Kevin C's review of Taves, Revelatory Events.

[Kevin Christensen]

As promised a while back, my long review of Ann Taves Revelatory Events, titled, "Playing to an Audience."

http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/playing-to-an-audience-a-review-of-revelatory-events/

I managed to get this done in the midst of getting our Bethel Park reader to sell, finding a new place in Canonsburg, getting the new place ready to live in and moved to, and dealing with my wife's summer knee replacement.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

 

[Okrahomer]

I am in awe of the sheer weight of your scholarship and reasoning power.  I was wondering--if you are comfortable with revealing it--if the former believer you reference in the article is someone from this board?  I realize this is probably a somewhat inconsequential question and makes no difference to anyone but me; but I think it would be worth knowing if/how your review alters that person's previous conclusions.  Will Taves be responding to your critique?

[clarkgoble]

I'll check it out later tonight. Been waiting for this.

[RevTestament]

9 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

As promised a while back, my long review of Ann Taves Revelatory Events, titled, "Playing to an Audience."

http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/playing-to-an-audience-a-review-of-revelatory-events/

I managed to get this done in the midst of getting our Bethel Park reader to sell, finding a new place in Canonsburg, getting the new place ready to live in and moved to, and dealing with my wife's summer knee replacement.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

" Because I’m an unpaid amateur, doing what I do out of gratitude, love, and passion, none of that professional aspect applies. I know what I write may have both positive and negative consequences, affecting not only the lives of individuals who read what I offer but also the lives of their loves ones in the present, their children, and generations unborn. So doing what I do involves an inescapable responsibility, yet I cannot take myself too seriously because I know that for all my effort, anyone can dismiss all I have done with a mere “So what?” But most of all, I cannot forget that as a believer, my audience also includes God."

Amen, bra

[mfbukowski]

10 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

As promised a while back, my long review of Ann Taves Revelatory Events, titled, "Playing to an Audience."

http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/playing-to-an-audience-a-review-of-revelatory-events/

I managed to get this done in the midst of getting our Bethel Park reader to sell, finding a new place in Canonsburg, getting the new place ready to live in and moved to, and dealing with my wife's summer knee replacement.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

 

Dang dude, I am impressed!

[Kevin Christensen]

17 hours ago, Okrahomer said:

I am in awe of the sheer weight of your scholarship and reasoning power.  I was wondering--if you are comfortable with revealing it--if the former believer you reference in the article is someone from this board?  I realize this is probably a somewhat inconsequential question and makes no difference to anyone but me; but I think it would be worth knowing if/how your review alters that person's previous conclusions.  Will Taves be responding to your critique?

Yes, it was someone on this board who brought Revelatory Events to my attention, but as to whether my review alters that persons conclusions, I don't know.   I do know that, for example, Vogel has not been persuaded by my reviews of his stuff.  Same for my response to the CES letter and the responses of Runnells and Stephens to me.  I wrote my response to Deconstructing Mormonism out of respect and concern for Kerry Shirts, but I don't know whether he even read it.  Riskas was dismissive at Amazon, but then again, I was not impressed by his dismissal.   I expected an uproar over my Square Two essay, A Mormon Rashomon, and got utter silence.   Robert Heinlein once commented that publishing is like "dropping feathers down a well."  That has often been my experience, and the response to my Paradigms Regained was something of an anomaly.

Decades back, post mission, when I went to visit a friend of lapsed faith with copies of Lehi in the Desert and Madsen's Eternal Man in hand, after a bit of conversation, I realized that as relevant as they were to me, they would have no effect on the other person.  All of that experience has influenced why Kuhn had such and impact on me, as it helps me at least see the shape of the chaos, the constraints behind the patterns of differing readings, differing valuations, and draw a bit of meaning that I, as least, see as an underlying order.

Thanks for the gracious comments.

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

[mfbukowski]

5 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Yes, it was someone on this board who brought Revelatory Events to my attention, but as to whether my review alters that persons conclusions, I don't know.   I do know that, for example, Vogel has not been persuaded by my reviews of his stuff.  Same for my response to the CES letter and the responses of Runnells and Stephens to me.  I wrote my response to Deconstructing Mormonism out of respect and concern for Kerry Shirts, but I don't know whether he even read it.  Riskas was dismissive at Amazon, but then again, I was not impressed by his dismissal.   I expected an uproar over my Square Two essay, A Mormon Rashomon, and got utter silence.   Robert Heinlein once commented that publishing is like "dropping feathers down a well."  That has often been my experience, and the response to my Paradigms Regained was something of an anomaly.

Decades back, post mission, when I went to visit a friend of lapsed faith with copies of Lehi in the Desert and Madsen's Eternal Man in hand, after a bit of conversation, I realized that as relevant as they were to me, they would have no effect on the other person.  All of that experience has influenced why Kuhn had such and impact on me, as it helps me at least see the shape of the chaos, the constraints behind the patterns of differing readings, differing valuations, and draw a bit of meaning that I, as least, see as an underlying order.

