 4 hours. When I returned, I saw that I'm still the last person to respond to that thread, and I was expecting the views to have gone up by maybe a thousand or so. Instead, the views jumped from 6,500 to well over 10,000.

This kinda puts a damper on William's belief that people only read my threads to see what he and wade have to say. I thought that was pretty funny.

He's lying, of course.

He's not lying, he's just delusional. It is just as likely that more people are going to tune in to a debate when an overheated and flamboyant bomb thrower like Kevin Graham shows up then while a single person is tying up loose ends on his own in temperate, scholarly language.

Move along...nothing to see here.

[_Chap]

He's not lying, he's just delusional. It is just as likely that more people are going to tune in to a debate when a overheated and flamboyant bomb thrower like Kevin Graham shows up, then while a single person is tying up loose ends on his own in temperate, scholarly language.

So ... people are going there thousands of times to read Kevin Graham.

Got it. And Schryver is so temperate and scholarly that the mods keep deleting his posts ...

by the way, I wonder if Droopy is actually allowed to read MDDB? Sometimes they don't even allow the Legion of the Banned to do as much as that. Course, I wouldn't know myself.

[_DrW]

Droopy,

Are you sure you are looking at the right thread?

From what I can see, Kevin and George Miller are the ones who are citing the real experts to back their positions, (Hamblin is probably sorry he even asked the question), forcing Wade to admit that he is not a scholar, and that George Miller would be right if Wade were a scholar (look for yourself), and making Will talk about quitting the field.

Looks like three - zip to me.

Do you really think that Will Schryver's "cypher" claims are anything but nonsense?

Wait, maybe you shouldn't answer that.

[Guest]

-