Why Byu And The Maxwell Institute Are In Serious, Serious Trouble

[Olavarria]

To paraphrase Brent Metclafe: "Finding out that Brigham Young believed and taught the Adam-God theory won't destroy faith but finding out an apostle lied about it will."

I don't wanto argue about BRM(he wasn't lying, he was just wrong) and the particulars of Metclafe's idea, but the jist is correct.

Teaching things that are demonstrably false WILL destroy faith. Biblical scholarship will not.

[why me]

Hmmm.. how so? I did not read THAT into the whole thing. Looks more to me like a bit of a power struggle in several different forms, but not censorship.

Dan has been very vocal on the internet, using his own name. I believe that he was fired for his remarks on the internet and his defense of the lds church. I don't think that his firing was about one incident. If so, this sends a message to future scholars to tone down their internet remarks, be careful of what they say, or use a different screen name from their own.

[Robert F. Smith]

Matt, I was warned against pursuing a degree in Hebrew Bible by BYU Religion instructors, and encouraged instead to pursue a degree in an ancillary subject. I will not address publicly my own experiences with the department, but I would strongly advise LDS students who may have an interest in teaching at BYU to take this advice very seriously.

I don't know, David,

You were so buoyant the other day. Are you coming down from your BBQ high? Are you trying to guarantee that you'll never have another job at BYU?

There are a number of Hebraists at BYU, including some who also know Northwest Semitic languages in general. One is constantly pouring over his old, well-marked copy of Gesenius. Another has a son getting a graduate degree in Hebrew at the University of Texas at Austin.

It is true that BYU is an undergraduate institution in ancient Near Eastern studies, and seems to kick the fledglings out of the nest as quickly as possible. It may be a good thing that you and others have gone off to get PhDs with "gentile respectability" (to use Nibley's phrase -- Nibley told his serious students to leave and get their graduate degrees elsewhere).

The Religious Education people have a strong publication venue as the BYU Religious Studies Center, and many of their professors are active participants in annual and regional AAR/SBL meetings. Millett has been very busy making nice with the evangelical community, something which some of us consider a very important ecumenical effort. The basic notion to keep in mind is, Things change. By the time your current case of dyspepsia is gone, things will have changed still more. So, take heart. Remember the guys who "failed" with Zion's Camp. They didn't really fail . . .

Wonderful things are in the offing. I'm sure of it. Think of the next BBQ . . .

[Kerry A. Shirts]

As rants go.. it meets all the criteria. Emotional. Swearing. No logical case. And even statements like this that I quote which do not show credible insight into the very words upon which the "rant" may rest -- in this case the concept of "Scholarship".

Excellent job at that!

Why thank ya.....thank ya very much......

[mfbukowski]

Not knowing anything about BYU, politics, as an ignorant UCLA Bruin, it is totally clear to me that secular scholars will never recognize ANY religious believer as impartial enough to write serious papers about scriptural or theological matters because they begin with a conflict of interest and a "bone to pick".

 

That is what secular universities are for- secular learning.  If you want to learn how to fix Fords, you don't go to school to learn about Volkswagens.

The very existence of BYU is based on a perceived need for a "church university" and so it must by its very nature present the church's point of view, at least on religious matters.

There is nothing wrong with that- that was why it was established in the first place. But to think that "impartial" scholarship is going to happen there is just incredibly naive.

Edited March 11, 2014 by mfbukowski

[CASteinman]

I understand entirely. I have tried to say that our LDS students are getting DISCOURAGED from the teachers and scholars and church itself from learning the languages of the Bible, and its INTERNAL, and.......well.........Good ole Brother Bokovoy was the one I had recently been told about, among others, and now here he is.......... soooooooo......... well.......... can I sit by in silence? Unfortunately no.

Well, I have no doubt you can't do it in silence! Sacrament meeting must hurt!

But this is simply not a big problem in the Church. Nor is the anti-Mormon promulgation of negative information. The internet is just the new messaging media. It has different processes. But we faced every bit as much -- or worse -- in times past. And we survived it. We will survive this as well.

Perhaps I might polish my own apple a bit by revealing my very very teensy tiny but nevertheless seminal contribution to the start of FAIR.