Thanks for the gracious comments.

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

I have had discussions with Vogel before and he seems to be unacquainted with Kuhnian thinking.  He thinks in a more positivistic manner, like say, Riskas or like the line of thought presented in Paul Boghossian's "Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism".

I think your "Sophic Box" article successfully refutes that entire way of thinking anyway, as well as your references to the Perry Scheme.  https://www.mormoninterpreter.com/sophic-box-and-mantic-vista-a-review-of-deconstructing-mormonism/

In my view you either "get" relativism or you don't and once you do, positivism simply is inadequate on its face and not much even worth the effort to argue against it, except to help others "get better"

I have not had a chance to get into your full article here, but after a quick skim, I think you hit the nail on the head yet once again.  I hadn't thought of Taves's proposal as a kind of question-begging exercise, but if my skim of your article correctly captures its drift,  after reflecting a bit, I think you are exactly right.  Hadn't thought of it that way, but I think you hit it!

You must read this article which is hard to find on the internet- and I am willing to scan it and send it to you- it makes some of the same points you make- not against Taves but in general it takes the same position you have taken here against Taves, against positivism.  All I have is a paper copy with my notes 

"Hitting the Strawman, Missing the Parade" Sebastian Deterling- Hans Bredlow Institute Hamburg Germany.  Published in Constructivist Foundations- Vol. 6, No. 2

Quote

Now within analytic philosophy itself, epistemic relationism has found support in Richard Fumerton's "norm circularity" argument: according to our own standards of rationality, we cannot justify an epistemic system by recurring to that very system.  However, if we try to justify our own epistemic system, w enecessarily invoke its principles in the course of doing so" (78-79)

Further in the same article, Deterling makes this point:

Quote

The same holds true at least in part for Boghossians reading of Rorty.  Indeed absolute description-dependence- when read through a dualistic representationalist/correspondationalist lens- leads to logic absurdities.  But that misses the whole point that the project of Rorty is to replace a representationalist dualism of facts versus descriptions/observations/propositions with a thoroughly pragmatist account. By necessity, his conceptualisation of "knowledge" and "truth" cannot be about "correspondence" with any "facts" and later Rorty explicitly held that "truth" is a concept withoout any substansive content.  Even if one does not subscribe to Rorty's pragmatism, it would be easy to show how description dependence read through a nondualist ontology, coherence theory of truth, or a non-naive replacement of truth with viability would evade the absurdities Boghossian points out.  Ironically, Boghossian appears to be so entrenched in his own paradigm as to be unable to grasp that sense could be made of the positions he opposes from within another paradigm.

These seem to me to be direct support for your argument, even if of course the subject matter is different.

It is very hard to avoid circular arguments when paradigms collide precisely because..... paradigms are colliding! 

I am continually engaged on this board- today in fact- with presenting another paradigm to others here who are not acquainted with thinking differently and so I am constantly confronting communication problems precisely with these issues.

Edited February 3, 2018 by mfbukowski

[Bob Crockett]

On 2/2/2018 at 12:05 PM, Kevin Christensen said:

As promised a while back, my long review of Ann Taves Revelatory Events, titled, "Playing to an Audience."

http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/playing-to-an-audience-a-review-of-revelatory-events/

I managed to get this done in the midst of getting our Bethel Park reader to sell, finding a new place in Canonsburg, getting the new place ready to live in and moved to, and dealing with my wife's summer knee replacement.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

 

 

I realize I'm just a dog barking in the manger, and you are highly revered here, and further that I do like your stuff, but can you write any piece without invoking "Margaret Barker" or the word "paradigm"?

No personal insults.  Disagree with opinions, not the words someone chooses to use. ~Mods

[mfbukowski]

How about if no one uses the word "Mormon" on this board?

Isn't the point of this board to talk about Mormon paradigms?   And scholars who uphold them even if the are non-Mormons?

Let's ban talking about the church at all! 

Let's ban Brant Gardner from talking about Book of Mormon History.  That guy is ALWAYS talking about the same thing- what a bore!

I mean I want to hear about what he did last summer or how his Christmas was- dont you?

 

Edited February 3, 2018 by mfbukowski

[Bob Crockett]

"Paradigm" is a meaningless buzzword, like "narrative."  

Margaret Barker lacks a real doctorate.  Her conclusions conflict with elemental teachings in church manuals about Josiah and the temple.  

Just two minor observations.  I like what Kevin has to say, but that doesn't mean I agree with it all. 

