Quote:
Originally Posted by ChinoCoug
That sounds awfully circular criteria. He's demanding evidence of a religious book from work outside the realm of religious studies?
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You assume he's seeking, not just employing a rhetorical device.
He sets up a strawman. It's a classic case in the law.
"Legitimate scholars would have studied Mormonism and found it to have been of ancient origin. Show me just one."
Why the hell is that assumption even true?
Scholarship costs money and money exists for things that are largely predominant
Mormons are so unimportant outside our sphere, nobody gives a hoot and holler about us. There is no money in it, so nobody will fund it, to debunk it or to prove it. So the only ones interested are Mormons and exMos.
To compound the problem, Mormon religions comes from an anti-intellectual tradition. So we're not equipped to even attack it empirical. We haven't translated the language of the debate. Most Mormons don't even know the language of the debate.
People ridicule my usage of ontological, epistemological and axiological, but outside of the scholars here, how many have even considered those basic concepts in terms of our religion. Very, very few.
Our view of the Godhead did not even consider the debates of Arius and Athanasius. St. Augustine is just a historical figure.
So it is outright idiotic to suppose nonMormon sources to study us anything more than sociologically. Thus Seattle's "argument" is little more than a ruse. He knows this.
And we show him the few authors who have reviewed it, he'll redefine the terms.