Hugh Nibley- Child Abuse?

[Pahoran]

First, let me say again I have no idea if she is truthful or not. My purpose is to show the fallacy of the arguments of people here with no experience who jump on the Nibley bandwagon just because he is a famous mormon.

As opposed to whom? The Mormon-haters who jump on the Beck bandwagon because the accused is a famous Mormon?

As to EX-Husband, let me say this…I have been an attorney over 20 years. I practiced criminal law a number of years, then was in a practice where I also handled family law. I must say that I learned a long time ago to rarely believe ex-spouses. So, I take anything an ex says with a grain of salt.

So do I. Ex-husband, ex-wife, ex-Mormon, ex-Catholic. I take anything an ex says with a grain of salt.

But John Beck apparently is on pretty good terms with his ex-wife; they separated pretty amicably, primarily because he likes boys and she likes girls. They’re both “gay,” you see, and so they sympathise with each other.

But John simply didn’t see what she reports. And he was there at the time.

You seem determined to prove that everyone is lying except Martha.

As to what has been expunged, I say again that the LDS Church is pretty darned good at that sort of thing and again refer you to the Mark Hoffman Investigation

Irrelevant and incompetent. Only a fairly dedicated fanatic could seriously entertain the notion that somebody spend thousands of hours going through all the microfilms with a razor blade and sellotape to cut the articles in question out of the films and splice them together; and then, after all that, for that same somebody – or maybe a different somebody – to repeat the whole process in order to seamlessly restore the articles.

Why would anybody do that? Who, in 1988, could anticipate the contents of Martha’s future book in order to set her up in such an elaborate ruse?

How – desperate – would you have to be to believe such a ridiculous piece of nonsense?

Regards,
Pahoran

 

[SirThomasMore]

Once again, trial by innuendo

 

[SirThomasMore]

As opposed to whom? The Mormon-haters who jump on the Beck bandwagon because the accused is a famous Mormon?

 

[Pahoran]

nope…fact. The Church falsified and deleted records in the investigation. That is fact.

Call for references, please; can you substantiate that accusation?

Tell us, please: does the fact that these accusations are false increase their appeal to you, or is their veracity simply irrelevant to their utility?

actually, you did.

Actually, I did not. Do you have difficulty reading plain English?

Or are you just so arrogant that you presume to know my mind better than I do?

You have accused her of lying. Where is her presumption of innocence?

It’s found in the alternative possibilty, i.e. that she genuinely holds false “recovered” memories.

lol…try again. I have said more than once that I have no opinion on her veracity. I am just making sure you biased Mormons who ignore truth to defend Nibley don;t get carried away

IOW, you haven’t the moral courage to take responsibility for this accusation, but you still want to milk it for all the polemical advantage you can get out of it.

Got it.

More bold claims with no foundation. Figures

Okay then: you choose one of her disputed assertions – any one – and I’ll show you what’s wrong with it.

She is just as credible as Joe Smith and his 9 versions of a vision.

Irrelevant tu quoque fallacy. Or rather, a gratuitous cheap shot.

Just because you need her to be wrong does not mean she is

Not nearly as much as you need her to be right.

Prove it. Prove it could not happen

It’s up to the prosecution to prove that it could.

Not true. You know nothing of the law. When a defendant raises an affirmative defense,. it is up to the defense to prove the affirmative defense. You have made an affirmative defense, yet seem unable to prove it. Therefore, you lose

Not true. I didn’t raise an “affirmative defense.” I raised a “reasonable doubt” defense. It is reasonable to doubt the accusation Martha makes, because the probability that repeated molestation in that situation over a period of years could go undetected is vanishingly small.

First, I doubt it.

Your doubts, like all the rest of your opinions, are worthless.

I told the truth.

Second, I was referring to investigation and trial of child molestation cases.

I admit that I have no experience stitching up innocent people for crimes the didn’t commit, so I’ll yield to your expertise there.

Regards,
Pahoran

 

[Annie_B]

Hi Annie,

I don’t know any Latter-day Saint who “hates” Martha. To be frank, most people I know have never even heard of her. I’m aware that some of her family are upset about the contents of her book.

This is not to say that she has a large fan club among fair-minded people; after all, she did kidnap her nonagenarian father straight out of hospital (he’d gone there with chest pains) and confine him in a hotel room while she tried (unsuccessfully) to browbeat a confession out of him regarding her “recovered” memories.

This is hardly an admirable act. In fact, it’s the only proven instance of abuse in her entire book.

But “hate?” Not at all. Actually I rather suspect that TikiTokiguy is indulging in a charming little polemical trick called “poisoning the well.” This was first identified by Cardinal Newman, which makes it a suitable subject for a Catholic forum.

