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Thanks for all the responses thus far. I posted my opinion on a similar thread elsewhere but I basically agree with Orson and others who say that a lack of empathy for those asking questions is the biggest problem. Quote:My personal opinion, and this may be way off because I just don’t know, is that the average Joe like me simply didn’t have a lot of access to the church history prior to discovering Mormonism online. My house was full of books that I could buy every month or six, depending on where I was living at the time, when I stopped at “the temple bookstore”. This was LDS inspirational writing, not scholarship. The one old transplant I knew who was an ardent supporter of FARMS had a 3 ring binder into which he put newsletters or something but he wasn’t really sharing any of what he learned at church or with the ward family.
I know this is derailing a bit but I am getting some where so bear with me. Apologists like to say that the material was out there and that those of us who were uninformed were so by our own omission. However, to say for most of my life I had no access to the kind of things we discuss here as a matter of routine, is an accurate assessment. It can be quite the rude awakening to discover a rich expanse of Mormon studies and thought riddled with unflattering complexities you never knew existed. Today, thanks to Google et al. everyone with wifi can peer into the barn with Emma or trace Elijah Abel’s line of authority. It’s a confusing experience for many people. The defensive posture of some apologists creates a hostile environment in which to work through the questions and conflict. As a result, some apologetic organizations get tarred with a broad brush. In most cases, legalistic verbal maneuvering around issues, which is how it can come across even when it is genuine, just leaves a bitter aftertaste for members who’ve heard time and time again (especially in wards with lots of new converts) that the gospel “just made sense.”
When one first experiences the difficulty of engaging Mormonism beyond the manual, it’s easy to be offended by the messenger. When the messenger is responding with flippant apologetics, predictions about when you will leave the church, hyperbole and polemics, offenses are virtually guaranteed.
Just a few weeks ago, a young almost 14 year old deacon came to our house to home teach. After he presented his lesson, the bishopric members who is his partner prodded him to bear a testimony. To this boy’s credit, he did not pretend to know more than he does. He was beautifully honest and simply said ‘I believe that the prophet and the leaders of the church believe this (whatever the principle was) is true, and I believe they are inspired when they are speaking as prophets.’ He then shocked all present when he popped up with “Did you know that Joseph Smith said people lived on the moon and that Brigham Young said men lived on the sun?”
After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I wondered at the fact that less than two years ago, this kid was singing “Follow the Prophet” with gusto and now, still an impressionable young man, he’s mastered an apologetic response that while true, may or may not serve him well in the next few years. Will learning to parse the words of the Prophet serve him well? In the long run perhaps, if he makes it that far. I don’t pretend to know.
As I said, I don’t know what the answer is other than mercy, compassion, and a large dose of empathy flowing in all directions but I do understand why FAIR/FARMS and some of the other apologetic sites and organizations end up with a bad name, earned or otherwise.
Quote:Plural marriages increased competition in the marriage market, so the “spiritual slackers” and lower quality men had to work to improve their standing to compete. They had to clean up, try to get good jobs and treat the women with respect. It gave the women more options as to whom to marry.
B-fricken-S! That answer is just disgusting, IMO. So anyone who was a member of the church at the time but not in the super special polygamy club was a spiritual slacker? They needed to learn to treat women with respect? Because polygamy is all about being respectful to women? That is rich. That’s essentially what they are saying. The much more obvious answer is that those who were in the special leadership club wanted first round draft picks among the females. Sorry, to sound negative, but I find that so-called reason to be extremely self-serving and inflammatory.
The problem with apologetics in general is that all they have to do is keep a foot in the door – they don’t have to really have any answers at all or be totally rational in their arguments. I have found some apologetics to be better than others. But just like criticisms, they begin with the conclusion (that the church is true in the case of apologetics) and create arguments from that. That’s the only premise they can’t abandon in their logic, but that means they can do whatever mental gymnastics are required to make that be true. There’s very little about it that’s balanced. They are trying to balance the opposing view. I would actually really enjoy reading someone’s outlandish fake apologetics (I’m thinking winged monkeys, alien invaders, Jedi mind tricks). That would be an entertaining web site!
Hugh Nibley wrote an incredibly patronising piece called “No Ma’m that’s not History” in reply to Fawn Brodie. Maybe it would be better / easier to point out the GOOD apologetics we’ve read. They do exist! There’s a lot of decent apologetics about Lehi’s family out in the Arabian desert. Also “Endowed from on High”. A friend gave me this book to read (it’s not long), but it links the endowment into the Bible really well, and shows parallels with Judaism. Much better than the classes I had.
