Dan McClellan on Mormon Stories

[Calm]

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

All of them?

And they like all of his work?

Yes, that is exactly what I mean.

[Bernard Gui]

9 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

classic example is the neuroscience study of the nuns (or monks or something religious) praying and certain aspects of the brain lighting up in the action. That's data. But those more non-religious interpreted the data to assume that the nuns were just having a brain experience when describing "Spirit." Meanwhile the nuns interpreted the data as what happens to them physically when God speaks to them spiritually. You can't prove one or the other correct by data alone. We all interpret data based on our contexts. But data doesn't innately support supernatural claims. Basing one faith on this is kinda contradictory to what faith is IMHO

I wonder if God is obliged to respond to prayers to satisfy the demands of scientific investigators. 

[Bernard Gui]

8 hours ago, smac97 said:

As I have noted previously, in my first-hand experience Dan 

• has declared that those people who oppose elective abortion are doing so as a matter of "identity politics,"
• that "opposition to abortion ... fall{s} under the rubric of controlling the agency of women,"
• that this objective ("'controlling the agency of women'") is "firmly embedded in right wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation ... it's a reification of identity politics,"
• that in opposing elective abortion I am "seek{ing} social capital through carrying water for others structuring power against the interests of their social identities,"
• that women who oppose elective abortion are merely pursuing "social capital and/or self-realization,"
• that "the vast majority of the anti-abortion argument is built on a foundation of right wing authoritarian identity politics, which is absolutely aimed at prioritizing the agency of men over women,"
• that there is a "conspiracy" or "movement" afoot to subjugate women and control their agency, and that I am part of this conspiracy, and that this is "absolutely true,"
• that "'men are almost entirely responsible for accidental pregnancies,'"
• that "those who catalyzed America's anti-abortion movement" have/had "underlying racist motivations" for doing so,
• that "{t}he anti-abortion movement overlaps significantly with the white nationalist movement," and so on.

When Dan publicly accused me of "carrying water" for white supremacists and "conspiring" to "subjugate" women, I took those as "personality attacks."  His various categorical imputations of evil motives onto people opposed to abortion also seem like "personality attacks."

I'll see if I can find a few instances of Dan's "take downs" of others that, in my view, are likewise "personality attacks," imputing of evil motives, etc.

Thanks,

-Smac

Dan has done that to other board participants on various issues, too.

[Bernard Gui]

7 hours ago, Doctor Steuss said:

Within critical scholarship, the necessity is to assume no religious text (be it the Koran, the Bible, the Abhidamma Pitaka, the Menog-i Khrad, the Sanghuangjing, the Prgmateia, or any of the thousands of religions and texts that have existed, and will be created in the future) has supernatural elements, like prophecy, or divine communications, or magical powers that can be channeled/harnessed.  

In other words, within the narrow boundaries of the realm of scholarship, no "data" would be considered evidence of supernatural truth claims of a religion and/or text.  The reasoning (at least if I am remembering Dr Higashi's explanation correctly) is that allowing for "supernatural truth claims" of one necessitates that all religions and texts must be granted that same level of allowance, as far as a religious scholarship methodology would be concerned.

We might consider these two examples of several in the Book of Mormon that address this issue.

Quote

2 Nephi 31:3  God speaketh unto men according to their language, unto their understanding.

Alma 29:8 For behold, the Lord doth grant unto all nations, of their own nation and tongue, to teach his word, yea, in wisdom, all that he seeth fit that they should have; therefore we see that the Lord doth counsel in wisdom, according to that which is just and true.

 

 

 

[BlueDreams]

52 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

I wonder if God is obliged to respond to prayers to satisfy the demands of scientific investigators. 

I'm sure God doesn't mind. They're Their kids too. Plus I've supplicated for dumber things

With luv, 

BD 

[Bernard Gui]

23 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

I'm sure God doesn't mind. They're Their kids too. Plus I've supplicated for dumber things

With luv, 

BD 

I’m not so sure that “They” has such obligations. I remember “They” saying something about seeking signs. 😘

Edited December 12, 2024 by Bernard Gui

[Robert F. Smith]

4 hours ago, Calm said:

This is what is taught about the original Bible that can, imo, lead to seeing the Bible as univocal.

