Michael Coe Interview On Mormonstories

[Teancum]

Quaere: Michael Coe is not a Mormon. Michael Coe never has been a Mormon.

So how, exactly, is any interview he might give a "Mormon story?" He has no "Mormon story" to tell.

Wait, something's just occurred to me. Dr Coe is fairly well-known for having a disdainful attitude towards the Book of Mormon. Could it be that Mister Dehlin found that such an attitude was useful to his so-called "Mormonstories" enterprise?

And does that mean that "Mormonstories" is really an anti-Mormon propaganda mill?

Regards,

Pahoran

Sure. Just like his interviews of Brant Gardner, Bushman, Givens, etc. Could it be the Mister Dehlin foind such attitudes from such persons not useful to his Mormon Stories Enterprise? Does that mean Mormon Stories is really supportive of the Church?

[Pahoran]

Sure. Just like his interviews of Brant Gardner, Bushman, Givens, etc. Could it be the Mister Dehlin foind such attitudes from such persons not useful to his Mormon Stories Enterprise? Does that mean Mormon Stories is really supportive of the Church?

Quite clearly it is not, and nobody could claim that it is. However, the people you name are in fact Mormons; they have a "Mormon story" to tell. No doubt Mister Dehlin thought that interviewing them would lend him some degree of credibility in the minds of those who are determined not to apply any critical thinking to his activities.

And see? It worked.

However, despite your failed attempt at deflection, the point remains: Coe is not a Mormon. Coe has never been a Mormon. Nothing he has to say could by any stretch of the imagination be classed as a "Mormon story."

And yet, the interview took place.

Funny, that.

Regards,

Pahoran

[Teancum]

Quite clearly it is not, and nobody could claim that it is. However, the people you name are in fact Mormons; they have a "Mormon story" to tell. No doubt Mister Dehlin thought that interviewing them would lend him some degree of credibility in the minds of those who are determined not to apply any critical thinking to his activities.

And see? It worked.

However, despite your failed attempt at deflection, the point remains: Coe is not a Mormon. Coe has never been a Mormon. Nothing he has to say could by any stretch of the imagination be classed as a "Mormon story."

And yet, the interview took place.

Funny, that.

Regards,

Pahoran

Coe has an interest in Mormon things. He is an expert on Mesoamerica. He has worked with Mormons. You set up the artificial bar for Mormon Stories interviewees to have to be Mormon not those who run Mormon Stories and you do it to have an artificial club with which to beat Mormon Stories with.

Funny that.

Fact is Mormon Stories interviews a variety of persons on a variety of topics of interest to those interested in things Mormon. And it is a wonderful thing that you think Dan Peterson, Teryl Givens, Brant Gardner, Richard Bushman and others are simply useful idiots in Dehlin's viscious agenda. I hope you let them know what fools you think they are.

[Calm]

Coe has an interest in Mormon things.

Given the accuracy of some of the things he said (see Sorenson's letter cursor has generously posted for us), i doubt his interest is more than a passing one.

[cursor]

There is no question that Michael Coe respects my father as a scholar on the subject of ancient Mesoamerica. How will he react to the open letter? While he may not respond publicly, I can't imagine that it won't have some stirring affect. What will he think once he has his copy of Mormon's Codex, written directly scholars like him?

I believe Mormon's Codex will establish beyond reasonable question to both Latter-day Saints and non-LDS scholars as well that Joseph Smith had in his possession, and translated, a Mesoamerican codex written by Mormon in the late fourth century AD.

[Calm]

It is going to be very interesting to see what happens.

[why me]

Coe has an interest in Mormon things. He is an expert on Mesoamerica. He has worked with Mormons. You set up the artificial bar for Mormon Stories interviewees to have to be Mormon not those who run Mormon Stories and you do it to have an artificial club with which to beat Mormon Stories with.

I had a problem with the interview. I don't think that john challenged him very well. It seemed the Coe was more or less laughing at the mormons for believing what they believe and John allowed it to happen without as much as challenge from his side. One cannot just let the person speak without putting up some sort of a argument. That is what makes an interview such as this interesting. But john just let it happen. I felt that he was enjoying the responses too much to challenge him and then again, if John agreed with Coe, what is there to challenge anyway.

[cursor]

I just created a note within the Coe podcast comments that included a hyperlink to my father's An Open Letter to Michael Coe. I've already received an email request from Mormon Stories for me to arrange an interview with my dad. I respectfully declined for him.

