Last year, FairMormon had a big win for their organization when LDS General Authority Kevin Pearson came to speak at their conference and endorsed them. I consider myself an LDS Apologist. I was moved by Elder Pearson’s words at that conference as he encouraged all LDS with the ability to act on their own to publicly defend the Church. I felt a spiritual prompting to do more than I have been in my efforts to provide intellectual answers and paradigms for those in faith crisis.
In his talk, he identified three organizations that the Church in some degree officially endorses. He thanked those organizations and encouraged others to support them and to direct questioners to those resources. FairMormon, the journal Mormon Interpeter, and BOM Central.
My position is well known (like beating a dead horse some would say). I don’t believe the BOM is historical. I don’t believe the LDS Church is God’s one, exclusively true church. I believe most scripture should be taken metaphorically and not literally. But I have a testimony of the restored gospel, I love the church, I’m an active, faithful LDS with a temple recommend. I love the Book of Mormon. I love the teachings of Jesus Christ. I love the unique teachings and practices we have in the church, coming through Joseph Smith and modern prophets that lead us today.
I want to be more aligned with the traditional Apologists like those three organizations. I feel like I’m more like them than different. We all attend church together. Serve together. Try to figure out how to keep others in the church together. Together, we are trying to figure out how to overcome all the opposition the church is facing on truth claim issues.
Much of what FairMormon, Mormon Interpreter, and BOM Central put out, I can support. Some of it I like a lot. Some of it, I may not feel it is compelling. But rarely do I find the material bad.
With Elder Pearson’s endorsement comes a level of responsibility. We can’t provide ridiculously bad arguments that critics slice up and mock us for it. We can’t go for the cheap, easy wins that might appeal to a mass, uneducated audience when the people that are actually in faith crisis seeking to know the right answers read both sides and have to admit the critics are right. We can’t come across so bad that we seem dishonest and break trust with honest seekers.
With that long introduction, I wanted to put some context into what I’m going to do next, which is criticize these three organizations for some recent bad Book of Mormon apologetics.
Mormon Interpreter
The Mormon Interpreter published an article recently by father and son team Bruce and Brian Dale titled Joseph Smith: The World’s Greatest Guesser (A Bayesian Statistical Analysis of Positive and Negative Correspondences between the Book of Mormon and The Maya)
The gist of the article is that the Dales took 131 positive correspondences and 18 negative correspondences between the Book of Mormon and ancient Mesoamerica, using non-LDS and Book of Mormon critic Michael Coe’s book on Mesoamerica. They assigned probabilities to each of these and calculated what they call the probability that Joseph Smith could have guessed these correctly.
A lay reader might get confused by the math and the discussion of statistical principles in the article and the critiques of the article, but it’s not that complicated. If a basketball player shoots 80% from the free throw line, the probability he makes both when he shoots two is 0.8 * 0.8 = 0.64, 64% chance. The probability he misses three in a row is .2 * .2 * .2 = .008 = .8%. That’s all the math you really need to know. The Dales strung together a bunch of probabilities like this to develop a probability the Joseph Smith could have “nailed this” so accurately.
The result of the calculation according to the Dales:
We find that the likelihood that the Book of Mormon is fictional is about 1.03 x 10–111, less than one in a thousand, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion.
The article has taken an onslaught of criticism from both non-LDS and believing LDS in the comments section at the Interpreter site and other forums, for example Mormon dialogue, Mormon discussions, reddit, my facebook page, lds philosopher blog post.
The criticisms are in many different categories. 1) the arbitrary allocation of probabilities most of which seem way too favorable for the author’s desired outcome 2) capping the max probability negative correlations at 50 3) the arbitrary inclusion of 131 positive vs only 18 negative correspondences—obviously going to manipulate the outcome especially given the previous 4) the failure to identify combined probabilities, and treating all 131 as completely independent.
I like to look for simple test cases in this kind of analysis. For example, consider this little hypothetical account discovered with unknown origins.
Sam rode on his horse on the road from his home to the big city where he planned to sell the grains he collected from his corn, wheat, and barley fields in the marketplace. He took a detour to visit the partially destroyed monument to his famous great-great-grandfather, got lost, was attacked by a group of bandits shouting at him in a foreign language, they threw rocks at him, afraid to get too close when they saw him draw his steel sword, but he was stung by a poisonous snake and died.
This little story contains 10 positive convergences (bullseyes) from the Dales’ list of 131 totaling 1 in 6.25 trillion probability to guess right and four negative convergences (anachronisms) offsetting this by 10,000. Doing the math, this says the author of this little story nailed ancient Mesoamerica to the tune of 1 in 625 billion. You might say, no, that story has a bunch of generic sort of details that might be the case for any story setting. And several anachronisms that would pretty much rule ancient Mesoamerica out. I think you’d be right. But this model was published in the Mormon Interpreter and claimed to be peer reviewed.
