Most Delusional anti-Mormon Ever?

[Calm]

 

16 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

but I am also aware that others-taught are not immune to taking their own selves too seriously. There are plenty of historical examples of this from world-famous scientists and engineers. And world-famous military strategists, theologians and philosophers, too. 

I am not sure how you get from self-critique to “taking their own selves too seriously”.  I am wonder if I use the last phrase differently than you do.

[The Nehor]

55 minutes ago, bluebell said:

Everyone one else would say the same about themselves. It’s just that our biases play a bigger role in what we will accept as accurate than we’d like to admit. 

Definitely, which is why you go to the experts who have spent their lives studying that field. They are biased too but they are trained to scrutinize for factual errors and in the aggregate they usually do a good job.

To be honest I am dubious of the premise of the book. Correlations between the Book of Mormon and the Apocrypha don’t seem that likely. The bulk of the apocrypha was written over two and a half centuries after Lehi left and a lot of those books came even later and the ones that flipped the script a lot were pretty new notions. I am just not sure what this would be indicative of. A connection?

Edited December 14, 2025 by The Nehor

[Rain]

2 hours ago, Calm said:

I would love to see studies showing how people rate their ability to suppress biases vs the reality as it seems likely this would be an area our self appraisal isn’t that great…since our biases would affect our judgment.  We often don’t recognize our own biases after all, hard to suppress what we aren’t aware of.

decided to look and found this

https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2015/june/bias-blind-spot.html#:~:text=It has been well established that people,biased than others have been less clear.

Not sure how this applies to when we recognize our biases rather than ignore them and attempt to control them.

This does not bode well for me!

[bluebell]

3 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Definitely, which is why you go to the experts who have spent their lives studying that field. They are biased too but they are trained to scrutinize for factual errors and in the aggregate they usually do a good job.

To be honest I am dubious of the premise of the book. Correlations between the Book of Mormon and the Apocrypha don’t seem that likely. The bulk of the apocrypha was written over two and a half centuries after Lehi left and a lot of those books came even later and the ones that flipped the script a lot were pretty new notions. I am just not sure what this would be indicative of. A connection?

Agreed

[morgan.deane]

13 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Maybe you should take this a little less seriously. The "associate professor" thing is obviously intended as somewhat of a joke -- probably assigned the title by the jokester Cardon, and not self-assumed. And he doesn't claim to be a "full professor."  He does have a lot of knowledge regarding the Apocrypha, so much so that he wrote a book about correspondences between apocryphal works and the Book of Mormon. Unaccredited people with large amounts of knowledge gained by self-study sometimes get assigned "courtesy titles" by media figures or other kinds of pundits. Some examples:

• Elvis Presley - the King of Rock and Roll
• TIna Turner - the Queen of Rock and Roll
• John Wayne - the Duke
• Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington
• Adam Reader - the Professor of Rock - in his case, self-assigned as a trade name. To be fair, he does know a lot about the subject. I do wonder, are there any universities offering courses in Rock and Roll that have a department that would require hiring a professor to chair it? Asking for a friend...
• Bill Nye - the Science Guy - but his BS degree is in mechanical engineering, not science

I am a retired software developer. I'm also an Army veteran. I once worked with a project leader, seriously a fine chap, who insisted upon calling me "Sergeant Major" even though I rose never higher than a three striper, a mere buck sergeant. Should I have been offended on behalf of my old fellow soldier, who stayed in the service after I left, and actually did rise to the rank of Command Sergeant Major? My project leader was actually a retired lieutenant colonel, and I liked to annoy him by calling him General. Payback! 

 

I literally said it didn’t matter, except I was annoyed, and yet you still felt the need to explain to me that Elvis wasn’t a real king. Thanks for clearing that up.  

But since you brought it up, there is a distinction that matters. Someone jokingly calling you the wrong rank is very different from someone assuming a rank for personal benefit. The latter is serious enough to have its own name and crime called stolen valor. I don’t know what point you thought you were making, but explaining obvious jokes, unoffensive and even earned honorifics during an anecdote that doesn’t apply to something I already minimized feels extraordinarily petty.