[TOmNossor]

On 2/2/2018 at 2:05 PM, Kevin Christensen said:

As promised a while back, my long review of Ann Taves Revelatory Events, titled, "Playing to an Audience."

http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/playing-to-an-audience-a-review-of-revelatory-events/

I managed to get this done in the midst of getting our Bethel Park reader to sell, finding a new place in Canonsburg, getting the new place ready to live in and moved to, and dealing with my wife's summer knee replacement.

Kevin,

Thank you!  I have enjoyed many (most or all probably) articles.

I want to ask you about this from Taves:

"Research becomes polemical when we apply methods and theories to others that we are unwilling to apply to our own beliefs and practices. It is good to test our methods and theories on ourselves to see what it is like to be studied in this way."

I have not finished your entire review yet, but will.  Does Taves believe here methodology leaves some supernatural Catholicism where the Pope is infallible and the Eucharist is Transubstantiated and ...?   If she does, that seems quite remarkable to me.  If you can answer that question, I would be thrilled.

 

I will now meander on about why I ask.

 

I am a former Catholic.  I didn't leave Catholicism because of problems with Catholicism.  I left ignorant of what a powerful case Catholicism makes.  I left because I could tell there was something to the CoJCoLDS that I could not well explain without acknowledging God's hand.  But, I have never left behind God.

When I dialogue with folks who deny that God exists or is active in the universe, I offer very different concepts and ideas.  I have spent a lot of time reading the "four horsemen" of atheism, and I think they fail to deal with my personal experiences.  I am a theist because of what I have found "in my mailbox" (C.S. Lewis's term).  It is possible that I live in the matrix.  All I experience is a product of a computer program and I am a brain in a vat, but I think Occum's Razor militates against such a view.  All I experience could be a product of my brain (ala Sam Harris), but I think Occum's Razor militates against such a view.

However, when I dialogue with theist, I often see how their criticisms decimate IMO their particular faith long before they impact mine.

Anyway, I wonder what type of Catholicism Taves could embrace that would not be explained (ie dismissed) naturalistically by her methods.

Charity, TOm

[Bob Crockett]

4 hours ago, Bob Crockett said:

I realize I'm just a dog barking in the manger, and you are highly revered here, and further that I do like your stuff, but can you write any piece without invoking "Margaret Barker" or the word "paradigm"?

No personal insults.  Disagree with opinions, not the words someone chooses to use. ~Mods

So sorry.  I must be tone deaf.   Rather than offend, I'll beat it out of here.  BC

[Kevin Christensen]

17 hours ago, Bob Crockett said:

"Paradigm" is a meaningless buzzword, like "narrative."  

Margaret Barker lacks a real doctorate.  Her conclusions conflict with elemental teachings in church manuals about Josiah and the temple.  

Just two minor observations.  I like what Kevin has to say, but that doesn't mean I agree with it all. 

Disagreement is fine, and goes with the territory.

On Barker's doctorate:

http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/1241/archbishop-of-canterbury-awards-lambeth-degrees

To me "paradigm" has a formal definition that I have often quoted when I use it.  A standard example of scientific work that establishes a method, problem field, and standard of solution.  If other people use it as a meaningless buzzword, that indicates that they have not paid attention to formal definitions.  And, while I have a mere Bachelor of Arts degree from San Jose State University, it is in English.  So I know something about "narrative," and I have profited from reading things like Robert Alter on The Art of Biblical Narrative.

Bob and I have disagreed on a number of things, but I heartily endorse his work on Mountain Meadows.  He offers good examples of scholarly work, using valid methods in dealing with significant historical problems, and offers what I find to be convincing solutions.  His work casts powerful light and creates a compelling narrative regarding what happened.

It is possible to dismiss Einstein as a "mere patent clerk" or the Russia investigation as a "witch hunt."  In both cases, the whole point is depend on paradigms to do the work via an example embodied in "mere patent clerk" or "witch hunt" where the method, problem field, and standard of solution offered strive to direct attention away from one set of information and direction of inquiry and toward another.  The same words, Jesus observes, may produce wildly different yields, depending on soil, nurture and context.  The different teachers of religion, Joseph Smith observed, can understand the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling questions by referring just to them.

Welcome to the world in which we live.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

[Kevin Christensen]

18 hours ago, TOmNossor said:

Kevin,

Thank you!  I have enjoyed many (most or all probably) articles.

I want to ask you about this from Taves:

"Research becomes polemical when we apply methods and theories to others that we are unwilling to apply to our own beliefs and practices. It is good to test our methods and theories on ourselves to see what it is like to be studied in this way."

I have not finished your entire review yet, but will.  Does Taves believe here methodology leaves some supernatural Catholicism where the Pope is infallible and the Eucharist is Transubstantiated and ...?   If she does, that seems quite remarkable to me.  If you can answer that question, I would be thrilled.

 

I will now meander on about why I ask.

 

I am a former Catholic.  I didn't leave Catholicism because of problems with Catholicism.  I left ignorant of what a powerful case Catholicism makes.  I left because I could tell there was something to the CoJCoLDS that I could not well explain without acknowledging God's hand.  But, I have never left behind God.

