Has your opinion of the LDS church

[Boy Named Sue]

I fine it significant that those involved in the dialogue with Dr. Peterson do not see an ethical lapse in drawing a salary from the organization you are working to undermine.  Reminds me of a person I know who has professed, privately, to being an atheist, who is drawing a salary as a youth pastor for a local evangelical church.

charity, there are multiple views here and they are not all right or all wrong. palmer may be acting with great integrity by his own standards to disclose the things he learned during his career. while i do not know mr. palmer, it is my understanding that much of what he discussed in his book was learned and explored in depth during his job. at some point he may have felt compelled to share his observations that were the product of his career.

there is the whistleblower scenario. sure he was an employee, but he may be the one expressing the most honesty by blowing the whistle on his superiors' lack of ethics. oddly, it was his peers and equivalents, still in the same corporation that are crying foul. the church has been somewhat quiet on the subject, church court notwithstanding.

he did not steal information. he did not share trade secrets. he simply voiced the facts as he considered them. though, that golden pot thing was a bit kooky. ill give you that. but nobody is debating the kookiness of that here. only his ethics in saying what the facts is.

[Baptized1962]

I fine it significant that those involved in the dialogue with Dr. Peterson do not see an ethical lapse in drawing a salary from the organization you are working to undermine.

Charity, your claim that he is "working to undermine" the organization is amazing mind-reading. He apparently worked very hard not to be disfellowshipped. Dan claimed Palmer's book amounted to a "public apostacy" because he wrote what he discovered and believed to be true.

That is the problem here: asserting that people know what Palmer's intentions were, despite what he wrote about them, and that his intentions were to "undermine [the church]".

Many of us have been employed by the Church over the years and have questioned the accuracy and public declarations of the Church leadership at one time or another. We paid tithing without having a full accounting of what the Church did with the money. Do you want to put the Church on trial for not giving a 100% accounting of the tithing expenditures to those who've contributed it? Is that an "ethical lapse" that should be rectified?

We didn't hate the Church at the time we began questioning changes that were made to the temple ceremonies. We thought the ceremonies were "restored" from ancient rites and would never be changed. Why did we think that? Can you guess? Do you know? Weren't we supposed to wonder?

All of this goes back to whether this site, and the questions raised by anti-Mormons, has strengthened or weakened testimonies.

[juliann]

there is the whistleblower scenario. sure he was an employee, but he may be the one expressing the most honesty by blowing the whistle on his superiors' lack of ethics.

But only after he retired? What about all of those who were deceived! under the rule of evil ethics until he was sure he could act without any financial repercussions to himself? You will have to explain to me why anyone should be admired for anything but self-interest if the stakes are really that high. He gives a bad name to whistleblowers who do risk everything to do what they think is right.

[juliann]

We didn't hate the Church at the time we began questioning changes that were made to the temple ceremonies. We thought the ceremonies were "restored" from ancient rites and would never be changed. Why did we think that? Can you guess? Do you know?

Uh huh. You are a fundamentalist stuck in a liberal leaning theology.

[Boy Named Sue]

Many of us have been employed by the Church over the years and have questioned the accuracy and public declarations of the Church leadership at one time or another.

me too. i was an employee.

anyone else?

[charity]

1962 wrote: "Do you want to put the Church on trial for not giving a 100% accounting of the tithing expenditures to those who've contributed it? Is that an "ethical lapse" that should be rectified?"

No ethical lapse. When we pay tithing, we give it to the Lord. It is no longer ours and no one owes us an accounting. The accounting must be between those who receive the funds on behalf of the Lord and Him. If they mismanage the funds, He will take care of it.

"The Church owes me" entitlement attitude gets people in trouble. The Church doesn't owe me anything. Not accounting. Not explanations. Not apologies. I owe everything to God. Mosiah 2: 21 I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another

[Boy Named Sue]

there is the whistleblower scenario. sure he was an employee, but he may be the one expressing the most honesty by blowing the whistle on his superiors' lack of ethics.

