Scott Gordon the CES Letter and Truth

[_Philo Sofee]

Great group photo!!! And Grindael, you are, as usual, spot on about what the apologists HAVE accomplished. They have strengthened, ironic as all total get out, the anti-Mormon testimonies!

[_Lemmie]

For some CES letter irony, in an MD&D thread on tad mccallister’s Talk re the Book of Mormon:

Robert f. Christensen:

13 hours ago, rockpond said:
.”............... he avoids the really tough, problematic stuff.”

Any specifics, or are you thinking in a general sense? I see it as a very basic introduction to Book of Mormon apologetics. Callister, a tax attorney by profession, isn't really qualified to dive in much deeper.

http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/721 ... 1209924051

Same guy, same link:

I don't see the problem, or the harm. Callister has presented something at the introductory level, for the unwashed masses. His is not some grandiloquent piece designed to slay all the dragons, and we should not expect it to. I always hear complaints that "the Church didn't tell me this in a timely fashion," etc. Well, here it is in easily digestible form for the simple-minded. Moreover, I see nothing anti-intellectual about it. Why do you find it embarrassing?

[_Lemmie]

Nice pic, grindael, looking good!

[_Dr Exiled]

I've been banned over there. I guess there's the answer to Dr. Jenkins' query if any TBM lurkers are interested.

TBM's, just admit there is no proof whatsoever for a historical Book of Mormon and let's move forward with a fictional model already. It's kind of embarrassing that historicity is still pushed as a viable belief.

[Guest]

Earlier in the thread:

21 hours ago, smac97 said:

I think we need to address these controversies. We need to contextualize them. We need to respond with accuracy and humility and fairness. The existence of an accusation or criticism is not evidence for itself, though some seem to think otherwise

And yet, still no answers.

smac:

And in the main, I find Mr. Runnells' "questions" to be banal, facile, and uninformed. In contrast, I have found much of the apologetic work produced by the members of the Church to be, in the main, persuasive, well-reasoned, thoughtful and erudite (and often quite "satisfying").

Ok. But still no actual answers ?

7 minutes ago, Exiled said:

because the questions are difficult to answer

Not really.

7 minutes ago, Exiled said:

and require a lot of squinting to see things as the church claims them to be.

They often require a lot of context and information and exposition, yes. That's part of the problem with the "Big List" approach. I've commented on this here:

But... still no answers.

He then quotes himself:

Many challenging issues can, and generally are, framed as a short questions that demand long answers. Understanding the context of the issue. Re-visiting underlying assumptions. Differentiating fact from fiction/rhetorical embellishment. And most important of all . . . providing answers based on prayer, scripture, and substantive study and research, rather than off-the-cuff, just-take-my-word-for-it types of explanations.

Still. No. Answers.

But Smac is not done. He quotes himself, AGAIN:

Many challenging issues about the Church can be framed (and usually are by folks like Jeremy Runnells and Bill Reel) as a series of fairly short questions that typically demand long answers. But understanding the context of the issues, and addressing assumptions underlying each "question," and differentiating facts from fiction/rhetorical embellishment, and so on are all necessary predicates to providing substantive and informed and competent answers. Naturally, this can take a lot of time, far longer than it took a person like Jeremy Runnells to do some Googling and then copy and paste his "questions" into a "Big List." And not just time, but prayer and effort to meaningfully study and research relevant scriptures, scholarship, etc.

And yet this has been done for Jeremy Runnells. And the result was that Mr. Runnells largely blew off and generally failed to meaningfully address the very answers to the "questions" he had posed.

In our world of soundbites, Wikipedia, on-demand media content, etc., some of us want a quick 'n easy answer. That is not always possible, or even advisable. But then, perhaps treating these "Big List" grievances as being presented in good faith is not advisable, either.

Sigh. but he’s not done.

Malarky. Mr. Runnells' "questions" have been repeatedly and substantively addressed.

Um....

And again:

As for "discounting it," I have repeatedly provided numerous links which substantively respond to Mr. Runnells' "questions."

Thanks,

-Smac

?????????

[_Lemmie]

I've been banned over there. I guess there's the answer to Dr. Jenkins' query if any TBM lurkers are interested.

TBM's, just admit there is no proof whatsoever for a historical Book of Mormon and let's move forward with a fictional model already. It's kind of embarrassing that historicity is still pushed as a viable belief.

No surprise, all you did was ask for one answer. One the other hand, Smac’s whole thread participation just makes his position look worse and worse.

[_Physics Guy]

I don't think a non-historical Book of Mormon is really viable because the actual content of the Book of Mormon is unimpressive. The message itself just reads like mediocre Bible fan fiction, so it's hard to believe that it's the best revelation that God Almighty could have come up with in 1830. Smith's claim to have received that revelation isn't impressive enough to warrant trust in all Smith's later revelations. You can't build much of a faith in Joseph Smith's Restored Gospel based only on the content of the Book of Mormon as an inspired but unhistorical text.