Regards,
Pahoran

Hi Pahoran
well said. I wondered about the choice of the word “hate” in the original post myself and saw it more as a “bait” word aimed to stir the pot rather than to promote intelligent discussion. To assume that any group - as a group - would “hate” a person makes no sense…
Annie

 

[dianaiad]

Hmm, I don’t know, never been. But I was talking religion to the family doctor and she told me a funny story - in medical school her roommate was a Mennonite who was very sweet. She she spent spring break with this Mennonite in some large town with a big Mennonite community. She said she found them absolutely rude. Then she said her husband, also a doctor, spent some time in Salt Lake City for a medical conference, and he found the people there very rude. In my two years in the LDS church, always having a suit on, volunteering, even being the greeter of the ward, even helping teach the Gospel Principles class, I developed zero friends in the church, I assume because I was not married. So much for being so “Christian.” I’ll take some blame tho, I never had a testimony of Smith, I pretended I did, I even tried to have one, perhaps I had a 10% testimony, but deep down I knew he was false and bad. Perhaps the other members could see right through my fake testimony. Perhaps they could see I’m liberal and not conservative. The LDS church is 99.9999 conservative/Republican. Then again, perhaps they are simply cliquish stuck-up rude people. Probably a mix of all things.

Tokotikiguy, there are more Mormons who live outside the USA than inside. Those Mormons couldn’t care less about US Politics, or about who votes Republican. That alone says that your claim is a tad bit exagerated; it’s not possible for 99.9999% (I’m sure you meant to put a percentage mark there, since it IS true that there are more than 99.9999 conservative Republicans in the church) of Mormons to be Republican conservatives. Add to that the decided tendency for the LDS population of any area to ‘go with the flow’ politically, with the people who live near them, and you have…quite a few LDS Democrats and liberals.

…or did you forget about Harry Reid? I love Harry Reid. I really hate his politics, but I love that he is a MORMON with those politics. He has been incredibly useful…so much so that I’m almost going to regret his being ousted this November.

Are Utah Mormons generally conservative Republicans? Yep. It’s not because they are mostly Mormons, though. UTAHN’S are conservative Republicans…mostly because of what the Democrats have done to them over the years. I don’t think you want to mention “Clinton” and “Executive Order” to a Utahn you want to make friends with.

Mormons who live on the East coast tend to be Democrats.

As for whether the members could ‘see through’ your ‘fake testimony,’ that’s a possibility. People are generally uncomfortable around hypocrites.

 

[Eliza10]

I do not know of Patty Bond, but why do you assume that I must be totally ignorant of all such stories to hold the position I do?
.

And you don’t need to know her story specifically, just any one in detail. Patty’s brother is anti-Catholic debator James White, and he did not like what Patty had to say about their father, not did any one else in their family. I was particularly interested in the story since I had heard White debate, and because Bonds is a convert, like me, and at a cost, and because White reminded me of a Narcissist I know. None of those things may interest you, so the story might not interest you as it did me. But when you are drawn into a story like that, seeing all angles of the thing (like SirThomas has to do in his court cases), you learn things.

If you have had any direct experience with any type of systematic abuse (not all types are as blatant as sexual abuse), or are close to the stories of anyone who has, you see the certain lines of similarity between all kinds of abuse. And you just recognize the signs.

Have I demonstrated in that past a tendency to make big claims about subjects that I know literally zero about? .

No, nothing like that. Sorry, I did not mean to give the impression that I think that.

It is very easy to ascribe motives to anyone involved…

Yes, and people were ascribing motives to her, that she is crazy, and it just didn’t sit right for me. That’s why I jumped in.

It would not take much imagination to find bad motives for Martha Beck to invent a story…

On the contrary, in my opinion, I cannot think of a plausible motive for her to do that. [note: Please, pahoran, don’t try to make some up; I don’t think I can take it].

 

[Pahoran]

Show me a Mormon hater. Who are the Mormon haters?

You won’t have to look very far.

Do you? Comparing an ex-religious to an ex-spouse is silly. But, if you need to do it to make a point, then, I guess anything goes…right?

If you say so; that seems to be your M.O., so you are speaking to your expertise. In the meantime, a number of ex-Mormons have compared leaving the Church to getting a divorce, so that comparison is not original to me.

And yes, an awful lot of exMo’s (and ex’ed-Mo’s) tend to show a great deal of bitterness towards the Church for a long time afterwards.

Tell us, SirThomasMore, how happy you are as a Catholic that you can walk away from your obsession with the Church of Jesus Christ and stop bashing it at every opportunity?

lol…“good terms”, does not mean calling your ex a liar. So, nice try.

I didn’t say he called her a liar; I said that he contradicted several assertions of fact she made in her book.

Her book, SirThomasMore.

Do you demand that your friends agree with you about everything, do you?

