I once read a very eloquent letter that described how LDS apologists had destroyed a man's testimony. The man wrote that as he read their writings he was led to think that many of the things he had been taught to place faith in were not so at all. They had been argued into oblivion by the defenders of Mormonism. A nice example is the Whole Hemisphere Theory of Book of Mormon peoples. Many leaders of the Church traditionally taught that the peoples of the Book of Mormon were the "principal ancestors" of Native Americans.
As time has worn on, and little has evidence has been found to support that view, the apologists have adopted the convenient strategy of cultivating the LGT (Limited Geography Theory). According to the LGT, descendants of the Lehi party were absorbed into much larger native populations as soon as they landed in the New World. Thus, we are told, one should not expect them to have left ANY FOOTPRINT in their new environment. So, in other words, all attempts to find the Nephites and Lamanites can cease, and any pretension to having found anything connected to them can thankfully be abandoned.
Now that the lack of any linguistic, archaeological, or DNA evidence has been defined as a virtue for the book, the LDS Church has, through its website, jumped on board and linked to such dumbfounding numbskullery as an answer to its prayers. In short, we can now have faith in the Book of Mormon again because we will never find any hard evidence of these past peoples we believe actually existed. Once the requirement for any evidence has flown out the window, one can believe practically anything. Have you been abducted by aliens? Are you sure? Thanks be to the rhetorical wizards at FARMS and FAIR, who have taken Hugh Nibley's suggestion that one should work from the assumption the Book of Mormon is ancient to its logical extreme, the assumption is now the only thing that matters.
So our disillusioned friend had problems with this and numerous other nuggets of LDS apologetic revisionism, which generally works on the principle of plausible deniability (whereas secular anti-Mormonism works on the principle of denied plausibility). Can we blame him? No, now PR firms have schooled official spokesmen for the Church. They have taken a page from the apologetic playbook and decided that anything wonkie should be smoothed over with vacuous and misleading statements. Eternal progression is now a positive belief in the value of a good continuing education, for example. So, long-time Mormons are getting uneasy to see the faith of their ancestors erode before their eyes at an unprecedented pace.
The new bogeyman in the apologetics/polemics war has been identified as the "secular anti-Mormon." We could bring to apologists' attention the thinking liberal Mormon, but to many of them there is no distinction. Thus our disillusioned friend is left with no option other than leaving the Church, a result some would perhaps chalk up to a step in that person's repentance process. In his eyes the thinking liberal Mormon is just the secular anti-Mormon working up the courage to be honest with him- or herself. If one does not agree with the current position of the Church (or its apologists), so the thinking here goes, one is an enemy of it. Well, one almost can't blame these guys. After all, he is only applying an extreme version of the Churchs position in a practical, everyday fashion as they fight the forces of 'evil' at FAIR and other places.
But I think I am being too hard on these apologists. In reality, part of their job is to keep Mormons from being snookered by all the liberals, ex-Mos, and anti-Mos into believing things that may turn them into liberal Mormons, who are, for all intents and purposes, not Mormons by the Church's definition, except nominally and therefore statistically.
Friday, February 24, 2006
Fourteen Articles of Faith!
It turns out that a few of printings of the LDS Articles of Faith had 14 articles instead of 13. One of the fourteen-article versions was in a book entitled The Mormons, or Latter-day Saints, in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo, & Co., 1852) written by a government cartographer named John W. Gunnison. Another was printed in an LDS newspaper called the Frontier Guardian edited by Orson Hyde.
Most interesting is the difference in Article 8:
"We believe in the word of God contained in the Bible, we also believe the word of God recorded in the Book of Mormon, and in all other good books."
Of this version Lew Wallace writes, "Using this version, the admonition to 'study the scriptures' takes on new meaning, for careful evaluation is mandatory as we dig out the things which qualify as the 'word' of God (i.e., of divine origin), not only in the Bible and Book of Mormon, but in other good books-- even those without Church imprimatur."
