Problems in FARMS/FAIR: A Cassius CFP

[_Doctor Scratch]

From juliann:

Whoa....what was that about spreading gossip? Mike Parker isn't even a part of all this. He is a great guy who occasionally responds on the Bloggernacle. What is the point of printing up every ugly comment that can be found from any source without verification? How is dividing people up into decent and nasty going to give anyone the moral high ground?

Parker used to be the "Secretary" for FAIR, plus he performed some kind of moderating services for the FAIR blog. Additionally, he recently authored a FAIR blog attack piece on Richard Packham. He said in his last barrage of posts here that he is a FAIR "volunteer." So, I would say that he has (and is) a pretty significant figure in the world of FAIR. On top of all that, he's got a long history of involvement with SHIELDS, and he authored an article for FARMS, If I recall correctly.

All of this stuff is completely "verifiable," juliann. Do you want the links? If you want to continue to embrace people like Parker, Schryver, and Greg Smith, that's your choice. You can either rein them in and convince them to be more tolerant, or they will continue to color impressions of your organization.

[_Drifting]

In what way did John screw up?

Listen, calling Daniel Peterson a "pathological deceiver" just gave ammo to John's detractors among the apologists. I call that "screwing up."

I think it is an understandable mistake, but I won't say, "yea! way to go! that's what we need!"

Is that it? Really?
Come on Kish, that's lame and you know it.

[_Eric]

Don't forget the hay day FARMS and co. had on Martha Beck, sex abuse victim and mother of a handicapped child.

With the man running for President belonging to the Mormon Church, it's worth noting that a school teacher that works for the Mormon Church published a "book review" wherein childhood sexual abuse allegations are editorialized and dismissed while victims are openly disparaged.

Classy. And very Christian.


Haters.

[_Juggler Vain]

FAIR retracted and rewrote the ad hominem portion of the FAIR Wiki article I submitted in response to their call for examples, even though Mike Parker refuses to admit that it is ad hominem -- he calls it "snark."

Here is the old portion of the article with attacks:



***

Here is the new portion, without attacks.



Also, I just realized that the language in my screen shot of the old portion above is actually more harsh than the language FAIR just retracted. Here is the language that was on the FAIR Wiki earlier today:

It is, I suspect, this last point that makes many critics cry "foul." The critics are not anxious to "reveal the truth" about the seer stone in the hat. The hat detail provides a setting for the theory espoused by critics that Joseph cheated with notes while dictating. In Parson's painting, with it's open setting, the cheat-notes theory can't get any traction.

In the face of other evidence, critics don't seem worried about historical accuracy. Instead, they downplay the impressive witness testimonies of the plates' reality. Nor is a seer stone in a hat intrinsically less plausible than a Urim and Thummim with breastplate.

Perhaps what critics want above all is to make the translation alienating. They may want it to seem bizarre, even eerie. They may hope that a historical truth in visual form will allow them to slip a bigger lie by us.

It seems like they want a portrait of the translation that will convey something to a modern audience that it never portrayed to the participants—that the Book of Mormon was uninspired and uninspiring.

I guess FAIR recently tried to preemptively edit the attack into a less openly hostile ad hominem. Why? So they could call it "snark" with a straight face? I don't know.

-JV

[Guest]

Is that it? Really?
Come on Kish, that's lame and you know it.

Listen, I think it best to choose one's words more carefully and with a cool head.

"Pathological deceiver" is not a productive term to use. It just isn't. Moreover, it isn't true.

My understanding of apologetics is that it is more like the warfare that goes on in dirty political campaigning. I don't think the people who engage in such warfare are pathological liars; I think they are calculating soldiers who use deception as part of their toolkit because they truly believe the nature of their cause justifies the level of deception that they use.

[_Chap]

Is that it? Really?
Come on Kish, that's lame and you know it.

Listen, I think it best to choose one's words more carefully and with a cool head.

Calling someone a "pathological deceiver" is not a productive term to use. It just isn't. Moreover, it isn't true.

My understanding of apologetics is that it is more like the warfare that goes on in dirty political campaigning. I don't think the people who engage in such warfare are pathological liars; I think they are calculating soldiers who use deception as part of their toolkit because they truly believe the nature of their cause justifies the level of deception that they use.

OK. So they are calculating liars. They know exactly what they are doing.

Somehow I feel it would be better if they were pathological, which might suggest that they just couldn't help it ...

[Guest]

Anti-Mormon? Durham warned Church leaders, in the 1970s, that they were sitting on a membership exodus time bomb. I'd call that pro-Mormon, actually, a radical shift from the "all is well in Zion" approach, and Durham's call was simply to be more honest, and "tell the truth about our history", and "let them decide" (members and investigators).