[cursor]

John Dehlin would now like to know who might be "the next best alternative." He suggests that they "need a faithful response to Coe." Recommendations?

[why me]

John Dehlin would now like to know who might be "the next best alternative." He suggests that they "need a faithful response to Coe." Recommendations?

I think that john reads this board and has read this thread. Good that he now wants an alternative. I think that we did good work in explaining our problems with the Coe interview.

[Pahoran]

Coe has an interest in Mormon things.

Not enough of an interest to actually listen to anything we might have to say, though.

He is an expert on Mesoamerica. He has worked with Mormons. You set up the artificial bar for Mormon Stories interviewees to have to be Mormon not those who run Mormon Stories and you do it to have an artificial club with which to beat Mormon Stories with.

Your faulty mind-reading rises to the level of bearing false witness. There is nothing "artificial" about taking "Mormonstories" at their word, to the extent of expecting them to tell Mormon stories.

Funny that.

Fact is Mormon Stories interviews a variety of persons on a variety of topics of interest to those interested in things Mormon. And it is a wonderful thing that you think Dan Peterson, Teryl Givens, Brant Gardner, Richard Bushman and others are simply useful idiots in Dehlin's viscious agenda. I hope you let them know what fools you think they are.

Again with the bearing of false witness. I call upon you to repent.

It is possible that, early on, faithful Latter-day Saints might not have realised what Mister Dehlin's agenda was. Later on, I expect that they would have weighed up the pros and cons of getting their side out to the "Mormonstories" audience. I do not regard them as "useful idiots" for making such a decision. After all, it is not they who are stubbornly defending that anti-Mormon enterprise in this forum. They aren't the ones who are stupidly insisting that "Mormonstories" must be hunky-dory because they consented to be interviewed there.

Regards,

Pahoran

Sigh. Thread ban for the liar liar pants on fire and call to repentence.

[why me]

I call upon you to repent.

Regards,

Pahoran

Now Pahoran, you forget that you are not really Pahoran of the book of mormon. No need to call someone to repentance. Unless you want them to call you to repentance for judging them in such a way.

Edited July 9, 2012 by why me

[why me]

It is possible that, early on, faithful Latter-day Saints might not have realised what Mister Dehlin's agenda was. Later on, I expect that they would have weighed up the pros and cons of getting their side out to the "Mormonstories" audience.

Early on, Mormonstories was a great podcast. I really enjoyed Bushman, blacks and the priesthood, polygamy etc. But now, I don't enjoy them so much. I think that John has changed from the wanting to have questions answered member to more or less a disbelieving guy who wants a different type of questions answered. But I could be wrong. It is only my opinion.

Edited July 9, 2012 by why me

[ShawFanX]

Quaere: Michael Coe is not a Mormon. Michael Coe never has been a Mormon.

So how, exactly, is any interview he might give a "Mormon story?" He has no "Mormon story" to tell.

Wait, something's just occurred to me. Dr Coe is fairly well-known for having a disdainful attitude towards the Book of Mormon. Could it be that Mister Dehlin found that such an attitude was useful to his so-called "Mormonstories" enterprise?

And does that mean that "Mormonstories" is really an anti-Mormon propaganda mill?

Regards,

Pahoran

Quite.

[cinepro]

As I said when we last discussed the interview, I think Coe's biggest mistake was thinking the Book of Mormon means what it says.

[ShawFanX]

Attached is the Open Letter to Michael Coe, from John L. Sorenson.

From the letter:

It would be surprising if as much as one-ten-thousandth of the information potentially obtainable by

studying the material remains has so far been obtained.

The straw that will eventually break the anti-Mormon camel's back with regard to archeology is this. Critics of the Church (and of diffusoionism generally) have far overstated their case and severely overstepped what the evidence since the birth of Mesoamerican archeology can actually tell us about the ancient Mesoamerican world. Much, if not most of anti-Mormon criticism rests upon a central assumption that we pretty much know all there is to know about the ancient Americas, and that what we know is of a clarity and factual obviousness and precludes LDS claims. As is usual in such cases, a scholarly discipline (archeology) that is theory rich and data poor, is reversed, for the purposes of the argument, to be data rich and theory light.

