Coggins7 wrote:Obviously, Coggins is too lazy/stupid to go over to MAD and confirm/disprove what I've said.
This is why Dartagnon, who's posts are composed primarily of this kind of verbiage, has never kicked anyone's butt on the Book of Abraham or any other issue.
Keep up the pose.
I bet there are some others here who would enjoy a brief refresher course. Here is an old Coggins post from MAD, where he goes begging for the information he is too lazy to dig up for himself:
Gomer Pyle wrote:I have a pretty active and broad intellctual life. lI do a lot of reading, studying, and thinking, and frankly, thought I've educated myself in this area fairly extensively in the past, as I've said, I'm not an expert. Nor, given the very real testimony I have of the Book of Abraham, do I feel I need to be. Scholarly support for the text is purely an appendage, as far as I am concerned. However, I am interested in the intellectual support for it so that my forays into apologetics in this area will be more effective and less confronatational, as substative knowledge creates calm assureance and featheirs that cannot be ruffled by shrill ideologues.
I thought I was at least fairly competent and able to defend myself here pretty well, but its much more diffeicult when somwone begins claiming that all past arguments generated by LDS scholars (Nibley, Gee etc) are at best tendentious and probably mendacious examples of gross shcolarly ineptitude and then implies that there is some body of arcane techinical knowledge, known only to smart people like Metcalf and others, which has conclusively and without any possible doubt exposed the Book of Abraham as a fraud. I, of couse, not dedicating every waking hour of my life to the defense of the Book of Abraham, as others clearly dedicate much of their intellctual engery to impuging it, seek further education in the matter.
So then, borhers and sisters, ladies and gentlement, what is the present sattus, in a scholarly sense, of the critcs' theories concerning the orgins of the Book of Abraham text?
(emphasis added)
Notice the portion I've bolded. So why bother with the scholarship at all, then? Why not just say, "God told me so, I have a testimony, so you can forget about any so-called 'evidence,' since I don't care about that." Further, why bother reading websites such as "thefrontpage," since it is merely an "appendage"?
Of course, no one at MAD was willing to help poor Loran out, so he erupted with the following little-boy tantrum, directed at Dartagnan (whose name Coggs seems incapable of spelling correctly):
Coggins7 wrote:Dartagnon, you are a partison intellectual hatchet man, just like most of the ax grinders at Signature. Your scholarship, like so much of thers, revolves around trying to prove the Book of Abraham false, not attempting to get as close to truth about it as you can. And of course, anyone who begins with a fixed and unalterable assumption about something, can probably eventually generate evidence demonstarating the correctness of the original bias. That, however, is poor scholarship. You may try to hide begind technical jargon and harisplitting textual issues all you like, but the fact remains that the holes in the present critical theories of Book of Abraham origins are real and they are not going away anytime soon.
Your cock certainty that the Book of Abraham has been delegitimized is a sure sign that your psychological agenda regarding it has, as with most critics, long ago trumed your intellectual honesty and rigor. There is no such certainty. Competent LDS scholarship has indeed provided plausible rebuttles to all critical arguments up to this juncture, and wailing, pulling your hair, and insulting those who point these inconveint realities out to you will not make those arguments any stronger.
Two other points. I apologize for my use of the hypocephalus in my last post as a source for the Book of Abraham. Of course the Book of Breathings is the central point of contention here (that and the Egyptian Alphebet and Grammer). It was late and I was throwing out terms.
Also, none of these above problems overturns another major probem for the critics, and that is the incredible correspondence between the Book of Abraham and anceint Jewish religious texts that have come to light only since Joseph's day, especially the exstensive Abraham literatue we now have that was unknown to Jospeh Smith. The critics can't explain that away so easily (of course, split enought hars and quibble at a rarefied enough level and you can make quite a show of it). Literary genres motifs, symgolism, and traditions found in such ancient texts, and represented also in the Book of Mormon pose extreme difficultiers for the Dawkinoids over at Signature and here. Keep up the good work.
Oh, and just for the road, Dartagnon, why don't you go get yoursself some C-4 stuff it down your pants, and blow yoursself (sorry, just could't resist this with this smarmy, self satisfied pontificating ass. Just tooooo tempting. I'll repent later...)
Are these the words of a man who did not just get his butt kicked? Methinks not. In fact, methinks poor Loran is still smarting from the thrashing he got.