But only after he retired? What about all of those who were deceived! under the rule of evil ethics until he was sure he could act without any financial repercussions to himself? You will have to explain to me why anyone should be admired for anything but self-interest if the stakes are really that high. He gives a bad name to whistleblowers who do risk everything to do what they think is right.

is there a statute of limitations on whistleblowing? escalante, where are you? cast off your jargon and wax elequent on law again. i like when you throw that stuff around.

why should he have to forfeit his job or pension because over the course of his career he reshaped his views? he was a teacher. he taught. are you implying that he did not teach while he was employed. or that he did not manage teachers? admittedly, if he was publishing as Cash, Johnny while teaching, there may be an issue with that. but i dont see any ire over the assumed name transcripts. only those that were released post retirement.

his retirement money is his based on what he did for the church. it is not a conditional retirement, typically. self interest is everywhere. its self interest that motivates the leaders of the church. its self interest that motivates the church to finance farms to defend the church against claims such as those in palmers book. self interest is everywhere and is not a mandatory disqualifier.

you mention risking everything. keep in mind that for a mormon, exaltation in the celestial kingdom is everything. and he risked that for what he thought was right. or he risked it for money. who knows. you dont know. i dont know.

i shouldnt even be defending him, for all i know he is a schmucko. but, i still dont like the treatment he got from farms. and if he really did violate a code of conduct as an employee, let the church declare it from the top and not send out a pitbull on their behalf.

[Boy Named Sue]

1962 wrote: "Do you want to put the Church on trial for not giving a 100% accounting of the tithing expenditures to those who've contributed it? Is that an "ethical lapse" that should be rectified?"

No ethical lapse. When we pay tithing, we give it to the Lord. It is no longer ours and no one owes us an accounting. The accounting must be between those who receive the funds on behalf of the Lord and Him. If they mismanage the funds, He will take care of it.

"The Church owes me" entitlement attitude gets people in trouble. The Church doesn't owe me anything. Not accounting. Not explanations. Not apologies. I owe everything to God. Mosiah 2: 21 I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another

[Daniel Peterson]

The point was that whatever you may think of his insider status, nit-picking the definition of "insider" smacks of every defense we've heard for the historicity of the Book of Mormon and the translation that was provided.

Every single one, huh? Please advise: Am I supposed to take an assertion like this seriously?

Pointing out, in passing, that a book's title is inaccurate and misleading is scarcely "nit-picking." A good review will point such things out when it's called for.

Call anyone who challenges an unsubstantiated claim as "anti-Mormon"

I'm going to assume that you're intending to level a serious accusation there. If so, I can only say that I don't, and FARMS doesn't, call every critic an "anti-Mormon," and that I reject your suggestion that LDS claims are, as a whole or even largely, "unsubstantiated."

The historical questions raised by documented "insider" accounts is valuable, whether you think they are material or not. Joseph's [alleged] failures in the translation process and Palmer's [purported] exposure of the [supposedly] questionable nature of the claims both raise some pretty reasonable doubts that should be explored.

I agree. That's why the FARMS reviews explored them.

By showing the conflict between what the average person would understand a translation to be and what insiders to the actual act of translation noticed, he placed valuable information at the fingertips of people who won't hear this during the missionary discussions.

Oooh yes. I'm quite certain that missionaries won't draw the attention of investigators to important items like E. T. A. Hoffman's Der goldne Topf. I simply adored that part of Palmer's book. It's one of the most literally unbelievable excursions I've ever experienced.

Looking for truth, telling what you've found and then providing your conclusions, if I might translate your real intent Dan, is very sneaky.

You've sanitized Mr. Palmer's record, and suggested a dishonorable intent on my part. It would have been very deft -- if it weren't so ham-handed and preposterous.