Being as generous as possible, this article is the most laughable, embarrassing article I think I’ve ever seen pushed by a group of serious scholars that I usually respect. Instead of taking the article down after the reviews started rolling down, the article is getting pushed more aggressively. FairMormon and Book of Mormon Central shared the article. Daniel Peterson summarized the article in LDS Living, which at last count was shared 536 times. Others in various forums have called Daniel Peterson dishonest for this. That’s very cynical. I don’t see it that harshly, but this episode was every difficult for me.
Book of Mormon Central
Matt Roper and Paul Fields did a study on Book of Mormon Wordprint patterns, ie computer statistical analysis of word pattern to determine authorship and other attributes of the book. Book of Mormon Central have done various blog posts and videos that promoted what they saw as very impressive results of this study.
They claim their study shows that each Book of Mormon “voice” (Mormon, Alma, Nephi, Pahoron, Zeniff, etc) has word patterns that are statistically different and that the combined voice diversity is greater than 8 total novels from four 19th century writers (Cooper, Dickens, Austen, Twain). Huck Finn has a unique voice compared to Tom Sawyer. And Austen’s Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy have unique voices. And when you take all the voices of 8 sample novels, they have many unique voices, similar to the chart below, but the combined diversity of all 8 is even less than the Book of Mormon. Here’s the chart from the Youtube video they showed.
Impressive! At least until I noticed the chart looks very similar to charts I’ve produced, playing with the same data in my own way. Here’s my chart.
The methodology for my chart is as follows:
This gets a little complicated, but I will try to explain this easiest as possible for a lay reader to follow along. When I studied word patterns in the Book of Mormon, I found two distinct patterns. These patterns are charted X and Y. (Bubble Size is the number of total words for each voice)
X axis on the chart. Narrative vs Sermon. The Book of Mormon consists of large blocks of narrative, written largely by Mormon but also Moroni, Nephi, and a few others. I call this Narrative Voice in my studies that you can read more about here. And also inserted sermons, discourses, or letters from Alma, Amulek, King Benjamin, Samuel the Lamanite, etc. The narrators Mormon, Moroni, Nephi, etc, sometimes go back and forth between narrative and sermon. Narrative is generally written in third person past tense with Sermon written in first person present tense. Words heavy in the Narrative portion are: the, and, to, it, did. Words heavy in the Sermon portion for example are: if, for, ye, unto, shall, which. The degree to which a bubble on the chart is left or right is simply the degree to which they use this simple set of words. Which also correlate strongly to whether they are pure narrative vs pure sermon or some combination.
Y axis on the chart. A pattern that changes from the beginning to the end (Mosiah Priority), which could be attributed to authorship contribution or could be considered in a single author/translator model to be normal voice creep or drift where vocabulary patterns change naturally and linearly as one writes. I have referred to this as Original (O) Voice and Late (L) Voice in my writings on this. Words weighted towards the beginning: now, on, or, might, therefore, thus, took, caused. Words weighted towards the end: my, did, unto, behold, wherefore, because. The degree to which a bubble on the chart is up or down correlates to the usage of these words, which strongly correlates to where the words appear in the Book of Mormon chronologically (Mosiah Priority).
Publishing the BOM Central bubble chart and making the claim that it represents complex, unique voices is weak. The trends I identify are quite simple and should come out in this kind of data analysis. But similar to the Interpreter article, what I am very disappointed by is that when the model’s weakness is shown, instead of quietly taking the work down and stopping the promotion, the decision is to ignore the correction and continue to promote the work.
Note of clarification: I do not mean by this that the BOM is not complex or that the nuances between the Narrative and Sermon voice are not complex. But the Fields-Roper claims, ignoring this more obvious explanation for the data distribution, are seriously flawed.
FairMormon
Tad Callister’s new book A Case for the Book of Mormon is making a splash. Brother Callister is General Authority Emeritus. I don’t want to pick on Brother Callister. He’s not a scholar. He’s writing to a popular audience. He shouldn’t be evaluated the same way as scholars who are at the forefront of these discussions. He’s the grandson of Legrand Richards, author of Marvelous Work and a Wonder. That book, was for my generation something very comparable to Brother Callister’s book on the apostasy and this one on the Book of Mormon for this day. They are works that are quasi-intellectual, inspiring for LDS, good for introducing one generally to some issues that you can follow up through other sources to get more up-to-date scholarship. But they are not aware of current scholarship both pro-LDS and critical, full of prooftexting scripture out of context, using parellelomania concepts, and generally just not good Apologetics.
