Grant Palmer

[the narrator]

Here's a perhaps-irreverent question. How much time must pass after Grant Palmer's death for it to be OK to talk about his methods in writing the book? How does it compare with his discussion of Joseph Smith?

. . . . .

[staccato]

Here's a perhaps-irreverent question. How much time must pass after Grant Palmer's death for it to be OK to talk about his methods in writing the book? How does it compare with his discussion of Joseph Smith?

I think we should go by the dead mormon prophet rule. As long as the body is still warm, their words have credibility. As soon as it is cold, baby, all bets are off.

[ttribe]

I think we should go by the dead mormon prophet rule. As long as the body is still warm, their words have credibility. As soon as it is cold, baby, all bets are off.

Cheap drive-by.

[staccato]

Cheap drive-by.

Oh, I'm not just driving by. When I first began discussing church history with apologists on these types of boards, I was constantly surprised at how quickly the words of the dead prophets were dismissed. Under cute names like "presentism" and "ongoing revelation."

[LifeOnaPlate]

Cheap drive-by.

Doesn't really answer the question, eh?

My point is this: I have had disagreements with Lou over tone, over certain aspects of reviewing and talking about books, etc. There are things about Lou's "Prying Into Palmer" that I think could be left out or stated better. But to dismiss the whole thing as a useless and mean attack is simply not accurate. I think there are occasional reviews in the FARMS Review which damage its reputation in some circles based on tone and approach. At the same time, critics have wrongly dismissed or even attacked the FARMS Review, or people who have published in the review, in a way that overlooks the excellent stuff that they've published.

[ttribe]

Oh, I'm not just driving by. When I first began discussing church history with apologists on these types of boards, I was constantly surprised at how quickly the words of the dead prophets were dismissed. Under cute names like "presentism" and "ongoing revelation."

Then it's just a cheap derail then. My apologies.

[Benjamin McGuire]

dblagent007 writes:

You made some good points in that other thread. You should have written a review of Palmer's book. It would have been nice to see a high quality review that didn't focus so heavily on his past. I tend to agree, however, that it wouldn't work in a podcast format.

I don't think it would have worked as a review either. A review isn't a place to establish a formal method, it isn't a place to provide detailed analysis, for the most part. I think that you could produce a book length response to Palmer, but this wouldn't be a quick undertaking, nor would it really address the same audience. And I think that is part of the problem here. I think at some time, I may have a longer contribution which addresses the issues which I see with Palmer's work (without necessarily addressing Palmer), and I have started to some extent already on that route - but its anything but quick and easy to write or to read.

[the narrator]

Doesn't really answer the question, eh?

My point is this: I have had disagreements with Lou over tone, over certain aspects of reviewing and talking about books, etc. There are things about Lou's "Prying Into Palmer" that I think could be left out or stated better. But to dismiss the whole thing as a useless and mean attack is simply not accurate. I think there are occasional reviews in the FARMS Review which damage its reputation in some circles based on tone and approach. At the same time, critics have wrongly dismissed or even attacked the FARMS Review, or people who have published in the review, in a way that overlooks the excellent stuff that they've published.

Off-the-cuff, what percentage of critical reviews would you say go too deep into personal attacks?

[LifeOnaPlate]

Off-the-cuff, what percentage of critical reviews would you say go too deep into personal attacks?

"Deep" into personal attacks? I can't think of one that goes "deep into personal attacks." There may very well be some, I may very well judge things differently now than I did when I first read various things. My main beef is about tone usually. This is a subjective question. How much can a reviewer talk about the process of making a book, or about the writer, before they have stepped over the line? (I don't hear many cries of "ad hominem!" when a reviewer says something nice about an author, though it is, in principle, ad hominem, no?) I approach tone from an ethical and pragmatic standpoint, which are pretty subjective ways of judging as well. This is one reason why I'm more interested in talking about specific instances than statistics. A worthwhile review can contain a few things I find distasteful, but if I stamp a percentage on things I end up overstepping what I think a rational and reasonable analysis should provide.