For fifteen years, until he was safely retired and drawing a pension, Mr. Palmer worked on -- and, under the pseudonym of "Paul Pry, Jr.", distributed -- a manuscript in which he assaulted (originally in very vitriolic and sarcastic terms) the Church for which he worked, from which he drew a salary, and whose members trusted him to teach their children its history and doctrines, all the while attempting to conceal his efforts from his supervisors and, when he was unable to do so, misleading them about the matter. And you want me to venerate him as a forthright teller of truth? Surely you can't be serious. Despite my considerable reservations about some of his writing, I could buy Mike Quinn as a truth-telling hero. But I cannot accord that honor to Grant Palmer/Paul Pry Jr.

I don't care particularly, in this regard, whether he was sincere or not. Even if sincere, he should not have continued to accept a salary from the Church for teaching the Church's young people while he was working on an anti-Mormon book...Then his "insider" status is trivial, and not worth mentioning.

How about if we let the public determine its triviality?

Which is exactly what we did, by sharing with the public the actual facts about Mr. Palmer's status as a scholar and writer of Mormon history and by providing the public with evaluations of his book by distinguished senior historians of Mormonism like Davis Bitton, James Allen, and the staff of the Smith Institute, as well as by rising young historians like Mark Ashurst-McGee and Steven Harper and by the intellectual historian Louis Midgley. You would have preferred, perhaps, that the public have less information? Would you have preferred that the public base its estimate of Mr. Palmer's stature as a historian only on the title of his book and on a few newspaper articles relying on Signature Books press releases?

How funny. Do you really think that I need to engage in "damage control?"

You must think so. Otherwise, I really can't see why you would be attempting it.

Have you been as candid about Joseph's work? Have you pointed out that he never translated and then presented his work at "an academic conference nor published anything at all prior to his book..."?

Why is it always half a story, Dan? Why is it always holding up anti-Mormon works to a higher standard than the claims of Mormonism? Because of faith?

No. You can't possibly be serious. Even you must realize that I disagree with your confident assertion that Joseph "never translated," and even you must understand that, since Joseph wasn't pretending to be a scholar, nobody expected or expects him to have presented his scholarly works at an academic conference.

The farm boy produced nothing too spectacular when real scrutiny has been done. Well, except for the entourage of apologists. That's pretty impressive.

Too true, alas. Only a handful of us benighted fools continue to believe that "the farm boy produced" something truly "spectacular."

Will the last one out the door please turn off the lights?

[Daniel Peterson]

and if he really did violate a code of conduct as an employee, let the church declare it from the top and not send out a pitbull on their behalf.

The Church will not issue a statement about a past employee.

Moreover, the Church did not "send out a pitbull on their behalf."

The idea of reviewing Palmer was mine. I recruited the reviewers and I edited their essays for publication. Period.

[Christian]

As to my vote for the original topic:

I had doubts when I came to this board, but they had more to do with my lack of emotional fullfilment in the church--i.e. never gaining a testimony, dissonance between my intuition and what the "church" said about how I should chart my life, and dissatisfaction with church culture.

After reading this board for the past year or so (and occasionally posting), topics on this board, and more significantly, the arguments that support the church in the face of its doctrinal and historical criticisms, have given me a more historical, doctrinal, or academic basis for my doubts. If the church ever were to become a place that was more emotionally satisfying to me, I think my desires to return and be active would be further quashed by these new, more substantive doubts.

On the other hand, reading this board while still interacting with many active and TBM members has helped me to appreciate the significance that mormonism plays in their lives and in my own life as I was raised mormon, despite its weaknesses.

[Escalante Sam]

there is the whistleblower scenario. sure he was an employee, but he may be the one expressing the most honesty by blowing the whistle on his superiors' lack of ethics.

