At the conclusion of his welcoming address last Thursday morning, FIRM Foundation ((The Foundation for Indigenous Research and Mormonism Foundation – yes, it’s the Foundation … Foundation. The name appears as “FIRM Foundation” in much of their literature and on the wristbands issued at this event, although it also sometimes appears as “FIRM: The Foundation” and other somewhat less redundant forms.)) president Rod L. Meldrum spoke of his commitment to truth, saying that wherever science conflicted with scripture, he was unalterably on the side of scripture. It was an eloquent testimony, and I have no doubt whatsoever it was sincere: he had just spoken for an hour on science and scripture, very fluently and to the delight of an audience of hundreds who had listened so keenly that at times I noted a call-and-response effect: When Meldrum would make a point by asking a rhetorical question, many of those nearest me would respond with the expected answer in unison. This was a speaker, and an audience, committed to the truth as they saw it, devoting abundant resources of time and thought and money and personal loyalty to their cause.
It seems natural, given the way civilization has developed in the past few hundred years, to pit science against religion this way. These represent two great ways humans have for discerning truth: science representing the exercise of human observation and ingenuity to arrive at conclusions about the physical world, and revelation representing instruction from a divine source incapable of error or deceit. Mormonism teaches that ultimately there will be no conflict between true science and true revelation (my science crush John A. Widtsoe put it this way: “According to our belief, all truth is a part of our religion, and we stand ready to accept all truth, providing we are absolutely certain that it is the truth. For that reason, there can be no conflict among our people between religion and true science.”)
But.
To claim that you will always side with revelation against science when the two are in conflict implies that your understanding of both science and revelation is adequate – that you sufficiently understand the claims of science, and that you truly understand what revelation teaches. What I heard at this conference did not meet those criteria:
Revelation, represented by the KJV text of Genesis 1:7 (“And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament”) was used to support the claim that the Earth is a sack of icy water rather than molten rock – as if the ancient Hebrews had an accurate knowledge of the physical world and its origins; and as if their vocabulary were capable of conveying the same ideas as the expanded and nuanced vocabulary of English; and as if there were no cultural context necessary to understanding ancient Hebrew thought; and as if God intended modern man to read ancient scripture as a science textbook; and as if … and as if … and as if.
Science, represented – misrepresented – by the claim that mainstream science is inconsistent with itself, was used to discredit science as a way of knowing. One example: Science insists that there are three types of rock (igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic), but — in Meldrum’s misrepresentation — science also claims that all rock came from the molten interior of the earth, and therefore there can be only one type of rock – igneous – as if rock that was formed by cooling from its molten state (igneous) could not thereafter be altered by enormous pressure to become something significantly different (metamorphic), or could not be broken down through natural processes, then settle into a new form (sedimentary).
This insufficient understanding of revelation and misrepresentation of science occurred over and over in that session, but I will not attempt to catalog more examples without a transcription of the session. A similar lack of humility toward the state of our current knowledge of both science and religion was present in the other sessions I attended, in somewhat different forms:
The second speaker, a metal worker whose personal passion is constructing models of “relics of the Restoration” – models of the gold plates, the Liahona, and so on – seemed to believe that because he had been able to recreate a physical form of, say, the Urim and Thummim, according to limited available documentation, he had special insight into how those tools functioned in the Restoration (but his history was off in some significant details), or because he had been able to find a way to manufacture metal plates in a way that matched surviving descriptions and used only technology available in the ancient world, those ancient originals must have been constructed by the very techniques he himself used. It was a fun presentation, and I fully understand the urge to bring the past to life through models – but his claims for the accuracy of those models in a technological/scientific sense, and his claims to revelatory knowledge of how they functioned, are abuses of both science and revelation.
And in the case of the third session, a supposed disclosure of what the ancient Hebrew scriptures (through the apocryphal book of II Esdras, apparently) of the details of Donald Trump’s presidency, are in a class by themselves, outside of any common agreement on the forms of either science or revelation.