[the narrator]

"Deep" into personal attacks? I can't think of one that goes "deep into personal attacks." There may very well be some, I may very well judge things differently now than I did when I first read various things. My main beef is about tone usually. This is a subjective question. How much can a reviewer talk about the process of making a book, or about the writer, before they have stepped over the line? (I don't hear many cries of "ad hominem!" when a reviewer says something nice about an author, though it is, in principle, ad hominem, no?) I approach tone from an ethical and pragmatic standpoint, which are pretty subjective ways of judging as well. This is one reason why I'm more interested in talking about specific instances than statistics. A worthwhile review can contain a few things I find distasteful, but if I stamp a percentage on things I end up overstepping what I think a rational and reasonable analysis should provide.

However, when you are accusing people of misrepresenting FARMS and overgeneralizing, statistics plays a huge role. Which is why I am asking you what percentage of critical reviews do you personally think go overboard on the personal attacks? A friend of mine who is associated with FARMS told me that he felt that about 1/4 of reviews in FARMS went too far with their personal attacks. He however also noted that roughly only 1/3 of the reviews were critical responses (where the personal attacks would only be located). With those numbers, well over half of the critical responses in the Review, in his estimation, went too far in personal attacks and undermined (whether correctly or incorrectly) the credibility among many of FARMS. Without having to dig through and do an in-depth statistical analysis, would you say (off the top of your head), that this is a FAIR evaluation?

[volgadon]

Only if it's A&W. The only true and living Root Beer.

I'll take a tall glass of cold kvass any day of the week. Luckily I know of two places in SLC that sell it.

[volgadon]

However, when you are accusing people of misrepresenting FARMS and overgeneralizing, statistics plays a huge role. Which is why I am asking you what percentage of critical reviews do you personally think go overboard on the personal attacks? A friend of mine who is associated with FARMS told me that he felt that about 1/4 of reviews in FARMS went too far with their personal attacks. He however also noted that roughly only 1/3 of the reviews were critical responses (where the personal attacks would only be located). With those numbers, well over half of the critical responses in the Review, in his estimation, went too far in personal attacks and undermined (whether correctly or incorrectly) the credibility among many of FARMS. Without having to dig through and do an in-depth statistical analysis, would you say (off the top of your head), that this is a FAIR evaluation?

That probably holds true for a large portion of academic reviews.

[David Bokovoy]

Chris, this doesn't need to be explained to anyone who understands what integrity is; so I'll confine my explanation to you.

Sorry, Chris, no offense, but I just started reading this thread and literally spit my V8 juice all over the screen when I read this line. I love Pahoran. You crack me up!! This may be the funniest thing I have ever read.

[LifeOnaPlate]

I'll take a tall glass of cold kvass any day of the week. Luckily I know of two places in SLC that sell it.

Whoa I really don't like that stuff!

[volgadon]

Whoa I really don't like that stuff!

You are awesome for even knowing what it is. of course, disliking it is still something to repent of. =)

[LifeOnaPlate]

That probably holds true for a large portion of academic reviews.

Right. And consider my notes of DCP's FAIR conference address from the year before last. I concur with what he said:

Some are critical because they are concerned with the tone and method. Hard as it is to say we need to listen to them, though many of their accusations can be flat-out false. There is an ad hominem story about how apologists behave and they are wrong in many cases. Many people haven't even read the stuff. Still, it is never wrong to listen to your critics. And to the extent that tone has gotten into what we wanted to say, we need to improve in that area. Still, there is a great need to advocate the gospel especially in venues we may have been leaving to our critics. Elder Maxwell said the Church won't just passively sit back and accept criticisms, no more uncontested slam-dunks. We will respond. It is a scriptural mandate, 1 Peter "be ready always to give an answer with meekness and fear. " Apologia, apology, an answer, a defense, not "I'm sorry." Some who even criticize what is being done aren't doing much to pitch in.

http://www.lifeongoldplates.com/2008/08/daniel-c-peterson-humble-apologetics.html

Even the last sentence sticks out to me. Some of the people who criticize various apologetic outlets or writers think their contribution in writing somewhat distant academic analysis of historic LDS baptismal font shapes in Chile is more important than responding to a critic who hurt someone's faith. I think we could all agree that we would like to help people develop faith in addition to whatever other pursuits (as cool as they are) might be. Don't like the reviews of Palmer's stuff? Do me a favor and write one up for me and send it along so I can email it to people who contact me upset over Palmer's book. If it's a better review I would love to use it.