It is written later “errors entered the text”, suggesting there were no errors to begin with.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/bible-inerrancy-of?lang=eng#title5

This comes across as univocality to me.  If someone sees it differently, I would love to hear their interpretation on why it doesn’t mean that.

In his The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, Bart Ehrman goes over plenty of instances of forgery in biblical texts -- often by well-meaning scribes.  That is in addition to poor translation quality.  Then we have to contend with the false notion that all scripture says everything in the same way and in the same voice.  I have written a good deal about the proposed metanarratives of the BofM and the Bible, which I will be publishing soon.  What is noteworthy is the wide array of different metanarratives which have been proposed by scholars.  If univocality had any validity that would hardly be likely.  Here is what non-LDS Dr Pickering had to say of Dan's notion of univocality:

Quote

@7:10 Historical critics tend to be looking for disunity in the text: places where one voice ends and another one begins, whereas narrative critics tend to assume unity in the text because, even if the book involves multiple voices, it still could be a choir; so as a narrative critic, I'm looking at the final form of a text, like this as a work of art, and considering how its diverse elements might nevertheless work together.  In my estimation, while the suggestion that chapter 1 corrects and replaces chapter 2 is certainly a possible reading, I think the better explanation has to do with their role in the plot and structure of the book.  In basic plot analysis, a story has to have a phase that includes the primary conflict, which is what chapters 2 to 4 are doing in Genesis.  But before this, a Storyteller might choose to have an optional stage that doesn't include any action yet, but which functions purely to lay down the basic facts of the world in which this story takes place. If it were a movie this would be the beginning credits where the camera sweeps over the scene showing us a dystopian future, or a historical period piece, or a fantasy story with dragons in it --   whatever the case might be.  It seems to me that Genesis 1 is performing that world-building role, if (8:33) you'll excuse the pun.  The structure of Genesis backs this up as well, though it's a bit more complicated.  In my analysis, the book has three major parts, which are separated by one of the genealogy types, and it has five subsections which are bracketed by the other two genealogy types.  Each of the three parts then has an introduction and an epilogue that bridges into to the next (9:00) story.  So Genesis 1 would be the introduction of the creation and fall story, and at the end of this block you've Got the birth of Seth, and you've got the restarting of worship, which sets up Noah.  The second block gets a prologue as well, which reveals God's intention to uncreate his world via a flood, and after its genealogies (those of Noah's children) you get the Tower of Babel story, which functions again as an epilogue and sets up Abraham.  The third part contains the other three subsections, which tell the stories of Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph, and possibly the aborted migration to Canaan in Genesis 11 is the prologue of this block.  At the end, though, in a less complicated way, Genesis 50 acts as a final epilogue, and that teases their slavery in Egypt which sets up the Exodus.

@9:55   Now I acknowledge that the structural pattern here isn't super clean, but I think there's a good case to be made both from plot and structure that the final composer of the whole book like to set the scene before launching into their stories, and this is probably what Genesis 1 is doing, rather than it being a correction.  I also don't think chapter 2 is in all that much conflict with chapter 1.  You could, if you felt the urge to harmonize, fix a bunch of the apparent conflicts by supposing that chapter 2 all takes place on the 6th day of creation before everything gets its ‘very good’ declaration, and this speculation spawns other cool related speculations, but who cares?  It's true that chapter 2 does see God having to go back and create a mate for Adam to resolve this ‘not good’ thing that exists in his creation, but the question is what is the story function of this device?  Because it's not as if the rest of the animals don't have mates; like God didn't create a male-only Cosmos and then go ‘O, dang how do they multiply?’ and then like surgically remove a female from the side of every male.  This is very much a special situation that Adam is in.  So the point of this device seems to be to force the character of Adam to search through all of creation and to discover that he is unique.  You can see this because he has brought all the animals to name them, but it's not about the naming.  Before that process, God says Adam's going to need a partner, and then (11:29) the takeaway from that process is that there is no one in all of creation that corresponds to him.  So the naming reveals that there's nothing that bears a name in relation to (11:41) him when the woman is taken literally from a part of him to become his partner, Adam then gives her a name too, declaring that at last there is someone who is of the same stuff as him: she is the isha to his ish.  Now this naming process incidentally is often interpreted as establishing the male as the head of the hierarchy, which is wrong and bad. Hierarchy is not the focus here.  Finding an equivalent to him is.  Their their unity and equality is the focus in this chapter, and then as an etiology of marriage this splitting of the human into two is mirrored by the rejoining of the two into one flesh again.  So the crucial thing here is not to decide that my explanation is better or worse than Dan's.  The point is only that the evidence can be constructed in different ways depending on one's assumptions methodology and so on.  You know scholarship is about gathering data and refining arguments to come to the best possible understanding of the text (12:43) that we have, and Dan's channel is doing an incredible job of bringing his branch of strongly data-driven academics to the public domain and specifically using good research and good argument to show up people who are ignorant of the data and spreading disinformation that props up their agenda.  So keep doing God's work, Dan.  Scholarship is definitely able to prove some takes to be lies and disinformation, which is what Dan is doing well.  But what scholarship is less able to do is to to declare a certain view, certain argument to be correct, because all interpretation is provisional, as confident as we might 

