The Sacred Curse

[_Simon Southerton]

I don't suppose we could get Simon to dicker a little with Smac on the Mad board?? I would so love this!

I'm sorry. I don't debate with fundamentalists on any topic. That includes the Flood, evolution, Creationism and Book of Mormon historicity. I'm happy to launch grenades from across the Pacific.

The tyranny of distance and time zones make this especially difficult. I'm not prepared to sit down and discuss stuff at a time that is always convenient for apologists and rarely convenient for me.

I've done a little toing and froing on the r/Mormon website but I wouldn't call it debating. https://www.reddit.com/r/Mormon/comment ... red_curse/

[_Simon Southerton]

Wow. Revisionist history is just stunning. Is this how they teach it now?

Every time science disproves an element of the Mormon church, someone decides:

1. That’s not really what we believe.

2. That’s not what you learned growing up, and if it is, you learned it wrong.

and/or

3. Words don’t mean what we used to think they meant, if that meaning is disproven by science.

The havoc that arguments like that must wreak in an intelligent mind is beyond understanding.

The apologetic arguments only carry weight in their echo chamber. They would be more testimony-threatening than anything I write if they could just manage to get ordinary members to read their nonsense.

[_Arc]

mfbukowski on the other board made these nice comments (insults?)

"Sigh
It's just the old historic vs the newer spiritual understanding of our beliefs.

It's no different than Book of Mormon geography vs horses in the Book of Mormon, metallurgy, translation vs revelation, the Book of Abraham, and every other misunderstanding. Evolution. Young earth. Big Bang and ex nihilo, geocentric universe and flat earth!

Can't we see it's all the same argument, different day?

What a waste of time!!

Every alleged anachronism disappears if Joseph was teaching spiritual principles and not science or history.
When will we get over this nonsense??

Grow up people!

Grow up critics, somewhere there's a brain in your head that should get you past Santa Claus and baby stories!!"

Simon must be getting to them

aussieguy55, it had been a longtime since I visited the other board before yesterday when I went looking for the original of the mfbukowski post you quoted, and couldn't find it. What I did see was that Smac 97's Gish Gallop nonsense over on the Simons' New Book thread is so offensive to logic and reason I actually thought about opening an account there. Would you, or someone who has actually seen the original mfbukowski post you cited here, kindly provide a direct link to it? Thanks.

[_Stem]

The apologetic arguments only carry weight in their echo chamber. They would be more testimony-threatening than anything I write if they could just manage to get ordinary members to read their nonsense.

Absolutely true. That's most explicitly obvious when you substitute the Church with something else. Every defense they make on topics like this supports all the crazy theories which resonate with the exceedingly few oddballs.

As it were, though, I participate over on that board from time to time, and happened upon it yesterday. The brief back and forth got me interested to go purchase your new book. So, that's nice. Looking forward to it.

[_Dr LOD]

The apologetic arguments only carry weight in their echo chamber. They would be more testimony-threatening than anything I write if they could just manage to get ordinary members to read their nonsense.

So very true.

A particular apologetic argument only works in the carefully proscribed area of facts and truth that they carefully lay out beforehand. Selectively culling the facts to be used and the facts to be ignored. They then present this super compartmentalized product as the TRUTH. The funny part is there was absolutely no faith on their part involved. It was all the product of their pride and rationalization.

It is also fun to see the incongruity of their apologetics across different subjects, as they use different data points. In one a particular fact is discounted or ignored, in another it is the lynch-pin of the apologetic argument.

[_Gray Ghost]

I used to engage Mr. Bukowski prior to being kicked off of MDD by, I believe, Scott Lloyd, for bugging him about always responding to anything with follow the brethren, follow the brethren. Anyway, I think Mr. Bukowski is viewed much the same way one would view the old high priest in the ward that had his pet theories about whatever. However, if one digs down on what Bukowski claims, pretty much anything is true for a person, as long as that person believes it. He acknowledges the history problems and says so what, I believe anyway, and cites Alma 32 and D&C 93.

I agree that if the church ever espoused Mr. Bukowski's thinking, many would leave, that is if they were paying attention.

Yes, if you ask him about that enough, he'll admit it. Pragmatism is a knife that cuts in an infinite number of directions.

[_Lemmie]

The apologetic arguments only carry weight in their echo chamber. They would be more testimony-threatening than anything I write if they could just manage to get ordinary members to read their nonsense.

Truly. I just finished reading, well, trying to read, a response Smac97 gave that contained FIFTY-FOUR paragraphs, with no paragraph containing more than one sentence.

To me, the most telling one, given after he wrote a huge OP about your book that included, literally, listing 22 footnotes from FAIRMORMON, was his answer to the question, had he read your book?

Smac97 wrote:

Haven't read it, and likely won't.

In a lengthy thread where he goes on and on trying to dispute the details of your book, that would give an ordinary believer pause, I should think. He may end up being your greatest publicist.

Also, this just cracked me up.

smac97:

( Also, what is a "Mesoamerican apologist"? Daniel Peterson is an American professor of Islamic Studies at BYU. He was born and raised in California.)

Come on, hasn’t he read about all those child psychologists? What wunderkinds they must be, still in puberty and producing such work. Oy.

[_candygal]

I don't suppose we could get Simon to dicker a little with Smac on the Mad board?? I would so love this!

I'm sorry. I don't debate with fundamentalists on any topic. That includes the Flood, evolution, Creationism and Book of Mormon historicity. I'm happy to launch grenades from across the Pacific.

The tyranny of distance and time zones make this especially difficult. I'm not prepared to sit down and discuss stuff at a time that is always convenient for apologists and rarely convenient for me.

I've done a little toing and froing on the r/Mormon website but I wouldn't call it debating. https://www.reddit.com/r/Mormon/comment ... red_curse/

I get it and respect your decision not to participate on those subjects; especially on that board. But would still like to have seen it...!

[_DoubtingThomas]

Every time science disproves an element of the Mormon church, someone decides:

The same is true for all religions. Religions evolve to survive. Mormon apologetics isn't original, many Bible apologists make similar arguments to defend the Bible.

[_Lemmie]

Louise Midgley:

The previous tiny little difference of opinion that Professor Peterson and I had with "Little Old Donkey" over whether the traces of the DNA of the three migrations mentioned in the Book of Mormon now be present in all native Americans rests on ignorance of the reasons this simply has to be so.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... 4759479061

bolded to note the lack of understanding of how evidence works. Assuming the conclusion is such bad science. What is worse is how badly he abuses members of his church for doing the same thing. From the same link:

....the rubbish being peddled by Rodney Meldrum about where the events described in the Book of Mormon took place...