I want to point out here as well that while I disagree with Chris Smith on many things I don't disagree with him in all things by any stretch. When I met him at Claremont we had a good time, and I consider him a friend.

[Kevin Christensen]

However, when you are accusing people of misrepresenting FARMS and overgeneralizing, statistics plays a huge role. Which is why I am asking you what percentage of critical reviews do you personally think go overboard on the personal attacks? A friend of mine who is associated with FARMS told me that he felt that about 1/4 of reviews in FARMS went too far with their personal attacks. He however also noted that roughly only 1/3 of the reviews were critical responses (where the personal attacks would only be located). With those numbers, well over half of the critical responses in the Review, in his estimation, went too far in personal attacks and undermined (whether correctly or incorrectly) the credibility among many of FARMS. Without having to dig through and do an in-depth statistical analysis, would you say (off the top of your head), that this is a FAIR evaluation?

I'd say that even using language like "FARMS went too far with personal attacks" while asking for statistics is going too far in the assumption that personal attacks are the order of the day. I've read all the FARMS Reviews. I noticed that when John Charles Duffy wrote his long essay in Sunstone a few years back on LDS apologetics, he made an effort to include a section footnoting everything thing he thought problematic. What he did not do was statistical analysis. Rather, he generalized about the whole from his non-representative sample. I think there have been over 300 reviews published, and well over 200 authors. Duffy's sidebar collected a couple of dozen issues (not all of which I would agree with), which means that the vast majority of authors and reviews don't include anything that could be considered a personal attack. Lets be absurdly generous and say, 10%, which means 90% of the authors have nothing of the kind. Even the most famous one, the Hamblin acrostic, was broken before publication. So the action of an individual that got censored by the editors becomes the paradigmatic example of FARMS? I don't think so. The irony, of course, is that Duffy's long article was illustrated with cartoons, and if you checked the small print, you'd see that most of them had a note that the idea was suggested by John Charles Duffy. The frequent attempts to generalize about FARMS scholarship based on alleged personal attacks, is of course, ironic. It's a way to poison the well. At a Sunstone back in 2002, I met an acquaintance who had become a Sunstone Board member. When she recognized me from our Cupertino Ward book group, she asked what I had been doing, and I showed her a copy of my just published "Paradigms Regained." She said, "Before you say anything, I never read anything from FARMS... it makes me mad." I asked if the FARMS essays I had written and showed her had made her mad, and she admitted that they hadn't. But she was still willing to dismiss EVERYTHING, refusing even to read anything, on dubious generalization from an inadequate sample. John Hatch's rather sloppy and self-contradictory Sunstone presentation cast a long shadow over the perceptions of the work of FARMS. It's still out there on the net, I expect. But frankly, it wasn't a good piece. I was in the process of writing a detailed response, when Louis Midgely suggested I should give the kid a break, and let it go for the time being. I did get to respond to Wunderli's sequel though, at another Sunstone.

Personally, I thought all of the reviews of Palmer were worthwhile and justified. When I read the book, every page irritated me. (I have a review up at Amazon.) Someone like Bitton, who is an insider if anyone is, is entitled to show some irritation when an amateur hack shows up claiming to represent a general consensus of LDS scholarship. I'd published more than Palmer had, and I'd never claim to be an insider. At best, I'm a spear carrier. Bitton was justifiably irritated, and I think if we are in the business of being honest, that we should have the right to say how we feel, and why.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

[volgadon]

Right. And consider my notes of DCP's FAIR conference address from the year before last. I concur with what he said:

That is a good point. However, I get the impression that the Narrator is making this out to be a problem with FARMS and FAIR rather than with academics in general.