Thank you, Ray. I think this example is emblematic of the problem. It is tragic that someone of Durham's deep spiritual commitments and loyalty to the LDS Church, not to mention learning and passion for history, should have been casually maligned in the way Matthew Brown did here. It was low. One can easily say similar things about D. Michael Quinn, who has been maligned and maltreated repeatedly by the apologetic community.

[_Fence Sitter]

Yes, we pasted your impressive response in another thread. Well said.

Sorry, I didn't see that. I just didn't want Fence Sitter to be too worried about fallout where I'm concerned. I can handle myself when I care enough to do so.

Besides taking the opportunity to thank you for doing it, I was actually hoping my post might provide some impetus to allow you to continue the cross posting. Based on what Cal has posted I see that this was not an issue anyways, at least with the moderation.

It was discouraging to see the lack of response to your excellent post in the "Smith,Peterson, Dehlin & Lou" squabble.

[_mercyngrace]

Besides taking the opportunity to thank you for doing it, I was actually hoping my post might provide some impetus to allow you to continue the cross posting. Based on what Cal has posted I see that this was not an issue anyways, at least with the moderation.

It was discouraging to see the lack of response to your excellent post in the "Smith,Peterson, Dehlin & Lou" squabble.

Cal's thread is already dropping to the bottom of the front page and I've decided not to resurrect it just to cross post. I think any more cross posting will risk turning the thread into one about personalities and that would ultimately be counterproductive. The point has been made that there are concerns about the state of LDS apologetics and this thread has the attention of those capable of addressing said concerns. I have a lot of faith in both Cal and Wiki Wonka, both of whom can access and read this board at will.

for what it's worth, I did ask another online Mormon community about the role of LDS apologetics in faith crises and got a smattering of responses, mostly measured and thoughtful, expressing criticisms that I think are worth considering. I will forward those comments along to people who can effect change as they deem necessary as well as a link to the thread Liz started about positive changes in LDS apologetics which I personally thought had several points worth noting.

[_Kishkumen]

When those who don't know criticize those who do: Hamblin on Quinn

William Hamblin has a special jones for criticizing Michael Quinn as a "bad historian." In his 2000 review of the second edition of Quinn's Early Mormonism and the Magic World View Hamblin immediately takes aim at the historian by quoting one of the most hated men among LDS historians of Mormonism: Pat Bagley.

I find it interesting that an [sic] outside—and fair—observer[s] of the Mormon scene [Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling] would cite Quinn's books. His critics slander Quinn at will and try to tar him with a broad brush—without being able to show a single specific instance in his work that would justify these loose comments—but such petty lies and disparaging remarks will do nothing to diminish the national reputation of this distinguished scholar.

I'm not twisting words. I'm asking for fairness and accuracy. Next time someone who calls himself or herself a Christian launches an assault of Quinn, let's see them link it to evidence rather than unjustifiable prejudice.

Hamblin believes that he is just the man to take up this gauntlet and show once and for all that Quinn does not deserve to be considered a competent historian.

I want my readers to recognize that, at least in my field, this kind of opening to a review is rare, if it ever happens at all. Why? Because scholars are primarily interested in reviewing the scholarship that they see before them. They usually do not make it clear at the outset that they have a particular dislike of the scholar whose work they are reviewing and admit that their goal is to destroy the person's reputation.

This particular opening is most rare in nature. We have one LDS scholar essentially beginning by alluding to a spat between the hated Pat Bagley and the apologists (including the review's author) about D. Michael Quinn that will be resolved through Hamblin's success in destroying the academic reputation of Quinn. In terms of collegiality among academics, it is a train wreck.

As he gets underway, the dubious reasoning begins:

Unfortunately, Quinn's national reputation is not well merited.

How do we know?

Re viewers [sic] of his books have increasingly recognized the fundamentally tendentious nature of his work3 and the fact that Quinn simply cannot be trusted to represent his sources accurately.

Let's take a moment here to think about this. Hamblin has informed his reader that Quinn has a favorable national reputation (Hamblin dismisses it as nothing more than the author's "inflated self-promotion" in footnote 2), which he will argue is not well merited. His first evidence of this is that "reviewers" of his books have increasingly recognized the fundamentally tendentious nature of his work. It might help us to assess the value of this criticism by following up in the footnotes:

3. See Duane Boyce, "A Betrayal of Trust," review of The Mormon Hierarchy: Extensions of Power, by D. Michael Quinn, FARMS Review of Books 9/2 (1997): 147—63, and George L. Mitton and Rhett S. James, "A Response to D. Michael Quinn's Homosexual Distortion of Latter-day Saint History," review of Same-Sex Dynamics among Nineteenth-Century Americans: A Mormon Example, by D. Michael Quinn, FARMS Review of Books 10/1 (1998): 141—263, both providing an absolutely astonishing litany of Quinn's ubiquitous misreadings, misrepresentations, and distortions.