Elvis earned his honorific on his way to selling 1.8 billion records in a truly great career. (Ironically, he felt it was unearned and rejected it.)  I earned my title by completing a rigorous program and being formally hooded. At the end of that ceremony, I was addressed by my title for the first time, and it was satisfying precisely because it was earned. Even then, I rarely bring it up, except when a shock jock uses it as a tagline for his schtick. 

If you want to litigate this with a useless military anecdote, yes I do have a legitimate reason to dislike some random dilettante assuming a rank I earned. This isn’t a friend jokingly calling you “Sergeant Major”; it’s someone calling himself Sergeant Major and then using it to posture and project authority. As Paul put it in Hebrews 5:4, no man taketh this honor upon himself. An actual Sergeant major would be at least a little annoyed by that act, as I was at this self proclaimed professor. 

Seriously, Professor Apocrypha can take a stab at grading this stack of papers any day of the week. It’s not as vainglorious as pontificating about the “lobotomy that is the Trinity” or calling yourself a king, but it’s the job of actual professors.

https://www.britannica.com/story/why-is-elvis-called-the-king-of-rock-n-roll

Edited December 14, 2025 by morgan.deane

[ZealouslyStriving]

The self-importance is suffocating.

[morgan.deane]

4 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

The self-importance is suffocating.

I literally said "it didn’t matter” and noted my annoyance. (Three times now!) You and Stargazer are the ones elevating it by continuing to litigate and resorting to insults. That says far more about your relationship to standards than my supposed “self-importance.”

[Stargazer]

19 hours ago, Calm said:

 

I am not sure how you get from self-critique to “taking their own selves too seriously”.  I am wonder if I use the last phrase differently than you do.

I am using lack of ability to self-critique to mean take one's own self too seriously. Perhaps this is inaccurate. I've run into people who are always right. I'm sure you have as well. People for whom the phrase "changing one's mind" is Greek to them.

[Stargazer]

18 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Definitely, which is why you go to the experts who have spent their lives studying that field. They are biased too but they are trained to scrutinize for factual errors and in the aggregate they usually do a good job.

And they criticize each other about biases all the time. Experts are not all of one mind, as you may know. And they are subject to professional jealousies as well. Consider Alfred Wegener, a meteorologist, who proposed the idea of continental drift. It didn't take too long for his idea to begin to get acceptance, but some experts mocked him, especially ones in North America. Ignaz Semmelweis pioneered antiseptic procedures, and demonstrated that the incidence of infection could be drastically reduced by requiring healthcare workers to disinfect their hands. He was vilified by his colleagues (he was also a jerk, so that may have contributed). Mathematician Georg Cantor's work on set theory was extremely controversial, and the opposition contributed to his mental health issues -- but his work is now largely accepted. These are old examples. I'm sure there are plenty of newer ones.

Consider morgan.deane's reaction to the joking title of "Associate Professor of all things apocryphal." How dare he call himself a "professor"! I don't know whether that is jealousy or some kind of academic classism. I've experienced this kind of classism myself. Having a mere Associate Degree in computer programming, how dare I question someone with a Bachelor's Degree in computer science! 

18 hours ago, The Nehor said:

To be honest I am dubious of the premise of the book. Correlations between the Book of Mormon and the Apocrypha don’t seem that likely. The bulk of the apocrypha was written over two and a half centuries after Lehi left and a lot of those books came even later and the ones that flipped the script a lot were pretty new notions. I am just not sure what this would be indicative of. A connection?

We can be sure that New Testament apocryphal writings were written after Jesus's resurrection. But Old Testament? Not so easy. For many works, such as the Book of Tobit, the internal evidence makes it pretty clear when it originated, which is the Second Temple period -- this is the book where the Sadducees got the seven brothers who married the one widow conundrum they tried to trick Jesus with, by the way.  But for others, the date of original composition is less certain -- and whether the material in them is drawn from earlier works no longer extant, how can we know?