Also, the fact she is gay also lends credibility to her story. She is not first female sexually abused by a man who turns to women. Thanks for making that point for me

Except that it is a known and uncontroversial fact that she really was molested, at a young age, by a neighbour boy, not by her father.

A fact you previously tried to dismiss as “irrelevant.”

Are you now, at last, prepared to admit that it was not?

irrelevant. Under your rules, people could rarely commit crimes. Newsflash: Crimes happen all the time

So they do. But when person A says, “This crime happened to B and I when we were together,” and B says “No it didn’t,” you’d better be prepared to sort out what happened before you go to trial on the strength of A’s testimony.

Then I am speaking over your head.

Yes, I am completely dazzled by your superior intelligence.

I have no idea who is lying. I am just saying that your defenses of Nibley don;lt hold water

You know what? Maybe you’re right.

But then, they don’t need to hold water.

You see, Hugh Nibley had no case to answer. And, were it not for the fact that he was a Mormon (ugh!) you’d be able to see that. You might even be able to admit it.

First, that is not even a valid objection. Second, it is completely relevant. Past conduct is always relevant.

I realise that for you, as for most bigots, the targets of your bigotry are completely monolithic; so that if an unsupported accusation is made against one group of Mormons (such as the Church Historical Department in Salt Lake City) then you feel free to extrapolate the smear to any other group of Mormons (such as the librarians at the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University in Provo.)

However, people who don’t deal in such broad-brush stereotypes understand that this is false.

Do you get all your convictions by appealing to the basest prejudices of the jurors?

Or someone with a lot to hide. Or maybe they had duplicate microfilms. YOU brought up the defense yet can’t support it.

I have facts. All you have in rebuttal is a bunch of maybes.

Martha made a detailed description of how she went to the HBLL, looked up everything she could find about Sonia Johnson and they weren’t there. Guess what? They’re there. People who were at BYU at the time remember them being there. They also recall that there was all manner of anti-Mormon material there.

Her accusation is absurd on its face, and your attempts to shore it up are ridiculously weak, and would not convince a jury with an average IQ anywhere above room temperature.

In Celsius.

Are you serious? The LDS Church covered up for years the MMM. That included controlling juries and people.

That is a notorious and thoroughly-discredited canard.

No wonder you like it so much.

They covered up evidence in Hoffman, they cover up evidence against the LDS Church.

That’s what Mormon-haters love to believe.

But it’s false.

Regards,
Pahoran

 

[Eliza10]

… My purpose is to show the fallacy of the arguments of people here with no experience who jump on the Nibley bandwagon just because he is a famous mormon.

And you are doing a great job.

 

[Pahoran]

On the contrary, in my opinion, I cannot think of a plausible motive for her to do that. [note: Please, pahoran, don’t try to make some up; I don’t think I can take it].

So you are more comfortable with unsubstantiated accusations of child abuse going unchallenged than you are with them being tested.

Got it.

I don’t know whether she’s making it all up or if she genuinely holds false “recovered” memories about the event. Based upon the fact that her “recovered” memories came before the book, I’m inclined to believe the latter; however she certainly embellishes a lot of material.

How do you feel about the one and only proven instance of abuse in the book: the kidnapping and interrogation of her ninety-year-old father?

In any event, it might interest you to know (or maybe you’d prefer not to know) that she originally planned her book as a novel. Her publishers told her it would sell better as a memoir, and in the first person; because, as someone else pointed out, people tend to instinctively trust a first-person narrative.

So she reworked it as a memoir.

Apparently she didn’t have to change very much.

Did you notice that, except for herself, her husband and her father, everyone in her book is either anonymous or pseudonymous?

And what did you think about the funny story she told in connection with her therapist, Rachel Grant?

Regards,
Pahoran

 

[Eliza10]

Pahoran, I would like to get in on the discussion more, but you are here, saying things like this:

"I’m sure you and your fellow ex-Mormons would just lap this story up.

“I’ll tell you where you really wouldn’t want me: on the jury.
Because I’d see through your lawyerly tricks as soon as you tried to pull them out.”

"Do you have difficulty reading plain English?

"Your doubts, like all the rest of your opinions, are worthless.

"I admit that I have no experience stitching up innocent people for crimes they didn’t commit, so I’ll yield to your expertise there.

"I realise that for you, as for most bigots, the targets of your bigotry are completely monolithic

“That is a notorious and thoroughly-discredited canard.
No wonder you like it so much.”



Its just so ugly. Can’t you just debate? Why do you have to be ugly, snarky, personal, insulting? It is so unpleasant. This kind of talk doesn’t belong on our boards, and I don’t see why the mods haven’t suspended you for it. They must not be reading.