Taken from Lew Wallace's A New View of Our Scriptures in the March 2001 issue of By Commmon Consent.
Most interesting is the difference in Article 8:
"We believe in the word of God contained in the Bible, we also believe the word of God recorded in the Book of Mormon, and in all other good books."
Of this version Lew Wallace writes, "Using this version, the admonition to 'study the scriptures' takes on new meaning, for careful evaluation is mandatory as we dig out the things which qualify as the 'word' of God (i.e., of divine origin), not only in the Bible and Book of Mormon, but in other good books-- even those without Church imprimatur."
Taken from Lew Wallace's A New View of Our Scriptures in the March 2001 issue of By Commmon Consent.
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Spies everywhere?
It may surprise you, but the LDS Church does keep up on its members' activities. There is an organization within the Church called the Committee for Strengthening the Members, which keeps files on members the Church considers potentially or actually subversive in some way. When Mormon intellectuals end up in an ecclesiastical court, euphemistically and alternatively entitled, 'Courts of Love,' they are sometimes surprised to find thick files on the table sitting next to their judges. You see, back in the day, the Lord revealed to his people that he wanted them to keep track of all of the nasty lies told about His Church.
His Church took Him seriously. The only problem is that many of the things they collected were not actually lies. Some of them were simply unflattering truths. When Joseph Smith ordered that the Nauvoo Expositor be destroyed, it was because the Expositor was going to print the unflattering truths that Joseph Smith was marrying many women, some of whom were already married, and that he had had himself anointed king of the Kingdom of God on earth. It was all true, but only a few people were supposed to know it, and they were sworn to secrecy on pain of death. Fortunately, poor William Law only suffered the loss of his press. It was Joseph Smith who lost his life when a mob murdered him at Carthage jail while he vainly emptied the chambers of a small derringer into the stairwell leading up to his second-story holding place.
Today unflattering truths continue to be a problem for the Lord's kingdom, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that unflattering versions of the truth are. When historian Michael Quinn discovered that the LDS Relief Society had been modelled on the male priesthood, and that women essentially were given the priesthood in the temple ritual, this unflattering version of the truth got him ex-communicated. Here I should simply say the truth, because it simply is true. I could multiply examples of this problem, but you get the idea.
The key thing for us Mormons is to remain silent about things that might diminish the good image of the LDS Church. President Hinckley has generously told us on Larry King that we can believe anything we like, so long as we don't publish it. Thank God Utah joined the United States.
Well, as I said above, the Church takes all of this very seriously. They have a divine mandate to do so, evidently. So in order to keep the spring pure, or keep the wolves out of the flock (choose your metaphor), the Church spies on its own members. This has been going on from at least good old Nauvoo, when Joseph enlisted the help of two young men to infiltrate the reformed version of the LDS Church started by William Law. It continued much more egregiously in the Church's cooperation with the federal government to turn in secret polygamists in the mid twentieth century. It flourished especially on the BYU campus, where Ernest L. Wilkinson (otherwise known as Ernie the attorney) placed spies in the classroom to make sure the twin pillars of modern paganism (from a conservative perspective) evolution and communism, were not being taught in the Lord's university.
It also continued in the entrapment of gay Mormons on BYU campus. Gay sting operations were used to weed out homosexuals from the university and the flock. Bizarre experiments using electro-shock and aversion therapy were used for a while to make gay men straight. Oddly they were largely unsuccessful. Now days they simply deny that there is such a thing as a homosexual person. Homosexual behavior is simply a sin like any other, which can be changed through repentance. I guess some people believe it.
Now is the great day of spying on intellectuals and liberals. By the way, the real trick to disparaging the Church's so-called enemies is to put the qualifier 'so-called' before any reference to them. So the intellectuals who disagree with the Church are not really intellectuals, they are only "so-called intellectuals." Gays and lesbians are "so-called gays and lesbians" because the Church refuses to acknowledge their self-proclaimed identity. To the leaders of the LDS Church, there is no such thing as a homosexual person. You see, when you have the only true church on the earth, you also have the authority to arrogantly deny people their own identity. But I digress.