But here's the rub: much of the apocryphal material that Jonah Barnes tries to suggest is showing up in the Book of Mormon was not even known to academics in 1830, let alone known to Joseph Smith. How did it get there? Unless possibly it was found on the plates of brass. 

Jonah Barnes does not claim to be an expert along the lines of Benjamin McGuire or Hugh Nibley. From the Foreword by D. John Butler:

Quote

  "This is not an academic book; it’s not trying to be. This is a combative, snarky challenge to think about a very big subject in a new way.
Some readers will want more footnotes, or more consideration of other writers’ theses, more discussion of the details of dating, or painstaking analyses of lines of non-English text.

   "That’s not this book. In the future, Jonah Barnes— or someone else— may write a more detailed, academic, point-by-point exploration of this subject matter. But Jonah doesn’t drink cognac. He doesn’t have an elbow-patch jacket. Jonah is making a big-picture argument and extending an invitation.

   "The argument is this: Jonah suggests a new context for the Book of Mormon. He observes that the Book of Mormon looked ridiculous when it came out. It made big claims— that the ancient Israelites knew about Satan and the coming mortal ministry of Jesus Christ, for instance, and that Eve was to be praised for her choice rather than condemned. These ideas were incompatible with scholarly thinking of the day, and the Book of Mormon was duly laughed out of court. 

   "But then other books showed up, making the same claims. And they kept showing up. More and more of them. A veritable flood tide, as Jonah demonstrates. 

   "Some sense has to be made of this. To the long list of books we are supposed to imagine Joseph Smith had access to in 1829, must we add Ethiopic Enoch and the Nag Hammadi library, and then understand that he sometimes drew his doctrines from those works in preference to the Bible his family and culture knew and embraced? Or does it make more sense to imagine that the doctrines for which the Book of Mormon was mocked in 1829 were, in fact, part of Israel’s ancient inheritance, and had been deliberately kept out of the Old Testament?"

Barnes, Jonah R.. The Key to the Keystone: How Apocryphal Texts Unlock the Book of Mormon's Brass Plates (p. 5-7). Plain and Precious Publishing LLC. Kindle Edition. 

Would it be so hard for an actual expert to examine Barnes' work, without pre-judging it due to academic classism or political antagonism, and come up with an honest assessment of the ideas in the work? I expect it would be very hard, so I don't expect to see anything of the kind. Call me cynical.

[Stargazer]

23 hours ago, Calm said:

Did his political/social views impact the book?

Having read the book, I'd have to say that I don't recall any such impact. But perhaps on a deeper reading it might be detectable. But it doesn't seem likely.

[Stargazer]

14 hours ago, morgan.deane said:

I literally said it didn’t matter, except I was annoyed, and yet you still felt the need to explain to me that Elvis wasn’t a real king. Thanks for clearing that up.  

You're welcome. And thanks for the downvote! I need every one I can get to help keep me humble!

You said it didn't matter, yes. So why bring it up anyway, when it is clearly a "courtesy title" and a joke? Seems like it really did matter. 

14 hours ago, morgan.deane said:

But since you brought it up, there is a distinction that matters. Someone jokingly calling you the wrong rank is very different from someone assuming a rank for personal benefit. The latter is serious enough to have its own name and crime called stolen valor. I don’t know what point you thought you were making, but explaining obvious jokes, unoffensive and even earned honorifics during an anecdote that doesn’t apply to something I already minimized feels extraordinarily petty.

Elvis earned his honorific on his way to selling 1.8 billion records in a truly great career. (Ironically, he felt it was unearned and rejected it.)  I earned my title by completing a rigorous program and being formally hooded. At the end of that ceremony, I was addressed by my title for the first time, and it was satisfying precisely because it was earned. Even then, I rarely bring it up, except when a shock jock uses it as a tagline for his schtick. 