I was very active on AOL -- in the chatroom that this board is named after -- watching the growth of anti-Mormon activity on the Internet. I considered it a significant and dire threat -- as you do. And I raised this idea to a couple of other people that I thought were high quality folk -- but I had no idea how they would take it and run. I remember the very first conceptual meeting in a private AOL chatroom, where one of these folk brought up my concern and my idea of an internet clearing house of information to systematically answer the questions from a scholarly and effective perspective.

I still think this is a useful function, perhaps even a necessary one. But I no longer consider it to be the key. The enemies of the Church, including ol' scratch and his minion (I am not referring to the piker on the Board that must not be Named) will produce materials in objection faster than scholarly refutation can answer them. In some cases, its not particularly new stuff, its just rebranding, reconfiguring, resorting old tired arguments into new fresh sounding ideas. But every time that it is dressed up in new clothing, it appeals to a new audience and the same old answers look tired and unfashionable. So we need continual updating of answers.

Ok, fine. Except that we are smaller in number than they are. They can pour this stuff out like sewage from a factory. Good careful scholarship and research takes time. It cannot operate inside their op tempo.

So, scholarship and internet papers are not the key solution to these problems. The key really is -- though you may hate to hear this -- testimony and faith. Sorry, but that's really the deal.

And interestingly enough some of the best apologetics work I have enjoyed has not been the work of scholastics. Welch -- who was a lawyer -- is one of my favorites and his work is like a Gem.

BTW...

I know that if one my children were to want to go into some ancient scripture field of study *I* would discourage them and it has nothing to do about faith promoting blather. It would be about the moolah.

Its ok to relax a bit and imagine for a time that we have a Prophet and 12 Apostles, guided by God who will lead the Church correctly -- even through these rough seas. Really... its ok!

[CASteinman]

chadash assur min hatorah: the Torah forbids innovation.

Wow. That's sort of a weird belief. Its not a Mormon D&D thing but I would sort of like to know how they come to that conclusion.

[Tacenda]

To paraphrase Brent Metclafe: "Finding out that Brigham Young believed and taught the Adam-God theory won't destroy faith but finding out an apostle lied about it will."

I don't wanto argue about BRM(he wasn't lying, he was just wrong) and the particulars of Metclafe's idea, but the jist is correct.

Teaching things that are demonstrably false WILL destroy faith. Biblical scholarship will not.

Hear, hear! High five to this!

[CASteinman]

Dan has been very vocal on the internet, using his own name. I believe that he was fired for his remarks on the internet and his defense of the lds church. I don't think that his firing was about one incident. If so, this sends a message to future scholars to tone down their internet remarks, be careful of what they say, or use a different screen name from their own.

Do you have any evidence for such belief? I am not being critical here.. but I just don't think this is the motivation. I have not seen any indication of it.

[CASteinman]

To paraphrase Brent Metclafe: "Finding out that Brigham Young believed and taught the Adam-God theory won't destroy faith but finding out an apostle lied about it will."

For some I suppose. But this is not a universal law you know...

[Robert F. Smith]

See? I toldja all I knew whereof I was speaking when I said students get discouraged from studying and teaching Old Testament........ I am sincerely sorry it's this way also. Crimany man, it just doesn't have to be so FEAR based from the church. If the church really has the Spirit to guide us, then who is to say those students looking into the Old Testament are NOT being guided? Buy BYU thinks it knows best. I honest to luvin goodness am seriously sitting on my hands here from really letting it rip about how I feel and other folks who have given me insider information on how things are REALLY happenin behind the scenes, but I have promised, so I will refrain, but this is but ONE example of quite a few I am aware of. This is why our church is literally 20 years behind the times in scholarship and understanding of the Bible alone, not to mention so much else. I'm sorry to be the one ta tell ya'all, but man the paranoia of fear and dread of the philosophies of men mingled with scripture and other silliness has just GOT TO DISAPPEAR! And, I don't know the solution. I can tell you though, from my exposure to the Biblical languages I have had thus far, I can absolutely certainly see that the Bible is a different animal than I have been taught. Careful selection of the few pictures and scriptures and contexts that have been picked through the years and repeated and repeated are simply NOT the story or meaning of the Bible. Oh we have some bright spots in LDS scholarship, make no mistake about it, but overall.....without any meanness or judgment, even though that is what I, unfortunately am doing here, the scholarship out of the MI would be A, while the rest of whatever religious studies has happened at BYU is a grade of D. The faith promoting has backfired for one very serious reason........ the faith promoting approach has backfired for ONE VERY IMPORTANT REASON............ a VERY *******IMPORTANT******** REASON I'm telling you.......the Internet. Now full access to the most astonishing amounts of information is had at the mere push of a button. Control over information is being RAPIDLY lost to absolutely ALL people as the computers and net grow. There is no longer any special privaleged information for only the upper cognescenti. Now we ALL get the much broader and fuller skinny, and if all the churchs of the earth combined to try and keep it secret, it ain't happenin now man. Sooooooooooo, we have to go FULL GUNS as a church into the intellectual....... NOW we are beginning to fathom and see the seriously high price of faith promoting at the expense of genuine and serious knowledge. And it's only just begun man...... I promise, I am not simply typing sour grapes here......... Bokovoy and others I am aware of are the victims of the SYMPTOM of the problem, NOT the problem itself ........