The habit of spying on members to weed out people who think differently is so very deeply entrenched, that now the student body at BYU does it without any explicit encouragement. They are so 'righteous' that they take it upon themselves to report their professors to higher authorities for such cardinal sins as making them read books with curse words in them and the like. Did I say that I feel really glad to be an American citizen? Well, some of these poor professors end up losing their jobs over the accusations of students. A couple have been fired or threatened because of material in the very books that won them their jobs. It's kind of like China during the Cultural Revolution, when you make the whole nation judge, jury, and executioner, no one, and I mean no one, is really safe.
Simon Southerton wrote a book about Amerindian DNA providing no indication that there were Hebrews here, contrary to the teachings of the Book of Mormon. While the people at FARMS and FAIR were scrambling to find a way to make this not matter in the least, the Church initiated a 'Court of Love' for Simon Southerton on the grounds that he slept with another woman some years ago when he was separated from his wife. Don't worry, I don't buy their pretext either. By the way, just where did they dig this up? Was spying involved perhaps?
Back to the spying. I hang out at one of these Yahoo! groups where liberal Mormons vent because being liberal in the LDS Church is frankly miserable. Life as a liberal is really swell in an organization where being a Democrat has been half jokingly considered grounds to deny people privileges of full-faith membership, where people regularly praise conservative presidents and their policies as divinely inspired, and where any strangley non-conservative-sounding thoughts are greeted with deafening silence. You feel loved.
Anyway, some of the people on this group got the crazy idea of sending flowers to President Hinckley on behalf of all the gay people who felt excluded by the Church's explicit support for all efforts (legal and semi-legal) to stop gay marriage from happening. The nice thing about moral certainty is that you feel you can impose your personal values on absolutely everyone else. Well, the folks who were planning this wanted to advertize their efforts on a website. Funny thing is, as soon as they discussed a possible domain name for it, the domain name was bought up by someone else. Well, it turned out that a Mormon apologist was spying on discussion groups to gather intelligence on such efforts.
Imagine it. In a Church that claims (albeit somewhat erroneously) to be 12 million strong, a zealous defender spied on the activities of a few discussion boards and to frustrate them where possible. Was he commanded by higher powers? We'll probably never know. Did he need to be? I doubt it. When a mentally ill Cody Judy held a fake bomb to the head of one of the LDS Church's top leaders, the students in attendance at the meeting started singing 'We thank thee, O God, for a prophet." The young perpetrator, thinking they were singing to him, was caught off guard. Suddenly a bunch of college-age Mormon men jumped on him. Some were kicking him and saying, "Don't mess with the elders of Israel." Just think. They didn't know whether the kid had a real bomb or not. That didn't stop them. Now who's crazy?
His Church took Him seriously. The only problem is that many of the things they collected were not actually lies. Some of them were simply unflattering truths. When Joseph Smith ordered that the Nauvoo Expositor be destroyed, it was because the Expositor was going to print the unflattering truths that Joseph Smith was marrying many women, some of whom were already married, and that he had had himself anointed king of the Kingdom of God on earth. It was all true, but only a few people were supposed to know it, and they were sworn to secrecy on pain of death. Fortunately, poor William Law only suffered the loss of his press. It was Joseph Smith who lost his life when a mob murdered him at Carthage jail while he vainly emptied the chambers of a small derringer into the stairwell leading up to his second-story holding place.
Today unflattering truths continue to be a problem for the Lord's kingdom, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that unflattering versions of the truth are. When historian Michael Quinn discovered that the LDS Relief Society had been modelled on the male priesthood, and that women essentially were given the priesthood in the temple ritual, this unflattering version of the truth got him ex-communicated. Here I should simply say the truth, because it simply is true. I could multiply examples of this problem, but you get the idea.