If you want to litigate this with a useless military anecdote, yes I do have a legitimate reason to dislike some random dilettante assuming a rank I earned. This isn’t a friend jokingly calling you “Sergeant Major”; it’s someone calling himself Sergeant Major and then using it to posture and project authority. As Paul put it in Hebrews 5:4, no man taketh this honor upon himself. An actual Sergeant major would be at least a little annoyed by that act, as I was at this self proclaimed professor. 

Seriously, Professor Apocrypha can take a stab at grading this stack of papers any day of the week. It’s not as vainglorious as pontificating about the “lobotomy that is the Trinity” or calling yourself a king, but it’s the job of actual professors.

https://www.britannica.com/story/why-is-elvis-called-the-king-of-rock-n-roll

Thanks for explaining why Elvis was called the King of Rock and Roll. I'm sure I needed that.  

How do you know that it was Barnes himself who gave himself that honorific? You don't; it was jokingly handed to him by the host of Ward Radio, where he frequently appears, and specifically because he speaks a lot about apocryphal writings (and not just the semi-canonical Apocrypha).  And what makes you think he is using it to "posture and project authority"? Do you watch Ward Radio a lot and see him "posturing and projecting authority"?

Let me try to disabuse you of your hard feelings in the matter. In THIS EPISODE of Ward Radio, the host introduces him as the associate professor yada yada, and then says he's not a real professor. The link bypasses the cold open and the advert and goes right to the episode proper. Within a few seconds what you hear might still your ire on the matter, I hope.

It's not a case of "stolen valor." It's a joke, Professor. Get over it.

Edited December 14, 2025 by Stargazer
Removed some of the snark

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

And they criticize each other about biases all the time. Experts are not all of one mind, as you may know. And they are subject to professional jealousies as well. Consider Alfred Wegener, a meteorologist, who proposed the idea of continental drift. It didn't take too long for his idea to begin to get acceptance, but some experts mocked him, especially ones in North America. Ignaz Semmelweis pioneered antiseptic procedures, and demonstrated that the incidence of infection could be drastically reduced by requiring healthcare workers to disinfect their hands. He was vilified by his colleagues (he was also a jerk, so that may have contributed). Mathematician Georg Cantor's work on set theory was extremely controversial, and the opposition contributed to his mental health issues -- but his work is now largely accepted. These are old examples. I'm sure there are plenty of newer ones.

There are but those are examples of the system working. In the aggregate they eventually follow the data. When something new like continental drift shows up that would upend a long held consensus the general response is skepiticism. That is good and healthy. You don’t overturn things on a whim. You go out and get more data. There is a danger in these stories which seems to suggest that people who upend the consensus are morally good fighting the hidebound skeptical consensus. I suspect this is part of the reason why a lot of theoretical ideas that show up in fields like physics and astrophysics pick up a bunch of adherents right off the bat when adherents don’t have any grasp of why they should or should not accept it. They aren’t really qualified to have an opinion on the matter that means anything at all.

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

Consider morgan.deane's reaction to the joking title of "Associate Professor of all things apocryphal." How dare he call himself a "professor"! I don't know whether that is jealousy or some kind of academic classism. I've experienced this kind of classism myself. Having a mere Associate Degree in computer programming, how dare I question someone with a Bachelor's Degree in computer science! 

There is some classicsim but there is also an understanding that most people without those kinds of qualifications aren’t trained in textual criticism. They are usually right.

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

We can be sure that New Testament apocryphal writings were written after Jesus's resurrection. But Old Testament? Not so easy. For many works, such as the Book of Tobit, the internal evidence makes it pretty clear when it originated, which is the Second Temple period -- this is the book where the Sadducees got the seven brothers who married the one widow conundrum they tried to trick Jesus with, by the way.  But for others, the date of original composition is less certain -- and whether the material in them is drawn from earlier works no longer extant, how can we know?