I have struggled with writing this post – not because of any lack of grounding in science, and certainly not because I lack faith in revelation, but because this conference had the form of science and revelation , but thoroughly denied the power of either. Yet these speakers (and the audience; I overhead many snippets of conversations with claims like “science is only theory; I have written my own papers about electromagnetism”) were all so very, very sure that they knew both that mainstream understandings were wrong and that their idiosyncratic explanations were correct. How did they know what they claimed to know, and why did it bring me such a stupor of thought rather than interest or excitement?
Because their way of “knowing” has far less in common with either science or revelation than it does with the way conspiracy theorists “know” things – such as “knowing” that there was a second shooter at the grassy knoll; that the moon landing was faked; that the Twin Towers were not brought down as a result of being struck by airliners; that the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre at Newtown was a false flag operation. They “know” these things not because God has revealed them (although there may be a sense that they have been inspired to see the truth that the rest of us are blinded to) and not because they have respect for the scientific method (although they may indulge in pseudo-scientific imitation of scientific experiment).
The conspiracist mindset somehow grasps the “truth” first, and then searches for data points to support the conclusion (whereas a scientist, who may well have a hunch to guide his initial research, reserves his conclusions until his observations are made and analyzed, and contraindications are addressed). That conspiracist mindset was on full display in the session about the origin of the Earth and its life: We were told first that the Earth is a sack of water, then were treated to a torrent of “data” supporting that conclusion – no coherence, no attempts to test the notion, but merely a flood of mishmash of sources: scripture taken out of context, somebody’s lawsuit about something, pictures and bits of text from sources that might have been reliable and might have been reported accurately but sometimes sounded as if they came from the Weekly World News for all the credibility they carried, rhetorical questions presented as evidence (“What if I told you that …” and “Have you ever thought about …”), and always – always – the scoffing at mainstream scientists for being wrong about this and that and not even looking for proof of this other thing.
This mindset either ignores data that conflicts with the chosen theory, or else attempts to discredit that data with mockery rather than with logical refutation. That tendency was constantly on display in the snark and sarcasm of the first session.
That sort of conspiracist certainty that a speaker “knows” secrets of the future – whether an unfolding of the end-of-times or an outline of the presidency of Donald Trump – is at the heart of every paper, book, speech, or off-the-rails Sunday School lesson that relies on an idiosyncratic analysis of ancient documents. The Lord’s statement that he himself did not know the day or the hour of his return does not prevent such speakers from drawing conclusions from their “study” of the revelation. The unsupportable nonsense that any American president of the far distant future was important enough for the Lord to reveal a detailed prophecy of his administration to an ancient prophet does not stop a conspiracist from teaching his wild notions as revealed fact. People who “know” the future this way have been identifying the empires represented by Nebuchadnezzar’s statue for literally thousands of years, and the identifications have changed after every major war or the rise or fall of kingdoms. People have for just as long been “analyzing” the Revelation of John to produce minutely detailed timelines of the last days – analyses which are always suspiciously focused on the analyst’s own day and feature his own bugbears. There is a special kind of hubris in insisting that God spoke to Isaiah, or Esdras, or John, not with prophecy that could be of any possible use to their people of their day, but only so that we, the chosen generation, could finally recognize the truth that had eluded so many prophets and faithful believers for millenia.
My few hours at the FIRM Foundation Expo were a distressing mix of intellectual dismay at the continuous denial of the scientific method, and profound depression at the misuse of scripture – the misleading of Latter-day Saints by Latter-day Saints – that I could not bear any more of it. Supporters of the views of the FIRM Foundation may perhaps justly criticize me for sampling such a small part of their offerings and drawing my conclusions from them, but from listening to presentations, observing audience members, reading the schedule and presenter descriptions, and familiarity with a few of the upcoming speakers, I could see no hope of substantially modifying the impressions of those first hours. The deadening, depressing effect on my spirit would not be lifted by hearing more.
I am particularly dismayed to learn, through Nathan, a Keepa reader who attended part of the Expo on Saturday, that there is a Universal Model club (UM is the name supporters give to their pseudo-scientific explanations of the physical world – “based,” as one believer puts it, “on natural law and not on theories”) on the BYU campus. A university is supposed to foster knowledge and truth, with BYU’s special mandate the teaching of revelation alongside the accumulated wisdom of man. What is happening when students turn their backs on both, to indulge themselves in this false religion and fake science? It is a form of deliberate, willful, insanity, the conscious choice to accept the dogma of ignorance and misunderstanding. It is not knowledge, and it is not Mormonism.