Even the last sentence sticks out to me. Some of the people who criticize various apologetic outlets or writers think their contribution in writing somewhat distant academic analysis of historic LDS baptismal font shapes in Chile is more important than responding to a critic who hurt someone's faith. I think we could all agree that we would like to help people develop faith in addition to whatever other pursuits (as cool as they are) might be.

I think both are important, but responding to attacks on someone's faith are more important in both the short and long runs. people should focus on their strengths, if the one writing about obscure details of our ecclesiastical architecture is not veyr good at apologetics, then he should stay out of it.

Don't like the reviews of Palmer's stuff? Do me a favor and write one up for me and send it along so I can email it to people who contact me upset over Palmer's book. If it's a better review I would love to use it.

Somehow I doubt many will take you up on the offer. Personally, I don't think I've ever read much by Palmer.

I want to point out here as well that while I disagree with Chris Smith on many things I don't disagree with him in all things by any stretch. When I met him at Claremont we had a good time, and I consider him a friend.

Never met him, but have no reason to doubt what you say.

[David Bokovoy]

I dunno. Be a graduate student or recent graduate student actively involved with Mormon studies. They are usually my friends active in SMPT, MHA, JWHS, AML, and other acronyms. They are here at Claremont, and abroad at other graduate schools. Last summer I was in the building for the Maxwell Institute for a seminar at BYU making fun of the FARMS Review for that very thing. (I think I just remembered, is it called just The Review now?)

I've pretty consistently advocated for peaceful and good apologetics. I'm well aware of the reputation problem FARMS has in certain circles. I'm also well aware that many of these new scholars aren't even half familiar with most of what FARMS has done. (Parenthetically, it's the Maxwell Institute now.)

I'll admit that I've heard similar sentiments expressed on occasion from LDS graduate students in religious studies. I've even heard them expressed personally by Bushman. It's one of the reasons why I haven't had too much interest in participating in his conferences. It's a gross mischaracterization of the outstanding work produced via FARMS/The Maxwell Institute and I believe in part stems from feelings of jealously rather than historical reality. Even when the conference for LDS students was held here in Boston, literally five minutes from my home, I attended only the first segment, and that combined with my previous experience at Yale, was more than enough.

Concerning Grant Palmer, I see nothing at all wrong with Dan's comments in this thread or Louis Midgley's summary of Palmer's background. In case people aren't aware, even academic books will feature a summary of the author's credentials which appear in order to sell the book and inspire readers to take the author's work seriously. A proper critique of Palmer's book would explain why the author is not truly the "insider" his book represents him to be. This is precisely what Midgley provided.

[the narrator]

I'd say that even using language like "FARMS went too far with personal attacks" while asking for statistics is going too far in the assumption that personal attacks are the order of the day. I've read all the FARMS Reviews. I noticed that when John Charles Duffy wrote his long essay in Sunstone a few years back on LDS apologetics, he made an effort to include a section footnoting everything thing he thought problematic. What he did not do was statistical analysis. Rather, he generalized about the whole from his non-representative sample. I think there have been over 300 reviews published, and well over 200 authors. Duffy's sidebar collected a couple of dozen issues (not all of which I would agree with), which means that the vast majority of authors and reviews don't include anything that could be considered a personal attack. Lets be absurdly generous and say, 10%, which means 90% of the authors have nothing of the kind. Even the most famous one, the Hamblin acrostic, was broken before publication. So the action of an individual that got censored by the editors becomes the paradigmatic example of FARMS? I don't think so. The irony, of course, is that Duffy's long article was illustrated with cartoons, and if you checked the small print, you'd see that most of them had a note that the idea was suggested by John Charles Duffy. The frequent attempts to generalize about FARMS scholarship based on alleged personal attacks, is of course, ironic. It's a way to poison the well. At a Sunstone back in 2002, I met an acquaintance who had become a Sunstone Board member. When she recognized me from our Cupertino Ward book group, she asked what I had been doing, and I showed her a copy of my just published "Paradigms Regained." She said, "Before you say anything, I never read anything from FARMS... it makes me mad." I asked if the FARMS essays I had written and showed her had made her mad, and she admitted that they hadn't. But she was still willing to dismiss EVERYTHING, refusing even to read anything, on dubious generalization from an inadequate sample. John Hatch's rather sloppy and self-contradictory Sunstone presentation cast a long shadow over the perceptions of the work of FARMS. It's still out there on the net, I expect. But frankly, it wasn't a good piece. I was in the process of writing a detailed response, when Louis Midgely suggested I should give the kid a break, and let it go for the time being. I did get to respond to Wunderli's sequel though, at another Sunstone.

