From one of the 5 out of 5 star reviews on Amazon.

"In this volume, Ash competently regurgitates the best LDS scholarship on issues. . ."

Exactly.

http://www.amazon.com/Shaken-Faith-Syndrome-Strengthening-Testimony/dp/1893036146/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

This review has puzzled me a lot.

"Best Introduction to LDS Apologetics, Hands Down!" How is a book about one's weakening faith in LDS an "Introduction to LDS Apologetics"????

I mean, does Ash want people with testimony problems to become LDS Apologists?

Seems to show me how false LDS is!!!

So, your testimony has been shaken a bit son. Here read this Intro to LDS Apologetics book and it will fix that problem. Strange. It is like FAIRLDS wants to turn LDS believers who without guile believe in golden plat translations into rock heads in hats (and sand) with guile dripping from them.

God help us.

Maybe he does want people with testimony problems to think like apologists. Apologists are terrific at seeing something that makes the church look bad, and figuring out why it isn't real or doesn't matter.

Maybe in the future only apologists, and people think like them, will be members.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/2013 12:40AM by crom.

http://www.amazon.com/Persistence-Polygamy-Joseph-Origins-Mormon/dp/193490113X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375911346&sr=1-1&keywords=the+persistence+of+polygamy


"Foster, myself, and Smith find Joseph's marriages to 10 teenagers within the norms of statistics and inherited biological and legal traditions in Joseph's environment."

I had to comment on that:

Do you understand how unbelievably weird this sounds? Who marries 10 teenagers? How is that within the norms of statistics or legal traditions?

crom Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I had to comment on that:
>
> Do you understand how unbelievably weird this
> sounds? Who marries 10 teenagers? How is that
> within the norms of statistics or legal
> traditions?

LOL! Great comment. Obviously this is just for a Mormon audience.

People who know a bit about statistics took issue with their "analysis" in the book.

Joseph was his own data set where they only looked at the AGE GAP between him and his wives. They compared it with a data set from the era for men 34 - 38 and the ages of their wives. They claimed the means and standard deviations were "comparable".* Conclusion this is normal.

The problems are:

These people in the other data sets were monogamous and didn't marry women who were already married.

Some of these other data sets, particularly the ones that more closely align with Joseph's, are slim making them suspect to being 'representative'. (They also group "teens" for overall percentages. No differentiation made between being 14 and 19.)

To see some of their tables:
http://signaturebooks.com/2011/06/craig-foster-defends-joseph-smiths-underage-marriages/


Joseph was fortunate to have some outliers that cancelled/balanced out. 14 year old Helen Mar Kimball and 14 year old Nancy Mariah Winchester are cancelled out by 56 year old Fanny Young and 58 year old Rhoda Richards. On average a perfectly respectable age. (But it also makes his standard deviation larger than "normal".)

It assumes that polygamy is perfectly normal.

Marrying every few weeks happens all the time.

Stories of flaming swords and eternal salvation/damnation are the usual reasons people get married.

Yeah, perfectly normal, nothing weird here.

*I disagree.



Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2013 07:30PM by crom.

Exactly.

lumping all of his marriages together to get an average age difference is ridiculous. His standard deviation is twice that of most of the other regions, so the figures are not comparable anyway - they clearly represent different populations (as they state, JSJr is not a region). Each of his marriages should be compared to the mean age differences (and the group with Utah should be excluded for obvious reasons - the activities of his followers should not be used in a comparison of the 'normality' of his behavior!).

From those guys own little table (fig 5.4 in the link), less than 16% of first marriages involved an age difference of more than about 16 years between husband and wife. Less than 2% would involve a gap of 24 years. There is no accounting for changes in age difference between younger and older brides (it would seem to be less acceptable for a 20 year age difference at 14 years than at 30 years).

When he married Nancy Mariah Winchester (14yo) when he was 37/38, that was not a normal marriage.