I wrote on this previously. Another review from a more critical perspective which I don’t agree with completely but shows many of the flaws is here. A quick example is that Br. Callister points out various doctrines of the Book of Mormon that he says are unique and says “how could Joseph ever known this?” When an advanced google book search query shows hits on each one.
… and to a post mortal spirit world in Alma 40. Where did Joseph Smith get these profound doctrinal truths that were in fact contrary to the prevailing doctrinal teachings of his time?
Here’s a little graphic I did comparing one of the hits from an advanced google book search query to Alma 40.
Brother Callister seems not aware of Brant Gardner’s work on translation and retaining Hebraisms. He’s not aware of the work of BYU professors Nick Frederick and Thomas Wayment that have identified numerous allusions to the KJV New Testament. He’s unaware of Richard Bushman’s concessions to modern Protestant material in the Book of Mormon. He gives no regard for traditional Biblical scholarship in the way he’s prooftexting Bible verses that he claims reference the Book of Mormon. Most LDS scholars, even those on the conservative side, won’t stand with him on that. He’s not aware of Blake Ostler’s Expansion Model. He’s not aware of Skousen-Carmack’s work acknowledging modern elements that must have come through a loose translation. He’s using Smoot’s imperative for a historical BOM, but wielding it in an extremely dangerous and hopelessly naive way, claiming none of the book came through the mind of Joseph.
If a regular guy without credentials wrote this book, FairMormon and Book of Mormon Central would ignore it, mock it, or even blast it for being weak on scholarship, similar to how Book of Mormon Central recently blasted the FIRM Foundation Heartlander Group for the same kinds of problems.
But for some reason, FairMormon has latched onto this book. Promoting it on their website, doing podcasts and blog interviews, sharing it on Facebook, and also invited Brother Callister to speak at the FairMormon Conference. Last year Elder Pearson spoke at FairMormon and this year Craig Christensen appears to be on the schedule in the role as General Authority speaker. I think that’s great. They’re not scholars, but they come in official capacity from the Church, and it’s great to hear the church’s perspective on the Apologetics landscape. But Callister is not appearing in that context. He is presenting actual apologetic material.
Good Book of Mormon Apologetics
Before I get accused of being a hater of these three good organizations, I want to reiterate my stance. I’m an LDS Apologist. I’m a Latter-day Saint. I’m not a critic. I share much more in common with the good people that work for and volunteer for these three organizations than the Exmormon critics who they spend much of their time addressing. I love a lot of what they produce. I wish they’d let me in and collaborate with them.
There are bad Book of Mormon Apologetics. That is what I focused on here. These cause us to lose credibility. They win points with the uninformed, but they hurt us more in the long run. Many people accuse LDS Apologists of “lying for the Lord”. LDS Apologists have a pretty bad reputation among non-LDS, and it’s not just a good vs evil thing. It’s because there are times we sometimes use bad arguments and bad manners (I empathize with the LDS Apologists on this and have written on this elsewhere, but it’s outside the scope of this post) . I don’t think that’s necessary, and I hope we can improve this reputation.
Then there are Book of Mormon Apologetics that I don’t personally find super compelling but I wouldn’t call them dishonest or bad, and I acknowledge they are compelling to many others. I don’t criticize these. I even sometimes point some people in faith crisis to these arguments. LGT to explain DNA and other evidences, loose translation to explain anachronisms, chiasmus and other Hebraisms, Nahom and other old world stuff, emphasis on the witnesses.
Then there are what I would call good Book of Mormon Apologetics. When the Interpreter, FairMormon, or Book of Mormon Central focuses on these things, I’m always a big fan.
Good Book of Mormon Apologetics
–complexity of the text in terms of characters, geographical setting, time span, intertextuality within itself
–inspiring, spiritual, transformative nature of the text
–showing character of Joseph and those close to him as being pure and believing. I think it’s dangerous to focus on character, because Joseph clearly did things that showed questionable character. But I think he believed in what he was doing and so did those closest to him that knew him the best.
–doctrinal profundity. 2 Ne 2, 2 Ne 9, King Benjamin’s address, Abindadi’s preaching to King Noah’s court, Alma’s discourse on faith in Alma 32, Alma 34, Moroni 7, the visit of the Savior in 3 Ne. These are some of the greatest religious texts that exist in the world, in my opinion.