Thanks for the write up, Ardis. As depressing/demoralizing as the experience was, you did an important service–saving the rest of us from having to sit through it … 🙂
“The conspiracist mindset somehow grasps the “truth” first, and then searches for data points to support the conclusion.”
That is a succinct description of “confirmation bias” which is a common human trait. And we all do it or at least have done it to some extent. I think the point of an education, scientific and scriptural, is to learn to rise above that simplistic thought process to a higher level – to take the “leap of faith” to challenge our own ideas, thoughts, and preconceptions to test them out scientifically and spiritually regardless of what any one else is telling us. I’m not saying that each of us determines a subjective truth individually, but there is something to individual responsibility for what we choose to rely on and how we come to that.
Thanks, Ardis. The UM nonsense is particularly popular in my neck of the woods, as its prophet and his minions all live within a few miles of me. Likewise, the pseudo-theories about history and the future are very strong in Mesa. It’s so frustrating! I am grateful for this well-worded take down.
Amen.
“To claim that you will always side with revelation against science when the two are in conflict implies that your understanding of both science and revelation are adequate – that you sufficiently understand the claims of science, and that you truly understand what revelation teaches.”
And there’s the quote for the scrapbook. 😉
Thanks again for braving this, Ardis.
I wasn’t going to comment, but you mentioned the Universal Model, and I had never heard about that. So I looked it up…………….
As a professional astrophysicist I will now go weep in a corner, and try to forget the insanity that I just witnessed. My brain hurts from just looking at the webpage for the Universal Model and reading through Dean Sessions’s Linkedin profile. I haven’t wades through such scientific ignorance since I learned about the Electric Universe.
Excuse me while I go clear my browser history now.
The amount of intellectual hubris is staggering. Thanks for this writeup, and and your wading through the mud, as it were.
quantumleap42,
I was once a professional astrophysicist but have since drifted into particle transport theory. But yeah. The Universal Model is even more idiotic than the Electric Universe, which (sadly) has the support of at least one Mormon commenter at blogs I frequent.
Thinking aloud here:
Science does not proceed by finding evidence to support a hypothesis. It proceeds, per Karl Popper, by looking for evidence to disprove a hypothesis. This evidence almost always takes the form of testable predictions made by the hypothesis that are found to not match reality. When a hypothesis makes numerous predictions, different from the predictions of competing hypotheses, and its predictions are found to match reality better than the competing hypotheses, we begin to have confidence in the hypothesis and it becomes a theory.
When someone points at some observation to prove his hypothesis, and fails to show how it does better than competing hypotheses, it’s a big red flag. When someone says that some theory is “just a theory”, meaning that they have theory confused with hypothesis, that’s a big red flag.
Revelation is complementary to science in that it does not proceed by attempting to disprove what is being asserted, but rather by seeking divine confirmation. Put another way, with science, we don’t have access to the back of the book to check our answers; this requires a different approach from religion, where we do have access to the back of the book, in the form of revelation. The catch is that the revelation always comes through imperfect human channels, and the other catch is that the Author of the back of the book may very well decide you don’t need to see the answers yet, until you’ve worked the problem set a bit harder. Which some people are simply not patient enough to do.
Pardon my rambling.
Well, I do take some comfort in that it appears there is no officially recognized UM club at BYU. At least not from what I could search out. Although it’s sad that there is even an unofficial one.
We owe you our thanks for sitting through these sessions AND telling us about them, so that we are aware of what is going on around us. That way we can be more prepared when we are confronted with arguments or statements that pop up.
Ardis, thank you for braving the underbelly of pseudoscience to give this report. It makes me sad when genuine science has so much wonder, explanatory power, and depth, to offer. It is sad that, even so, people hold it in unnecessary suspicion. This conference sounds like the kind of thing two grade school kids on a playground might make up to sound sciency (and no offense meant to grade school kids, most these days would have at least watched a couple of documentaries that would have cleared up the confusion on display at this conference). When you don’t have to link your ideas to data either scripturally or empirically it’s chaos, and it sounds like you got to watch up close and first hand the free-for-all that ensues. Thank you for adventuring into the wilds of nonsense. I’m glad you got to escape and give this report.