 

Edited December 11, 2024 by Robert F. Smith

[Robert F. Smith]

6 hours ago, smac97 said:

....................................

• .................. the data do not support any kind of supernatural insight on the part of Joseph Smith .............
• ..........................................
• ......................... the data do not support the supernatural truth claims of Mormonism."
• "The data do not support any actual supernaturally-guided prophethood of Joseph Smith."
• ...............................

Dan seems unaware that acceptance of supernaturalism is also rejection of free agency.  Supernaturalism is also consonant with determinism, which Calvinistic church leaders such as the late Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel readily admit cancels free agency.   For them, the sovereignty of God is primary.

[Robert F. Smith]

6 hours ago, Calm said:

Here is an example of an assumption of univocality, imo, inserted into Biblical text…as in all biblical writers meant the same thing when they wrote Jehovah, which is Christ (whether they knew it or not).

..........................

What makes that assertion so problematic is Gen 18, in which Jehovah (YHWH) and two angels show up at Abraham's tent, sit down and eat a nice meal, and then Jehovah speaks with Sarah and Abraham about some of their concerns.  Jesus did not yet have a physical body and so could not eat a human meal.  The solution:  Both "God" and "Jehovah" are titles, not names, and the KJV OT nearly always represents Jehovah (Yahwe) as LORD.  There are other such problematic texts.

We need to be very careful about our assumptions.

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Here is what non-LDS Dr Pickering had to say of Dan's notion of univocality:

My understanding is Dan rejects univocality completely, so I am confused by this comment.

Are you saying Dr Pickering believes in univocality, only he defines it differently than Dan?  If I understand what Pickering is describing, it doesn’t seem like it’s univocality in the sense that everything written in the Bible is from the same voice/viewpoint.  Rather that the last editor (not sure if that is the right term) took the varied voices and attempts to harmonize then by providing his own framework…that reminds me of how composers create medleys, creating a new old song out of multiple songs.  In one sense it is one song, in another it’s two or three.

From what you quote, it doesn’t appear to me that Dr. Pickering has an issue with Dan’s way of doing things.  Dan’s branch of Bible criticism (historical, what Pickering describes as looking for the ends, the discontinuities) differs from Pickering’s (narrative, looks at more how the individual stories are combined within the framework of the latest author if I understand him correctly), but it does not appear to me Pickering is saying those who do it Dan’s way are wrong and those who do it his way are right.  It seems to me he is saying both serve a useful purpose in providing multiple ways of looking at scripture, allowing at times scholars to say with certainty what the scripture isn’t, but not able to declare any interpretation absolute.

Is this an approximation of what Pickering is concluding?

If so, it seems to me that Dan fits that description.  When he is describing what scripture does, he uses phrase like “most scholars”, “probably” and “likely”.  Taken as a whole he does not speak in absolutist terms as to what scripture is.  He does, imo, speak in absolutist terms of what scripture isn’t…which may or may not be accurate, but is that an issue for Pickering?

Edited December 11, 2024 by Calm

[Calm]

10 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Brilliant summary, Spencer.