–Bible intertextuality—this is what I think might be most impressive, how the Bible is alluded to and expounded on seemingly very complex and intentional
–general concept that the sum total of this complexity and impressive output is outside the natural ability of Joseph and must be inspired somehow
When I defend the Book of Mormon, these are the arguments I use. I’m not opposed to the Apologists who argue for BOM historicity. I know that’s where the mainstream of the church is and likely will be for a couple generations at least. What I do feel compelled to speak up against bad arguments that cause us to lose trust with the honest seekers. This article summarizing some research from Jana Riess backs up what I’ve seen time and time again in the faith crisis world. Difficult historical issues are hard to deal with in a faith crisis. But the trust and feeling lied to or misled is more dangerous and more likely to cause someone to leave the church. Let’s not create that.
Wheat & Tares 
I don’t understand the need for any type of apologetics, be it rude, personal attacks, intellectual, scientific, scholarly, whatever. You are never going to prove the truth of the BoM or anything else. Most apologetics do more harm than good. Despite what this OP says, I think Church leaders are coming to the same conclusion.
I think the best avenue is to just forthrightly answer questions. Like is being done on Gospel Topics. But these entries need to be peer reviewed by leaders and scholars, with the authors’ names attached.
With all due respect to the OP for spending the time on such a long and detailed post, I’m with Roger Hansen. It’s contradictory to claim that gaining a testimony is all about faith while simultaneously trying to “prove” the “truth” of something that is a matter of faith. IMHO, it’s not only a pointless, intellectually dishonest exercise, it’s a deeply cynical one. It’s as if even our leaders feel (or fear) that faith, belief and subjective spiritual witnesses aren’t enough to keep people in the church. If that’s so, then the whole Mormon enterprise smacks of unbelief and charlatanism.
Also, I have to say as an academic and as one who attends academic conferences with other scholars, nothing produced by any of these sites/organizations would pass muster in the secular, scholarly world. I know Callister is writing for a general audience, but there is nothing in the book that I’ve seen that PROVES anything about the Book of Mormon. It’s still all just testimony bearing, insistence on the truth of things and not one clear, concrete, documentable bit of evidence that the Book of Mormon is actually “true” in any sense, whether historically or spiritually. Most of the stuff produced by these organizations should be categorized and thought of as speculation, not scholarship, which is fair enough. I have no objection to speculating. I do a lot of it myself, but it’s not scholarship. And pointing out things like chiasmus or common vocabulary or whatever, of course is meaningless in the larger context of “proving” the truth of religious texts, ideas or the religion itself. It’s all just a kind of loose collection of stuff that could be interpreted in a number of different ways. It’s just that these organizations interpret these things in the way that is most favorable to the church, which, ironically, destroys any intellectual or scholarly credibility that they have since they’re so obviously biased. I think Roger Hansen gets it right. Lets honestly answer questions even if the answer is “I don’t know”. That’s the more honest way to proceed, I think.
can someone enlighten me on when and by whom was the claim first made that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the “one true” Church (capital C)? I know Joseph Smith was told (per one version of the First Vision) that none of the other churches was the true Church. But when was the claim first made that his church was the exclusive one?
@josh harrison, I think this claim goes back to D&C chapter 1 which claims that the church is “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth” which even if it was the case in 1831, is not necessarily the case now
Good heavens. So much deciding for others whether you should or should not… anything at all. If proving the Book of Mormon is, or is not, history is important to you, then that is what you will set out to do, because it is important to you! Whether it is important to anyone else is irrelevant, they do not have to read your proofs or disproofs.
This phrase was popularized in the United States by Mark Twain (among others), who attributed it to the British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” (Wikipedia)
The Drake Equation is a similar attempt to quantify the probability of intelligent life somewhere else in the universe; it assumes the existence of intelligent life on Earth. It is a WAG (Wild Assed Guess), but as reasonable as I’ve seen.
Either of these attempts mean something to those for whom statistics has meaning. As for me and the Book of Mormon, if I believe it to be fiction I would not be a member of the church, for there would be no purpose to the sacrifices one might have to make. I do not claim it to be 100 percent true; I make no attempt to quantify its truth or authenticity. The parts that are important to me; discussion of certain cosmic concepts (freedom, truth) and the atonement are excellent explanations which I rely on frequently.
