Christian Apologetic Patterns

[salgare]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

For example, IMO, the final straw from GA's for Dan was the times magazine photo incident where he went ballistic on the photographer for his photo gallery of seemingly unhappy Mormons in Happy Valley.

Never heard of such an incident (perhaps you can cite a source),

seriously?  Well someone with some pretty good pull got time to remove it.  Gee I wonder who that was? Memory hole in action!

[salgare]

1 hour ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Steve,

I'm very interested in if other Christian Apologetics follow similar patterns as to those of Mormon apologists.

What might also interest you is poking around into the history of Mormon Apologetics which is relatively young/new, starting with Hugh Nibley being considered by most as the Father of Mormon Apologetics.

Actually, Mormon apologetics began with Orson Pratt and B. H. Roberts.  It continued with Sidney Sperry (grad Univ of Chicago in Hebrew), and then Hugh Nibley and John L. Sorenson.  Jack Welch formed FARMS in California in 1979, and brought it to Provo  the following year when he joined the faculty at BYU.  Some Nibleyphiles got involved with FARMS along the way, but it was always a loose knit group of professors from various disciplines.

Yes, funny part is Orson and BH are my heros, both renegades to leadership of their day, and neither would recognize what is going on today (they were into metaphysics).  Wonderful history correction ty.  I'm not familiar with Sperry, 1895-1977 wow

................................................................  There is a recent history (what 5 years back?) of their getting booted out of the Maxwell Institute, for reasons that have a fascinating and super heated history of its own (remember John Dehlin in this regard, another fascinating history to follow).

John Dehlin heard that an article about him was soon to appear in FARMS Review.  He had not read it, but claimed it was a "hit piece," which it was not, and sought to prevent publication (censorship). 

Steve, as I mentioned in OP this is a very hot topic with a long long history of its own  Hoping to not side track the op on this, but worth your investigation sometime.

Some critics referred to this group as "The old Guard" which was replaced with "The new Guard" of which the old guard utilized all of their old ad hominem against the new guard and BYU for firing them and clearing them out.  These went on for several years after the firing.  A portion of these attacks were over accusations that the new guard were following some of the Nuanced Mormons and did not believe in the historicity of the BoM. Critics believe that the Church needed gentler apologitics and heavily influenced the firiing.     This is the first "pattern" I would like to ask about.

Completely false version of what happened, but it does comport with the anti-Mormon ranting and fuming about the matter.

In hopes of not lighting this fuse I did note that it was Critics belief.

A gentler generation of potential apologist were evolving out of a Professor at (someone please help with name) in California named Richard Lyman Bushman, author of Rough Stone Rolling.  This was the first real appearance of transparency as Richard was not excommunicated for publishing a book that others had been excommunicated for revealing.  A few of the younger men that come from those studies and have posted about found the ad hominem ways of the old guard to be very undesirable and they tend to reflect just about 180 degree opposites in their demeanor with others.  This is the second pattern.

The third pattern is Terryl Givens and his wife.  These are the Nuanced Mormons.

Dan Peterson, Richard Bushman, and Terryl Givens are merely three of a plethora of well-known Mormon scholars, all of whom are friends, and none of whom has ever been in danger of excommunication (where do you get this crazy stuff, salgare?).  Bushman is a retired professor of American History from Columbia Univ., has since held the Howard Hunter Chair in Mormon Studies at the Claremont Graduate Univ., and was for a long time a stake patriarch.  He is highly regarded by virtually all Mormon scholars, as well as by the Brethren.  Always has been.

Claremont, thank you, yes I think some very good things came out of his work at Claremont.  It always struck me weird that that did not happen at BYU???  As for the excommunication statement, what I was trying to say is that if you pushed Rough Stone Rolling and what the Givens are selling now back to say to the 90s' it well could have been the september 8!  And indeed there are topics in Rough Stone Rolling that has gotten other publishers excommuncated for publishing the same information.  i.e. http://www.washingtonindependentreviewofbooks.com/features/the-mormon-excommunication-of-fawn-brodie-why-banishing-the-famous-biograph

The Church has no official apologetic and the critics have suggested that the above patterns have actually driven/changed doctrine and Church policy, as most of the General Authorities of even 15 years ago had little knowledge and understanding of the history and doctrinal issues.