But only after he retired? What about all of those who were deceived! under the rule of evil ethics until he was sure he could act without any financial repercussions to himself? You will have to explain to me why anyone should be admired for anything but self-interest if the stakes are really that high. He gives a bad name to whistleblowers who do risk everything to do what they think is right.

is there a statute of limitations on whistleblowing? escalante, where are you? cast off your jargon and wax elequent on law again. i like when you throw that stuff around.

why should he have to forfeit his job or pension because over the course of his career he reshaped his views? he was a teacher. he taught. are you implying that he did not teach while he was employed. or that he did not manage teachers? admittedly, if he was publishing as Cash, Johnny while teaching, there may be an issue with that. but i dont see any ire over the assumed name transcripts. only those that were released post retirement.

his retirement money is his based on what he did for the church. it is not a conditional retirement, typically. self interest is everywhere. its self interest that motivates the leaders of the church. its self interest that motivates the church to finance farms to defend the church against claims such as those in palmers book. self interest is everywhere and is not a mandatory disqualifier.

you mention risking everything. keep in mind that for a mormon, exaltation in the celestial kingdom is everything. and he risked that for what he thought was right. or he risked it for money. who knows. you dont know. i dont know.

i shouldnt even be defending him, for all i know he is a schmucko. but, i still dont like the treatment he got from farms. and if he really did violate a code of conduct as an employee, let the church declare it from the top and not send out a pitbull on their behalf.

What I don't get about this whole Palmer imbroglio is why the man was allowed to continue working for CES after he was exposed as the author of "New York Mormonism." The Midgely article makes it sound like it was an open secret inside CES that Palmer was an unbeliever. So why didn't the powers-that-be do something about this rank apostate posing as a respectable CES employee? Turning around Boy Named Sue's question, is there a kind of moral/ethical statute of limitations on criticism of a coworker you've known for years is betraying the organization? Or is the critic estopped altogether due to his/her acts of omission regarding that coworker and that betrayal?

[Daniel Peterson]

What I don't get about this whole Palmer imbroglio is why the man was allowed to continue working for CES after he was exposed as the author of "New York Mormonism."

Ahh. Thereby hangs a tale. But not one that I feel authorized to tell.

The Midgely article makes it sound like it was an open secret inside CES that Palmer was an unbeliever.

Some had learned about the manuscript. Did they know all? Were they told all? Was everything they were told true?

So why didn't the powers-that-be do something about this rank apostate posing as a respectable CES employee?

By the way, Mr. Palmer spent his last years as an active CES employee not as a teacher of youth but as a counselor at a correctional institution.

*****

Dan claimed Palmer's book amounted to a "public apostacy" because he wrote what he discovered and believed to be true.

Actually, I don't believe that I've used the phrase "public apostasy" here, and I certainly wouldn't accuse a person of public apostasy simply "because he wrote what he discovered and believed to be true." I would accuse a person of public apostasy who came out in open and public opposition to fundamental teachings of the Church. Which, incidentally, I do think Mr. Palmer did.

That is the problem here: asserting that people know what Palmer's intentions were, despite what he wrote about them, and that his intentions were to "undermine [the church]".

I don't believe that I've said much, if anything, about Mr. Palmer's intentions. They are of secondary importance to me. I disagree with his book because I think it wrong. (On the matter of The Golden Pot, it's ludicrously wrong.) I fault not his motives but his actions. As I've said clearly enough before, I do not think it even remotely admirable to continue for many years to accept a salary for teaching doctrines and history that you reject while you are working on and circulating a pseudonymous manuscript attacking those doctrines and that history which you will openly publish once you are safely pensioned.

[trim]

I voted for strengthening my testimony. I say this only because it has motivated me to study more deeply and think more broadly. At first I reacted a little to harshly to critics, but I believe I now have a more measured approach. I find that there is validity in some views that initially caused me some concern (i.e. Rollo Tomasi)

I expect that the information exchange here will only serve to strengthen preconceptions, whatever they may be, rather than apply themselves to the tabula rasa.

I enjoy being a part of a process in which I am the dunce in the class rather than the one setting the curve. It is much more rewarding to me personally.

[BYUGestapo]

I've read about half of this thread, a true endurance feat by any reckoning. The theme of Apologetics, do they hurt or hinder should be obvious---they hinder.

Apologists by the nature of their job have to openly discuss tough issues that make it into the general consciousness. Tough issues are tough for a reason, they don't have good answers.