The Book of Tobit is generally dated to the 2nd or 3rd century BCE. A supposition that the Book of Mormon writers referenced old material written in the Brass Plates that was later referenced in the Apocrypha is a serious stretch and the correlation would have to be VERY strong to support the idea. It would be harder to prove direct textual links with the language jump. If it is just the ideas that carried over then a stronger argument would be that the Protestant tradition Joseph Smith was raised in included some ideas from the Apocrypha.

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

But here's the rub: much of the apocryphal material that Jonah Barnes tries to suggest is showing up in the Book of Mormon was not even known to academics in 1830, let alone known to Joseph Smith. How did it get there? Unless possibly it was found on the plates of brass.

Are we talking about the Apocrypha itself or other apocryphal texts.

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

Jonah Barnes does not claim to be an expert along the lines of Benjamin McGuire or Hugh Nibley. From the Foreword by D. John Butler:

The foreword is a polemic implying the writer isn’t some high falutin academic while also putting up a shield admitting the writer isn’t actually engaging the texts in older languages and insists this is just a high-level bird’s eye view. This assures the reader that even if parts are disproved on “technical” grounds or whatever the overall idea is still there. A clever sleight of hand common to many kinds of apologetics.

1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

Would it be so hard for an actual expert to examine Barnes' work, without pre-judging it due to academic classism or political antagonism, and come up with an honest assessment of the ideas in the work? I expect it would be very hard, so I don't expect to see anything of the kind. Call me cynical.

I doubt there is much to engage. I think it would be hard since I can’t tell from that foreword if the argument is that there were lost Jewish teachings that made it into apocryphal books and the brass plates or if both were ‘revealed’ to both groups later. What is the argument?

The Nag Hammadi library and the Book of Mormon? Very unlikely. Most of the ways that the esoteric teachings of the gnostics match up with Mormon beliefs are Mormon beliefs that aren’t referenced in the Book of Mormon in any case. I don’t think the Watchers are going to make a comeback in LDS thought. The idea that the Nag Hammadi library matches up to LDS beliefs is an old one. There were talk tapes about it being copied around in my mission. When I got home I looked them up and the mischaracterizations were either naive or dishonest. These aren’t unique to the Church.

I don’t think it will be engaged much since these kinds of books are a dime a dozen. It sounds like the book will be too high-level to be engaged so why bother? Because it will trick people? Again, a dime a dozen. A researcher dedicated to discrediting this would probably succeed (assuming it is false) but it would take a lot longer to refute than it would to propose. If there was something to it it needs someone willing to get into the weeds and present an actual argument.

[Stargazer]

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

There are but those are examples of the system working. In the aggregate they eventually follow the data. When something new like continental drift shows up that would upend a long held consensus the general response is skepiticism. That is good and healthy. You don’t overturn things on a whim. You go out and get more data. There is a danger in these stories which seems to suggest that people who upend the consensus are morally good fighting the hidebound skeptical consensus. I suspect this is part of the reason why a lot of theoretical ideas that show up in fields like physics and astrophysics pick up a bunch of adherents right off the bat when adherents don’t have any grasp of why they should or should not accept it. They aren’t really qualified to have an opinion on the matter that means anything at all.

Of course they're examples of the system working. I wasn't arguing that the system is broken. Although if you listen to some qualified persons in the sciences, they are starting think that the system has started to work very poorly for various reasons. Check out Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder on YouTube if you want to investigate that further. She has some trenchant criticisms.

If Barnes is right, then his proposals will eventually be shown to be correct. If not, then not. 

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

There is some classicsim but there is also an understanding that most people without those kinds of qualifications aren’t trained in textual criticism. They are usually right.

But they can be wrong. 

I seem to recall that all the local theology experts in Joseph Smith's neighborhood thought he was seriously out to lunch, as did the Pharisees and Sadducees when it came to Jesus and his disciples. Don't get me wrong; I like experts, too, but I recognize their limitations. For a start, if the only tool you have is a hammer, then you see nails everywhere.