Whoa! LOL! Dear me! You may have noticed a few interesting issues popping up here that could well give you pause.

1) To contest the merit of Quinn's national reputation, Hamblin has assembled a series of in-house LDS reviews written by a list of scholars with the following credentials:

a. Duane Boyce: Duane Boyce received his academic training in psychology, philosophy, and the clinical treatment of families. He received a Ph.D. from Brigham Young University and conducted his postdoctoral study in developmental psychology at Harvard University. He was a member of the Moral Studies Group at BYU and served on the faculty there before becoming vice president of a steel company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri.

b. George L. Mitton: It is unclear to me what Mitton's credentials are, or whether he has published anything outside of LDS apologetics.

c. Rhett S. James was an institute instructor for 27 years and the author of some Mormon and LDS historical books, including one on Martin Harris. He has also taught at LDS Business College.

So, this is the long list of Quinn's august detractors, whose opinions Hamblin believes should cast grave doubt on the value of Michael Quinn's historical scholarship.

One other issue grabbed my eye that cause me concern about the motivations of one of these reviewers: Rhett S. James.

In footnote 4, Hamblin chides Quinn for accusing Rhett James of accepting the authenticity of the infamous Salamander Letter, while he himself wrote a book under the same mistaken assumption. One is left wondering whether bad blood exists between James and Quinn, since mutual accusations of shoddy scholarship have been exchanged in print.

The other thing that jumps out at me is that the books that set these LDS critics of Quinn off regarded the hierarchy of the LDS Church and homosexuality, two particularly sensitive issues in LDS circles. Hamblin gratuitously mentions that these men have found... get ready for the emotional language, "an absolutely astonishing litany of Quinn's ubiquitous misreadings, misrepresentations, and distortions."

Clearly we are in for another clear-eyed take on Quinn's scholarship that strives to educate as objectively as possible. I would say that if Hamblin ever loses his day job he should consider writing the captions for fight scenes in a new Batman TV series (Bam! Whop! Kerplow!).

Hamblin's review is immense in scope, and it is not without its valid points. I will focus, however, on one passage in which he takes issue with Quinn's discussion of magic circles (since I have a life outside of keeping track of LDS apologists behaving badly):

To summarize, thirteen witnesses, while insisting that the Smiths were of low character, failed to state that they were involved in treasure hunting or magic; sixty-four witnesses believed the rumors of treasure hunting, but did not mention the rumors of magical practices; and five witnesses testified of treasure hunting with some form of divination (perhaps based on distorted stories of Joseph's claims of prophetic powers) but without magic circles. Only three contemporary witnesses—Cole, Capron, and William Stafford—claimed that the Smiths were involved in making magic circles to hunt treasure.146 It should be emphasized that these are all witnesses for the "prosecution" as collected by the anti-Mormon writers Hurlbut and Howe. But there were dozens, if not hundreds, of area residents who also knew the Smiths but did not sign the affidavits. To these should be added dozens of pro-Mormon witnesses for the "defense," such as Lucy Mack Smith, none of whom describes the Smiths engaged in making magic circles. Why, one might ask, did Quinn not undertake a complete survey of the evidence on allegations of the Smiths' treasure hunting? Why did he simply cite those few minority sources that support his thesis, ignoring those that do not?

First of all, I really have no idea why Hamblin bothers going on about this. Why don't we just go straight to accounts of Joseph Smith's testimony in the 1826 trial for "glass looking":

Mr. Smith was fully examined by the Court. It elicited little but a history of his life from early boyhood, but this is so unique in character, and so much of a key-note to his subsequent career in the world, I am tempted to give it somewhat in entenso. He said when he was a lad, he heard of a neighboring girl some three miles from him, who could look into a glass and see anything however hidden from others; that he was seized with a strong desire to see her and her glass; that after much effort he induced his parents to let him visit her. He did so, and was permitted to look in the glass, which was placed in a hat to exclude the light. He was greatly surprised to see but one thing, which was a small stone, a great way off. It soon became luminous, and dazzled his eyes, and after a short time it became as intense as the mid-day sun. He said that the stone was under the roots of a tree or shrub as large as his arm, situated about a mile up a small stream that puts in on the South side of Lake Erie, not far from the Now York and Pennsylvania line. He often had an opportunity to look in the glass, and with the same result. The luminous stone alone attracted his attention. This singular circumstance occupied his mind for some years, when he left his father's house, and with his youthful zeal traveled west in search of this luminous stone.