Thank you for this summary of the pseudoscience of the conference. My questions are:
1) was there anything particularly Mormon about the event besides the topics they chose to speak about?
2) is there anything you could identify in Mormonism that would support this type of *intellectual hubris* or disrespect for scientific rigor?
3) aside from the very Mormon characteristic of having lots of men speak in public, does it seem that women are equally represented and gullible in the audience?
May you be blessed for your sacrifice.
charlene, you ask better questions than I did, and I’ve been thinking about them for hours lying awake in the night.
1. There was an opening prayer, with particular emphasis on the pray-er’s recent return from a mission; there was some “brother”-ing and “sister”-ing, and the apparent assumption that everyone there was LDS and had come to strengthen their faith. It was taken for granted that everyone knew who Joseph Smith was, and what were the basic narratives of the Restoration so that no explanation of any term or event was needed, that sort of thing. Nothing I saw during my limited attendance made the inappropriate claim that the group had the backing of the Church. It was a gathering by, of, and for Mormons, certainly, in the same sense that organizations like Mormon History Association and Association for Mormon Letters, etc., are Mormon.
(2. below; getting the easy responses out first. 🙂 )
3. Probably half or more of those in attendance Thursday morning were older couples. The few people who struck up conversations with me, and those who tried to help me find my way through the very disorganized venue, were women. I don’t know whether that pattern held for the entire conference — as Nathan noted in his comment on another of these related posts, the age demographics were quite different on Saturday morning; I can’t guess whether the gender demographics were different when more students and working-age people were present.
2. This is the challenging one, isn’t it? It’s the one that kept me awake.
My personal preference would be to dismiss out of hand that anything in Mormonism creates or sustains this type of nonsense … but it isn’t that easy.
Because of the late date of our founding, Mormonism escaped some of the religious/scientific antagonism of, say, the days of Galileo — by the time we came along, many of those issues had been more or less settled. But Darwinism came along in our relatively early days, and certainly that was a shock to our system as we tried to come to grips with whether organic evolution was compatible with a revealed Creation. With time, many, perhaps most of us have come to understand that the two are not necessarily incompatible, because we are able to understand that our revelation on the subject is even more limited than our scientific understanding: we accept that revealed accounts of Creation tell us the *why* but not *how* Creation was achieved — and we look forward to the promise that “when the Lord shall come, he shall reveal all things—things which have passed, and hidden things which no man knew, things of the earth, by which it was made … (D&C 101:32-33). If that revelation is in the future tense, then past revelation doesn’t tell the full story.
But despite that recognition, there is a longstanding suspicion and rejection of evolution, and an adherence to the fundamentalist beliefs that the earth is 6,000 years old and not a day older, and that God created Adam’s body by, basically, breathing on a mud pie, and made Eve’s body by somehow transforming Adam’s rib into a full human, that nothing — including, apparently, the plants that Adam and Eve ate in the garden — died before the Fall, and so on. That fundamentalism led to the troubles for BYU’s first professional faculty in the early 20th century, and leads to complaints to this very day from parents who are upset that their children hear the word “evolution” at BYU. It led to mostly pre-Correlated statements by some apostles who wanted to use Genesis as a scientific textbook, although there are equally many and eloquent statements by other apostles testifying to the vast age of the earth and the need to read Genesis as an ancient Hebrew religious text rather than as a scientific treatise.
So there’s *that* in Mormonism that supports the disrespect for science. I wouldn’t say that *came* from Mormonism, because it is common in other faiths, but certainly it is *present* in Mormonism.
Then there’s the bone-deep skepticism of “the world” as a place and a philosophy of deception and wickedness, and a confidence — exaggerated, in my view — that as the people of God we have all the answers to all of the great questions, and those answers do and must stand in opposition to the vain philosophies of men. That is, we simply know better … even, apparently about matters which God has not revealed. I think that generally unexamined belief runs very deep through Mormonism, although it is a byproduct, a misapplication, of Mormonism rather than anything intrinsic to it.