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

The Book of Tobit is generally dated to the 2nd or 3rd century BCE.

Yes, I'm aware of that.

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

A supposition that the Book of Mormon writers referenced old material written in the Brass Plates that was later referenced in the Apocrypha is a serious stretch and the correlation would have to be VERY strong to support the idea. It would be harder to prove direct textual links with the language jump. If it is just the ideas that carried over then a stronger argument would be that the Protestant tradition Joseph Smith was raised in included some ideas from the Apocrypha.

Joseph Smith was raised in a Protestant tradition that included some ideas from the Apocrypha? Which tradition was that, and did his family Bible even include the Apocrypha? But see your next question...

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

Are we talking about the Apocrypha itself or other apocryphal texts.

We are talking about other apocryphal texts. I just brought up the Book of Tobit just because I've been reading it and finding the story interesting, especially when correlated with the trick the Sadducees were trying to pull with Jesus. 

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

The foreword is a polemic implying the writer isn’t some high falutin academic while also putting up a shield admitting the writer isn’t actually engaging the texts in older languages and insists this is just a high-level bird’s eye view. This assures the reader that even if parts are disproved on “technical” grounds or whatever the overall idea is still there. A clever sleight of hand common to many kinds of apologetics.

I doubt there is much to engage. I think it would be hard since I can’t tell from that foreword if the argument is that there were lost Jewish teachings that made it into apocryphal books and the brass plates or if both were ‘revealed’ to both groups later. What is the argument?

I don't remember if I mentioned it to you or not, but the proposal is that some material that was found in apocryphal writings that were not discovered or not well-known in Joseph Smith's time can be found in the Book of Mormon. 

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

The Nag Hammadi library and the Book of Mormon? Very unlikely. Most of the ways that the esoteric teachings of the gnostics match up with Mormon beliefs are Mormon beliefs that aren’t referenced in the Book of Mormon in any case. I don’t think the Watchers are going to make a comeback in LDS thought. The idea that the Nag Hammadi library matches up to LDS beliefs is an old one. There were talk tapes about it being copied around in my mission. When I got home I looked them up and the mischaracterizations were either naive or dishonest. These aren’t unique to the Church.

I can't comment much about this -- I have no idea what your mission's samizdat actually consisted of. My mission didn't have that kind of thing going on so far as I can recall. But then we might not have been as sophisticated as your generation was. I suspect this book is a cut above the samizdat your mission was passing around.

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

I don’t think it will be engaged much since these kinds of books are a dime a dozen. It sounds like the book will be too high-level to be engaged so why bother? Because it will trick people? Again, a dime a dozen. A researcher dedicated to discrediting this would probably succeed (assuming it is false) but it would take a lot longer to refute than it would to propose. If there was something to it it needs someone willing to get into the weeds and present an actual argument.

I think the utility of the book is to pique the interest of someone willing to get into the weeds. That seems to be part of its intent. As I indicated, I'd like to see an honest someone with the requisite knowledge and qualifications actually do it. 

ALL THAT BEING SAID...

I don't necessarily "believe" all that Mr. Barnes puts forward. I'm not qualified to judge. But I have found it extremely interesting, and borders on persuasive. Reading this book has been fascinating beyond my expectations -- and fortunately it is not written in the style of a formal tome guaranteed to put one to sleep if suffering from ... drat ... forgot the word for "not being able to get to sleep". Nevermind, it's 1:40 am here and I need to go to bed. Where I will no doubt think of something else to write here...

 

Edited December 15, 2025 by Stargazer

[morgan.deane]

7 hours ago, Stargazer said:

You're welcome. And thanks for the downvote! I need every one I can get to help keep me humble!

You said it didn't matter, yes. So why bring it up anyway, when it is clearly a "courtesy title" and a joke? Seems like it really did matter. 

Thanks for explaining why Elvis was called the King of Rock and Roll. I'm sure I needed that.  