Of course none of these groups claim to represent the Church, and yet it is obvious (to critics at least) that the Church supports these efforts as they are the ones writing the books, doing the various private organization conventions, working these sites etc.  They are what Joe Public who investigates will see.  They are the intellectuals and scholars whom the GA's turn to for advice etc.

It's this third pattern that is of great interest to me.  They travel the country doing "firesides" (present talks/preach in Church owned Chapels) directed at members with doubts.  Those who have been off put with the likes of pattern one, generated doubts that are crashing their shelves based on pattern two, are presented with pattern three, the option that Humanism is where its at, make it whatever works for you, no need for orthodoxy or doctrines or God for that matter.

The Church obviously supports their teaching Nuanced Mormonism as it allows them to use their Chapels and have never called them to a court of love for extensive public teaching of what the first two patterns above might well consider apostasy (i.e. a non-historical BoM).

I'm interested to know if these kinds of shenanigans are common among other Christian communities, where not only do the critics need to be handled publicly, but internal member losses call for other unofficial apologetics focused at active members. 

While it is true that the LDS Church has no official apologetic style or content, it is not true that the LDS Church supports the work of what you call "Nuanced Mormons."   Do you have a source from which you have obtained this folderol?

lol, folderol, had to look that one up.  I spent quite some time here trying to pin you and MFB down on this whole New Mormonism.  Mum is obviously the word even around here.  As I have noted already, the church supports them by allowing them to continue with their "rescue" firesides pushing their pragmatical views, which are so foreign to old school, or correlated members, even those whom are regulars here.

sorry page loads from where I am are terribly slow to MDDB ... and you are hard to respond to with your embeds

Edited April 7, 2016 by salgare

[Calm]

11 minutes ago, salgare said:

seriously?  Well someone with some pretty good pull got time to remove it.  Gee I wonder who that was? Memory hole in action!

Perhaps you are thinking of "Inside a Mormon Ward"?:

http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1903792_1895237,00.html

[Calm]

No, I suspect you mean this one:

http://time.com/3783335/happy-valley-a-photographer-reflects-on-his-mormon-upbringing/

What are you claiming was removed?

Edited April 7, 2016 by Calm

[consiglieri]

In addition to making any number of good arguments, Mormons apologists use logical fallacies as much as anybody else, I suppose.

One in particular comes to mind . . .

 

 

Edited April 7, 2016 by consiglieri

[juliann]

2 minutes ago, consiglieri said:

In addition to making any number of good arguments, Mormons apologists use logical fallacies as much as anybody else, I suppose.

One in particular comes to mind . . .

 

 

 

Uh huh. And the most commonly used strawman is "Mormon apologists."

[Kevin Christensen]

1 hour ago, salgare said:

One bad apple spoils the whole bunch they say.  I wonder how many of you 300 were ever embarrassed by Dan or Bill.  I do know that FAIRMormon was be very proactive on trying to cleanup this bad reputation.  Could someone fill me in on the fairly recent name change, I did not even realize it until a couple months when I as chastised here for referring to them as FAIR.  Why the change.  I was somewhat surprised to see Dan at the top still, after some kind of reorgination, seeming how he is one of the major players in your bad rep.  I guess the good news is that he has mostly fallen from the lime light of at least the MDB board.

But we are not talking about apples but about reputation and reality.  Perhaps you could read one of my essays from the Review, say this one,

http://publications.mi.byu.edu/fullscreen/?pub=1436&index=8

and then explain how my appearance in a Journal with an unjustified reputation for reliance on ad hominem somehow spoils my argument and discredits my footnotes and causes my careful prose to be replaced by nothing more than a barrage of personal insults.  And for the record, Mike Quinn cited that essay as exemplary apologetic.