Josh Harrison: “And also those to whom these commandments were given, might have power to lay the foundation of this church, and to bring it forth out of obscurity and out of darkness, THE ONLY TRUE AND LIVING CHURCH UPON THE FACE OF THE WHOLE EARTH WITH WHOM I, THE LORD, AM WELL PLEASED., speaking unto the church collectively and not individually.” — D&C 1:30
@MTodd, thank you for the reference. This is further evidence that we (LDS members) are asked to not only have a testimony of the BOM, we are to have a testimony of the truthfulness of the Doctrine and Covenants. Because while the BOM testifies of Christ, it does not make organizational claims (how could it?). I guess what I am saying is that one can have a testimony of the BOM and one can believe that no other book brings us to Christ as effectively, but in order to believe that “the Church is true”, you have to embrace the D&C. And I guess once the D&C was canonized that became more natural. The problem I have with the D&C is that it includes so much trivial information (D&C 126 for example). Yet we are counting on D&C 1 to be the foundation for the claim that the Church of Jesus Christ of latter Day Saints is the “one true Church”.
I commend your critique of the bad apologetics. These Wordprint studies claiming that Alma and Nephi couldn’t have possibly been the same author and so on and so forth have been around for decades. I read in a study not too long ago, the name of which I forget and I am still looking for, that the Wordprint computer model is not good at detecting common authorship in works where the author has deliberately tried to fake authorship. Plus you have to factor in the fact that the Book of Mormon borrows heavily from the KJV, which we know was authored and translated by various authors and translators. Alma includes words from the KJV Pauline epistles more copiously than does the book of Nephi 1. So it makes sense that you would find distinct authorship between the two.
“I don’t believe the BOM is historical. I don’t believe the LDS Church is God’s one, exclusively true church. I believe most scripture should be taken metaphorically and not literally. But I have a testimony of the restored gospel…” That works! And moving away from ridiculously bad arguments sounds like a great start! But what does that leave beside plausible but probably unlikely hypotheses? Doesn’t it stand or fall based on the spirit alone? Or is there some LDS Rosetta Stone out there that I’m unaware of?
Silfo, was there a question there for me? If so, please rephrase. I didn’t understand.
Well I think there was at lease one question in there – Doesn’t it stand or fall based on the spirit alone?
As someone who has produced academic articles, I have always been confused at the intellectual approach of apologist organisations like Fair Mormon.
I just looked on their website and their stated objective is to “provid[e] faithful answers to criticisms of the LDS Church”.
That whole idea does not make sense to me. If I wanted a faithful answer to a criticism of the LDS Church, I’d ask the LDS Church. I would look to non church based organisations to provide alternative and more comprehensive treatments of those criticisms. Fair Mormon should offer evidence based answers and leave the faithful response to the church to provide.
Silfo. Sure.
This is a worthy attempt at critiquing a Mormon apologetic enterprise that has stumbled badly and lost its way, but let’s be clear: as long as Mormon apologists continue to argue for BOM historicity, many Mormons will continue to wind up feeling lied to and misled.
In a (Mormon) world that made more sense, LDS Living would publish this corrective commentary, it would be widely shared, and FairMormon, BOM Central and Mormon Interpreter would publicly embrace the challenge to move toward a new apologetic praxis.
Speaking of world’s that might make more sense, if the Church is true, shouldn’t Mormon apologists be some of the happiest, most pleasant, self-assured and charitable people on the planet? Instead, most of them strike me as variously cranky, petty, preening, and cruel.
Chino, thanks for the comment. As for your last paragraph, the Mormon apologists could turn that right back on you. If the church isn’t true, Exmormons should be happy, and many strike me as petty, cruel, etc. I used to have the same view of Mormon apologists. I was at the deepest part of my faith crisis about 10-12 years ago, and I thought people like Dan Peterson were awful people. I felt pretty roughed up by he and his cronies. But after a faith reconstruction period and now spending a lot of time online as an LDS Apologist myself, I get occasionally attacked pretty hard by Exmo’s. It’s brutal sometimes. I have to work very hard not to attack back and make myself look like a jerk myself. It gets personal. There are longstanding personal battles with certain people. And then anonymous snipers come in. It’s not fun sometimes. I’ve felt that way about you at times. So, my perspective now is more empathetic. But I agree, that we as LDS Apologists need to do better to be more charitable and pleasant in our interactions online.
For sure, my third graf could easily be read as the three fingers that point back at ourselves whenever we point a finger at others. And I willingly cop to the three pointing back at me (cranky, petty, preening) but cruel I’m not. At least not cruel enough to parade the below sentiment through a community of folks that includes you, me and so many others who volunteered years of our lives to an organization, a project, only to get repaid by its apologists with garbage like this:
“The claims of the Restoration do, in fact, stand up to historical examination, although (very likely by divine design) their truth is neither so blazingly obvious nor so indisputable as to compel acceptance — least of all from people disinclined to accept them.”
Disinclined? Peterson can go pound sand and the LDS project would do well to stop coddling its belligerents and blowhards.
