mfbukowski Posted June 1, 2020 Posted June 1, 2020 28 minutes ago, stemelbow said: I don't get any of your questions or how they apply. This is about the passage in the BoM that talks about there coming upon the people a skin of blackness, put there by God in order to keep these cursed people from being enticing to his people. I don't see how Alma saves it, so I commented. It shows that black and white often applies to spiritual status, not race or color. Please actually listen to the videos Kevin posted. It's as simple as that. You are not using the sources provided to understand his points, so of course your question has not been answered I have had a few personal interactions with Marvin Perkins, setting up Stake firesides etc- he is local to the LA area, and he is a tremendous force for good, and an inspired man.
stemelbow Posted June 1, 2020 Posted June 1, 2020 1 hour ago, Ahab said: Something they wore that showed or signified that those people had rejected God, which fact would not be enticing to people who want to do God's will. And the text doesn't say that skin/clothing was "put there by God". The text says God caused that skin of blackness to come upon them. Which I interpret as God inspired them to put some kind of clothing on. Which wasn't much, but at least it was something. The clothing we wear generally says something about us, and we who have made covenants with God wear clothing to show that we have. Alright. Seems unreasonable to me, but ok.
stemelbow Posted June 1, 2020 Posted June 1, 2020 1 hour ago, mfbukowski said: It shows that black and white often applies to spiritual status, not race or color. Please actually listen to the videos Kevin posted. It's as simple as that. You are not using the sources provided to understand his points, so of course your question has not been answered I have had a few personal interactions with Marvin Perkins, setting up Stake firesides etc- he is local to the LA area, and he is a tremendous force for good, and an inspired man. Thanks Mr. Bukowski. We'll see if my interest and imagination get captured by any of this.
Ahab Posted June 1, 2020 Posted June 1, 2020 1 hour ago, stemelbow said: Alright. Seems unreasonable to me, but ok. Alright. Seems unreasonable to me that you think what I said is unreasonable, but ok.
mfbukowski Posted June 2, 2020 Posted June 2, 2020 (edited) 9 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said: But there is the problem in 2 Nephi 25:1-5, that "no one understands the things of the Jews like unto them unless they are taught after the manner of the things of the Jews". Notice that the problem only emerges when cultural mixing occurs, and that mixing raises the problem of misunderstandings, which means that the statement would not arise in the first place unless the people of Nephi was a mixed group that included people who did not share Nephi's cultural background. The logical error you explain here is THE most ubiquitous mistake, I think, most people make, the mixing of contexts. It is what is called a "category error", sometimes it happens when mixing language games, it happens when we mix paradigms, it happens when we confuse objective evidence with subjective evidence, it happens in the fallacy of "presentism" , when physicalist explanations are mixed with qualia, and on it goes. In the final analysis these are semantic errors. A simple way of putting it is "mixing metaphors" One example would be if one asked oneself if "reality" is out in the world or is it all "in our heads". It is both and neither, as Rorty shows us- surely the causes of perception are "in the world" but what we see in our perceptions is generated within our bodies. In errors in presentism, we mix the thinking of today with the way things have been considered in the past. Suppose there was discussion of the color of virtue- mixing one set of properties with another, mixing a perceptive quality with a cognitive, moral quality. Another example would be an individual watching a marching band going by and then asking "Well I see a bunch of people playing instruments, but where is the "band"? Such a person would be confusing the name of the collective group with the individuals. A practical application for that would be one who has a problem knowing how "one God" can also be three persons. Another is mixing scientific language games with spiritual ones, as we see here all the time and in fact in this particular instance. On one hand we are discussing an objective observation of darker and lighter skin with using the words "dark and light" as metaphors for spiritual purity. Edited June 2, 2020 by mfbukowski 2
Stargazer Posted June 4, 2020 Posted June 4, 2020 When Jesus told the people who followed him that they had to drink his blood and eat his flesh, many of them followed him no longer because they weren't listening with the spirit. They took him literally when it was not at all literal -- and he knew how it would be received: some would listen to his bare words and would be offended, and not listen to the spirit of what he said. They would self-select themselves out of the Kingdom of Heaven. We have seen plenty of examples here in this conversation where the literal must be what was meant, despite the fact that everyone knows that the scriptures frequently are not speaking literally, but figuratively. People are being offered the chance to mishear what is being said, and some run like the wind with the mishearing. And then they call themselves wise. 1
alter idem Posted June 5, 2020 Posted June 5, 2020 On 6/1/2020 at 8:54 AM, stemelbow said: Hey Kevin, Thanks for the response. It was a good one. I don't have any particular comment or concern with what you said there. But, I find a great deal of your argument in your essay problematic by sheer common sense: So your take, and Sproat's, is that God decided to curse the Lamanites with dark colored underpants? So God in his infinite wisdom figured, "I need to curse them. I want them to be not enticing to my chosen favored people. Aha! I'll make them wear black underpants. My chosen won't find that enticing at all. What a grand sore cursing I just devised to put upon them." Um...I have no clue why he thinks Alma 3 should be used to revise 2 Nephi. I mean...it'd be great if the racism was simply taken out. But...pretending its not there just feels silly. I'm guessing I'm missing something, but I simply don't see what that is. You bring up a point of interest. You suggest that the curse was about not being 'enticing ' or attractive to the Nephites; So does that mean that if one isn't generally attracted to people of certain races, they are racist? I've seen it as a matter of preference, and that people/cultures have general standards of beauty or attractiveness. If the Nephites didn't appreciate darker skin (as some cultures do, even today) and God used this preference to further his interests, would that be wrong? Are the writers of the Book of Mormon guilty of racism simply for writing about something that happened? And if it's racist to not be attracted to certain physical features, I'm not sure how one fixes that.