When I dialogue with folks who deny that God exists or is active in the universe, I offer very different concepts and ideas.  I have spent a lot of time reading the "four horsemen" of atheism, and I think they fail to deal with my personal experiences.  I am a theist because of what I have found "in my mailbox" (C.S. Lewis's term).  It is possible that I live in the matrix.  All I experience is a product of a computer program and I am a brain in a vat, but I think Occum's Razor militates against such a view.  All I experience could be a product of my brain (ala Sam Harris), but I think Occum's Razor militates against such a view.

However, when I dialogue with theist, I often see how their criticisms decimate IMO their particular faith long before they impact mine.

Anyway, I wonder what type of Catholicism Taves could embrace that would not be explained (ie dismissed) naturalistically by her methods.

Charity, TOm

Hi Tom,

Professor Taves would be the best one to answer the question.  But part of reason for my title comes from the way Taves talks about how audience expectations changes the way she herself teaches Catholocism, that is, she teaches differently at a Catholic school, than she does at a secular University.  And just as there are lots of different kinds of Mormon interpretations, there are also a range of Catholic interpretations, ranging from literal belief to celebration of tradition and community and out right skepticism under social conformity.   But a secular approach to Catholicism is, by definition, not Orthodox.  Though the concept of Orthodoxy in any faith tradition is inevitably in tension with the notion of an open-ended search for "further light and knowledge."

I quoted from one of Taves's essays that also has this:

Quote

Most of us, whether clergy or academics, have multiple shifting identities –

professional and personal - that surface to varying degrees in different contexts. Like

persons moving across cultures, we, adopt different roles, play by different rules, and

fulfill different obligations in each of these different contexts. Many of us, I suspect, take

this for granted and know how to do this, without necessarily spending a lot of time

reflecting on how we do this or what marks the boundaries between one role and the

other.

http://www.religion.ucsb.edu/Faculty/taves/GTU-FinalLecture.pdf

Most of the time when she explores this kind of thing, she is reporting to academics, which means, in that kind of paper, she takes the role of an academic in an academic community.  And clearly, her books demonstrate an effort to dissect religion and religious experience to a set of "building blocks" that different people and communities assemble and value in their own ways.  But how she feels when she attends Mass and participates in Catholic ritual and community, is something inherently personal, and a very different process than dissection.  So I will not speculate. 

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

 

[mfbukowski]

On 2/3/2018 at 12:51 PM, Bob Crockett said:

"Paradigm" is a meaningless buzzword, like "narrative."  

Margaret Barker lacks a real doctorate.  Her conclusions conflict with elemental teachings in church manuals about Josiah and the temple.  

Just two minor observations.  I like what Kevin has to say, but that doesn't mean I agree with it all. 

"Paradigm" is a meaningless buzzword to people who have no clue what it means and what a revolutionary idea it is.  In my opinion you do not have the "standing" to agree or disagree with what Kevin knows about Kuhn and his importance and this comment betrays your lack of knowledge.

Kuhn has popularized another view of science coming out of Pragmatism which has been ignored and which makes fundamental changes to the way many view the philosophy of science.  It makes the man in the street see it the way professionals in the field have seen it and amplifies the view with new details about paradigm formation which are totally original.

And Barker, a non-Mormon scholar gives us new perspectives that need to be included in church manuals?    The fact is that she AMPLIFIES the Mormon perspective and verifies the historicity of our views helps our position even if her perspective as a non-member is not precisely like ours

That gives us credibility and the fact that you don't see that betrays your lack of understanding of how much that increases our credibility.

Imagine a non-Mormon scholar's view "conflicting" with a Mc Conkie, fundamentalistic  interpretation in the Book of Mormon- while acknowledging that the BOM was "real", or else the difference would not even exist, because there can be no disagreement about what does not really exist?

Would that help our case?   Of course it would!!!   How can you NOT see that??

[TOmNossor]

8 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Hi Tom,

Professor Taves would be the best one to answer the question.  But part of reason for my title comes from the way Taves talks about how audience expectations changes the way she herself teaches Catholocism, that is, she teaches differently at a Catholic school, than she does at a secular University.  And just as there are lots of different kinds of Mormon interpretations, there are also a range of Catholic interpretations, ranging from literal belief to celebration of tradition and community and out right skepticism under social conformity.   But a secular approach to Catholicism is, by definition, not Orthodox.  Though the concept of Orthodoxy in any faith tradition is inevitably in tension with the notion of an open-ended search for "further light and knowledge."