Personally, I thought all of the reviews of Palmer were worthwhile and justified. When I read the book, every page irritated me. (I have a review up at Amazon.) Someone like Bitton, who is an insider if anyone is, is entitled to show some irritation when an amateur hack shows up claiming to represent a general consensus of LDS scholarship. I'd published more than Palmer had, and I'd never claim to be an insider. At best, I'm a spear carrier. Bitton was justifiably irritated, and I think if we are in the business of being honest, that we should have the right to say how we feel, and why.

Kevin Christensen

Pittsburgh, PA

I don't think I mentioned Hamblin's antics, nor would I, as they were never published. In that instance Dan did what any responsible editor would do, and made sure it was broken up.

My intrusion into this debate came largely to defend Chris's original point that Dan's antics here did no help anything. Whether or not you agree with the assessment, there are many out there who believe that the FARMS Review (and those involved) repeatedly exhibit a tactic of beginning and/or focusing their critical responses with personal attacks, which are designed to go after the character of the reviewed author, establish them as an enemy, and wage personal jabs that are irrelevant to the discussion. While this may be exhibited in only a portion of the Review's essays (you say 10%, my friend and your associate says 25%), the percentage becomes significantly larger when it is taken into account that only a portion of the Review's reviews are even critical responses. Thus the percentage of critical reviews which contain this tactic is, in my and many others views, alarming and unsettling.

As I began earlier, whether or not this view of the FARMS Review is correct, and whether or not it is only representative of a very small minority, antics like Dan exhibited here to not help in changing the view that many have of the FARMS Review, and subsequently the view of FARMS as a whole. When there are a whole lot of books in the world to read outside of FARMS, why would someone want to go to a group that they feel has already repeatedly put a bad taste in their mouth.

Perhaps an analogy might help. Certainly, The Adventures of Pluto Nash are not representative of the whole of Eddie Murphy's career. 48 Hours, Beverly Hills Cop, Trading Places, and Shrek are all examples of great works of his. In fact Pluto Nash may only represent a small minority of his works. However, that film alone can make me want to spend my money and time on other films, simply by having Murphy as a star. While I may occasionally miss out on a great film because of this, that he comes out with Norbit and Meet Dave, strengthens my (possibly false) assumptions and lets me feel assured that I'm safe in just avoiding Murphy altogether.

If FARMS wants to break the stereotype, it needs to stop defending The Nutty Professor and releasing sequels.

*(FYI. For clarification, the use of The Nutty Professor was not meant to allude to any specific person (or person in general), but was really just the name of a really crappy movie.)

[Nightingale]

Pahoran: "Chris, this doesn't need to be explained to anyone who understands what integrity is; so I'll confine my explanation to you."

Sorry, Chris, no offense, but I just started reading this thread and literally spit my V8 juice all over the screen when I read this line. I love Pahoran. You crack me up!! This may be the funniest thing I have ever read.

Goes to show how one person's "joke" is another person's insult. I don't think it's funny at all to say that Chris doesn't "understand what integrity is", implying that he has none.

I'm astonished that anyone would think that was funny, especially concerning Chris, and certainly being classified as the funniest thing you've ever read. Really?