It's been clear that those who have been most involved in spreading the reputation (Dehlin, for one) have not bothered to substantiate the charge with specific and demonstrably characteristic and representative examples.  I challenged him on this on this board to provide examples several times, but he never managed to come up with anything.  But of course, as Maverick's dear old Pappy used to say "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, and those are pretty good odds."

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Bethel Park, PA

Edited April 7, 2016 by Kevin Christensen
typo

[consiglieri]

There is another common logical fallacy that is actually a part of the structure of the LDS Church.

 

[Mystery Meat]

2 hours ago, salgare said:

John has known contacts as well and I believe him.  But I don't want to derail too soon, I'm wondering with the falloff of interest in organized religion in general what apologetics might be like and if it is also changing in other organizations

 

Is this the same John Dehlin whose sources tell him that President Monson has dementia? Because anyone with a brain can see that he does not (and I have about as good of a source as possible on this). So John's known contacts (if they are known, please tell us who they are. Yes, this is a CFR) are worth about as much as John's own credibility. 

Nada.

[salgare]

1 hour ago, Daniel Peterson said:

The phony stories about me are pretty tiresome, but I feel that I should spike them whenever possible, so that they don't become the historical record.

And they will out live you, ouch.

[consiglieri]

1 minute ago, Mystery Meat said:

Is this the same John Dehlin whose sources tell him that President Monson has dementia? Because anyone with a brain can see that he does not (and I have about as good of a source as possible on this). So John's known contacts (if they are known, please tell us who they are. Yes, this is a CFR) are worth about as much as John's own credibility. 

Nada.

I talked to a member of President Monson's stake presidency over the fence when he was visiting my neighbor last year.

He told me President Monson is suffering from mental difficulties.

Your source is probably better, though.

Carry on.

[Calm]

20 minutes ago, Calm said:

No, I suspect you mean this one:

http://time.com/3783335/happy-valley-a-photographer-reflects-on-his-mormon-upbringing/

What are you claiming was removed?

 

I am wondering is this is something that in salgare's view counts as ballistic (seems like the most likely discussion involving Dan given that Time doesn't post comments that I can see):

https://disqus.com/home/discussion/timelightbox/happy_valley_utah_brian_shumway_reflects_on_his_mormon_upbringing_lightbox/oldest/

 

Quote

 

I suppose the mediocrity of Mr. Shumway's photographs would be easier to forgive if it weren't for the intellectual pretentiousness of the accompanying article.  I mean, Wow.  Like, umm, he read Friedrich Nietzsche (note the correct spelling) and Jean-Paul Sartre and Erich Fromm at sixteen?  So did I.  In California.  And now I'm a believing Mormon academic.

And Mormons can't watch television on Sundays?  What's with those Tabernacle Choir broadcasts on Sunday mornings, then?  And those other Church-produced Sunday television programs on Church history and the like?  And we shouldn't visit friends on Sundays?  What???

Nonsense.

 

 

Quote

 

My apologies.  I would never have guessed -- how could I? -- that, in order for you to desire heaven, I need to express public enthusiasm for Mr. Shumway's photographs, to be awestruck at the idea of a sixteen-year-old reading Nietzsche and Sartre and Fromm, and to agree that Mormons are forbidden to watch television or visit friends on Sunday .  I do hope you'll reconsider.

I don't actually have any strong feelings about the photographs, one way or the other.  They don't offend me, but they don't seem particularly remarkable in any other way, either.  (Am I permitted to respond to them that way?)  I thought the little essay somewhat pretentious, and not overly accurate.  (Is it permissible to say that?)

 

Quote

 

Yeah.  Really.  My comments were extraordinarily vicious and cruel.

Come on.  Expressing one's opinion that a set of photographs weren't especially memorable -- remember that, as has been asserted here, each person's experience and expression of that experience (except, possibly, mine) is unique, sacred, and beyond critique -- has at least some historical precedent.  Have you read much art criticism?  There's no rule that it has to treat any and all works of art deferentially and with reverence.