I’ll limit my comments on apologetics to FAIR, since the vast majority of the stuff I’ve read has come from their website. There have been a few things from them that caused me to look at the issues in a way I hadn’t considered before, but in general I found their arguments to rely too much on discrediting the source of the criticism, addressing only part of the issue, or flat out lying about what the critic says in order to refute a weaker argument. Additionally, there doesn’t seem to be a recognition of the big picture. They have all sorts of links to all the individual issues, and each of them seems to rely on “well, here’s a way you can look at this that doesn’t completely disprove the church is true.” And if you look at them one by one, you might be okay with that. But if you then put all of those issues together and think about the gigantic amount of mental gymnastics required to take those positions on all those things simultaneously… it hurts my brain to even consider it.
I think it all comes down to what hawkgrrrl said: apologetics start with a conclusion and find a way to justify it, instead of starting with facts and evidence and following where that leads you.
Cylon wrote:I think it all comes down to what hawkgrrrl said: apologetics start with a conclusion and find a way to justify it, instead of starting with facts and evidence and following where that leads you.
which is why we don’t need apologetics to confirm our testimony of truth. if something is true, it is gospel. if something is not true, it is not. we should NEVER be afraid of the truth.i would greatly prefer to have a site lay out all the facts–where facts that are ‘difficult’ could be footnoted with references to other facts that may put a given fact in context.
in another thread on NOM, a poster presents a list of parallels between the primitive church and what JS restored. facts of history. this is useful. when we study church history thoroughly, we find that the primitive church was deeply flawed, as is the current LDS church. unfortunately, because official church history is hagiograohic, the truth that churches founded by imperfect men are imperfect. this is the truth, but covered up by LDS whitewashing.
in fact, the apostasy was about having neoplatonic philosophy of an ideal god, omni-whatever, as the image of perfection. likewise, christ is painted in terms of perfection and sinlessness. by believing that god is flawless and absolutely ideal, god’s true church must also be ideal.
as the LDS tries to seem mainstream, church leaders preserve this false concept of god in correlated teachings. they also whitewash church hisory and leadership, to preserve the myth of perfection and infallability. then apologetics come along to help provide pseudo-analytics of the myths. its wrong and cowardly to do so.
we need a different approach, one based on truth.
wayfarer wrote:as the LDS tries to seem mainstream, church leaders preserve this false concept of god in correlated teachings. they also whitewash church hisory and leadership, to preserve the myth of perfection and infallability. then apologetics come along to help provide pseudo-analytics of the myths. its wrong and cowardly to do so.
we need a different approach, one based on truth.
Ahhhh. I don’t post this stuff on staylds anymore…but…yeah…this is exactly what I see the problem being…and I will hit the like button when i see it.
I don’t have an answer, and I don’t know how change it to make it work.
Only, that, what is the point? Most of us won’t be happy anyway…and it will only cause those devout faithful members who don’t care and don’t want to know… to start their own angst and crisis of faith… It truly does just suck sometimes.
I’m not sure I will convey this idea very articulately, as it’s still forming, but I’ll try. Apologetics (and critics) miss the point, and so do leaders when they whitewash and correlate defensively. I don’t begrudge anyone a view of facts and even speculation and opinion (bearing in mind that some of what passes as “fact” on both sides of the divide is really just partial evidence + speculation and opinion). Certainly wrong or misleading information isn’t helpful regardless of the objectives behind it. I am concluding that the church’s value is its social structure (lay clergy, families, unique scriptures, seminary, missions) combined with shared moral values (whatever behaviors add to your social capital or the reverse of the ones that cause you to feel ostracized), all of which are centered around Christ (his role & example). The organization has elasticity built into that, which is why it is more malleable than other churches. It’s as true as it needs to be under that view.
A lot of FARMS and FAIR is about “blinding with science”. I don’t have a problem with them focussing on particular aspects though. All academics do. cwald wrote:Only, that, what is the point? Most of us won’t be happy anyway…and it will only cause those devout faithful members who don’t care and don’t want to know… to start their own angst and crisis of faith… It truly does just suck sometimes.
what is the point? this:When we do a really careful study of what JS taught about god and gods, when we understand the history of god, and when we understand the nature of god as presented by Jesus in what little we have of his authentic teachings, we see that god is not the platonic ideal. The LDS answer to the theodicy is that god does not have power to overcome free will. As well, god, or a god, is subject to laws: natural laws of the universe, either a higher or lower law, as stated in section 88.
The idea of a god with limited power is anathema to mainstream christianity. The idea that god works within law places supernatural miracles within the ‘myth’ category, or at least in the realm of unexplainable technology.
But more importantly, in understanding god’s nature as taught by JS and where LDS ‘theology’ leads puts a lie to the idea that everything has to ‘perfect’ if it is associated with god.
the church today teaches perfection whereever it can. And even in some places that it doesn’t make sense. Open up “Gospel Principles” to the ‘honesty’ chapter. You will find there an absolute standard of honesty that none of scriptures support. While I think honesty is an ideal worth living, especially as it comes to personal authenticity, the church has never consistently pursued honesty as it’s first priority.