How do you know that it was Barnes himself who gave himself that honorific? You don't; it was jokingly handed to him by the host of Ward Radio, where he frequently appears, and specifically because he speaks a lot about apocryphal writings (and not just the semi-canonical Apocrypha).  And what makes you think he is using it to "posture and project authority"? Do you watch Ward Radio a lot and see him "posturing and projecting authority"?

Let me try to disabuse you of your hard feelings in the matter. In THIS EPISODE of Ward Radio, the host introduces him as the associate professor yada yada, and then says he's not a real professor. The link bypasses the cold open and the advert and goes right to the episode proper. Within a few seconds what you hear might still your ire on the matter, I hope.

It's not a case of "stolen valor." It's a joke, Professor. Get over it.

Sorry for the delayed response. I was performing in Christmas concert for my stake orchestra. It took a little while because some joker pretended to be a violin player and strut around the place with a dumb grin. None of the professional musicians could do anything about it because he was well liked behind a microphone and every skilled musician that objected was called self important and told that it was just a joke musician, get over it.

Clearly that didn't happen but you see my point. 

 If its just a meaningless joke, why do you and zealously striving spend THREE posts telling it doesn't matter? I’ve minimized this from the beginning. If I was clearer I would have said it didn't matter much, but it was just annoying enough for me to include it in my comment. No big deal, right? If you agreed, you wouldn’t have felt the need to explain to me that Elvis wasn’t a real king, turned my passing annoyance into a sermon, or addressed me with honorific irony. 

I wouldn’t have mentioned “stolen valor” at all if you hadn’t dragged in an irrelevant story about your military experience into it. Frankly, given how Barnes opines on everything from the “lobotomy” of creedal Christianity to pacifism to Adam–God theory, it’s clear despite his disclaimers that he enjoys the (stolen) prestige of being called a professor. The more you say it doesn't matter, the more I'm convinced my passing annoyance was onto something bigger and more important. His counter productive bravado should be called out. 

That’s the galling part of this. No one seems bothered by his attempt to borrow credibility. But somehow I’m the “self-important” one for having earned my station and mildly objecting to his posturing. In the strange world of internet sophistry, the person with the degrees ends up the humorless bore for objecting to a strutting dilettante.

I was done with this conversation in my first post. You’re the one keeping it alive. I’ll assume you’ll now take your own advice and get over it. Good luck. 

[ZealouslyStriving]

1 hour ago, morgan.deane said:

it’s clear despite his disclaimers that he enjoys the (stolen) prestige of being called a professor

If be this you mean he likes to hear himself speak, no one denies that- even those who enjoy him.

[Calm]

8 hours ago, Stargazer said:

forgot the word for "not being able to get to sleep".

Insomnia….a word burned into my brain.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

If be this you mean he likes to hear himself speak, no one denies that- even those who enjoy him.

I think it’s more than that, I think he views himself as an authority of some type, someone others should listen to.

[Calm]

3 hours ago, morgan.deane said:

If I was clearer I would have said it didn't matter much, but it was just annoying enough for me to include it in my comment.

I think I understood, sometimes it satisfies an ‘itch’ for me to say something publicly even if I don’t expect anyone to respond and in fact no one responses.  If it is a minor irritation, by saying something I scratch it enough to be able to stop thinking about it.

Quote

o one seems bothered by his attempt to borrow credibility.

I was, it’s more than a minor irritation to me, but you seemed to want to simply say something and then let it go, so I didn’t give in to the impulse.

I have always wanted to pursue a doctorate, first and foremost to pursue my love of learning in a systematic way while engaging with others similarly interested and second, to prove to myself I had the self discipline to follow through to the end.  Alas, health interfered.  I am well aware that amateur studying/research is not the same thing even if important insights can at times come from such.

Edited December 15, 2025 by Calm

[ZealouslyStriving]

37 minutes ago, Calm said:

I think it’s more than that, I think he views himself as an authority of some type, someone others should listen to.