You might also want to consider this response to @Dan McClellan from another critical scholar, Jordan Pickering, PhD, “Does Dan McClellan's popularizing of critical scholarship do what it should? (A view of Genesis 1),” Longwind, Jan 19, 2024, online at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQoDe9iaZ-Y .  Especially beginning @7:10.  A good response to “The evidentiary foundation of the Documentary Hypothesis?” Dan McClellan, Jan 16, 2024, online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WZkXJKw7qI&t=0s .

Robert, is there a response by Dan to Pickering’s commentary? The only connection I am getting through google between them is your comment here…which is odd since the video itself should be another connection.

If Dan has not responded, someone should suggest they do a podcast together discussing their approaches, etc.  I think that would be fantastic.  

[BlueDreams]

6 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

I’m not so sure that “They” has such obligations. I remember “They”sating something about seeking signs. 😘

I don't know if that counts as a sign. They weren't seeking to "prove" God, just understand spiritual experiences on a scientific level. More like, what happens to people who say they're experiencing God. That's being curious, not being hubristic.

 

Ps. I generally nowadays use They in the plural sense for God. Since it fits my experience of God most accurately: God as sacred Family, God as Heavenly Father and Mother, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. God that will one day incorporate us as Them. My prayers nowadays feel more like Family Counsel than anything else. 

 

With luv, 

BD

[bluebell]

12 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Yes, and the great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein did say that words mean what they are used to mean.   Most Latter-day Saints would no doubt agree with you, thus missing the major point of heresy on which the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints rises triumphant.  It is precisely because Latter-day Saint theology rejects supernaturalism that it is so strong in its assertions.  So "based,"  as they say nowadays.  However, you will not hear any LDS missionaries teaching that to anyone.

With all due respect, I'm not missing the point.  I just disagree with you on the importance of only using a very specific definition of the term.  And I don't remember, as a missionary, any missionaries avoiding it either.  Not that the word came up much, I'm sure.  

But it's very possible to teaching that we reject supernaturalism while still being able to use the commonly understood term of supernatural in these kinds of discussions, where the word is being used to refer to "things science can't explain".   

[smac97]

9 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Dan seems unaware that acceptance of supernaturalism is also rejection of free agency.  Supernaturalism is also consonant with determinism, which Calvinistic church leaders such as the late Chuck Smith of Calvary Chapel readily admit cancels free agency.   For them, the sovereignty of God is primary.

Given that Dan is writing as a social media influencer/popularist as much as (if not more than) as a "scholar," he has apparently not bothered to define key terms upon which his commentary about the Church relies, such as "supernatural" and "data."  Is he using these terms in a popular sense, or a technical/precise sense?  And in either case, I still don't know what he proposes would, and would not, count as "data" regarding Joseph Smith's prophetic calling.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited December 11, 2024 by smac97

[bluebell]

9 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

I wonder if God is obliged to respond to prayers to satisfy the demands of scientific investigators. 

Are you saying that the nuns were praying to fulfill the demands of scientific investigators?  Or that God did not respond to the nuns' prayers because they were being investigated by scientists?

[Doctor Steuss]

16 hours ago, smac97 said:

I think what you are describing is "methodological naturalism."  I plugged your comments into ChatGPT and got this:

Does this jibe with your recollection?

So if critical scholars "bracket such {religious} claims as non-testable within their discipline," then how does that work with Dan's pronouncements about what "the data indicate" about the Church?

• "The data I present on this channel almost unilaterally conflicts with and undermines LDS dogmas."
• "I've repeatedly pointed out that the data do no support an ancient origin for The Book of Mormon."
• "I've repeatedly pointed out that the data do not support any kind of supernatural insight on the part of Joseph Smith or any other leaders of the Latter-day Saint movement."
• "I've written papers, I've published a book that talks about what I think is going on regarding Jesus' relationship to God, and it flatly contradicts LDS doctrine."
• "I have repeatedly and consistently, across the entire life of my channel, pointed out that the data do not support the supernatural truth claims of Mormonism."
• "The data do not support any actual supernaturally-guided prophethood of Joseph Smith."
• "The data do not support the historicity of The Book of Mormon."
• "The overwhelming majority of my content flatly contradicts Mormon dogmas."