So what we're really asking is "Does extrapolating upon difficult, sometimes even intractable, issues help or hinder?" Um....duh. Anything described by the words difficult or intractable is a bad thing if your on "Defense."

Anyone who expects open discussion of the issues surrounding Mormonism to somehow be faith promoting smokes <insert preferred controlled substance here.>

Worse, is that often much imagination on the part of FARMS et al. goes into offering suitable solutions to these problems that end up being anything close to suitable. This discredits Mormon apologists. Once discredited, even good rationales are prone to dismissal.

As for myself, a Molecular Biologist, the 2003 Journal of Book of Mormon Studies that focused a great deal on the DNA issue was the final nail in my confidence of finding any faith promoting answers.

As a preemption, as I know much of what Daniel will say already, I have a BS in Micro/Molecular biology from BYU, I've worked for 3 years now in a reference lab. That means by federal and state law I've passed a board exam certifying me to hand out clinical results that are life threatening/highly complex.

Some examples of my work are HIV drug resistance analysis, HLA tissue typing(think transplants), Cystic Fibrosis mutation detection, Hepatitis C genotyping, Microsatellite analysis (think identical twins, paternity, Forensics etc...)and so on. These use both DNA sequencing and Fragment analysis, both integral to the work done on Amerind DNA.

So as such, I feel more than qualified to at least comment on the issue. I am NOT an anthropologist by training, but neither is Southerton, Whiting, Butler etc... Only Parr has any experience in that field, and what he has written on the subject is riddled with technical stretches of the imagination. Nevermind that his assertions go against the grain of what many who have literally published 10 to 20 times the number of papers on the subject say.

So while Daniel will point my lack of PhD(I know too many PhD to have much envy anyways), believe me that my dissappointment with the FARMS response to this issue is not trivial.

I don't think I'm any sort of exception. With time, this interaction between apologist and inquirer will just make things worse and worse for the Church.

[charity]

Gestapo, do I understand you to say that when someone makes a claim against the Church--history, doctrine or leaders--that the wisest course is to let it stand, unrefuted? More people will disbelieve the claim if no one answers it?

[maxrep12]

Even Daniel said this is not a testimony building environment. This has to be obvious to all who can look at the situation without wrapping themselves in their testimony first.

BYUgestapo,

I agree with everything you have said. This never will be a winning situation for the church. It is damage control.

[maxrep12]

Gestapo, do I understand you to say that when someone makes a claim against the Church--history, doctrine or leaders--that the wisest course is to let it stand, unrefuted? More people will disbelieve the claim if no one answers it?

If the answer is indeed a GOOD one, a response is always helpful. Here is the crux of the matter:

Can defenders of the faith recognize a quality response in contrast to a fanciful answer that begs credibility?

It has to be recognized that there is indeed mud on church history that cannot be cleaned. Let it stand as mud rather than turning it into a sugar coated "chocolate" of sorts.

[Daniel Peterson]

I've read about half of this thread, a true endurance feat by any reckoning.  The theme of Apologetics, do they hurt or hinder should be obvious---they hinder. 

Apologists by the nature of their job have to openly discuss tough issues that make it into the general consciousness.  Tough issues are tough for a reason, they don't have good answers.

It doesn't seem at all obvious that apologetics hurts, nor is it evidently true that tough issues always lack good answers.

In any case, it would seem that, even on this reading, it would be the existence of tough issues that would hurt, not the existence of attempts to answer them positively. Granted that people would tend not to be troubled in the absence of troubling issues, would it be better to forego any and all attempts to provide satisfying resolutions for those troubling issues once they arise (on the grounds that some will not be satisfied by the resolutions offered) or is it better to attempt to resolve the issues?

Anyone who expects open discussion of the issues surrounding Mormonism to somehow be faith promoting smokes <insert preferred controlled substance here.> 

You're presuming that no answer will ever be satisfying. That's a very big presumption, and, in my experience, there is considerable evidence for its falsity.