The story of Nephi and Laban is extremely important in this sense: that lying or killing for a higher purpose may be permissible by the spirit. While I don’t like the message, it at least is consistent with church history, and better explains some of the church history than the idea that everything was just exactly as it was supposed to be.
When I presented the lying and deception of Nephi in the lesson on ‘honesty’, no-one in the congregation had an answer for it. It just didn’t make sense given the lesson material. the lesson, flat out, teaches that lying is never acceptable. Again, that would be great if true, but the church has never practiced this. Deception continues, and I do not mean this as a negative, because it serves the church’s mission to continue to deceive, to cover up, and to provide ‘milk before meat’. The problem with teaching a principle of perfection is that members are never prepared to receive meat when it becomes apparent to them.
Apologetics tries to keep the milk alive, to use the metaphor. I believe this does a disservice — harm — to the members because they (1) do not learn the truth, and (2) are not prepared for the truth. Hence, when the truth comes out, very active, true believing members go completely negative in a hurry. The cognitive dissonance is just too painful.
now after 180 years, the church has painted itself into a corner, with hard-line dualistic statements of ‘its all true or the biggest fraud in history.’ It’s neither. The ‘truth’ of the church is in restoring the idea that god continues to reveal his will through the heart and mind of those who listen to that still, small voice. God is not to be found in the creeds and orthodoxy, but rather, in the 1:1 personal experience that we call ‘testimony’. And this ‘testimony’ is not the rote glove-version, but rather, the discovery, line upon line, and precept upon precept, that god is nearer to us as humans than we think. The ‘truth’ of the church is that we have a divine nature, explained by a plan of salvation that uniquely lays out pre-mortal existence and the possibility that all may be in a realm of glory. These things cannot be proven, and truly are unknowable in logical terms, but they can be felt. To know that god is one of us leads us to a higher knowledge that we can be one with god in many unique ways. God is not so distant, but as one of us, fully knows our weakness and has more compassion than we possibly can realize.
Such intimate knowledge of god is beyond apologetics and beyond words. In fact, I feel that apologetics continues to try to make literal and perfect and perfectly harmonious a set of concepts in scripture that were never meant to be harmonized. It’s a disservice to the spiritual nature of scriptural history to literalize scripture. When we embrace the myth and fiction as such, we begin to realize the god that is beyond all realization.
Quote:what is the point? this:…..
Touche’
Wayfarer, I think I love you. :clap: Also I read the post at NOM that you referenced and it’s just intellectually delicious. One thing that frustrates me about the church is that we’ve spent so much of our history trying to show how different we are and what more we bring to the table that mainstream Christianity that we’ve largely ignored the fact that the restoration was exactly what the Bible and early Christian leaders taught and expected.
The entire narrative (and all the redacted bits and metaphorical revisionism in scripture, and the numerology, and the symbolism, etc) is tied together. The more I study Biblical scholarship, the more I see it pointing to the restoration. What has happened in the wake of the early church is a downright shame.
Brian spoke to the need for apologists to write a grander narrative (in a response of John Dehlin’s FB page – maybe Brian will elaborate here…. cue Brian
but the narrative is there already. I wish I had the talent to tell the story as I see it but I swear every time I try, it still feels like I’m trying to grab a handful of jello – it’s wiggles around and slips through my fingers before I can get all the parts in place.
Maybe I should quit caffeine.
😆 I agree pretty much with all of wayfarer’s comment – and that actually is why I don’t mind all apologetics as a category. I just don’t like apologetics that I believe are used to perpetuate bastardized explanations of grand theological concepts and principles. That’s why my reaction to things posted at FAIR and FARMS varies according to the author and topic.
My own pet peeve is the maniacal obsession many have over the pursuit of absolute knowledge to the disparagement of true faith. Don’t get me started on that. (I have written dozens of posts on my personal blog that deal directly with faith and knowledge – and dozens more that are focused on charity, perspective, love, humility, etc. and deal with faith and knowledge, as well.)
Cylon wrote:There have been a few things from them that caused me to look at the issues in a way I hadn’t considered before, but in general I found their arguments to rely too much on discrediting the source of the criticism, addressing only part of the issue, or flat out lying about what the critic says in order to refute a weaker argument.
I agree with Cylon.I think there is a niche that they cover, but as Wayfarer is suggesting, we have to find these truths for ourselves. In my experience, Apologetics are dealing with issues we have no certain answers for, therefore their voice is one more voice in the wilderness, but doesn’t take us out of the woods. They just try to keep the critics honest, and don’t always hit the mark because of bias. But their effort is better than no effort. I like having some apologetic ideas to consider, but ultimately I usually feel less than satisfied. I think because as Wayfarer is pointing out…I need to learn these things for myself through personal revelation, after taking in all sides and stories. I have enjoyed many articles on their site, and often think their opinion is just as valid as critics. But some makes my head hurt too much too. I take in small doses.
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