I quoted from one of Taves's essays that also has this:

http://www.religion.ucsb.edu/Faculty/taves/GTU-FinalLecture.pdf

Most of the time when she explores this kind of thing, she is reporting to academics, which means, in that kind of paper, she takes the role of an academic in an academic community.  And clearly, her books demonstrate an effort to dissect religion and religious experience to a set of "building blocks" that different people and communities assemble and value in their own ways.  But how she feels when she attends Mass and participates in Catholic ritual and community, is something inherently personal, and a very different process than dissection.  So I will not speculate. 

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

 

Thank you for the response.

I tend to believe that there are many folks who reject ALL that is properly called supernatural and claim to be a LDS or a Catholic.  I guess I would not know if Taves is such a person, but it seems extraordinarily unlikely that her secular methodologies would result in Catholicism being supernatural while Mormonism is properly explained away.  

Charity, TOm

[clarkgoble]

16 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

To me "paradigm" has a formal definition that I have often quoted when I use it.  A standard example of scientific work that establishes a method, problem field, and standard of solution.  If other people use it as a meaningless buzzword, that indicates that they have not paid attention to formal definitions.  And, while I have a mere Bachelor of Arts degree from San Jose State University, it is in English.  So I know something about "narrative," and I have profited from reading things like Robert Alter on The Art of Biblical Narrative.

Not to go down a tangent, but I'll admit quite a bit of dissatisfaction with the term "paradigm." Kuhn himself recognized the problem of the term with his late followup. (I think this is in The Essential Tension but my copy is in storage right now) In Structure he simply uses the term in too many ways and too broadly. This leads to equivocation.  Since then of course people have tried to tighten things up with ideas like schemas that allow a given theory have meaning. Even if I find myself a bit skeptical of paradigms except when speaking loosely, there is a sense in which theories are tied together and statements are interpreted in light of those other theories. 

While of course apologists are completely right that the assumptions (theories) we bring with us to interpret data shape the data, I do worry we push "paradigm" a bit much. Ultimately it becomes far too easy to simply slip any theory in as paradigm as a way of avoiding critique. I'm not saying you're doing that - just that there's a strong danger in apologetics of a slippery slope. At a certain point why do we accept certain theories and reject others. Kuhn was arguing this wasn't simple but fairly complex. Examples like Copernican theory versus Ptolemy's were far from as straightforward as most assume. (Ptolemic astronomy for years had far better accuracy than Copernican - it was much more Kepler than made heliocentrism simple. However typically the cases where we as Mormons raise paradigms aren't the cases where we have hard data - unlike Kuhn's examples. So I think we have to be careful. Kuhn's arguments seem very apt for science. They seem very unapt for dealing with the arguments of source criticism, form criticism, or where we should apply reductive naturalism to phenomena. I believe God can act, yet I'm very skeptical when people inject angels or magic into normal phenomena. So something else must be going on. 

Put an other way, most apologists adopt a fairly typical scientific world view and look askew at people like No Death Before the Fall advocates or people who dismiss scientific evidence of various sorts. Why do we pick that particular halfway place between those embracing strong supernatural views and distrust of science and those who are reductive naturalists rejecting interventionist spiritual phenomena? I think our critics on both side have more we have to answer that paradigm lets us attempt to avoid.

Edited February 5, 2018 by clarkgoble

[Kevin Christensen]

Hi Clark,

The second edition of Structure had a recognition and response to the the range of definitions of "paradigm" in the first edition.  I use the second.  And Ian Barbour's Myths, Models and Paradigm has a chapter on that particular debate, and that leads him to define a paradigm as a standard example of scientific work that embodies a method, problem field, and standard of solution.

If there are some apologists who slip in any theory as a paradigm as a way of avoiding critique, can you make a specific, well supported case that that is what I do?  (There is a website out there what claims my formula is "Kuhn therefore Moroni."  My response was literally "sheesh!")   I've always been very formal and structured and specific in using Kuhn and Barbour. 

So in my essay, I quote Taves in light of Barbour's definition of a paradigm.

Quote

Based on this reconstruction, a naturalistic account would need to explain (1) the rapid flow of words that were “known” but seemed like they were not their own; (2) their ability to control the process, specifically to stop and start and shift modalities; and (3) their execution of a complex overall plan without evident planning. (250)

How does mentioning this specific method, problem field, and standard of solution contextualized in terms of highly hypnotizable people and spirit writing constitute an attempt to avoid criticism? I'm specifically comparing that method with Nibley on Blass for the Renaissance method for testing purportedly historical documents.  Taves describes the problem of the Book of Mormon essentially as no more than the need to explain something that is large and complex.  Content to her is not secondary, rather, content is basically irrelevant.  And Jerusalem 600BCE is not even mentioned.  I'm inviting the use of Kuhn in problem definition and solution, accuracy of key predictions, comprehensiveness and coherence, fruitfulness, aesthetics, and future promise.  How, specifically, am I using Kuhn to avoid criticism when in practice, I use Kuhn to focus criticism where it should be most relevant?