Worse, is that often much imagination on the part of FARMS et al. goes into offering suitable solutions to these problems that end up being anything close to suitable.  This discredits Mormon apologists.  Once discredited, even good rationales are prone to dismissal.

You're generalizing from your own failure to be satisfied by the limited set of FARMS arguments that you've encountered to a universal failure to be satisfied by any FARMS arguments at all, and from that presumed universal failure you're leaping to the conclusion that the arguments are, in each and every case, ultimately and objectively inadequate. Neither leap is obviously true. Both seem to me plainly false.

As for myself, a Molecular Biologist, the 2003 Journal of Book of Mormon Studies that focused a great deal on the DNA issue was the final nail in my confidence of finding any faith promoting answers. 

As a preemption, as I know much of what Daniel will say already, I have a BS in Micro/Molecular biology from BYU, I've worked for 3 years now in a reference lab.  That means by federal and state law I've passed a board exam certifying me to hand out clinical results that are life threatening/highly complex. 

Some examples of my work are HIV drug resistance analysis, HLA tissue typing(think transplants), Cystic Fibrosis mutation detection, Hepatitis C genotyping, Microsatellite analysis (think identical twins, paternity, Forensics etc...)and so on.  These use both DNA sequencing and Fragment analysis, both integral to the work done on Amerind DNA.

So as such, I feel more than qualified to at least comment on the issue.  I am NOT an anthropologist by training, but neither is Southerton, Whiting, Butler etc...  Only Parr has any experience in that field, and what he has written on the subject is riddled with technical stretches of the imagination.  Nevermind that his assertions go against the grain of what many who have literally published 10 to 20 times the number of papers on the subject say.

So while Daniel will point my lack of PhD(I know too many PhD to have much envy anyways), believe me that my dissappointment with the FARMS response to this issue is not trivial.

As BYU Gestapo -- love that Nazi reference! -- already knows, I'm inclined to rely on the judgment of Drs. Butler, Parr, Whiting, McClellan, Sorenson, Meldrum, Stephens, and Woodward (and even Dr. Southerton, as quoted below) rather than on his, regarding the issue of Amerindian DNA and the Book of Mormon. I note, too, that, for BYU Gestapo, "the DNA issue was [merely] the final nail" in his loss of faith, which suggests, since others with relevant scientific training and experiences and reputations superior to his appear to be untroubled by the DNA issue, that his reaction to the Amerindian DNA question may have been influenced by extrascientific factors.

I don't think I'm any sort of exception.  With time, this interaction between apologist and inquirer will just make things worse and worse for the Church.

My own experience suggests that you are, and that it won't.

[charity]

max, you asked: "Can defenders of the faith recognize a quality response in contrast to a fanciful answer that begs credibility?"

I admit to being a defender of the faith. But what I have seen here on the message board is an inability of the critics to recognize a quality response. Take the "adieu" issue. Showing the presence of the word in English dictionaries from early 1600's was met with "oh, yeah, so what, God could have done better if He wrote it" type responses. This is the standard type of reply to a quality response.

[Dunamis]

BYUGestapo, your name is inappropriate. Email a moderator with a name change request or open a new account. Until that time, the gestapo screenname will be on the queue.

[maxrep12]

max, you asked: "Can defenders of the faith recognize a quality response in contrast to a fanciful answer that begs credibility?"

I admit to being a defender of the faith.

[Daniel Peterson]

My opinion is that trust and credibility are an earned attribute of apologetics.

Of course. As with medicine, dentistry, car repair, and a host of other things.

But please recall that apologetics is not a single unified thing, and that apologists are not a single mass mind.

The last point that deteriorates the efficacy of apologetics is the constant refrain that the church does not hide its history and the individual members are lazy and at fault for not searching out its history.

I've often encountered complaints like "I didn't know that there were multiple versions of the First Vision" and "The Church is trying to hide the fact that Brigham Young was a polygamist."