The Church generally tries to avoid open controversy in these matters responding to questions with general statements about the realm of the Church and the realm of human endeavor, although occasionally, for whatever reason, the Church does, gently, diplomatically, in sometimes unnoticed ways, nudge us away from fundamentalism: The Sunday School manual’s Creation lesson now openly states that the “days” of Genesis need not be understood as the 24-hour period of our familiarity. Organic evolution is studied at BYU calmly and rationally, although I hear, anecdotally, that it still provokes cases of the vapors in some students or their parents.
If the Church did feel it was within their province to directly address some of these issues with, say, a set of gospel topics essays on science to complement those on history, it could quash, or provide the authoritative right to quash, some of the false ideas that anti-science Mormons waste so much time and effort and money on studying and promoting. They wouldn’t need to make any positive statements about things that haven’t been revealed or are beyond the scope of the gospel, but they could point to a few issues — like the use of “day” in the Creation account — and state that the gospel does not require us to believe anything that is not true, or does not require us to believe in a named list of fundamentalist assumptions about science. That they have not, and may never, issue such statements (and I don’t necessarily fault them for that — such essays would be enormously helpful and reassuring, but are not, after all, essential to the mission of the Church) is certainly an identifiable factor in Mormonism that allows superstition and false ideas to be promoted by organizations like Firm Foundation.
I at least take comfort from admirable scientists of the past and the present whose knowledge comes from observation and experimentation and measurement, and for whom the scientific method of constant refinement and improvement and rejection of previously held error is also a form of the gospel virtue of humility. You know, scientists like Steven Peck, who not only advance the sum total of scientific knowledge but who also teach it to a new generation, as much to lift students from the bondage of ignorant superstition as to serve their discipline. And men like John A. Widtsoe, who, I have no doubt, would have included virtually everything promoted at the Firm Foundation Expo within his statement that:
“We can only say that such conjectures are wholly unsupported by discoveries or revelation and are not worthy of consideration.”
(posting without proofreading)
Oh, Ardis, I’m so sorry to have disrupted your sleep! However, your answers are marvelously articulate. (a marvel in general, but not a marvel for your usual writing) Everything you’ve said here rings true. I recognize the fundamentalist notions from other, non-LDS, fundamentalists that I’ve encountered. I also recognize symptoms within the Mormon community that promote sidetracks such as this. I might add that our history of JSJ dabbling with what some consider supernatural, and some prominent church leaders formulating extravagant theories without much/any reference to observable evidence provide a model for such wild speculations
Lord, I pray thee, keep me from misleading others, or damaging testimony of thee.
And, praise thee, Ardis, for your efforts and testimony.
Thank you for this post. I’ve been observing the FIRM Foundation and their claims for years now, and your blog rings true. I hope that truth, revelation, and science, become even more dominant in our faith and helps control a lot of these conspiracies. I am optimistic that the Church leadership is going in this direction.
Great write up, Ardis. A pure labor of love to sit through all that.
How many of you are opposed to GMOs?
Buy organic?
Believed we’d be at peak oil already?
Believed Trump wouldn’t get elected?
In favor of every drug the FDA approved?
Opposed to pesticides?
Or maybe believe in the resurrection?
Everything our host is upset or saddened in others we all do. We all do.
There are plenty of people smarter than all of us who can excoriate us for various beliefs that we think are rational.
If you disagree, disagree with facts. But don’t assume you’re not constructing your own narrative because your like Nacho Libre’s Esqueleto and Hillary Clinton who both said, “I believe in science”.
And for the record I probably disagree with whoever these guys are where they disagree with generally accepted geology, etc.
I see no problem with acknowledging that where current scientific understanding (ie. “science”) contradicts the church, it’s safer to remain with the church.
Ardis,
You knocked this out of the park. Excellent write up.
I’m certain you didn’t read, or at least didn’t understand, the post, Blogo — but that’s okay. If I can take three hours of FIRM, I can take the occasional misreading of a blog post.
Comment #13 deserves to stand alone as it’s own blog post. The enlightened and respectful discussion is as remarkable as the conference themes.
Now I’m tempted to dig out my apocrypha and read 2nd Esdras.
Focus on chapters 11 and 12, TOClark, according to Nathan. 🙂
It seems to me that any attempt to understand ancient history needs to be done hand in hand with a thorough examination of where ones own cultural views came from.