“Difficult historical issues are hard to deal with in a faith crisis. But the trust and feeling lied to or misled is more dangerous and more likely to cause someone to leave the church.” This appears to me to be true without regard to whether the misleading is intentional, accidental, incompetent, ignorant, or imagined as a result of selective memory or perception. I’ve seen the effect of resulting mistrust in baby boomers as well as millenials. For most members there is no possibility of an acquaintance or interaction with misleading GAs sufficient to foster a possible rebuilding of trust. And sometimes closer acquaintance has cemented lack of trust rather than a rebuilding. Questions to which I can imagine no general answer are when (at what listener’s age or state of acquaintance with the Church) and in what context Church leaders should introduce which members to difficult historical issues to prevent their later feeling lied to or misled by simplified statements of general principles or incomplete analyses or stories (or histories). . It is also unclear to me why anyone should expect GAs to be fully knowledgeable on historical issues or, even if knowledgeable, able to express all aspects of them at once to avoid misleading.
Re “cranky, petty, preening, and cruel,” insulting, or accusing apologists and ex-Mo’s — I wonder if they ever, while acting in those ways, persuade to their positions anyone who is not already persuaded or wanting to be. On the other hand, it seems few people have never been cranky, petty, or accusing, even if unintentionally so. Here’s hoping for more charitable apologetics and criticisms — as modeled above by Churchistrue.
Ok so if it stands or falls based on the spirit alone what does that leave beside plausible but probably unlikely hypotheses?
Chino, Thanks for pointing to the problem of belligerent blowhards. Peterson at least is not always one such; he has written some gentle, motivational, encouraging columns. But when he is one, he seems to function as a cheer leader trying to exalt his team by denigrating others. That sort of cheer leading seems more motivated by an us/them attitude than by thinking about facts or issues. It’s akin to the booing and insulting of opposing teams I’ve heard at intercollegiate ball games. It seems to satisfy some emotionally, but doesn’t seem to have anything to do with persuading anyone to choose a team or position to support or believe in. It is, however, a fairly common rhetorical style in a lot of religious and political talk of at least the 19th – 21st centuries. It’s reasonably successful at rabble-rousing, just not at seeking truth or sense.
I’m currently content with my form of agnosticism as to Book of Mormon historicity. Some of the blowhards (and some others) just can’t accept such contentment, let alone the wholly non-historical BoM position, as compatible with any legitimate form of Mormonism. I’m not sure they’re interested in persuading to their position. Perhaps they’re more interested in driving out — in “purifying” the LDS team in their own image — having internalized an overconfident and/or self-righteous if-you’re-not-with-me-you’re-against-me attitude. I’m glad not all the apologists or analysts are blowhards and that some belligerent blowhards are not always so.
You can hardly blame an LDS GA for writing a book defending the Book of Mormon’s historicity. Anyone who would write in a different vein would not get close to becoming a GA. You can’t expect a GA to give serious consideration to evidence for and against the Book of Mormon. Anyone who would give serious consideration to evidence against BoM historicity would not become a GA.
This ability and willingness to maintain institutional loyalty in the face of contrary evidence about BoM historicity describes both LDS apologists and GAs. The worse the facts get, the more effective is the historicity issue for displaying LDS loyalty. All the participants in this exercise (apologists and critics alike) seem to think it’s about history or facts or truth. It’s more about sociology than history. It’s an illustration of how institutions and the people who interact with those institutions behave.
JR, where most LDS apologists are concerned, I suspect that any interest in persuading to their position is subordinate to their self-interest that’s served by defending institutional/audience interests.
r/exmormon can be gentle, motivational, encouraging… and hilarious
It can also function as a cheerleader trying to exalt the home team by denigrating others. A regrettable, undeniable, primate reality. Exmos, like mopologists, are human after all, go figure.
The disconnect I see is that I have no qualms wandering into r/exmormon and upsetting whatever weird primate home team consensus that may have emerged around some issue or personality. At most, it devolves into a passing drama.
Elsewhere, in Mormonia, you guys are still talking about BOM historicity as if it’s some kind of line in the sand that requires enormous reserves of chutzpah, gumption, bravery, etc. to talk about without being exiled. I grok that r/exmormon can get nutty at times, but the pressure — applied to folks who’ve done their homework and know better — to pretend there’s anything like a case to be made for BOM historicity is a kind of collective insanity that puts r/exmormon to shame with its sheer audacity.
chinoblanco asks “if the Church is true, shouldn’t Mormon apologists be some of the happiest, most pleasant, self-assured and charitable people on the planet?”
Yes, they shouldn’t. At least not for that reason. The virtues you cite do not emanate from the truthfulness of a church, a thing that cannot be objectively proven under the best of circumstances.