It's amazing to me that the nicest people seem to often be the biggest targets. I don't know Chris except for reading some of his posts here and on another board. I think he goes a long way to bridging the gaps between believers on different sides of the proverbial fence. He also often expresses positive comments about various people with whom he often disagrees, especially DCP, here and elsewhere. Lacking in integrity is certainly not a characteristic I would ascribe to Chris. Hence my failure to laugh at Pahoran's comment.

[the narrator]

FYI. For clarification, the use of The Nutty Professor in the last line of my previous comment was not meant to allude to any specific person (or person in general), but was really just the name of a really crappy movie.

[David Bokovoy]

Goes to show how one person's "joke" is another person's insult. I don't think it's funny at all to say that Chris doesn't "understand what integrity is", implying that he has none.

I'm astonished that anyone would think that was funny, especially concerning Chris, and certainly being classified as the funniest thing you've ever read. Really?

It's amazing to me that the nicest people seem to often be the biggest targets. I don't know Chris except for reading some of his posts here and on another board. I think he goes a long way to bridging the gaps between believers on different sides of the proverbial fence. He also often expresses positive comments about various people with whom he often disagrees, especially DCP, here and elsewhere. Lacking in integrity is certainly not a characteristic I would ascribe to Chris. Hence my failure to laugh at Pahoran's comment.

Well feel free to officially lighten up then. The comment was funny because it was so shocking. As such, it was classic Pahoran.

[smac97]

I think I already did. It's the name-calling, ad hominems, and personal attacks that the FARMS Review uses repeatedly to set up their responses as a battle of good verses evil. It's the very reason why Midgley had to write a whole essay attacking Palmer as a person to begin their review of the book.

Palmer set himself up as being part and parcel of the thesis of his book, the title of which is "An Insider's View of Mormon Origins."

Palmer traded upon his status as an "insider" to bolster the claims of this book. Yet his perspective toward the Church (as exemplified in Midgley's findings about "Paul Pry, Jr.") demonstrate the falsity of all this. So it's not an "ad hominem" to question the integrity of a person whose thesis relies on this status as an "insider."

I see the same flaw in Martha Beck and her "Leaving the Saints" book. The validity of the risible claims in that book were heavily dependent on Martha Beck, her personal life, her experiences, her words, her conduct. She injected herself into her thesis, just like Palmer did with his. So questioning it's not an "ad hominem" to question her integrity, either.

Actually, that is pretty much what the problem is. Mud-slinging in the guise of scholarship.

When the thesis of the book leans of Palmer's status as an "insider," I don't think questioning that designation is inappropriate.

I dunno. Be a graduate student or recent graduate student actively involved with Mormon studies. They are usually my friends active in SMPT, MHA, JWHS, AML, and other acronyms. They are here at Claremont, and abroad at other graduate schools. Last summer I was in the building for the Maxwell Institute for a seminar at BYU making fun of the FARMS Review for that very thing. (I think I just remembered, is it called just The Review now?)

Yep. And it has been called that for several years now. [EDIT: It's "The FARMS Review" now.]

[EDIT to remove snark].

A few points in closing:

1. I generally agree that "ad hominem" arguments are inappropriate in scholarship. We should focus on the argument, not on the foibles of the person presenting it.

2. However, I think that certain quarters exaggerate the scope and breadth of "ad hominems" in The Review. The "Metcalfe is Butthead" acrostic is a good example of this.

3. I also think think that The Review's scholarship, in the main, is pretty darn good. But rather than engage the substance of the reviewers' critiques, we see complaints about peripheral issues (such as occasional "ad hominem"). A good example of this is, well, the various reviews of Palmer's book. The flaws and gaps in its arguments are many and profound. And they have been explained at great length in The Review. Yet rather than address those flaws, folks like you gripe about Midgley's "ad hominem" (even though, as I have said, Palmer made himself a part of his thesis, thus making himself a legitimate subject of criticism).

Thanks,

-Smac

[Chris Smith]

Yep. And it has been called that for several years now.

No, it isn't.