Science: "How a Mormon Lawyer Transformed Mesoamerican Archaeology—and Ended Up Losing His Faith"

For discussion of liberty, freedom, government and politics.
Post Reply
User avatar
inho
captain of 1,000
Posts: 3286
Location: in a galaxy far, far away

Science: "How a Mormon Lawyer Transformed Mesoamerican Archaeology—and Ended Up Losing His Faith"

Post by inho »

The eminent science magazine Science published a news feature article about Thomas Ferguson.
The Believer: How a Mormon Lawyer Transformed Mesoamerican Archaeology—and Ended Up Losing His Faith
The article is worth reading. Even though it tells about someone who lost his faith, it is written in respectful manner. Jeff Lindsay said amongst other things this about the article:
As an aside, I'm pleased to see this acknowledgement for the pro-scholarship, hands-off approach the Church is taking. Research finds do not need to be vetted by General Authorities to ensure they are faith-promoting. This is in contrast to the New York Times harsh obituary on Thomas S. Monson that stated that the Church usually vets publications from historians who are given access to church documents, a claim sharply disputed by Scott Gordon at FairMormon as I discussed in my previous post.

http://mormanity.blogspot.fi/2018/01/sc ... ormed.html
I recommend reading the whole blog post by Jeff Lindsay. It gives some valuable additional information.

gardener4life
captain of 1,000
Posts: 1690

Re: Science: "How a Mormon Lawyer Transformed Mesoamerican Archaeology—and Ended Up Losing His Faith"

Post by gardener4life »

Well stuff like this isn't surprising. But I find it interesting that people have talked about this. Even other scholarly LDS people have talked about how they were shocked that some people were so silly as to fall for sacrificing faith because they didn't see an answer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKEwcWI14P0&t=237s

This guy, Rob Meldrum, talked about people making that mistake. He talks about how people place data over faith and revelation. But you know I always think how silly it is to think that humans can think that we always have ALL the data in the world, when our technologies are still developing. We can't analyze much of what's under the ground still! Why would we think that we know and have all the data when we still are figuring out even basic technologies! And the fact that our technology is developing faster than we can blink is actually a proof that we're still in our infancy. I mean think about it...if we knew everything there wouldn't really be any new discoveries or new technologies because we'd already have them. There's also the idea of even if we had technologies to know all the evidences we'd still have to look in the right places.

I think it's a trap to think of things the way the world sees them. Everything about our mortal probation is trying to learn how God sees things. But we keep up this fallacy that we're suppose to somehow see the world as Babylon sees it, and subdue revelation with science on top. Isn't that kind of silly to think? Scientists and universities teach to throw away the scriptures and God and laugh at them instead of using them to reconcile differences in technology that we're still figuring out. Well the truth is they started falling away when they would laugh and be ashamed of religious influence, NOT when they actually questioned their faith. They set it up long ago before then by thinking they could follow the crowd and not read the scriptures daily, pray daily, or feel the spirit. (No wonder they ran into trouble!) They still want to say that Noah's ARK is a myth and not real! We know it was real! Science also has promoted a view of competing with religion too instead of working hand in hand. There's really no logical reason why you can't say...the Bible says this, why can't science look for such and such clues. But many of them have fought this idea for years. Some recent people have started coming forward but it's kind of strange to decide that we can't use common sense reasoning of what people have believed for years to throw it all away and follow Darwinism promoted ideas. (Which one is really weird hmmm....)

(There's dozens of video links I could put in here for proof of the Flood! I was watching one on youtube just two days ago! And that wasn't even counting proof of the ARK in the Turkey/Armenia area.)

Now I think that a lot of Book of Mormon evidence is out there still waiting to be discovered. I don't think you can really properly place all that until you can map out the entire genome of humans though. But even if you can...there's a documentary on it of some guy trying to find the first man. And they want to throw out the scriptures searching for Adam the first man. But if you did that, wouldn't you actually find Noah, or Abraham? (The Lord says he'll mix Abraham's seed all throughout the world. Also if there's a flood then there's no more living DNA evidence of anyone before Noah.) So scientists end up going in odd avenues because they refuse to acknowledge the scriptures as support for their investigation scriptures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS2FMS87DE8 (This one is very interesting. But this is where you'd run into a conflict. If he found Adam did really find Adam or Abraham or Noah? And doesn't DNA technology fail to provide for details on how genes change and are different between siblings of parents and how sibling DNA evolves differently from each other? IF that's the case and he claims he found Adam in Africa ...which scientists are doing...then maybe they found Ham instead.)

I'm not knocking these guys. It's fascinating stuff. But there's still dozens of questions to ask and find out. Most likely these guys will eventually provide a skeletal framework for others to discover other things later and that's worthwhile. We are still far from the answers. And we'll be grateful for all the people that discovered things from before.