An example applicable to both Mark J’s comment and Blogo’s objection is this: In the 19th century, I run into the stated assumption from time to time that the divine/human body of Jesus Christ was created through sexual intercourse between God the Father (the fact of whose physical body is a basic tenet of Mormonism) and Mary in exactly the same way as the writers themselves engendered their children. This assumption comes from the ignorance (lack of imagination?) of 19th century men who applied their only knowledge of the mechanics of procreation to the divine sphere. Their conclusion was also a limited understanding of revelation — they took seriously and attempted to explain literally the scriptural phrase “Only Begotten Son” in the only way then open to them.
Today our imaginations are a little broader — we can imagine other ways to understand Mary’s conception of her divine Son, and still quite literal ways, because we have some basic understanding of in vitro fertilization, and could even construct a scenario based on an assumption that God works in the fourth dimension. Note that I’m not saying that either possibility is truth, only that we have more options for understanding, now. That does not mean that we have hit the right solution, either from the standpoint of science or the standpoint of revelation. The 19th century Mormons were standing with revelation, they thought, but there is no reason now to believe they were interpreting scripture correctly, and we no longer teach such an idea. Revelation has not told us how it all worked.
In short, I repeat what is the basic point of this post: Before you can take either side in any apparent controversy, you need the humility to recognize that both science and revelation are incomplete, and you need to understand both, at least in their incomplete form.
To declare that you will “stand with the Church” in a supposed science/revelation dispute, especially while failing to recognize that the Church has taken no stand, or that you will “stand by revelation” when you rely solely on a knee-jerk fundamentalism that doesn’t bear scrutiny, is no credit to the Church or to revelation.
This is a great post. I have only one disagreement: clearly the moon landing was faked….. 🙂
Really great review — I agree, it’s alarming.
As So-crates said, “The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing.”
“that’s us!” 😉
Excellent post. Raised in a home and a family of heathendom and apostasy in this is the right place, I accepted Mormonism as a child, youth, and an adult contrary to my original family’s precedent for its rejection. I then married a descendent of the Chamberlins (alluded to in your posting — wife’s maternal grandfather was a brother to the two BYU profs). The brothers’ experiences somewhat inform how I still tend to proceed even in my dotage. We need informed imaginations to come to truth. Excellent post.
Ardis, Your concluding paragraph at comment no. 23 should be cut, saved, printed, framed, and prominently hung in every home everywhere.
I just discovered this thanks to a friend. Great post.
#9 Matt
My wife and I have scoured social media too and can’t find anything about a UM club at BYU, official or not. Then again, given how little of a social media presence the expo as a whole seems to have, maybe it’s not surprising. My hope is that the club consists of the people who were mentioned as members during the presentations, i.e., children/grandchildren of the presenters. Hopefully that means it’s not really much of an active club.
Ardis,
This is an excellent write-up, and I second the accolades to your follow-up comments. Gary Bergera in #28 voiced my exact thoughts when I read your conclusion in #23. Thank you so much for lending your keen intellect to interpreting this way of thinking.
Thanks for this insight into the anti-intellectualism that some of our brothers and sisters are engaging in. It may be that as a math major in college, I am sensitive to a clear lack of mathematical, quantitative reasoning, but I would be amazed if any of the people involved in such speculative fiction have ever utilized calculus, differential equations, or numerical analysis in a professional setting.
People who ridicule radioactive dating of geological features, or of ancient organic matter, seem to forget that the same science that undergirds those techniques has created nuclear reactors, nuclear weapons, and the use of radioisotopes to analyze blockages in heart circulation and sterilize dangerous microbes out of our food.
People who reject the 14 billion age of the universe are also rejecting the observations of astronomers, including the observation of black hole collisions a billion years ago.
People who reject mutation of DNA are rejecting the medical advances we have made in the past few decades.
People who reject the geology of earth do not understand how we can detect minerals deep in the earth, or recover oil and gas by fracturing deep layers of rock.
I can understand why the ancient Hebrews thought the earth was surrounded by water. After all, they cpuld see the blue of the sky and observed that water fell out of the sky. And if you dig down far enpugh, you can find underground water under most places.