Enough boohooing already, Kerry,

As I long ago explained to Owen & Mosser (the evangelical duo who gushed about FARMS apologetics), most Mormon scholars and intellectuals live outside of Utah. Provo and BYU is not the epicenter of all things Mormon, nor should it be.

BYU is a university owned by the Church. It isn't the Church, and the Brethren probably have their doubts as to its effectiveness in every area. Plus, in hard economic times, BYU has its funding cut and cut hard. The bureaucratic nonsense and other things that take place at BYU campuses in Provo, Idaho, and Hawaii are pretty much the same things that take place at every other university in the world -- some of it being dark and Machiavellian. A sociologist would have a field-day analyzing it.

However, instead of whining about it, we should say "Rise up O men of God," and find yourselves anxiously engaged in a good cause. Ally yourselves with men of like mind, and fight the good fight. Arriba y adelante!! Never say "Die!" O.K.?

[mfbukowski]

Don't get me wrong, I understand not teaching 14-15 year olds the Documentary Hypothesis and that the Red Sea is debated and most likely a mistranslation of the Reed Sea. However, as one matures in their studies, they should come away with a more objective sound reason about the scriptures. This is why many evangelical Christians who go to school to study the Bible and Textual Criticism come out atheists and that maybe the fear behind not really divulging the entire truths. However, it does cause more damage than just simply speaking the truth in a manner that still allows the spirit to help a person learn and grow.

But the reality is that there is nothing to fear from textual criticism- remember that for a while at least Harold Bloom was on our side because he recognized that our anthropomorphic view of God could be construed as the ultimate in humanism- the worship of man himself

Of course for us that is the "Man of Holiness", but seeing ourselves as gods in embryo puts ourselves at the center of the greatest "human potential movement" in the history of the earth.

Philosophers like William James and Wittgenstein give us a perfectly rational basis for understanding religious experience and testimony.

The real problem is a misunderstanding of how these evil "philosophies of men" are indeed the best tools we have to spread the gospel across the earth. What has been termed "Postmodernism" can be our best friend if we understand how it can help us.

[why me]

Do you have any evidence for such belief? I am not being critical here.. but I just don't think this is the motivation. I have not seen any indication of it.

If one reads the critics and what they are saying, Dan, according to them, was responsible for people losing faith because of how engaged in apologetics. These people were not necessarily reading his articles on MI or FAIR but engaging with him on the internet either directly or indirectly on discussion forums. Dan is a complete picture or package. On internet discussions he was hard hitting and defended the church well. And this went along with his written work at MI or on FAIR.

His firing was based on his persona as much on the new direction at MI. And I do believe that his friends on this forum who are also engaged in apologetics, know this too.

[why me]

If one reads the critics and what they are saying, Dan, according to them, was responsible for people losing faith because of how engaged in apologetics. These people were not necessarily reading his articles on MI or FAIR but engaging with him on the internet either directly or indirectly on discussion forums. Dan is a complete picture or package. On internet discussions he was hard hitting and defended the church well. And this went along with his written work at MI or on FAIR.

His firing was based on his internet persona as much on the new direction at MI. And I do believe that his friends on this forum who are also engaged in apologetics, know this too.

But hey, it is of course speculation. And that is all one can do now. The truth will come out eventually.

Edited June 27, 2012 by why me

[CASteinman]

His firing was based on his persona as much on the new direction at MI. And I do believe that his friends on this forum who are also engaged in apologetics, know this too.

If so, this is the first I have heard of it. I have not heard even so much as a whisper of it until you proposed it.

Of such torn pillows are the feathers of false belief strewn around the land.

I would not want to spread rumors of this type -- its really a whole new defamation. I would want to really know.