The FAIR site have got a few dodgy graphs as well. They plot Joseph's average age difference for each age group of brides compared to US MINIMUM, average and MAXIMUM. Using minimum/maximum is crazy due to outliers. Joseph's average for young teens is well outside the national average (more than twice the average difference), but because his bar is dwarfed by the maximum (which might be one marriage), a TBM wanting reassurance will go away thinking it was all OK back then.

The age differences also apply to first/legal marriages where the wife will join the husband in open partnership. Not remain stashed somewhere, hiding the relationship, and unsupported by the husband. The plethora of graphs on apologist sites are a red herring, designed to mollify TBMs who come across this immoral behavior.

What the hell?

You can only define "having 10 teenage wives" as statistically normal if you quality 3 (maybe even 4) standard deviations from the norm as "statistically normal," which is a world in which all behavior is statistically normal. Or you'd have to have your population sample consist of fundamentalist leaders and Muslim sheikhs.

The population samples in that table (fig 5.4) do seem dodgy. Why only 20 samples for the entire west? Surely more than 20 men 34-38 got married. Somethings up. How were these comparative samples selected?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2013 11:25PM by crom.

I am appalled that he chose "Shaken Baby Syndrome" as the appropriate metaphor for losing faith.

I'd like to shake a few apologists.

"Ash said attending the FAIR conference should be a must for members wishing to better understand the church in all its complexities. Having participated in a handful of past FAIR conferences, Ash said the gatherings have helped him appreciate the great things the church has accomplished -- and ultimately, the truthfulness of the its teachings -- even with the weaknesses and shortcomings of its members.

"It's a matter of having answers, so that we can see that there is not a silver bullet, there's not a nail in the coffin, that proves the church is false," he said."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/3049875/posts

Yuck. The church is true - it's the members who have weaknesses and shortcomings. Yuck.

I think this church has never been truthful and the members are overworked and under appreciated.

That's how Mormonism left me: shaken not stirred.

good one :<>

OK I swear this will be my last time that I use this. All anyone needs to do is tout how smart and comparable Elder Ash is to the genius Samuel A. Cartwright. Drapetomania seems to be incredibly similar to this shaken faith thing.

Why would you want to flee these conditions - your parents were born into this and it's good for them and the family, forget truth or right - it is how families and races work, you must be crazy to upset the current social order.

It doesn't need saying, but Ash is an idiot and will forever be incapable of recognizing people improving themselves through liberalism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania

and I'm glad I did. thx

I'm not good at posting links so thank you. I think this is the 30th time I have posted this, but it never catches on or my comparisons to previous history are out of whack. Anyway thanks for posting the link, I think it is the most relevant comparison I have come across.

Mike likes to prattle on about the imaginary "Shaken Faith Syndrome", when the real disorder is MFFS:

Mormon Fragile Faith Syndrome


the inevitable result of trying to ram blatantly moronic beliefs down the gullet of one's intellect. Deep down, where the sun don't shine, dissonance rumbles away. Will an eruption follow, or will the soul wither, leaving an empty husk?


Whadya think, Mikey?

How about Suddenly Free Syndrome? The apologists fail to realize it comes in an epiphany. You can't poke that back in a bottle.

At least that's how it was for me. Others?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/08/2013 10:49AM by crom.

I missed that fact that the SECOND edition is being flogged:


"This second edition of Ash's widely successful Shaken Faith Syndrome includes more than 50 additional pages of material such as up-to-date highlights from scholarly studies that support the Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham, more discussion on how our brains and emotions handle challenging issues, and a brand new chapter on race issues and the Church."

Holy Crapola what swill appeals to the LDS Faithful.

Good catch. First edition in 2008. Talk about whipping a dead horse. Why would the second edition work any better than the first?

Link to first edition:
http://www.amazon.com/Shaken-Syndrome-Strengthening-Testimony-Criticism/dp/1893036081/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375974163&sr=1-3

And lo, no one doubted again. <hahaha>