The latter claim, of course, is absurd and impossible on the face of it. But even the former is merely pathetic. Articles on the various versions of the First Vision have occurred not only in Dialogue and BYU Studies but in the old Improvement Era and the Ensign, to say nothing of books such as Milton Backman's The First Vision and Eyewitness Accounts of the Restoration and Jack Welch's Opening the Heavens.

There is a vast literature on Mormon history, published over decades in such outlets as Dialogue, the Utah Historical Quarterly, The Journal of the John Whitmer Historical Association, BYU Studies, The Journal of Mormon History, and Mormon Historical Studies, by publishers such as the University of Illinois Press, Deseret Book, the old Bookcraft, Alfred A. Knopf, etc., etc., etc. The sheer volume of the literature is apparent in the 1152-page, 5.9 pound volume published by James Allen, Ronald Walker, and David Whittaker, Studies in Mormon History, 1830-1997: An Indexed Bibliography (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000).

A generation inclined to spend more time watching videos than reading can hardly complain if it feels uninformed. To expect to derive graduate level historiographical sophistication from the roughly forty 45-minute Gospel Doctrine lessons on the Doctrine and Covenants and Church history that are taught every fourth year, or from the Ensign, is simply unrealistic. (And I might add that to expect it to come from surfing through some web sites is altogether foolhardy.)

Agree or not, thats the situation.

Well then. It seems that when maxrep12 speaks, the thinking has been done. Debate over. Discussion ended.

[juliann]

i shouldnt even be defending him, for all i know he is a schmucko. but, i still dont like the treatment he got from farms. and if he really did violate a code of conduct as an employee, let the church declare it from the top and not send out a pitbull on their behalf.

And yet when Palmer does it you say...."he simply voiced the facts as he considered them. " When FARMS voices facts as they see it....well, you get the double standard, er...point.

[BYU Alterego]

I note, too, that, for BYU Gestapo, "the DNA issue was [merely] the final nail" in his loss of faith, which suggests, since others with relevant scientific training and experiences and reputations superior to his appear to be untroubled by the DNA issue, that his reaction to the Amerindian DNA question may have been influenced by extrascientific factors.

This is BYU G****** with the "PC" version of his Moniker.

Daniel may I suggest that you are misquoting me? May I also offer that its a chronic habit or yours?

What I said was:

"As for myself, a Molecular Biologist, the 2003 Journal of Book of Mormon Studies that focused a great deal on the DNA issue was the final nail in my confidence of finding any faith promoting answers. "

The noun being acted on in that sentence in the "2003 Journal of Book of Mormon Studies", and the action "was the final nail in my confidence of finding any faith promoting answers." The distinction is important, what I saw written by the LDS "experts" was fatally anemic. This made me lose hope that I would find a good answer to my concern.

As I've explained before to you, but you refuse to accept, the DNA issue was the first issue that ever caught my attention, and was a singular catalyst for me leaving the Church.

You'd be wrong to say is was the final nail in the loss of my faith. Once I opend the door that the BOM could be non-historical, I was able to see Joseph's history in a new, and what I believe to be a great deal more accurate, light. That was the final nail.

Your tangential inference that extrascientific factors (whatever that means) played a role is completely superflous to the issue at hand, and is assumably wrong.

By your same logic, would there not be extrascientific factors that influence the LDS scientists you ceaselessly mention to stay faithful to the Church?

By the way, you still on that tired old reputation word? Basing scientific judgement on reputation is beyond foolish. Beside the fact that the notion is wholely subjective, it lazily transfers intellectual responsibility to others.

I asked that based on my expertise, people treat the issue as non-trivial. Implied in that is the invitation to investigate first hand the available facts. Your approach, to cite others based on very subjective criteria, has the implied suggestion to do the opposite. Why work it out for yourself if "BYU" has already sorted it out?

Nevermind that for every citation you offer I can offer two of equal or greater qualification that disagree with your cadre of LDS "yes men." So my own qualifications are frankly quite irrelevant, hard as you might try to make them seem so.