mfbukowski Posted June 6, 2020 Posted June 6, 2020 21 hours ago, alter idem said: You bring up a point of interest. You suggest that the curse was about not being 'enticing ' or attractive to the Nephites; So does that mean that if one isn't generally attracted to people of certain races, they are racist? I've seen it as a matter of preference, and that people/cultures have general standards of beauty or attractiveness. If the Nephites didn't appreciate darker skin (as some cultures do, even today) and God used this preference to further his interests, would that be wrong? Are the writers of the Book of Mormon guilty of racism simply for writing about something that happened? And if it's racist to not be attracted to certain physical features, I'm not sure how one fixes that. We see more and more the use of the phrase " people who look like me." Folks complain about going to a movie and not seeing people who "look like " them. I think it's simply natural imprinting that perhaps it causes us to be attracted to those who look like members of our family already. Is it racist to want to see more people who "look like me"? I hear that phrase a lot lately.
alter idem Posted June 7, 2020 Posted June 7, 2020 On 5/24/2020 at 9:16 PM, Kevin Christensen said: On Friday Interpreter published Table Rules: A Response to Americanist Approaches to the Book of Mormon, from Oxford University Press. https://journal.interpreterfoundation.org/table-rules-a-response-to-americanist-approaches-to-the-book-of-mormon/ Besides a chance to quote Kuhn a lot (what can I say, he's relevant), I also got to promote Ethan Sproat's important 2015 JBMS essay Skins as Garments, and I even quote Toni Morrison on what "political correctness" is really about, and mention Postcolonialism. This is, I think, my 40th LDS publication, ninth at Interpreter, following 13 at Maxwell Institute, 12 at Meridian, and several more in various places. It's odd to see such a long list accumulating over the years, when from my beginnings and training, I shouldn't expect any. But, "When thou are converted, strengthen thy brethren." FWIW Kevin Christensen Canonsburg, PA Excellent article, I really enjoyed it and shared it with a couple of people as well. I went into it, not really sure about the Ethan Sproat theory, but after reading the evidence, to me, he really made his case, and from now on, I'm going to be reading those portions from this point of view. He definitely showed the wrongness of the one guy who said something like; 'when it says skin it means skin.' Well, that's not true, since Sproat proved that with two references--one that was to 'skin' as in a loincloth and the other to epidermis 'skin'. And, this reminded me of something I read years ago, but have not forgotten, about the limited vocabulary in the Book of Mormon. An example is while English has lots of different words to describe bodies of water, the Book of Mormon only uses a limited number of words to describe bodies of water. So 'skin(s)' is also used to describe different things, and he showed the way skins and garments were interchangeable also. Anyway, I'm glad you shared his theory, I'm surprised it wasn't addressed, and IMO, it should be given some consideration. I'm a bit worried about the critical thinking of some of our younger generation of scholars. I'm afraid that political correctness may sometimes be an impediment to indepth, honest scholarship. 4
Ethan Sproat Posted July 16, 2020 Posted July 16, 2020 Hello Kevin, Thank you for your generous review in The Interpreter (and ongoing promotion) of my "Skins as Garments" article. I'd be very interested in corresponding with you about some of my forthcoming Book of Mormon projects, but I am not sure how to contact you (your profile on this message board does not accept personal messages). You can send me a private message on this forum or contact me via the "send a message" link on my UVU professional profile. Thank you again for your insightful analysis on my article and its (lack of) place in current Mormon Studies conversations. Warm Regards, Ethan Sproat
Kevin Christensen Posted July 16, 2020 Author Posted July 16, 2020 (edited) On 7/16/2020 at 11:13 AM, Ethan Sproat said: Hello Kevin, Thank you for your generous review in The Interpreter (and ongoing promotion) of my "Skins as Garments" article. I'd be very interested in corresponding with you about some of my forthcoming Book of Mormon projects, but I am not sure how to contact you (your profile on this message board does not accept personal messages). You can send me a private message on this forum or contact me via the "send a message" link on my UVU professional profile. Thank you again for your insightful analysis on my article and its (lack of) place in current Mormon Studies conversations. Warm Regards, Ethan Sproat Professor Sproat, I just emailed you. My own email is posted at my Interpreter profile. [Correction, not the profile, but in the Author's Index.] By the way, I recently noticed that the download count for "Skins as Garments" at the Scholars Archive has risen to over 1.600, which is far higher than any of my essays there. That suggests to me that the candle is being passed around, adding more and more light where ever it goes. Best, Kevin Christensen Canonsburg, PA Edited July 22, 2020 by Kevin Christensen Correction 3
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