"Says that he came from town of Palmyra, and had been at the house of Josiah Stowel in Bainbridge most of time since; had small part of time been employed in looking for mines, but the major part had been employed by said Stowel on his farm, and going to school; that he had a certain stone, which he had occasionally looked at to determine where hidden treasures in the bowels of the earth were; that he professed to tell in this manner where gold-mines were a distance under ground, and had looked for Mr. Stowel several times, and informed him where he could find those treasures, and Mr. Stowel had been engaged in digging for them; that at Palmyra he pretended to tell, by looking at this stone, where coined money was buried in Pennsylvania, and while at Palmyra he had frequently ascertained in that way where lost property was, of various kinds; that he had occasionally been in the habit of looking through this stone to find lost property for three years, but of late had pretty much given it up on account its injuring his health, especially his eyes - made them sore; that he did not solicit business of this kind, and had always rather declined having any thing to do with this business."

OK, what we have here is fairly straightforward evidence, based on his own testimony, that Joseph Smith used a seer stone to find treasure. The use of such stones in this enterprise is a kind of folk magic. Once one accepts that obvious fact, one has a solid foundation for looking into other similar practices. If the others are perhaps less well attested, but consistent with this evidence, then you might be on less solid footing, but few but the most stingy historians would decry you for your methodology.

Not so Hamblin, who wants to use the very many people who may have known the Smiths but never offered testimony about their magic practices as witnesses in Joseph's defense for not having engaged in them. Truly there is a defense worthy of Johnny Cochran. "Oh, there may be 12 witnesses who claim they saw OJ kill his wife, but what of all of the neighbors who didn't see it! They outnumber those who do, so he must be innocent!"

Uhuh. Yeah.

Hamblin tells us that only three men claim that the Smiths used magic circles to find treasure: Joseph Capron, Abner Cole, and William Stafford.

Who were these men?

Admittedly they are not neutral witnesses, but, unlike Hamblin, most historians do not immediately dismiss hostile witnesses to historical events. One must proceed carefully, but they can still be highly valuable.

1. Joseph Capron provided one of the Hurlbutt affidavits, which casts some doubt on his story. But he has recently been vindicated as a reliable witness to the fact that Joseph Smith attempted to sell the copyright of the Book of Mormon in Canada. Anderson dismisses his witness on magical practices because he never explicitly says he was there, but the detail he provides is impressive:

The sapient Joseph [Sr.] discovered, north west of my house, a chest of gold watches; but, as they were in the possession of the evil spirit, it required skill and stratagem to obtain them. Accordingly, orders were given to stick a parcel of large stakes in the ground, several rods130 around, in a circular form. This was to be done directly over the spot where the treasures were deposited. A messenger was then sent to Palmyra to procure a polished sword: after which, Samuel F. Lawrence, with a drawn sword in his hand, marched around to guard any assault which his Satanic majesty might be disposed to make. Meantime, the rest of the company were busily employed in digging for the watches. They worked as usual till quite exhausted. But, in spite of their brave defender, Lawrence, and their bulwark of stakes, the devil came off victorious, and carried away the watches.

Hamblin is upset that Quinn only quoted the bolded portion. The fact that he did so in a discussion of magical circles would seem to me to require no explanation. He also dismisses the reference to the search for gold watches as a joke based on the Urim and Thummim invented by Abner Cole. In footnote 132 he says:

The allegations of the Smiths' search for "gold watches" may be Cole's satire on early Mormon descriptions of the Urim and Thummim as "spectacles."

In other words, Hamblin is telling us that he dismisses Capron's witness because he believes, based on no argument or evidence I can find, that a reference to a search for watches must be based on a joke of Abner Cole's. This is a stretch, to say the least, but it bothers Hamblin not at all in comparison with the travesty of Quinn's selective quotation of material pertinent to his argument. Horrors!

At this point it is worth considering a rebuttal of Anderson's dismissal of Capron:

Similarly, the fact that Joseph Capron did not say he actually saw the Smiths digging for treasure does not mean that his report contains “no personal observation.” As a neighbor of the Smiths, Capron was certainly in a position to know something of their activities, especially since he states that Smith “would often [p.33] tell his neighbors of his wonderful discoveries, and urge them to embark in the money digging business.” He also recounts a conversation with the elder Smith which clearly implicates the family in money digging.17

So, compared with all of those silent witnesses, whose great value we have to take on Hamblin's faith, Hamblin would have us dismiss the witness of Capron because he gave an affidavit to Hurlbut, and he talked about gold watches, which, for some reason, Hamblin dismisses as a myth of some kind.

