What is your opinion of FARMS?

[MikeWaters]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

I guess we're supposed to be impressed that God graced someone with Tex's spiritual sensitivity, insight and charity with a "witness".

I think we can assume that Tex has more sensitivity, insight, and charity than you. He is not a faker like you.

[Indy Coug]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

I think we can assume that Tex has more sensitivity, insight, and charity than [SU].

That's a mighty threshold to cross.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by Taq Man

It's difficult to trust the scholarship of a group who already know the anwser to the question. They will trumpet anything positive and poo poo anything negative. Have they ever gone contrary to that M.O.? Oh yeah they can't.

It is a good place to see the might of the Mormon spin machine. Not a good place for objective scholarship.

Has FARMS ever claimed that they are engaged in objective scholarship?

This whole topic is such a dead horse.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

Has FARMS ever claimed that they are engaged in objective scholarship?

Exactly. They are the same thing as that famous think tank here in Seattle, The Discovery Institute, that issues papers on intelligent design dressed up as real scholarship. Thus how ridiculous Archea looks calling Taq Man and me "closed minded" and the other side of the FARMS coin because we choose to wholesale reject FARMS' work as persuasive of anything.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

Exactly. They are the same thing as that famous think tank here in Seattle, The Discovery Institute, that issues papers on intelligent design dressed up as real scholarship. Thus how ridiculous Archea looks calling Taq Man and me "closed minded" and the other side of the FARMS coin because we choose to wholesale reject FARMS' work as persuasive of anything.

Look a few of the articles have been published in reputable journals. A few have been cited. But you know that, but choose to use the dishonest form of argumentation by throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

I make no claim that FARMS is the heighth of scholarship, nor do they. I even have my own criticism of them, but I will not blindly disregard them because some disaffecteds masturbate with joy when two of them deride the same church related item.

Two KKKs noting others hate blacks. Wow, what a revelation.

Color me unimpressed.

Mormons are but a blip, and your expectations that big time scholars will study LDS claims is ignorant and naive, if you believed it. But you're setting up a strawman to claim victory. I won't play that game, because it's specious and dishonest. I'm aware of the strawman technique and reject your thesis.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

Exactly. They are the same thing as that famous think tank here in Seattle, The Discovery Institute, that issues papers on intelligent design dressed up as real scholarship. Thus how ridiculous Archea looks calling Taq Man and me "closed minded" and the other side of the FARMS coin because we choose to wholesale reject FARMS' work as persuasive of anything.

We are making different points. You are arguing that they are useless (or worse) due to lack of publication in scientific journals. I am saying that that is not a fair or necessary metric. Their objective is to publish apologetic literature. Period. They have never claimed otherwise. If that doesn't float your boat, so be it.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by Jeff Lebowski

We are making different points. You are arguing that they are useless (or worse) due to lack of publication in scientific journals. I am saying that that is not a fair or necessary metric. Their objective is to publish apologetic literature. Period. They have never claimed otherwise. If that doesn't float your boat, so be it.

This is a telling admission, and I almost completely agree with you here. But some of us don't regard apologetics as morally neutral and just a matter of taste, like science fiction. Some of us are offended in a moral dimension by the whole idea of religious apologetics; we see it as unavoidably nothing more than parlor tricks and consciously so, though sold as passing for truth, not as illusion for entertainment or even philosphical enrichment. Does it matter that people have a real or distorted view of our ancient roots? I suppose a case could be made for it not mattering. tooblue would probably say there's no such as real or distorted; it's all "a game" anyway, a house of mirrors, whether you're doing scholarly, empirical work or apologetics. Whatever floats your boat. In my value system truth matters, is worth seeking, and just because it's truth, though the search never ends.

[Archaea]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

This is a telling admission, and I almost completely agree with you here. But some of us don't regard apologetics as morally neutral and just a matter of taste, like science fiction. Some of us are offended in a moral dimension by the whole idea of religious apologetics; we see it as unavoidably nothing more than parlor tricks and consciously so, though sold as passing for truth, not as illusion for entertainment or even philosphical enrichment. Does it matter that people have a real or distorted view of our ancient roots? I suppose a case could be made for it not mattering. tooblue would probably say there's no such as real or distorted; it's all "a game" anyway, a house of mirrors, whether you're doing scholarly, empirical work or apologetics. Whatever floats your boat. In my value system truth matters, is worth seeking, and just because it's truth, though the search never ends.

Apologetics is as old as religion.

Truth, to quote a tired axiom, is in the eye of the beholder.

Without apologetics, one would not have Augustine, Aquinas, Spinoza, Ghazali, Avicenna, Averro and many others.

Truth is important, I submit, even to the apologist, it's just a different flavor, not always the pure empirical flavor, you inted to cherish.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by Archaea

Apologetics is as old as religion.

Truth, to quote a tired axiom, is in the eye of the beholder.

Without apologetics, one would not have Augustine, Aquinas, Spinoza, Ghazali, Avicenna, Averro and many others.

Truth is important, I submit, even to the apologist, it's just a different flavor, not always the pure empirical flavor, you inted to cherish.

The men you list were not purveyors of apologetics. They were philosphers. There's a big difference. Except for some misguieded efforts to prove authenticity of the Shroud of Turin and similar activities Catholicism has not really been a hotbed of apologetics. Maybe because Cathocism has been host to most of our early intellectual breakthroughs since Greece and Rome (though to be sure not generally a happy host) it has not felt the need, for example, to prove the earth is 6,000 years old or Moses really parted the Red Sea.

[ChinoCoug]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

The men you list were not purveyors of apologetics. They were philosphers.

Now philosophers can't be apologists. Talk about redefining terms.