Vast extrapolations from a tiny sampling of the entire history of Mesoamerica are deployed to show that an entire civilizational sub-group could not have existed, and this despite the sheer vastness of central and South America, the tinyness of the sample, and the highly fragmentary nature of our understandin of the phenomena studied.

We still cannot read a number of the scripts/hyerglyphs discovered in this region on steles and other objects, and have no idea what many of these are saying. And yet how easy it seems to invent theoretical models of an acient world in wich Nephites are impossible.

Didn't Ebla teach anyone anything?

[cursor]

I've done some formatting to the raw Open Letter. The newer version PDF can be obtained here.

[Pahoran]

I've done some formatting to the raw Open Letter. The newer version PDF can be obtained here.

Splendid work. Thanks for that.

Regards,

Pahoran

[Storm Rider]

Just read the article; what a well reasoned piece. Thank you for writing it and the format was great. Three cheers are needed for work well done! :acute:

[cursor]

Apologies to ANACO for not having noticed his earlier post [#67] in this thread.

I have read that article and a portion is puzzling to me. Could you ask your father why he believes the Prophet Joseph Smith learned, two years before the Prophet's death, the geographical location of the Book of Mormon from a popular travel book?

I haven't yet asked my father ... but I'll see what I can offer on my own (and grabbing a few facts from his writings)..

While Joseph Smith translated the ancient Mesoamerican codex by the power of God, that does not mean that he was necessarily privy to everything related to it. If not, and if he did not share Mormon's life experience, and who lived his life within that geographic scope, then he was left to learn on his own (like the rest of us). Did Brigham Young know where the Book of Mormon events unfolded? Does Thomas S. Monson currently know?

In a 1890 statement from George Q. Cannon, counselor in the First Presidency:

“The First Presidency have often been asked to prepare some suggestive map illustrative of Nephite geography, but have never consented to do so. Nor are we acquainted with any of the Twelve Apostles who would undertake such a task. The reason is, that without further information they are not prepared even to suggest [a map]. The word of the Lord or the translation of other ancient records is required to clear up many points now so obscure.”

Around 1918 president Joseph F. Smith "declined to officially approve of [any map], saying that the Lord had not yet revealed it."

In 1950 apostle John A. Widtsoe said,

"As far as can be learned, the Prophet Joseph Smith, translator of the book, did not say where, on the American continent, Book of Mormon activities occurred. Perhaps he did not know. However, certain facts and traditions of varying reliability are used as foundation guides by students of Book of Mormon geography."

Exactly what Joseph Smith believed at different times in his life concerning Book of Mormon geography in general is also indeterminable. Only a few clues remain. For example, while the church was headquartered in Nauvoo, Joseph read a best-selling book of his day by John L. Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, which John Bernhisel had sent to him from the East. In a letter dated 16 November 1841, the Prophet thanked Bernhisel and wrote about the book that "of all histories that had been written pertaining to the antiquities of this country it is the most correct" and it "supports the testimony of the Book of Mormon." Ten months later, the Times and Seasons printed an enthusiastic review of the Stephens volume. John Taylor was the editor, although Joseph Smith had shortly before announced his own editorial responsibility for the newspaper. The unnamed writer of the review (probably Wilford Woodruff) stated that "we have just learned . . . [that] the city Zarahemla . . . stood upon this land [of Guatemala, whose ruins Stephens was reporting]."

Edited July 10, 2012 by cursor

[cursor]

oops ... I failed to add a reference to the final quote in my last post:

What is the Significance of Zelph in the Study of Book of Mormon Geography?

(Scroll down to the section entitled, Joseph Smith and Book of Mormon Geography.)

[cinepro]

oops ... I failed to add a reference to the final quote in my last post:

What is the Significance of Zelph in the Study of Book of Mormon Geography?

(Scroll down to the section entitled, Joseph Smith and Book of Mormon Geography.)

[cursor]

...

Edited July 11, 2012 by cursor

[Closet Doubter]

. . . . . It is difficult to understand how this natural genius could have absorbed all of the obscure hints available to him and embedded them in the text so that over 150 years later people would discover them and use them to indicate the historicity of the plate text. . . . . . . There is no indication that he knew that they were there and so we had to wait a century and a half to discover those clever subtle clues.

Could you please elaborate on what you are referring to here? Thanks.

[cursor]

I am in the process of creating a PDF for share that contains the full transcript of the Dr. Michael Coe podcast by MormonStories.org. Will post when done.