But this cheeky bit of ugly falsehood you spit here requires clarification:

"No, it really goes something like: “People who belong to **a church that has a pervasive, structural problem of endemic child abuse **shouldn’t be parading their triumphant [blah blah etc.]”

PROVE IT, Pahoran!

 

[Eliza10]

SirThomasMore, you are doing a great job debating fair and square and staying with the issues and not getting personal and ugly. I just can’t get in on this with the abusive way the other person debates. It turns my stomach.

 

[Pahoran]

Pahoran, I would like to get in on the discussion more, but you are here, saying things like this:

"I’m sure you and your fellow ex-Mormons would just lap this story up.

“I’ll tell you where you really wouldn’t want me: on the jury.
Because I’d see through your lawyerly tricks as soon as you tried to pull them out.”

"Do you have difficulty reading plain English?

"Your doubts, like all the rest of your opinions, are worthless.

"I admit that I have no experience stitching up innocent people for crimes they didn’t commit, so I’ll yield to your expertise there.

"I realise that for you, as for most bigots, the targets of your bigotry are completely monolithic

“That is a notorious and thoroughly-discredited canard.
No wonder you like it so much.”



Its just so ugly. Can’t you just debate? Why do you have to be ugly, snarky, personal, insulting? It is so unpleasant. This kind of talk doesn’t belong on our boards, and I don’t see why the mods haven’t suspended you for it. They must not be reading.

Perhaps they’re not. But if you could put aside your own partisan bias for just a moment, you’d realise that I’m only giving as good as I’m getting from SirThomasMore.

But this cheeky bit of ugly falsehood you spit here requires clarification:

"No, it really goes something like: “People who belong to **a church that has a pervasive, structural problem of endemic child abuse **shouldn’t be parading their triumphant [blah blah etc.]”

PROVE IT, Pahoran!

Prove what? That it was a fair response to:

People who follow false prophets and worship a different god[sic] than the in the Bible should not live in glass houses lst the house come crashing down and they get cut.

Which starts off with assuming a controversial assertion as if it were a fact (“false prophets”) followed immediately by an objectively false statement that is highly inflammatory (“worship a different god[sic] than the in the Bible.”)

You seem to have difficulty noticing when it’s a Mormon ox getting gored, Eliza.

Why is that?

Regards,
Pahoran

 

[Eliza10]

I don’t want to talk to you, Pahoran. You’re not nice.

 

[SirThomasMore]

Call for references, please; can you substantiate that accusation?

Nope. Recovered memories does not mean lying. You accused her. Back it up. Prove it.

IOW, you haven’t the moral courage to take responsibility for this accusation, but you still want to milk it for all the polemical advantage you can get out of it.

Cool…another LDS know he has lost so he starts the attacks. Actually, correcting your errors is enjoyable.

Okay then: you choose one of her disputed assertions – any one – and I’ll show you what’s wrong with it.

Wrong. YOU made the bold claims. Yet you keep dodging when asked to prove them. Figures

Irrelevant tu quoque

fallacy. Or rather, a gratuitous cheap shot.

Nope. Another fact.

Not nearly as much as you need her to be right.

I don;t need her to be right. Her being right or wrong means nothing. Nibley is dead and is already asking for forgiveness for leading people astray. I am just showing that LDS blanket “it is false, she is a liar” is faulty.

It’s up to the prosecution to prove that it could.

Nope…again, yopur lack of knowledge about the law humors me. You made an affirmative defense, prove it.

Not true. I didn’t raise an “affirmative defense.” I raised a “reasonable doubt” defense. It is reasonable to doubt the accusation Martha makes, because the probability that repeated molestation in that situation over a period of years could go undetected is vanishingly small.

Not true. You made an affirmative defense. You can;t prove it, so you try to shift the burden of proof. You lose. Again.

Your doubts, like all the rest of your opinions, are worthless.

cool…another attack. Means I hit the target. Thank you.

I told the truth.

lol

I

admit that I have no experience stitching up innocent people for crimes the didn’t commit, so I’ll yield to your expertise there.

ah…don;t be so humble…what you mean to say is you have ZERO legal experience, so your comments have no basis in anything other than your mind. Thank you.

[/QUOTE]

 

[Eliza10]

“He that sees another in error and endeavors not to correct it, testifies himself to be in error.” -Pope Leo I

SirThomas, I like this quote, and its fitting for this forum.

 

[SirThomasMore]

You won’t have to look very far.

 

[SirThomasMore]

So you assert. What does this mean exactly? That your still-Mormon ex-wife tried to keep custody of them?

 

[Eliza10]

. Are you happy enough as a Mormon to not come to a Catholic Board?..

 

[SirThomasMore]

SirThomasMore, you are doing a great job debating fair and square and staying with the issues and not getting personal and ugly. I just can’t get in on this with the abusive way the other person debates. It turns my stomach.

thank you