It would be much better if the text really were the miraculously transmitted message of a lost civilization of ancient Christian Jews in the Americas. Then Joseph Smith's supporting miracle would be to have received and passed on the ancient message, and that would be a pretty good miracle so the authority of all his later revelations would be established. The message itself would get a lot more respect as well because it would then be entitled to all the slack that ancient texts generally get—it was from another time that we can't judge by present standards, translation doesn't do it justice, the original authors were fallible and even biased human beings, and so on. Ancient provenance flatters the content of a text the way soft lighting flatters faces in portraits.

So Mormonism wins both ways from a historical Book of Mormon. Giving up that big double advantage is tough when the alternative is so weak. I think this is why so many Mormon colors seem to be nailed to the mast of Book of Mormon historicity. The good ship Zion has no seaworthy lifeboats. It's sail on or go down.

[_Dr Exiled]

I don't think a non-historical Book of Mormon is really viable because the actual content of the Book of Mormon is unimpressive. The message itself just reads like mediocre Bible fan fiction, so it's hard to believe that it's the best revelation that God Almighty could have come up with in 1830. Smith's claim to have received that revelation isn't impressive enough to warrant trust in all Smith's later revelations. You can't build much of a faith in Joseph Smith's Restored Gospel based only on the content of the Book of Mormon as an inspired but unhistorical text.

It would be much better if the text really were the miraculously transmitted message of a lost civilization of ancient Christian Jews in the Americas. Then Joseph Smith's supporting miracle would be to have received and passed on the ancient message, and that would be a pretty good miracle so the authority of all his later revelations would be established. The message itself would get a lot more respect as well because it would then be entitled to all the slack that ancient texts generally get—it was from another time that we can't judge by present standards, translation doesn't do it justice, the original authors were fallible and even biased human beings, and so on. Ancient provenance flatters the content of a text the way soft lighting flatters faces in portraits.

So Mormonism wins both ways from a historical Book of Mormon. Giving up that big double advantage is tough when the alternative is so weak. I think this is why so many Mormon colors seem to be nailed to the mast of Book of Mormon historicity. The good ship Zion has no seaworthy lifeboats. It's sail on or go down.

Too bad the evidence doesn't support historicity.

[Guest]

Yeah, exactly. The Mormon apologists can't jump away to a non-historical Book, though, so they fight desperately even when they don't have a viable battle plan. If they run out of bullets their last five guys will fix bayonets and charge like the Foreign Legion at Camarón.

At any rate that's the explanation I'm beginning to form for why some seemingly smart people are persisting with arguments that might at best seem barely passable individually if you squinted at each one by itself, but that together make up a structure that is obviously too flimsy to withstand a light wind. The desperate crew doesn't see how badly the whole ship is doing because they are fighting each point as it comes.

I wonder if perhaps the best way to help stuck people come out would actually be to stop attacking them and instead play along politely with their pretense that the Book of Mormon is a real ancient text and the declarations of Joseph Smith are profound spiritual truths. Get them to talk about whatever they think is coolest in their scriptures, and for each one say words to the effect of, "Gee, that's neat. How would you say that compares to ..." and then casually mention whatever other insight one may happen to know on a similar topic from some non-Mormon source.

If the Mormon insights really stand the comparison, then that's a legitimate Mormon apologetic independent of Book of Mormon historicity. If they don't, that's got to be a more decisive realization than any number of criticisms. Maybe Mormons don't need critical arguments as much as they need some fresh air.

[_Dr Exiled]

I've been banned over there. I guess there's the answer to Dr. Jenkins' query if any TBM lurkers are interested.

TBM's, just admit there is no proof whatsoever for a historical Book of Mormon and let's move forward with a fictional model already. It's kind of embarrassing that historicity is still pushed as a viable belief.

No surprise, all you did was ask for one answer. One the other hand, Smac’s whole thread participation just makes his position look worse and worse.

I wonder how a "good faith" question about historicity would even look like?

Perhaps it would look something like this: Dear Brethren of Even The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a church born to be a shining light in the wilderness of sin and sorrow, a church that suffered through the martyrdom of its beloved first leader, a church forced by a wicked generation to flee The Ohio, Missouri, land of Adam Ondi Ahman, and finally Nauvoo the Beautiful, dear, dear church leaders, how can one convince a generation of unbelievers of the richness of the Book of Mormon, a book filled with complexity, chiasmus and spiritual greatness when they are focused on a supposed lack of evidence for historicity? How can one build faith when these unbelievers won't even consider the intricacies of evidentiary standards and continue to focus on the unimportant views of so-called scientists?