This does not look like Dan is "bracketing" the Church's religious/divine ("supernatural") claims as being "non-testable."  Rather, it looks like he is, speaking in his capacity as a "scholar," making public pronouncements about what "the data" do and do not indicate about those claims, and finding those claims wanting.

Am I missing something?

Thanks,

-Smac

Yeah, that summary definitely matches what I recall of the various videos explaining it.  Thank you.

If Biblical scholarship, or utilizing the textual and/or source criticism and related tools, says a given passage, or passages within the Bible state "A" (at least as far as the original author's likely intent) but the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says those passages state "B," then I don't think it controversial to say that the data (I will never be able to see "data" as a plural... *sigh*... so pardon my grammar) does not support the dogma that the Bible says "B."

I see this probably a bit uniquely.  When I see Dan makes these claims, and the loaded and biting way in which he states them, I'm not only seeing him merely stating "My professional opinion differs from the faith opinion of the religious body I belong to," but as him trying to disarm a potent weapon of people who inhabit the convergence of the Ven Diagram of anti-Mormons and Christian fundamentalists.

A lot of mainstream critical Biblical scholarship contradicts LDS doctrines.  I don't think it's controversial or even all that noteworthy for a proponent of mainstream critical Biblical scholarship to note that reality when someone is trying to poison the well by using Mormonism as a bigoted cudgel.  It's like when mainstream Biblical scholars who are credal Christians note that the fully fleshed out doctrine of the Trinity isn't something one finds within the Bible.  Often, critical scholarship requires compartmentalization -- even of one's own faith and beliefs.

Edited December 11, 2024 by Doctor Steuss

[Doctor Steuss]

Slow PC.  Duplicate.  Sorry.

Edited December 11, 2024 by Doctor Steuss

[Robert F. Smith]

6 hours ago, Calm said:

Robert, is there a response by Dan to Pickering’s commentary? The only connection I am getting through google between them is your comment here…which is odd since the video itself should be another connection.

If Dan has not responded, someone should suggest they do a podcast together discussing their approaches, etc.  I think that would be fantastic.  

I know of no response, but I don't pay close attention to such matters.  A discussion between Pickering and McClellan would be very nice.

[Robert F. Smith]

7 hours ago, Calm said:

My understanding is Dan rejects univocality completely, so I am confused by this comment.

Are you saying Dr Pickering believes in univocality, only he defines it differently than Dan?  If I understand what Pickering is describing, it doesn’t seem like it’s univocality in the sense that everything written in the Bible is from the same voice/viewpoint.  Rather that the last editor (not sure if that is the right term) took the varied voices and attempts to harmonize then by providing his own framework…that reminds me of how composers create medleys, creating a new old song out of multiple songs.  In one sense it is one song, in another it’s two or three.

From what you quote, it doesn’t appear to me that Dr. Pickering has an issue with Dan’s way of doing things.  Dan’s branch of Bible criticism (historical, what Pickering describes as looking for the ends, the discontinuities) differs from Pickering’s (narrative, looks at more how the individual stories are combined within the framework of the latest author if I understand him correctly), but it does not appear to me Pickering is saying those who do it Dan’s way are wrong and those who do it his way are right.  It seems to me he is saying both serve a useful purpose in providing multiple ways of looking at scripture, allowing at times scholars to say with certainty what the scripture isn’t, but not able to declare any interpretation absolute.

Is this an approximation of what Pickering is concluding?

If so, it seems to me that Dan fits that description.  When he is describing what scripture does, he uses phrase like “most scholars”, “probably” and “likely”.  Taken as a whole he does not speak in absolutist terms as to what scripture is.  He does, imo, speak in absolutist terms of what scripture isn’t…which may or may not be accurate, but is that an issue for Pickering?

I thought it was clear that Dan's notion of univocality was rejection of it.  That should go without saying.  I quoted Pickering at length precisely so that his opposite position would be abundantly clear.

One gets somewhat the same disjuncture between canonical criticism and source criticism, with Pickering examining the final product and McClellan examining the individual elements of the final assemblage -- looking for the discontinuities -- as though the final product is merely an accidental pastiche.

On the contrary, the Bible was assembled with purpose by editors and redactors who saw a common theme or metanarrative which they intentionally emphasized.