And as for the essay, which I've been reliably and superfluously informed wasn't written by Brian Shumway, surely the point of its mentioning that Mr. Shumway read Nietzsche (and Fromm and Sartre) at sixteen was to illustrate the independence of mind that allowed him, indeed virtually obliged him, to transcend the lifeless, restrictive, uninteresting religion of the rather bovine -- and certainly non-Nietzsche-reading -- "Happy Valley" Mormons who look out, glum, dull, and unsmiling, from his photographs.  But the insinuation seems a bit problematic, since I myself, a believing Mormon, also read Nietzsche (and Fromm and Sartre) as a sixteen-year-old.

Pretense should occasionally be deflated.  I regret that you find that troubling.

If you want to see truly great photography of this general type, by the way, look at James Agee's and Walker Evans's documentary work on Depression-era sharecroppers in the American South.  Or, even more comparably, at Dorothea Lange's photographs of southern Utah towns in the early 1950s.

 

 

[salgare]

1 hour ago, Russell C McGregor said:

Sal, you are spreading gossip in defiance of first-hand testimony.

It is malicious.

Stop it.

 

I'm simply sharing my thoughts as I observed the public aspects of this all go down.  Besides Mark tells me that if I say it, its true!  sweet, I like pragmatism!

[cinepro]

2 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Doesn't it seem that stating your total ignorance of FARMS BYU Internal affairs, despite the fact that people like Peterson and Hamblin who were involved have provided detailed insider views, including correspondence from the time, on this board and elsewhere suggest that readers might be justified in being a wee bit cynical about your rather vague but sinister sounding speculation that they "knew, ... didn't... or something else"? 

What do "they" think about Peterson's employment at BYU as a Professor of Arabic, or as a regular columnist at the Deseret News, or the 18 volumes of Interpreter?  In light of such telling and vaguely sinister facts for which there has been no intervention, do they "know, don't or--shudder--something else?"

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

You don't need to read it as being sinister.  I was simply pointing out that it was my understanding that at least some GA's are involved in the management of BYU, and while they're obviously not involved in every decision made on the campus, it would certainly seem that for department changes such as those being discussed, they could become involved as they saw necessary.  If they weren't aware of what happened, then obviously they wouldn't get involved.  But if they were aware, even after the fact, then a decision to not get involved would at the very least indicate that the situation didn't bother them enough for them to get involved.

Obviously, those other contributions Dan has made are great, but in this case, the changes made at MI don't appear to have been disturbing enough to get any of Bradford's superiors to correct his course.  I don't' know what it means; I'm just pointing out the obvious.  It doesn't mean they were involved with those actions, but it would seem to indicate they were okay with them (or, perhaps, powerless to do anything; like I said, I don't know all the possible alternatives).

Edited April 7, 2016 by cinepro

[cinepro]

8 minutes ago, Calm said:

 

I am wondering is this is something that in salgare's view counts as ballistic (seems like the most likely discussion involving Dan given that Time doesn't post comments that I can see):

https://disqus.com/home/discussion/timelightbox/happy_valley_utah_brian_shumway_reflects_on_his_mormon_upbringing_lightbox/oldest/

 

Ironically, Dan's comments are probably the only memorable thing about that "photo essay".  I'm no Ansel Adams myself, but dang, those have to be the most mediocre pictures I've ever seen, and the captions are painful in their pretentiousness.  And seriously, did I really need to see his brother-in-law's bare behind?  Really?

[Calm]

From what I have heard over the decades, the GAs involved at BYU as regents and others don't get involved with the specfics very much, if at all.  I can see a reluctance to act on any situation no matter how appealing it would be to act because once it occurred, people would start assuming---as demonstrated here even without evidence of action--that a lack of action means approval or at least neutrality and this type of assumption would become even more widespreadthus requiring more and more public involvement even if it amounted to saying 'we are not involved' to deal with the speculation.