But if one believes the church is true then a large burden exists and depending on how well you “walk up to your covenants” you may be burdened with guilt. People that engage in arguments, including me to an extent, are NOT self-assured simply because those that ARE self-assured have their eyes toward God and, except for the charity part, aren’t really interested in ad-nauseum online arguing.
A person that does not care whether the church is true, but rather when is the 16th ward banquet, could be pretty happy. She doesn’t worry about whether the church is “true”, her job is to bring funeral potatoes and she does that with excellence.
And that happy person serving the 16th ward banquet is being poorly rewarded for her excellence by an outfit that is failing to explain why her kids aren’t showing up to enjoy the feast she’s prepared.
The 2 AM sadness she feels deserves better answers.
Chino, I don’t know about “most” LDS apologists. I pay almost no attention to apologetics anymore. Sometimes I do look at apologetic responses to what I have seen at r/exmormon or elsewhere. Sometimes I happen across them on blogs like this one. That’s how I’ve encountered both of Peterson’s Jekyll and Hyde personalities. Mostly I’m too busy.
“r/exmormon can be gentle, motivational, encouraging… and hilarious” — I’ve seen this and appreciated it.
“Exmos, like mopologists, are human after all, go figure.” — Yep. That’s essentially part of what I said though in different words.
“Elsewhere, in Mormonia, you guys are still talking about BOM historicity as if it’s some kind of line in the sand that requires enormous reserves of chutzpah, gumption, bravery, etc. to talk about without being exiled.” — Who are “you guys?” I mostly don’t talk about it at all; I don’t currently care about it. Those who approach me privately with Church issues don’t seem to care much about it either; they have different issues. On the apologetics side, it’s the Peterson-ilk that seems to be most exercised about it, though as Dave B. points out there are also GAs concerned about it — even if their general style is not belligerent blowhard .
JR, apologies, “you guys” was uncalled for. I meant, “you people.”
I kid , I kid.
That you pay almost no attention to apologetics anymore is a victory for humanity in my book. We’ll all get to that point eventually, hopefully.
Meanwhile, here we are, blocking progress with our ruminations on the latest freshest apologetic take. So it goes.
JR I think you do point to a social change in the church. While I don’t think historicity will, like “Churchistrue” suggests, go away as a key issue, it also isn’t a key focus for people the way it was 20 years ago. Political issues particularly those tied to sex and gender seem more pertinent to most people. Not just that but I’d say the “cash value” of membership. That is what is the Church doing for me. I’ve suggested elsewhere that this reflects a shift away from seeing religion primarily in terms of truth and duty and is a generational large social shift not merely affecting Mormons.
For various perhaps obvious reasons I see this as a problem, but that’s the world we live in. Exactly how apologetics should adopt to this isn’t clear.
There were clear problems with classic apologetics – primarily due to forgetting the distinction between “winning” an argument and persuading people. I think the former got focused on too much with unfortunate and sometimes negative rhetoric that turned off more people than it convinced. The Interpreter had been doing much better in that regard but this year has seen (IMO) a few unfortunate articles including this Bayesian one the OP discussed. I do wish it had stronger editorial control to weed out some of the badly argued pieces like this one because overall I think the Interpreter has done great stuff.
In my job, I get to see a fair amount of LDS apologetics. Most of what I see is sloppy. This is pretty much a hazard of all apologetics, in any field. Here is the reason why: When you begin with a preconceived conclusion and then attempt to prove that conclusion, you will inevitably cherry-pick evidence, gravitating to that which supports your preconceived conclusion and avoiding evidence that contradicts your belief. The more sound approach is to look at as much evidence as possible, with as open a mind as possible, and then draw your conclusions, let the chips fall where they may. To his credit, this is what Royal Skousen does, for the most part. And when he finds evidence that doesn’t quite “fit,” he lays it out anyway, assuming that perhaps sometime in the future it will make sense. What we generally see among Book of Mormon apologists is a willful blindness toward evidence in the text that doesn’t make sense at the present.
The whole notion of defending a book or a church is bound to be problematic, because of the issue discussed above, of getting the conclusion cart before the evidence horse. I feel no compunction to defend Joseph Smith, the Church, or the Book of Mormon. Rather, I feel compelled to defend the truth, whatever it may be. That is the only safe approach. Defending a human being as flawed as Joseph Smith in everything he said or did has resulted in some embarrassingly bad apologetics and horrifically convoluted arguments.