[why me]

What has been termed "Postmodernism" can be our best friend if we understand how it can help us.

Maybe not, if we base our definition of postmodernism as a rejection of meta-narratives, which is what mormonism is since it holds a meta-truth claim.

[Robert F. Smith]

And the critics will love it. They are already getting ready to make claims of whitewashing and hiding the truth. They are anxiously sitting on their hands, waiting to hit the keyboard. This is one reason why they are so happy that Dan is out of the picture.

Dan is not out of the picture.

[Robert F. Smith]

But the reality is that there is nothing to fear from textual criticism- remember that for a while at least Harold Bloom was on our side because he recognized that our anthropomorphic view of God could be construed as the ultimate in humanism- the worship of man himself

Of course for us that is the "Man of Holiness", but seeing ourselves as gods in embryo puts ourselves at the center of the greatest "human potential movement" in the history of the earth.

Philosophers like William James and Wittgenstein give us a perfectly rational basis for understanding religious experience and testimony.

The real problem is a misunderstanding of how these evil "philosophies of men" are indeed the best tools we have to spread the gospel across the earth. What has been termed "Postmodernism" can be our best friend if we understand how it can help us.

Yeh.

[why me]

If so, this is the first I have heard of it. I have not heard even so much as a whisper of it until you proposed it.

Of such torn pillows are the feathers of false belief strewn around the land.

I would not want to spread rumors of this type -- its really a whole new defamation. I would want to really know.

It comes with critical thinking. One must look at why he may have been fired. We heard about the Dehlin piece as being a catalyst. But I think that there was much more to it than that. The complete picture probably has to do with his apologetics at MI and on the internet. Do you think that the critics have been silent about him? And were not vocal in their complaints about him?

[mfbukowski]

I was very active on AOL -- in the chatroom that this board is named after --

Do you remember Sally0115? (That is close anyway- I think that was the name- supposedly her name was Ruth Packer and she was always there)

[why me]

Dan is not out of the picture.

I said the same when I made the comment of other venues, different from being the editor in a different post.

Edited June 27, 2012 by why me

[CASteinman]

Do you think that the critics have been silent about him? And were not vocal in their complaints about him?

I would be gasted in all the flabber regions if I learned that Scratch and his minions (not the real deal.. the Piker on the Board that may not be named) would have had any influence on this at all.

Edited June 27, 2012 by CASteinman

[David Bokovoy]

There are a number of Hebraists at BYU, including some who also know Northwest Semitic languages in general. One is constantly pouring over his old, well-marked copy of Gesenius. Another has a son getting a graduate degree in Hebrew at the University of Texas at Austin.

I'm not going to argue against the fact that BYU has some competent linguists. It does.

The Religious Education people have a strong publication venue as the BYU Religious Studies Center, and many of their professors are active participants in annual and regional AAR/SBL meetings.

While I'm not as critical as most other young LDS scholars I've conversed with, I'll just simply state that there is much needed room for improvement in the SBL sessions on Mormonism. We're not doing ourselves any favors by presenting poor biblical scholarship to the academic world.
  Edited March 3, 2014 by David Bokovoy

[CASteinman]

Do you remember Sally0115? (That is close anyway- I think that was the name- supposedly her name was Ruth Packer and she was always there)

Yes, I do remember Sally. I cannot say I liked her approach to things all the time, but I would not count myself among some of the folk who felt inclined to be against her.

[Robert F. Smith]

I still think this is a useful function, perhaps even a necessary one. But I no longer consider it to be the key. The enemies of the Church, including ol' scratch and his minion (I am not referring to the piker on the Board that must not be Named) will produce materials in objection faster than scholarly refutation can answer them. In some cases, its not particularly new stuff, its just rebranding, reconfiguring, resorting old tired arguments into new fresh sounding ideas. But every time that it is dressed up in new clothing, it appeals to a new audience and the same old answers look tired and unfashionable. So we need continual updating of answers.

Ok, fine. Except that we are smaller in number than they are. They can pour this stuff out like sewage from a factory. Good careful scholarship and research takes time. It cannot operate inside their op tempo.

So, scholarship and internet papers are not the key solution to these problems. The key really is -- though you may hate to hear this -- testimony and faith. Sorry, but that's really the deal.

It's a fair fight. We have the Holy Spirit on our side, and it testifies of the truth to the innocent seeker of truth.