The key thing for us Mormons is to remain silent about things that might diminish the good image of the LDS Church. President Hinckley has generously told us on Larry King that we can believe anything we like, so long as we don't publish it. Thank God Utah joined the United States.
Well, as I said above, the Church takes all of this very seriously. They have a divine mandate to do so, evidently. So in order to keep the spring pure, or keep the wolves out of the flock (choose your metaphor), the Church spies on its own members. This has been going on from at least good old Nauvoo, when Joseph enlisted the help of two young men to infiltrate the reformed version of the LDS Church started by William Law. It continued much more egregiously in the Church's cooperation with the federal government to turn in secret polygamists in the mid twentieth century. It flourished especially on the BYU campus, where Ernest L. Wilkinson (otherwise known as Ernie the attorney) placed spies in the classroom to make sure the twin pillars of modern paganism (from a conservative perspective) evolution and communism, were not being taught in the Lord's university.
It also continued in the entrapment of gay Mormons on BYU campus. Gay sting operations were used to weed out homosexuals from the university and the flock. Bizarre experiments using electro-shock and aversion therapy were used for a while to make gay men straight. Oddly they were largely unsuccessful. Now days they simply deny that there is such a thing as a homosexual person. Homosexual behavior is simply a sin like any other, which can be changed through repentance. I guess some people believe it.
Now is the great day of spying on intellectuals and liberals. By the way, the real trick to disparaging the Church's so-called enemies is to put the qualifier 'so-called' before any reference to them. So the intellectuals who disagree with the Church are not really intellectuals, they are only "so-called intellectuals." Gays and lesbians are "so-called gays and lesbians" because the Church refuses to acknowledge their self-proclaimed identity. To the leaders of the LDS Church, there is no such thing as a homosexual person. You see, when you have the only true church on the earth, you also have the authority to arrogantly deny people their own identity. But I digress.
The habit of spying on members to weed out people who think differently is so very deeply entrenched, that now the student body at BYU does it without any explicit encouragement. They are so 'righteous' that they take it upon themselves to report their professors to higher authorities for such cardinal sins as making them read books with curse words in them and the like. Did I say that I feel really glad to be an American citizen? Well, some of these poor professors end up losing their jobs over the accusations of students. A couple have been fired or threatened because of material in the very books that won them their jobs. It's kind of like China during the Cultural Revolution, when you make the whole nation judge, jury, and executioner, no one, and I mean no one, is really safe.
Simon Southerton wrote a book about Amerindian DNA providing no indication that there were Hebrews here, contrary to the teachings of the Book of Mormon. While the people at FARMS and FAIR were scrambling to find a way to make this not matter in the least, the Church initiated a 'Court of Love' for Simon Southerton on the grounds that he slept with another woman some years ago when he was separated from his wife. Don't worry, I don't buy their pretext either. By the way, just where did they dig this up? Was spying involved perhaps?
Back to the spying. I hang out at one of these Yahoo! groups where liberal Mormons vent because being liberal in the LDS Church is frankly miserable. Life as a liberal is really swell in an organization where being a Democrat has been half jokingly considered grounds to deny people privileges of full-faith membership, where people regularly praise conservative presidents and their policies as divinely inspired, and where any strangley non-conservative-sounding thoughts are greeted with deafening silence. You feel loved.
Anyway, some of the people on this group got the crazy idea of sending flowers to President Hinckley on behalf of all the gay people who felt excluded by the Church's explicit support for all efforts (legal and semi-legal) to stop gay marriage from happening. The nice thing about moral certainty is that you feel you can impose your personal values on absolutely everyone else. Well, the folks who were planning this wanted to advertize their efforts on a website. Funny thing is, as soon as they discussed a possible domain name for it, the domain name was bought up by someone else. Well, it turned out that a Mormon apologist was spying on discussion groups to gather intelligence on such efforts.