In Language in Thought and Action, Hyakawa talks about the need to move up and down level of abstraction, going from general to specific and from specific to general.  I provide specific examples to illustrate general points, and define my general points with specific examples.   I'm willing to accept criticism, but in order to benefit, I need something specific.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Edited February 5, 2018 by Kevin Christensen

[stemelbow]

hi Kevin,

I have not read Taves book, but it gets a little more interesting after reading your review.  I really enjoyed your review, btw.

Quote

I notice that Lucy Smith did not mention those themes as part of her late dictated memory. Comparison of the set of common themes that emerge in Underwood’s survey, which includes Joseph Smith’s surprisingly rare comments on the Book of Mormon text and those published by Lucy Smith on Joseph Smith’s evening recitals, shows little overlap, if any. This circumstance ought to be mentioned as a puzzle, even if we have no way of definitively resolving it in light of current records.

I've always found Lucy's claim of Joseph's story telling before the Book Of Mormon came out (in English at least) interesting.  It seems to me you spend quite a lot of time questioning whether Lucy's claim of Joseph telling stories was true.  I don't really see much reason to question that.  

you had said, in relation to this:

Quote

This is to convey a period of preparation and incubation, to get around the problem of Joseph composing a large and complex document in just the two months of final dictation without recourse to anything like Schucman’s decades of formal education and then taking a decade more to write down the course.

I question whether it wise to argue against Lucy's memory and Taves' use of it.  We have ltitle else to go on, other than, it seems, William's claim that Joseph simply couldn't have made up stories, he was too simple minded and all that.  

So, am I misunderstanding this?  Are you questioning Lucy's memory?  And if so, how is this in response to Taves (haven't read her book, I guess I remain confused in what we find here).

 

Later on you mention the rather meek sounding list of books Taves consulted for her review of the Book of Mormon, but I'm not sure it's useful to critique her on that.  Many times when books are referenced, as they pertain to the subject at hand, the author does not think they are relevant for whatever reason.  Taking issue with her in that she doesn't reference enough pro-LDS books really should be a question about whether she rejects the books and works you prefer and why she, she does, rejects them.  I hope that makes sense.  It is far more useful when you use other sources to say why her lack of referencing certain works is problematic, which I grant you do to some extent.  But, in my mind, it should have been left at that.  

[hope_for_things]

On 2/2/2018 at 12:05 PM, Kevin Christensen said:

As promised a while back, my long review of Ann Taves Revelatory Events, titled, "Playing to an Audience."

http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/playing-to-an-audience-a-review-of-revelatory-events/

I managed to get this done in the midst of getting our Bethel Park reader to sell, finding a new place in Canonsburg, getting the new place ready to live in and moved to, and dealing with my wife's summer knee replacement.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

 

Thanks Kevin, I was looking forward to your review, and I appreciate you posting it.  I have a couple of points I'd love your thoughts on.  

Quote

In this naturalistic context, her reference to a “power to transform” comes across like saying “placebos can at times help people in pain” — though not, of course, the people who know what is really going on, who know the placebo is not real medicine, that is, her intended secular audience, who have their own pre-existing and unquestioned group assessment of the true value of religion.

I didn't have this impression at all from reading her words.  I don't think she's being condescending at all.  

Also, as far as placebo, there is significant real value found in the placebo effect.  It sounds like you have a negative opinion of placebo as "not real medicine".   If proven medical treatments are available and someone is prescribed a placebo in place of these medical treatments, then this is a problem.  But I don't have this same general opinion about placebo.  It is very real and an amazing phenomena if you think about it, that shows some of the abilities our bodies have that we aren't consciously aware of.  Placebo where no effective medical treatments exist is a very useful and real thing.  

Quote

But what is not addressed in her account is how one should go about deciding which approach is better and not just “better” for the needs and expectations of a particular audience (when agreement with a given ideological position defines “better”) but a better explanation of the subject regardless of the audience.

Actually, I think this would run contrary to Taves approach to keep the dialogue open and academic.  This is something I really appreciate about everything I've read or listened to from Taves.  By actively avoiding getting into this category of value judgment, she is able to discuss topics like this in a neutral way that allows both believers and non-believers to engage.  

Quote

What drew my attention to Taves’s book were comments by an LDS reader on an Internet board who reported that Revelatory Events gave her a way to explain away the claims of Joseph Smith and all other religious claims in purely secular terms and let her walk away from the [Page 70]community, assured she was leaving behind nothing valid or of value or with worthwhile power to transform. 

Just curious if you're referring to me?  No worries either way, but that definitely is not how I would characterize my perspective about Mormonism, or my experience reading this book.  I'm personally involved in the faith still and I don't think there is nothing valid or valuable about Mormonism.  Sometimes I question whether the value in religion isn't something that could be found in greater proportion through other sources, and I wonder if there isn't a net negative impact.  I'm constantly thinking in terms of cost/benefit propositions.  

