Saving reprehensible Hamblin, Peterson etc comments

[_Buffalo]

Dehlin and his supporters have been claiming that the GAs have vindicated him and are attempting to stop apologetics. There is no evidence that this is true. It is just as likely that, in response to Dehlin's letter, someone sent a letter requesting information about the situation, and that Jerry Bradford decided on his own not to publish the article so as to not rock the boat. (It is a typical bureaucratic response to try to make a problem go away rather than to resolve it.) At any rate, I don't know if this is true or not--it is pure speculation. But it is no more speculative than what the Dehlinites have been claiming. I think it is extraordinarily foolish on their part to claim universal GA support for what they are doing based on an anonymous letter of unknown contents from an unknown GA. Nothing gets a GA's attention like someone falsely claiming to speak for GAs.

[_Kishkumen]

Nothing gets a GA's attention like someone falsely claiming to speak for GAs.

From his mouth to God's ear.

[_Buffalo]

You have to understand that William revels in this old-school "war" mentality between LDS members and former members. For him and his ilk (which, thankfully, is a very small minority; including the likes of bigoted apologists like DCP, Hamblin, Midgley, Smith, Pahoran, Loran). It is nice that some of the more sensible and scholarly folks in the Church have made conscious effort to distance themselves from such attitudes. What remains to be seen is which side will win out. For instance, if this school of thought had more weight to throw around, then folks like me would never be permitted to post on this forum. These guys consider themselves the keepers of the sheep and they know they cannot handle debate on these issues, which is why they prefer to have lecture privileges where their intended targets are not permitted to respond (i.e. banned posters on this forum or those incapable of responding to Dan's attack blog)

What we have learned beyond all doubt from this event is that Dan and his FARMS apologists can no longer deceive people into thinking FARMS doesn't do attack pieces. Of course they do. That's essentially what they do. We know now that Dan's scholarly standards are far below a level of civility acceptable by Church leaders, which is interesting given his repeated claims of desiring civility. He debates nothing and ignores everyone he perceives as a threat. For instance, he ignores me because he says I'm too unpleasant to be around. OK, so what is his excuse for ignoring virtually every other person on the planet (like Dehlin) who has done nothing whatsoever that could be considered uncivil? He cannot own up to his attacks and debate that person on an open forum, so he retreats to his usual attack-dog publication where he gets someone else to attack whoever it is he perceives as a threat. He did the same thing a decade ago when JP Holding kindly gave me a dozen copies of his book to give to Dan and his FARMS cohorts.

I told Dan beforehand that JP used a pseudonym and that he had a good reason to do so, and that nothing should be said about that out of respect for his desire to remain anonymous. So Dan hands the review job to one of FARMS's hatchet men, Russel McGregor, who attacks JP as an "anti-Mormon attacker," claimed his arguments are of the boilerplate anti-Mormon variety (every one of them were unique and never before seen by apologists) claimed he is anti-Mormon because he doesn't consider us Christian (which he never believed nor said even once in his book) and addressed not a single argument in the book. Oh, and then he mentions JP's real name, which he found while from googling his atheist stalkers. When I kindly asked Dan and Russel to remove that from the online "review" they kindly ignored the request and broke contact with me. Years later Russel said he apologized to JP, which I proved never happened after posting emails of our exchange during this controversy. Russel instead mocked JP for making a big deal of this and showed no form of apology or desire to apologize.

But this is just one of the many, many examples of the hit pieces Dan Peterson sends out to the web for the purposes of saving his flock.

So it is funny to see Hamblin and Peterson complain about defamation from a guy who was simply trying to preempt against an attack piece. Dehlin heard this from faithful LDS members among the FARMS ranks which proves that the critics aren't the only people who think Dan's attack pieces are over the top. Dan is the same guy who threw a tantrum when he found out that Robert Ritner was considering a libel suit against him for spreading false rumors about why he considered John Gee's scholarship sub-par, claiming falsely that he was thrown off the dissertation committee at Gee's request, insinuating, as always, that his anti-Mormonism prevented him from being objective. After gleefully misinforming his flock over the matter for several years, Dan suddenly shut his trap about the incident. Now it appears it was shut again, but this time by an LDS leader. That's very telling.

Saved before the mods delete it