2017 Mental Gymnastics Olympiad

[Hagoth]

Tickets are on sale for the 2017 FAIR conference. Get 'em while they're hot.

"Presentations include:
Early Mormon Women’s Witness to the restoration
Lost Teachings of the Prophets: Recently Uncovered Teachings of Joseph Smith and Others from the Council of Fifty Record
Witnesses of the Book of Mormon
The Kirtland Banking Crisis
Evolution
Learning to read scripture
Book of Mormon internal geography

And more

Some of our speakers include:

Matthew Bowen
Garrit Dirkmaat
Keith Erekson
Elizabeth A. Kuehn
Brant Gardner
Tyler Griffen
Janiece Johnson
Ugo Perego
Neal Rappleye
Ben Spackman
and
Daniel Peterson"

[Korihor]

I'm 1/2 surprised the church allows this to be held annually.

The other 1/2 of me thinks the church needs this so they let someone else unofficially do the dirty work in search of nuggets.

[Hagoth]

The other 1/2 of me thinks the church needs this so they let someone else unofficially do the dirty work in search of nuggets.

Yes, or at least gives The Brethren a handy diversionary tactic. It's this stuff that allows the GAs to respond the way Elder Holland did to Tom Phillips when he asked him about metallurgy and horses in the Book of Mormon:

"...don't embarrass yourself by asking about metallurgy or archeology or horses. The discussion about the power and promise of the Book of Mormon went light years beyond that a long time ago."

Elder Holland did not have to make the least amount of effort to try to answer the question, he merely sidesteps it with the claim that we have moved "light years" beyond asking such questions. In a way, it doesn't even matter what the answers are because they are merely canon fodder for leadership plausibility denial. What's important is that the mere existence of this kind of scholarly hand waving lifts the burden of embarrassment from the church and places it on the individual who doesn't buy into the (often equally embarrassing) apologetic arguments. Now you're embarrassing yourself if you point out that there was no metallurgy in Mesoamerica in BoM times. Sheesh. All of this allows someone like Elder Holland to perform a mike drop and walk away without actually having to give any answers at all, and at the same time not requiring him to acknowledge any specific apologetic claims. Everyone gets away unscathed except the kid who was willing to speak up about the emperor's nekidness. Pretty clever really.

[Corsair]

"Presentations include:
Early Mormon Women’s Witness to the restoration
Lost Teachings of the Prophets: Recently Uncovered Teachings of Joseph Smith and Others from the Council of Fifty Record
Witnesses of the Book of Mormon
The Kirtland Banking Crisis
Evolution
Learning to read scripture
Book of Mormon internal geography

It's a testament to my apostasy that I look at this list and it looks so colossally boring. The only way I could deal with attending this conference is through parody. Here are my suggested subtitles to these presentations:

Early Mormon Women’s Witness to the restoration - We are the real feminists on this planet

Lost Teachings of the Prophets: Recently Uncovered Teachings of Joseph Smith and Others from the Council of Fifty Record - A slice of things that won't directly embarrass believers in the crazy Council of Fifty minutes

Witnesses of the Book of Mormon - The word "Miraculous" will be used in a the most boring way possible

The Kirtland Banking Crisis - Mistakes were made, but not by Joseph Smith

Evolution - Bruce McConkie is not around to embarrass the BYU biology and anthropology department

Learning to read scripture - The Correlation department knows best

Book of Mormon internal geography - As accurate as Tolkien's map of Gondor

[moksha]

Lost Teachings of the Prophets: Recently Uncovered Teachings of Joseph Smith and Others from the Council of Fifty Records

That part of about learning the exact invocation for the "Dusting of the Boots Curse" was interesting. To quote verbatim:

You put your right foot in,
You put your right foot out,
You put your right foot in,
And you shake it all about,

You shout hosannah
and you turn yourself around
That what it's all about.

Does anyone know if Dr. Daniel C. Peterson will be making this presentation?

[MoPag]

Here is a link to the bios of the people speaking. https://www.fairmormon.org/conference/august-2017

I'm kind of impressed. I thought it would be a bunch of MLM founders.

Except there is this poor guy: Neal Rappleye. His bio is like sadly shorter that the other presenters. And it doesn't say where he went to school. And his presentation is called

Presentation: “Put Away Childish Things”: Learning to Read the Book of Mormon Using Mature Historical Thought

I can only imagine what that will be like.

[Korihor]

That part of about learning the exact invocation for the "Dusting of the Boots Curse" was interesting. To quote verbatim:

You put your right foot in,
You put your right foot out,
You put your right foot in,
And you shake it all about,

You shout hosannah
and you turn yourself around
That what it's all about.