People join religions and walk away from religions every day.  I respect those decisions as valid for each individual on a personal level.  

One other thing, I'm not sure why this touches a nerve for me so much, but I'm somewhat sensitive to the stereotyping by apologists of those who feel like they should leave Mormonism for whatever reason, but particularly faith crisis or historical criticism reasons.  These dismissive stereotypes I find offensive.  If someone does read a book by Taves and that contributes to them disengaging with Mormonism, then I'm giving them a lot of credit for a willingness to engage in a somewhat scholarly written text because they take their faith that seriously that they would invest the time and effort into really thinking things out.  Good on them.  This is something we should celebrate more, people who are willing to seriously question their religion and do some research and wrestle with their beliefs.  

I haven't finished the review, the next few pages sound to me like you're not reviewing the book as much as you're drifting into traditional apologetics, which I assume is appealing to your audience in the Interpreter.  I typically like book reviews that point out good and bad things about books and try to be somewhat even handed about strengths and weaknesses.  So far, this sounds like a very different approach to a book review.  I don't often read Interpreter articles because I haven't found the tone to be very even handed.  Unfortunately, this is so far reinforcing my earlier formed perspective about the Interpreter, and reminding me why I don't like it.  

I'll let you know what other comments/questions I have as I complete the book review.  Thanks

 

[hope_for_things]

On 2/2/2018 at 12:05 PM, Kevin Christensen said:

As promised a while back, my long review of Ann Taves Revelatory Events, titled, "Playing to an Audience."

http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/playing-to-an-audience-a-review-of-revelatory-events/

I managed to get this done in the midst of getting our Bethel Park reader to sell, finding a new place in Canonsburg, getting the new place ready to live in and moved to, and dealing with my wife's summer knee replacement.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

 

Ok, so I do appreciate where you are coming from better now after finishing the entire review.  Your last couple pages and ending paragraph explain your perspective.  I find it interesting that you brought in the Maxwell Institute and their new direction in contrast to what you're trying to accomplish and what you see as your target audience.  In case you haven't seen it, I've copied in a link of a review of Taves book that was published recently in the Mormon Studies Review and its more in line with the style of book reviews that I'm traditionally familiar with.  

https://mi.byu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/12-Perry-review.pdf

One thing that I think your final paragraph addresses that I find interesting is how you describe the believing audience.  See, I don't fit into this traditional believing audience anymore.  I also don't fit into the anti-Mormon audience either, as I'm still engaging with and seeing value from my Mormonism.  I personally identify well with many of those that you label as "disaffected LDS and secular critics" that you don't seem to like as much.  From my perspective, many of these people don't have an axe to grind against the church, but even if some do have criticisms of it, I try not to look at their work with a jaundiced eye.  

I also want to do the same for your work, and sometimes that presents a challenge because of how you've chosen to characterize paradigms using more tribalistic language.   For example, I'm going to check out Richard L. Anderson's essay "Imitation Gospels and Christ’s Book of Mormon Ministry", thanks to your recommendation, even though in the past I've had similar trouble reading Anderson's work because of his tone.   I try to give both sides a fair shake, the CES letters of the world which has a very clear bias against the church, and the Interpreter essays which very clearly bias the other direction.  Personally I don't like the tone of either side.  I much prefer a more academic and neutral style in the middle and I think Taves book is a good example of a scholar that works in this respectful middle ground.  

One other problem with the traditional apologetic approaches, I just don't see them working very well for the younger generations in an information age.  I think that engaging with the secular is an approach that might help religions to relate more as it seems to me that conservative religions are pushing against the secular and drawing dividing lines, and in the process not relating to the rising generations.  

 

[Nevo]

2 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

I haven't finished the review, the next few pages sound to me like you're not reviewing the book as much as you're drifting into traditional apologetics, which I assume is appealing to your audience in the Interpreter.

Yup, this is an apologetic piece posing as a book review. Kevin's not interested in engaging Taves on her own terms but rather in pointing out how his perspective—sorry, "paradigm"—is superior to hers. As usual, it all boils down to Kevin seeing farther and better because Barker, Nibley, etc. Taves, meanwhile, is blinded by her secular prejudices. Taves's treatment of the Book of Mormon is deficient because she didn't start by assuming that the Book of Mormon is exactly what it claims to be, per the rules in Friedrich Blass's 1892 work "Hermeneutik und Kritik." This oversight, in turn, has led her to neglect the classic-FARMS Book of Mormon scholarship that Kevin finds so persuasive. Anyway, the "review" should play well to Interpreter's audience.