BCC’s next book: a collection of Ardis Parshall essays.
I’d buy it.
I got turned on to this site by checking in to Dan Peterson’s Sic Et Non at the Patheos Website. Thanks, very enjoyable. I always check in on FIRM Foundation to see what nonsense is going on, but I never last long…it is too crazy.
I’m going one step further. I provisionally reject every setting proposed thus far for the BOM, and for the same reasons. The limited geography setting proposed by Sorenson and the rabbinical sect of the Church is every bit as laughable. I think about Leif Erickson landing on the Coast of Eastern Canada in the year 1000, and staying a mere 18 months…who’s settlement was discovered and where he and his little band left sufficient and undeniable evidence. Any civilizations of the nature described in the BOM would have and, indeed, have left indelible proof, not merely clues.
I don’t think of myself as an apostate, just a thinker who must be accountable for my thoughts and actions. I don’t know much, if anything at all, but I can know some things are reasonable or not. If there does not exist a cohesive argument capable of convincing a single non-Mormon archeologist of the reasonableness of the limited geography model, it must be rejected outright. I’m quite willing to accept the consequences of this standard of personal responsibility.
After perusing the Universal Model website, it quickly becomes apparent that it’s a modern day version of a priestcraft scam; snake oil; rainmaking. It’s all designed to push people down the sales funnel. Plain as day. As I read through it, i could identify the language and devices at work all designed to separate suckers from their money. I found it abominable.
Great work, Ardis! Thanks for the reporting and eloquent analysis.
I’m so sorry you had to sit through that, but I appreciate your write up and all your thoughtful words. I’ve been upset at the KSL ads promoting FIRM’s activities (or those of the participants) since it seems to add some “church sanctioned” aura to the activities. I was happy to see a group of BYU and UVU professors writing at least one public letter opposing the FIRM conference and objecting to the venue since holding it at UVU would seem to give it a “university stamp of approval.”
After all of this time, we finally received the first unpostable comment, defending against the characterization of the FIRM model as conspiracism … by defending conspiracism associated with 9/11.
Are you implying that they’re slow, on top of being disorganized, unprepared, and all of that other stuff we’ve been saying.
The author of the unpostable comment does not understand why his comment is unacceptable. It is unacceptable because Keepa is not a forum for strangers with conspiracist hobbies (or anti-Mormon angers, although that is not in play in this particular case) to air their off-topic views. I will not post such false ideas at Keepa and let them go unchallenged; neither will I be dragged into debating those false ideas with someone who will not be persuaded by truth. There are many nutty sites where nutty ideas can be posted and debated; Keepa is not one of them.
Orlando, that is the last response you’ll get from me. You are not even familiar enough with Keepa to realize that I am a woman, not the man you addressed me as, and you have no understanding of the community norms at play here. Good day.
Hi Ardis,
I have done a lot of work cataloguing errors in the Universal Model on my blog. Here’s the address.
https://bbickmore.wordpress.com/universal-model/
It is truly the stupidest pseudoscience trash I’ve ever encountered.
I first heard of UM today just after Sunday School and did a quick internet search. I couldn’t read the first book or even their summary of it without paying for it which was a red flag for me. So instead I started watching a YouTube video from April 2016 of Bruce Tuttle (the publisher) promoting it.
I only made it 12 minutes into the one hour presentation because my thoughts paralleled yours exactly: it “had the form of science and revelation , but thoroughly denied the power of either.” He certainly quoted general authorities and scriptures and bore his testimony of his conviction that we are being prepared to receive new truth and light.
Unfortunately, truth and light on such a large scale comes from the Prophet Seer and Revelator (and is usually signed by all the members of the First Presidency) – not by a publisher who is doing a publicity tour.
This looks like another mormon money making idea. And with a BS in Organizational Psychology, Sessions certainly has the skills to figure out exactly how to part Mormons from their money.
And thank you to Bickmore for quoting a lot of UM so I had an idea of what it is about AND for introducing me to the Gish Gallup. I now have a perfect description for Rennell’s letter and why it bothers me so much.
Rebecca, his comment was my introduction to the Gish Gallup, too; now I have recognized it in more than one context. I’m glad you found this post and took the time to comment.