Seems to me the best policy would be ignore speculation before it starts to rule one's life and just continue on as is, in this case most likely letting the university admin run its own course.

Edited April 7, 2016 by Calm

[Chaos]

14 minutes ago, salgare said:

I'm simply sharing my thoughts as I observed the public aspects of this all go down.  Besides Mark tells me that if I say it, its true!  sweet, I like pragmatism!

You are refusing to respond to questions. You are refusing to provide sources. We are not impressed. Poster removed and he can save face by blaming the moderators. No need to thank us Salgare.

[Calm]

5 minutes ago, cinepro said:

Ironically, Dan's comments are probably the only memorable thing about that "photo essay".  I'm no Ansel Adams myself, but dang, those have to be the most mediocre pictures I've ever seen, and the captions are painful in their pretentiousness.  And seriously, did I really need to see his brother-in-law's bare behind?  Really?

I don't think Dan's comments are memorable (I know Dan is crushed by my opinion).  They are neither surprising or extreme.  I am relatively certain I will forget them in a week or two though I may remember salgare calling them "ballistic" because they are so not in my view.

[consiglieri]

10 minutes ago, Chaos said:

You are refusing to respond to questions. You are refusing to provide sources. We are not impressed. Poster removed and he can save face by blaming the moderators. No need to thank us Salgare.

I'm glad you showed up, Chaos!

When are you moderators going to restore my posting privileges?

You first told me it was for 30-days and set to expire at the end of February.

But that was a long time ago.

I have PM'd the moderators several times about the issue but received no response.

I was beginning to think you had taken a permanent vacation. 

 

[Calm]

7 minutes ago, Chaos said:

You are refusing to respond to questions. You are refusing to provide sources. We are not impressed.

Hopefully he will at least respond to the claim that something got removed.   I am quite curious as to what he meant. At this point, the best conclusion to me is he put no effort into actually looking for it since it took me a few minutes to find the essay and after doublechecking it was not just my ipad that didn't show comments, a few more seconds to find a conversation about the essay where Dan Peterson was present...and salgare as far as I see hasn't even bothered to put effort into confirming whether I have found the correct item or not while finding time to make other comments (though not answers).  

Hopefully by the time I post this will be corrected.

[ttribe]

2 minutes ago, Calm said:

Hopefully he will at least respond to the claim that something got removed.   I am quite curious as to what he meant. At this point, the best conclusion to me is he put no effort into actually looking for it since it took me a few minutes to find the essay and after doublechecking it was not just my ipad that didn't show comments, a few more seconds to find a conversation about the essay where Dan Peterson was present...and salgare as far as I see hasn't even bothered to put effort into confirming whether I have found the correct item or not while finding time to make other comments (though not answers).  

Hopefully by the time I post this will be corrected.

There's no way for him to respond since he was thrown out of the thread.  Strikes me as a rather dead issue at this point.

[juliann]

I think we should dedicate this thread to every wild malicious accusation ever made! But only after we all admit we have secret GA contacts to establish our credibility.

[Calm]

7 minutes ago, ttribe said:

There's no way for him to respond since he was thrown out of the thread.  Strikes me as a rather dead issue at this point.

Ah, the "poster removed" was added after I posted, I thought it was a warning.

[Scott Lloyd]

40 minutes ago, salgare said:

I'm simply sharing my thoughts as I observed the public aspects of this all go down.  Besides Mark tells me that if I say it, its true!  sweet, I like pragmatism!

Which makes you scarcely better than a garden variety gossip. Russell was spot on. 

[Steve Noel]

4 hours ago, salgare said:

Steve,

I'm very interested in if other Christian Apologetics follow similar patterns as to those of Mormon apologists.