[manol]

5 hours ago, BlueDreams said:

I generally nowadays use They in the plural sense for God. Since it fits my experience of God most accurately: God as sacred Family, God as Heavenly Father and Mother, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. God that will one day incorporate us as Them. My prayers nowadays feel more like Family Counsel than anything else.

They/Them pronouns for God? 

And perhaps one day... "Us"?

Works for me!

(I think the Branches are already and inherently part of the Vine, but haven't accepted and aligned themselves to that perspective yet.) 

[Calm]

6 hours ago, smac97 said:

Given that Dan is writing as a social media influencer/popularist as much as (if not more than) as a "scholar," he has apparently not bothered to define key terms upon which his commentary about the Church relies, such as "supernatural" and "data."

Actually he said something about intentionally not defining things because it doesn’t make sense to given his paradigm of how categories work….this is a very, very loose paraphrase that I may have gotten wrong.  If I understand him correctly, people don’t actually create categories by defining that category and then seeing what fits and what doesn’t, but by instinctively (not sure that is the right word) grouping things together and then grading how close to the ideal of that category something fits.  

I don’t know if this means he never explains what he means by dogma and instead our experience with him will lead to us understanding something along the lines of what he means (for me it means unquestioned readings, probably authoritative in many cases). 

This may be the video I am thinking of, but I don’t have the time to check.  But anyone who is criticizing Dan (and I mean that in the academic sense) needs to watch this to begin to understand how he operates.

Edited December 11, 2024 by Calm

[Calm]

3 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I thought it was clear that Dan's notion of univocality was rejection of it.  That should go without saying.  I quoted Pickering at length precisely so that his opposite position would be abundantly clear.

One gets somewhat the same disjuncture between canonical criticism and source criticism, with Pickering examining the final product and McClellan examining the individual elements of the final assemblage -- looking for the discontinuities -- as though the final product is merely an accidental pastiche.

On the contrary, the Bible was assembled with purpose by editors and redactors who saw a common theme or metanarrative which they intentionally emphasized.

I really want them to get together so Dan can address this.   

[Calm]

5 hours ago, Doctor Steuss said:

I see this probably a bit uniquely.  When I see Dan makes these claims, and the loaded and biting way in which he states them, I'm not only seeing him merely stating "My professional opinion differs from the faith opinion of the religious body I belong to," but as him trying to disarm a potent weapon of people who inhabit the convergence of the Ven Diagram of anti-Mormons and Christian fundamentalists.

 

Yes…same here.  I look at who he is responding to and why they are doing what they do and why that might matter to Dan enough to rebut them.

His intensity is a sign of investment to me rather an attack on the person.  I am very intense in person I am told when invested, which is either being committed to conveying an idea or just interested in what I am talking about at that moment.  I think people would not read me as “calm” or moderate or whatever half as much as occurs when they just read what I say instead of hearing it.

[smac97]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Actually he said something about intentionally not defining things because it doesn’t make sense to given his paradigm of how categories work….this is a very, very loose paraphrase that I may have gotten wrong.  If I understand him correctly, people don’t actually create categories by defining that category and then seeing what fits and what doesn’t, but by instinctively (not sure that is the right word) grouping things together and then grading how close to the ideal of that category something fits.

This makes his declaratory statements about what "data" do and do not indicate to be even more odd and less illuminating.  

From about 5:26:

"So when I look at categories, I am looking at them through the methodological lenses of cognitive linguistics.  And in addition to the fact that we do not naturally, intuitively create, learn or use categories based on necessary and sufficient features, which is why I don't define things, because that's what 'definition' is, and that is artificial, and is generally attached to structuring power and identity politics and things like that, so I do not use definitions, for the most part, for conceptual categories.  I use this prototype theory to understand what are the prototypes, what sit closer to the periphery, what overlaps with other categories, and what has debatable membership within a category."

Wow.  I don't quite know what to make of this.  I am reminded of Daniel C. Peterson's and Stephen D. Ricks' Offenders for a Word, the first section of which ("Is Mormonism Christian? An Investigation of De􀃗nitions, part 1") begins with the following quotation (from Lewis Carrol's Through the Looking Glass) :

Quote

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master—that’s all.”