Science I think tries to compete with religion from pride, rather than admit we can't know everything right away. Faith was never about 'proving it' by some kind of argument, but by following in faith instead letting the proof come later after the reward of faith.


User avatar
kittycat51
captain of 1,000
Posts: 1791
Location: Looking for Zion

Re: Science: "How a Mormon Lawyer Transformed Mesoamerican Archaeology—and Ended Up Losing His Faith"

Post by kittycat51 »

No wonder why Ferguson lost his faith. BofM didn't happen where he thought. ;)

User avatar
inho
captain of 1,000
Posts: 3286
Location: in a galaxy far, far away

Re: Science: "How a Mormon Lawyer Transformed Mesoamerican Archaeology—and Ended Up Losing His Faith"

Post by inho »

kittycat51 wrote: January 20th, 2018, 2:31 pm No wonder why Ferguson lost his faith. BofM didn't happen where he thought. ;)
Actually, if you read the article, you will learn that it was issues related to the Book of Abraham that were more crushing to him.

gardener4life
captain of 1,000
Posts: 1690

Re: Science: "How a Mormon Lawyer Transformed Mesoamerican Archaeology—and Ended Up Losing His Faith"

Post by gardener4life »

For what it's worth, I think he DID find the Book of Mormon lands. He just didn't find the Nephite lands. And so the harder he tried to find evidence of their religion of course he'd get more discouraged. It's kind of silly that we have to think that any archaeology found has to be Nephite archaeology; but I do understand why people would want for those things.


Reasons;

People going in and under temples in Mexico and Yucatan see murals of a red skinned people killing and offering sacrifice of a white people. (Book of Mormon does say many were taken away captive in the invasions. You can find verses talking about this.)

Supposedly Brigham Young commented that the robbers and Lamanites were in the Utah area. (Utah is closer to Mexico than it is to the Hill Cumorah area and the area between Nauvoo and the hill Cumorah.)

Also we keep thinking this was a small civilization limited to something the size of Ohio or smaller but in a thousand years they could have had their borders in vast areas.

larsenb
Level 34 Illuminated
Posts: 10812
Location: Between here and Standing Rock

Re: Science: "How a Mormon Lawyer Transformed Mesoamerican Archaeology—and Ended Up Losing His Faith"

Post by larsenb »

inho wrote: January 20th, 2018, 10:33 am The eminent science magazine Science published a news feature article about Thomas Ferguson.
The Believer: How a Mormon Lawyer Transformed Mesoamerican Archaeology—and Ended Up Losing His Faith
The article is worth reading. Even though it tells about someone who lost his faith, it is written in respectful manner. Jeff Lindsay said amongst other things this about the article:
As an aside, I'm pleased to see this acknowledgement for the pro-scholarship, hands-off approach the Church is taking. Research finds do not need to be vetted by General Authorities to ensure they are faith-promoting. This is in contrast to the New York Times harsh obituary on Thomas S. Monson that stated that the Church usually vets publications from historians who are given access to church documents, a claim sharply disputed by Scott Gordon at FairMormon as I discussed in my previous post.

http://mormanity.blogspot.fi/2018/01/sc ... ormed.html
I recommend reading the whole blog post by Jeff Lindsay. It gives some valuable additional information.
What a strange article to appear in Science! Maybe the journal has changed since I used to selectively read it; even being a co-author on a Science article, myself.

Excellent analysis of Lizzie Wade's article by Jeff Lindsay. Too bad he wasn't chosen to peer review it. And the comments from Neal Rappleye included in Lindsay's analysis are excellent, as well. Ferguson comes across indeed, as something of an archaeological treasure hunter, if some of the comments attributed to him are true, especially the one where he wanted to go to Oman to climb every mountain to find any inscriptions left by Lehi/Nephi.

I called up Ferguson in the early '70's to ask him his advice on where to go and what to see on a trip I was planning to Mexico. At this point, I remember something a bit unsettling about our conversation, but haven't thought about if for so long, I no longer recall what that might have been.

Maybe Science should do a balanced and thoughtful review of Brian Stubbs' work found in: Exploring the Explanatory Power of Semitic and Egyptian in Uto-Aztecan.

User avatar
inho
captain of 1,000
Posts: 3286
Location: in a galaxy far, far away

Re: Science: "How a Mormon Lawyer Transformed Mesoamerican Archaeology—and Ended Up Losing His Faith"

Post by inho »

larsenb wrote: January 21st, 2018, 12:11 am What a strange article to appear in Science! Maybe the journal has changed since I used to selectively read it; even being a co-author on a Science article, myself.

Excellent analysis of Lizzie Wade's article by Jeff Lindsay. Too bad he wasn't chosen to peer review it.
This was a feature under the News section (which is strange too, since the article isn't really news). Since it wasn't proper research article, I don't think it was peer reviewed.

Post Reply