Imagine it. In a Church that claims (albeit somewhat erroneously) to be 12 million strong, a zealous defender spied on the activities of a few discussion boards and to frustrate them where possible. Was he commanded by higher powers? We'll probably never know. Did he need to be? I doubt it. When a mentally ill Cody Judy held a fake bomb to the head of one of the LDS Church's top leaders, the students in attendance at the meeting started singing 'We thank thee, O God, for a prophet." The young perpetrator, thinking they were singing to him, was caught off guard. Suddenly a bunch of college-age Mormon men jumped on him. Some were kicking him and saying, "Don't mess with the elders of Israel." Just think. They didn't know whether the kid had a real bomb or not. That didn't stop them. Now who's crazy?
Monday, February 20, 2006
Epinoia
I have never been able to decide exactly how I feel about Gnosticism. In college I was on a Gnostic kick. I even took a Coptic course in which we read nearly a third of the Gospel of Thomas in Coptic. I read a couple of books on the subject, and numerous scholarly articles. To this day I feel like I hardly have any idea what Gnosticism is about. Much Gnostic literature is difficult reading. It is filled with tedious cosmogonies built on the genealogical relationships between all of these abstract ideas that have been deified and only barely personified. After reading this stuff a while I feel utterly lost in the world.
This past weekend I listened to Elaine Pagel's "Beyond Belief." I was hestitant to get it, but I had just finished Bart Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus," and was looking for something else as basic and enjoyable. "Beyond Belief" had the clear virtue of being available as an audio book, so I could listen to it while I watched our daughter. Even though I am somewhat skeptical of Elaine Pagel's work (I found her work on Satan to be dubious at best), I had seen her at the SBL meeting a couple of years ago, and had been intrigued at least by what she was saying about the Gospel of Thomas.
"Beyond Belief" is essentially Pagel's brief history of the development of orthodoxy. I had hoped there would be a lot more about the Gospel of Thomas, which is what I was listening for, but the book offers an interesting reading of early Christianity. It posits the pivotal role played by Irenaeus in promoting the Gospel of John to emphasize Christ's divinity, which is, according to this Gospel, uniquely his among humans. Here is where the Gospel of Thomas comes in. Pagels sees this Gospel promoting a different view in which all human beings have the divine light or spark. As a Mormon this view appeals to me more. Mormons see humans as belonging to the same species as God, and thus being essentially the same in nature. While not the same, this is closer to the 'Thomas' view of a shared divine nature.
My favorite part of "BB" was Pagel's discussion of epinoia, which strikes me as a kind of creative revelatory experience. Among Gnostics this creative revelation was central. By meditating on the truth, Gnostics were ever discovering new truths and committing them to text. Hence the plethora of Gnostic scriptures of which we only possess a fraction. Men like Irenaeus hated this, because they were promoting a unified, universal (catholic) truth. Aside from a successful opposition, Gnostics also had other problems. They tended to be elitist in their attitude toward non-Gnostic Christians, whose Christianity was deemed by them to be a primary school variety of truth.
I love the concept of epinoia as Pagels described it. This creative, revelatory exercise matches my own view of what all scripture essentially is. Scripture is an act of mythography. Only by applying authority to certain texts at the exclusion of others after the fact does one come to a concept of authoritative 'canon.' One can legitimately ask, however, what the necessary value of Paul's witness, Luke's witness, or 'John's' witness is over any Gnostic text. None of these people personally saw Jesus, and thus one trusts, rather blindly IMO, their 'revelation' over others largely because of the somewhat arbitrary authority a certain group of Christians gave them many hundreds of years ago.