It seems pretty odd for a scholar steeped in training about textual interpretation and criticism to view the defining of terms as some sort of hegemonic exercise ("{defining terms is} generally attached to structuring power and identity politics and things like that"), which exercise is to be resisted through some sort of nebulous neo-marxist framework.  Instead, it looks like Dan prefers to use terms in a Humpty-Dumpty sort of way.  Interestingly enough, this I-refuse-to-define-terms-because-doing-so-structures-power approach is itself an exercise in structuring power, as it allows Humpty Dumpty to be the sole arbiter of what a word means, "neither more nor less," such that he becomes "master."

Refusing to define terms is the ultimate Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card for Dan.  He gets to make sweeping declarations about what "the data" indicate or do not indicate, support or do not support, and he will always be excused from marshaling evidence or demonstrating/explaining his reasoning because, in his own words, "I do not use definitions," such that "data" means what Dan McClellan "choose{s} it to mean--neither more nor less."  His audience, meanwhile, are going to have their own perceptions/perspectives/understandings about what "data" means in this context, and will extrapolate and draw inferences based on that understanding.  And those extrapolations/inferences are probably going to be all over the board.

For example, when I see Dan throw out conclusory statements about what "the data" do and do not indicate about something as subjective as faith-based as Joseph Smith's prophetic calling (and/or about the historicity of The Book of Mormon, which is a pretty wide-ranging topic), and then when I see him refusing to define terms, and when all of this arises in a social media context in which Dan seems to regularly throw around his scholarly bona fides, then I will extrapolate and infer that Dan wants to be able to make such statements without actually doing the work of substantiating and demonstrating them.  YMMV.

1 hour ago, Calm said:

I don’t know if this means he never explains what he means by dogma and instead our experience with him will lead to us understanding something along the lines of what he means (for me it means unquestioned readings, probably authoritative in many cases). 

This may be the video I am thinking of, but I don’t have the time to check.  But anyone who is criticizing Dan (and I mean that in the academic sense) needs to watch this to begin to understand how he operates.

Watched it.  I don't understand how he operates.  I mean, I understand his explanation, but it's provides no clarity as to what he means by "data" and "supernatural," by how he supposes to gauge "the data" associated with the prophetic calling of Joseph Smith, and so on.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited December 11, 2024 by smac97

[Calm]

5 hours ago, Doctor Steuss said:

A lot of mainstream critical Biblical scholarship contradicts LDS doctrines.  I don't think it's controversial or even all that noteworthy for a proponent of mainstream critical Biblical scholarship to note that reality when someone is trying to poison the well by using Mormonism as a bigoted cudgel.  It's like when mainstream Biblical scholars who are credal Christians note that the fully fleshed out doctrine of the Trinity isn't something one finds within the Bible.  Often, critical scholarship requires compartmentalization -- even of one's own faith and beliefs.

I think acknowledging this is much more intelligent than trying to shoehorn one’s personal beliefs into an academic framework that operates with a different method than how one processes faith/spiritual experiences.

It reminds me of how I share info about RLS.  If I am talking clinical findings I do not privilege my own experiences as ‘this is RLS’.  If someone wants to know how I experience it, they will get so many details that they won’t read about in the research, lol.  And they will miss out on some important info if they are trying to understand what RLS is generally…which would be a shame if they were looking for help with it for themselves.

I wouldn’t want a doctor to treat me according to his own experiences of RLS because what works for him might not work for me (my daughter and I can’t even use the same meds for it as what works for her triggers rls in me).  I don’t go to doctors for them to tell me their personal experiences. 

 It would be really odd to me if Dan privileged how he folds scripture into his personal life because that might be really unusual and not that useful to many others.  I wouldn’t do a podcast on how my beliefs get formed, why would he?  That is not why I want to listen to him.  I can get that at church or here at times, like in the discussion on how one reacts to scriptures describing destruction after Christ’s death.  By removing the personal side of belief, Dan makes his videos much more accessible to a much broader audience.  And that makes his work more useful imo than it would be with his personal beliefs attached.  For one thing, it allows me to take what he shares and do with it what comes naturally to me rather than feel like I should be following his example because he has more experience and understanding in the background of scripture than I do.  I appreciate that freedom he allows me.