2. Abner Cole, Palmyra newspaper editor, wrote a satire on Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and treasure digging, entitled, The Book of Pukei. As a tiny bit of fiction, one is tempted to dismiss it straight out, except that its details line up fairly well with the testimony of others, and:

Palmyra editor Abner Cole was perhaps the first person to publicize Joseph Smith's excavation exploits south of Palmyra. According to Dan Vogel, Cole was particularly interested in Smith's activities around what later came to be called "Miner's Hill," because he had owned that piece of property a few years before the proto-Mormons dug their tunnel into the hillside: "The Locations of Joseph Smith's Early Treasure Quests," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 27 (Fall 1994) pp. 204-207. In his Reflector for Jan. 18, 1831, Cole contrasts the prophetic careers of Smith and "the impostor of Mecca," noting that "Mahomet... retired to a cave in mount Hara, where he... [received] passages which he pretended had been revealed to him by the ministering angel." In his issue of Feb. 14, 1831 Mr. Cole says a little about the Smith family's money-digging and mentions the money-diggers' claims that "great treasures" of the "Ancient inhabitants" of the region "remained secure" from theft "in large and spacious chambers" in the earth, in and around Ontario county, New York. In his 1830 "Book of Pukei" satires, Cole makes further mention of the local money-diggers' preoccupation with " treasures, hidden in the bowels of the earth," but he does not specifically refer to their activities at Miner's Hill

In other words, Mr. Cole fairly closely connected with a piece of property on which the Smiths dug, and he seems to have known a fair amount about treasure digging activities in Palmyra.

3. William Stafford: members of the Stafford family participated in Joseph Smith's treasure digging activities. Joshua Stafford admitted precisely that in his affidavit. It is unlikely that he would have implicated himself in treasure digging in the fabrication of a lie.

5A. William Stafford, 8 December 1833. Stafford provides two separate accounts of Joseph Smith Sr. allegedly making magic circles to help discover treasure. Quinn chose only to excerpt the one that more closely matches his thesis. Quinn's excerpt is in bold.

Early in the evening [we] repaired to the place of deposit [of the treasure]. Joseph, Sen. first made a circle, twelve or fourteen feet in diameter. This circle, said he, contains the treasure. He then stuck in the ground a row of witch hazel sticks, around the said circle, for the purpose of keeping off the evil spirits. Within this circle he made another, of about eight or ten feet in diameter. He walked around three times on the periphery of this last circle, muttering to himself something which I could not understand. He then stuck a steel rod in the centre of the circles, and then enjoined profound silence upon us, lest we should arouse the evil spirit who had the charge of these treasures. . . .[They found no treasure because an evil spirit] caused the money to sink. (p. 46)133

5B. William Stafford, 8 December 1833. Quinn failed to mention this text, perhaps because it does not match any of the other descriptions of magic circles.

Old Joseph and one of the boys came to me one day, and said that Joseph Jr. had discovered some very remarkable and valuable treasures, which could be procured only in one way. That way, was as follows:—That a black sheep should be taken on to the ground where the treasures were concealed—that after cutting its throat, it should be led around a circle while bleeding. This being done, the wrath of the evil spirit would be appeased: the treasures could then be obtained. . . . But as there was some mistake in the process, it did not have the desired effect.134

Hamblin is again upset that Quinn has only quoted the bolded portion (the one that directly bears on Quinn's argument), and he fusses that Stafford's second description apparently contradicts the first. I would say that anyone who accepts the different versions of the First Vision accounts as not contradicting each other fundamentally should have no problem with the differences between these two accounts of the construction of a magic circle, but Hamblin will have none of it.

My view of Hamblin's argument at this point is that it is an exercise in obfuscation which is undermined horribly by his own egregious overreaching, not to mention the abundant evidence of Joseph Smith's magical activities. He wants to place a great deal of weight on the numbers, all the while avoiding the evidence that points to the likelihood that the three witnesses who mention the Smiths constructing magic circles were probably more valuable for their knowledge of these matters, both direct and indirect, than the many who did not know for whatever reason. If I want to know the history of what goes on at the corner basketball court, I will consult the guy who knows the spot and the guy who plays games of pick up; I will not impugn their witness based on the silence of the ladies of the garden club. Hamblin's complaint borders on ridiculous.

Given that Hamblin's criticism of Quinn is seriously flawed, one wonders upon what grounds Hamblin crows about Quinn's deficiences as a historian.