That is the issue with you not actually watching Jonah's stuff. He very clearly sees himself as someone trying to peak the curiosity of others to look deeper into things, instead of being passive observers. He has never said, "You need to listen to me and believe everything I say."

[Calm]

47 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

That is the issue with you not actually watching Jonah's stuff. He very clearly sees himself as someone trying to peak the curiosity of others to look deeper into things, instead of being passive observers. He has never said, "You need to listen to me and believe everything I say."

That doesn’t preclude what I am thinking of, which does not include people turning off their brains once he has spoken and getting spoon fed. He seems the kind of person who would prefer to be known for triggering great discussions rather than the person at whose feet others sit quietly and listen to in awe.

[ZealouslyStriving]

6 minutes ago, Calm said:

That doesn’t preclude what I am thinking of, which does not include people turning off their brains once he has spoken and getting spoon fed. He seems the kind of person who would prefer to be known for triggering great discussions rather than the person at whose feet others sit quietly and listen to in awe.

or (quoting you)

58 minutes ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

"I think he views himself as an authority of some type, someone others should listen to."

Which is it?

Edited December 15, 2025 by ZealouslyStriving

[morgan.deane]

13 hours ago, Calm said:

I think I understood, sometimes it satisfies an ‘itch’ for me to say something publicly even if I don’t expect anyone to respond and in fact no one responses.  If it is a minor irritation, by saying something I scratch it enough to be able to stop thinking about it.

I was, it’s more than a minor irritation to me, but you seemed to want to simply say something and then let it go, so I didn’t give in to the impulse.

I have always wanted to pursue a doctorate, first and foremost to pursue my love of learning in a systematic way while engaging with others similarly interested and second, to prove to myself I had the self discipline to follow through to the end.  Alas, health interfered.  I am well aware that amateur studying/research is not the same thing even if important insights can at times come from such.

Thanks for the understanding. (I know I've been a bit saucy lately, I really did have a stack of papers driving me crazy, but I mean that sincerely.)

Luckily the mind usually persists better than the body. So there still might be enough juice if you want to give it a try and take some classes. But even if you don't have credentials you can still be thoughtful, which is what I think you're being here. 

I think this thread is a pretty good indication of why I've had an account for 16 years and only have 200 posts. Apologies if I was too saucy. 

[JVW]

47 minutes ago, morgan.deane said:

Thanks for the understanding. (I know I've been a bit saucy lately, I really did have a stack of papers driving me crazy, but I mean that sincerely.)

Luckily the mind usually persists better than the body. So there still might be enough juice if you want to give it a try and take some classes. But even if you don't have credentials you can still be thoughtful, which is what I think you're being here. 

I think this thread is a pretty good indication of why I've had an account for 16 years and only have 200 posts. Apologies if I was too saucy. 

The world needs more saucy, keep on posting brother.

[Calm]

12 hours ago, ZealouslyStriving said:

or (quoting you)

Which is it?

Both. Have you not met someone who sees themselves as both a great authority and a great teacher who gets students really engaged with the material?  You should hang out with professors more. Some of them are quite arrogant and territorial (though my experience is the easygoing and/or earnest, more concerned about students and  coworkers’ feelings professors are more common).

[Calm]

2 hours ago, morgan.deane said:

 

Luckily the mind usually persists better than the body. So there still might be enough juice if you want to give it a try and take some classes. But even if you don't have credentials you can still be thoughtful, which is what I think you're being here

Fibro is doing a major number on my ability to stay focused. I would suspect I had ADHD except I remember too well when things were different.

But who knows, the latest medication has led to a massive improvement in mood and getting me off the roller coaster, so maybe it will stabilize the other parts of my brain eventually.  If so, I don’t mind being 80 when I get my Ph. D, but probably won’t do it in Math or Physics like I was thinking. Too many classes I would have to take just to get to where I could take upper classes again.  Psychology seems like it is doable though. 
 

(Physics was my dream, Math my Gift, Psychology my focus)

Edited December 16, 2025 by Calm