Edited February 5, 2018 by Nevo

[hope_for_things]

2 hours ago, Nevo said:

Yup, this is an apologetic piece posing as a book review. Kevin's not interested in engaging Taves on her own terms but rather in pointing out how his perspective—sorry, "paradigm"—is superior to hers. As usual, it all boils down to Kevin seeing farther and better because Barker, Nibley, etc. Taves, meanwhile, is blinded by her secular prejudices. Taves's treatment of the Book of Mormon is deficient because she didn't start by assuming that the Book of Mormon is exactly what it claims to be, per the rules in Friedrich Blass's 1892 work "Hermeneutik und Kritik." This oversight, in turn, has led her to neglect the classic-FARMS Book of Mormon scholarship that Kevin finds so persuasive. Anyway, the "review" should play well to Interpreter's audience.

I think he got a little too focused on the BoM in the review as I don't believe Taves was directly using the BoM as a comparison.  If I remember correctly, she spends more time reviewing specific early events and texts in Mormon history, things like D&C 3 and the first vision narratives, and doesn't spend much time with the BoM at all.  

She's making observations about the development of the earliest revelatory voice in each of these movements, and how group dynamics helped form the response to this voice in a collective way.  This is her central thesis if I were to distill it down in my opinion.  I think Kevin largely misses this important point as he gets too focuses on specific points of critique.  I think this is a very relevant point for Mormons studies scholars to consider especially considering how we think about the other figures in early Mormonism that influenced the early movement.  Joseph's family, Harris, Cowdery, Whitmers, Rigdon, etc.  All these people had profound influence shaping the Mormon movement.  

This idea that you have to first believe the claims of correlated Mormonism in order to critique the BoM makes absolutely no sense to me.  Is this a universal standard?  Do we have to believe literalist claims of every faith community and their traditional texts before making observations about them?  

[clarkgoble]

10 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

If there are some apologists who slip in any theory as a paradigm as a way of avoiding critique, can you make a specific, well supported case that that is what I do?  (There is a website out there what claims my formula is "Kuhn therefore Moroni."  My response was literally "sheesh!")   I've always been very formal and structured and specific in using Kuhn and Barbour. 

Just to be clear again, this isn't pointing at you, but rather my discomfort with over use of the term. Of course we can try and narrow the term down as you do but I'm not convinced all do. Alan Goff and I have discussed this at various points. Even using your use, we can then ask what justifies are particular paradigm. Even within an apologetic framework I think you'd agree not all agree even on methodology. If we are going to throw paradigm around, I think perhaps we should look at the diversity of paradigms and argue for particular ones. I've not yet had time to read your paper - and I usually love your stuff. So again please don't take this as a critique of your work. Rather this is just me expressing a certain discomfort with a way arguments have been going.

BTW - Scientific American's interview with Kuhn back in the 90's is a good overview of all the issues I'm concerned with. There's a certain ambiguity in his work. I should note that Hogan gets Peirce fundamentally wrong in a comment within that article. The passage I was thinking of was in the later postscript to Structures not The Essential Tension although in they essay "Second Thoughts on Paradigms" (293).

This NYTs article on Kuhn also does a good job outlining the problems with "paradigm" along with standard criticisms while still being quite accessible and even handed.

Kuhn's ideas are in many ways similar to the later Wittgenstein and many have been influenced in that direction. (I suspect Mark favors that a great deal as well as some of the other influences on Kuhn). How to apply that to apologetics might be an interesting question. Although I don't want to go too far down a tangent. (Again I hope to read your essay tonight - I'd planned to do so on the weekend but got sick)

Edited February 6, 2018 by clarkgoble

[Kevin Christensen]

Nevo:

Of course I didn't engage Taves on her own terms.  The point was to explore the implications of her terms for seeing and to test the strength of her explanation by comparing it to other explanations I know about.  To do that I had to not just read her book carefully and ever after uncritically trust her evident omniscience and infallibility because as a PhD, she must surely know everything worth knowing, and has seen everything worth seeing.  I had to make comparisons that showed the insight and persuasiveness of her arguments in relative terms.  If it happens that the depth of her insight into the Book of Mormon is that it is "large" and "complex", like other large and complex books,  has a bit of distinctive language, chiasmus that she compares to Schucman's use of iambic pentameter in another large and complex book, then it seem to me it might be both possible and meaningful to test the strength of that explanation.  And if she directly compares the composition of the Book of Mormon to Enid Blyton's composition of children's books like The Wishing Tree and Noddy Goes to Toyland, then it seem to me that significant differences in the actual content rather than just the similarity of words in bulk, are worth a bit of examination.  Or do the recent stories about LiDAR also cast unexpected light on possible settings of Noddy Goes to Toyland?

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/02/maya-laser-lidar-guatemala-pacunam/?beta=true

Though I mentioned her use of Blyton, I didn't make this particular point in the essay.  Which is to say, I'm just offering some observations.  Not all possible observations from all possible perspectives.

Just saying,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

 

 

Edited January 8, 2020 by Kevin Christensen
missing word