What might also interest you is poking around into the history of Mormon Apologetics which is relatively young/new, starting with Hugh Nibley being considered by most as the Father of Mormon Apologetics. Others can correct me, but I'd say Lou Midgley then took up the gantlet along Dan Petersen and a tight niche group that carried the load for 30 years. This group ended up known as FARMS which the Church eventually bought out and moved into the Niel A Maxwell Institute at BYU.  Their style of apologetics was very ad hominem based which you will still see around here in some.  There is a recent history (what 5 years back?) of their getting booted out of the Maxwell Institute, for reasons that have a fascinating and super heated history of its own (remember John Dehlin in this regard, another fascinating history to follow). 

Some critics referred to this group as "The old Guard" which was replaced with "The new Guard" of which the old guard utilized all of their old ad hominem against the new guard and BYU for firing them and clearing them out.  These went on for several years after the firing.  A portion of these attacks were over accusations that the new guard were following some of the Nuanced Mormons and did not believe in the historicity of the BoM. Critics believe that the Church needed gentler apologitics and heavily influenced the firiing.     This is the first "pattern" I would like to ask about.

A gentler generation of potential apologist were evolving out of a Professor at (someone please help with name) in California named Richard Lyman Bushman, author of Rough Stone Rolling.  This was the first real appearance of transparency as Richard was not excommunicated for publishing a book that others had been excommunicated for revealing.  A few of the younger men that come from those studies and have posted about found the ad hominem ways of the old guard to be very undesirable and they tend to reflect just about 180 degree opposites in their demeanor with others.  This is the second pattern.

The third pattern is Terryl Givens and his wife.  These are the Nuanced Mormons.

The Church has no official apologetic and the critics have suggested that the above patterns have actually driven/changed doctrine and Church policy, as most of the General Authorities of even 15 years ago had little knowledge and understanding of the history and doctrinal issues.

Of course none of these groups claim to represent the Church, and yet it is obvious (to critics at least) that the Church supports these efforts as they are the ones writing the books, doing the various private organization conventions, working these sites etc.  They are what Joe Public who investigates will see.  They are the intellectuals and scholars whom the GA's turn to for advice etc.

It's this third pattern that is of great interest to me.  They travel the country doing "firesides" (present talks/preach in Church owned Chapels) directed at members with doubts.  Those who have been off put with the likes of pattern one, generated doubts that are crashing their shelves based on pattern two, are presented with pattern three, the option that Humanism is where its at, make it whatever works for you, no need for orthodoxy or doctrines or God for that matter.

The Church obviously supports their teaching Nuanced Mormonism as it allows them to use their Chapels and have never called them to a court of love for extensive public teaching of what the first two patterns above might well consider apostasy (i.e. a non-historical BoM).

I'm interested to know if these kinds of shenanigans are common among other Christian communities, where not only do the critics need to be handled publicly, but internal member losses call for other unofficial apologetics focused at active members. 

 

Well this thread has taken on a life of its own. My head hurts just trying to follow the discussion here. There is a big difference in Evangelicalism between general apologetics and Mormon apologetics. I am still working on discovering the lay of the land myself. There is a definite tension when it comes to Mormon apologetics. It appears that in the last 20 years or so several theologians have begun to interact with BYU scholars. Many of these theologians have openly disparaged apologists who have written on Mormonism in the past. The earlier apologists tend to view most of these theologians as progressive Evangelicals. This is not without warrant. I recently contacted one of these theologians on Facebook. I told him I had several of Robert Millet's books and asked him for recommendations for understanding Mormonism. Here is what he wrote:
 

Quote

 

Millet is a popular writer and theologically informed. General Authorities read his work, so his work is influential. The development and popularization of his views on grace & works (along with Robinson's) represent an important development in Mormon theology. Of his books, I think The Mormon Faith (Shadow Mountain) is the most helpful for understanding Mormon thought; it addresses some issues his others books do not.

The best overview of Mormon theology from an LDS writer is Terryl Givens, Wrestling the Angel (OUP). He's also co-edited the just released Oxford Handbook on Mormonism--very helpful resource.

 

He also linked me to this bibliography from a fellow who teaches at Utah Valley State University:

http://www.uvu.edu/religiousstudies/docs/mct15_syllabus.pdf