Joseph H. Weston, who joined the Mormon church three days after completing his book, exclaimed:
Mormons don’t grovel before God, prating their unworthiness and imploring mercy. They are not slaves! They are men, made in the image of God! They proudly stand, hold their heads high, and put out their hands to shake that of God in greeting, as any worthy son would be expected to respectfully but proudly stand before a wise and good father (These Amazing Mormons! p. 82).
Most Mormons who become serious about apologetics do so because they are trying to convince themselves. If they stay in apologetics for years and years, it means they haven’t succeeded.
What Wally said.
Clark, I don’t think it would be fair to characterize the social change in the Church as primarily ” the “cash value” of membership. That is what is the Church doing for me.” (Of course, you didn’t say “primarily.”). It is also important to recognize that some of the change arises out of concern about what the Church is doing to others and what the Church is not doing for others — not just what the Church is doing or not “for me.” These are not just political issues; they can also be moral issues. Another part arises out of increasing awareness, even in the “faithful,” of the extent to which cultural matters and personal preconceptions affect the perception, articulation, and implementation of “revelation,” or out of exhaustion with the effort to sort that out at the expense of energy and time to devote to matters of more immediate need, or out of loss of trust in authority (or increasing trust in one’s own moral compass or “personal revelation”) and/or impatience with “revelatory whiplash,” etc. There are quite likely other concerns also motivating that social change. To the extent the change arises out of the concerns I mention here, it may not be “a shift away from seeing religion primarily in terms of truth and duty” but a shift toward seeing it in terms of truth and duty.
Frank, can you explain how this quote relates to the discussion at hand?
Daniel Peterson and Louis Midgely are major league “Dicks” pure and simple! I think (in the long run) their behavior and manner of treating people will have done MUCH MORE damage to “The Church” than any good. What a pathetic legacy they will leave behind.
Lefthandloafer, A southern “gentleman” once asked me, “Cain’t you say that no nicer?” 🙂
I think I understand that you are reconstructing your faith. You say “I want to be more aligned with the traditional Apologists like those three organizations. I feel like I’m more like them than different. We all attend church together. Serve together. Try to figure out how to keep others in the church together. Together, we are trying to figure out how to overcome all the opposition the church is facing on truth claim issues.”
And yet, you start out with three major truth claims that you don’t hold: 1- BOM historicity, 2- One and only true church, and 3- scripture is metaphorical rather than literally the word of God (all of which I agree on with you).
I am sincerely asking, why is it so important to you to be an apologist?
You find value in the Church even though you don’t subscribe to those three truth claims. You obviously don’t have apologetic arguments that convince you of those truth claims. Not to put words in your mouth, but you believe and have a testimony. Can that be enough?
For me, apologetics will never get me to a point where I will say “Well, that convinces me beyond a shadow of a doubt!” Quite the opposite – all the “failed” machinations eventually convince me that it doesn’t add up because no one can really make it add up.
Insistence by the institution that one must believe the truth claims in order to be all-in or “on the covenant path” puts one in a precarious position. I may be individually comfortable with some uncertainty – but they aren’t comfortable with my uncertainty. It is treated as a threat. And when apologetics can’t beat some sense into me, I must determine if I want to continue the beatings. Or not.
My time desperately trying to hold on through apologetics was like mental novocaine – I felt good for a while, but when it wears off you’re left with the pain that the ”truth” may not be true.
I can live with a lot of pain – but not the pain of being told that the pain is all my fault when fault is clearly shared. Apologetic contortions are ineffective because they eventually set aside intellectual honesty or resort to “shaming” or belittling the unbeliever. Just because one can’t prove something is true doesn’t mean that it isn’t true. But insisting on faulty proofs takes one from searching to skepticism to suspicion and on to separation.
It may well be that simply making it OK to have questions or doubts would keep far more people in the Church than all the Apologists combined.
In defense of Daniel Peterson, I will say that no one has done more to help the LDS community understand the community of Islam – an understanding that was sorely needed when it got underway in earnest (mid-2000s, during the Iraq war), and may be even more important now (with the rise of while nationalism, anti-Islamism, and antisemitism). His manner of treating “the other” has, in at least that sense, been exemplary.
I do not know him personally, but I think calling him a “major league ‘[d]ick[]'” is going a bit far, to say the least.
What do the mods think?
I’ve been out of town and not keeping up with this. Sorry for the late reply.
Beenthere. You ask “I am sincerely asking, why is it so important to you to be an apologist?” You answer the question pretty well in the last sentence of your comment. I think the gospel works, and I want to help those in faith crisis to see they can make peace with intellectual issues while retaining what is valuable.
Billy Possum. I’m the OP, and I think we have policy generally at W&T for the authors to moderate comments. My approach is to rarely, rarely censor comments. But I agree it’s a distasteful comment.