Here is where Mormonism comes in. Joseph Smith's scriptural writings offer us a glimpse of a post-canonical, latter-day epinoia. Interestingly they assume the authority of the canon, but it is an authority that is besieged by problems and doubt. The revelations of Smith, his meditations on Christianity, come to the rescue. They comprise a new voice to prop up the old. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you view these matters), Smith viewed himself as one bearing unique authority from God to do this latter-day epinoia. Others who claimed revelation, like Hiram Page (ahem), were muscled out of the picture. This has not prevented numerous Smith copycats from surfacing over the years, beginning with James Strang who claimed to have found another ancient American record called the 'Voree Record'. Even today there are schismatic Mormons writing addendums to Smith's mythos. The mythmaking continues unabated.
This past weekend I listened to Elaine Pagel's "Beyond Belief." I was hestitant to get it, but I had just finished Bart Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus," and was looking for something else as basic and enjoyable. "Beyond Belief" had the clear virtue of being available as an audio book, so I could listen to it while I watched our daughter. Even though I am somewhat skeptical of Elaine Pagel's work (I found her work on Satan to be dubious at best), I had seen her at the SBL meeting a couple of years ago, and had been intrigued at least by what she was saying about the Gospel of Thomas.
"Beyond Belief" is essentially Pagel's brief history of the development of orthodoxy. I had hoped there would be a lot more about the Gospel of Thomas, which is what I was listening for, but the book offers an interesting reading of early Christianity. It posits the pivotal role played by Irenaeus in promoting the Gospel of John to emphasize Christ's divinity, which is, according to this Gospel, uniquely his among humans. Here is where the Gospel of Thomas comes in. Pagels sees this Gospel promoting a different view in which all human beings have the divine light or spark. As a Mormon this view appeals to me more. Mormons see humans as belonging to the same species as God, and thus being essentially the same in nature. While not the same, this is closer to the 'Thomas' view of a shared divine nature.
My favorite part of "BB" was Pagel's discussion of epinoia, which strikes me as a kind of creative revelatory experience. Among Gnostics this creative revelation was central. By meditating on the truth, Gnostics were ever discovering new truths and committing them to text. Hence the plethora of Gnostic scriptures of which we only possess a fraction. Men like Irenaeus hated this, because they were promoting a unified, universal (catholic) truth. Aside from a successful opposition, Gnostics also had other problems. They tended to be elitist in their attitude toward non-Gnostic Christians, whose Christianity was deemed by them to be a primary school variety of truth.
I love the concept of epinoia as Pagels described it. This creative, revelatory exercise matches my own view of what all scripture essentially is. Scripture is an act of mythography. Only by applying authority to certain texts at the exclusion of others after the fact does one come to a concept of authoritative 'canon.' One can legitimately ask, however, what the necessary value of Paul's witness, Luke's witness, or 'John's' witness is over any Gnostic text. None of these people personally saw Jesus, and thus one trusts, rather blindly IMO, their 'revelation' over others largely because of the somewhat arbitrary authority a certain group of Christians gave them many hundreds of years ago.
Here is where Mormonism comes in. Joseph Smith's scriptural writings offer us a glimpse of a post-canonical, latter-day epinoia. Interestingly they assume the authority of the canon, but it is an authority that is besieged by problems and doubt. The revelations of Smith, his meditations on Christianity, come to the rescue. They comprise a new voice to prop up the old. Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you view these matters), Smith viewed himself as one bearing unique authority from God to do this latter-day epinoia. Others who claimed revelation, like Hiram Page (ahem), were muscled out of the picture. This has not prevented numerous Smith copycats from surfacing over the years, beginning with James Strang who claimed to have found another ancient American record called the 'Voree Record'. Even today there are schismatic Mormons writing addendums to Smith's mythos. The mythmaking continues unabated.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
Favorites
My wife is not big into favorites. She likes so many things for so many different reasons that she finds the concept of favorites too limiting. I run roughshod over such niceties as the exclusivity of the term favorite, so I have many favorites in the very same category. I have been giving some thought to the issue of my favorites in the cyber-Mormon world. Unlike many, I include anti- and ex-Mormon stuff under the general rubric of cyber-Mormon. I don't include Evangelical stuff for the simple reason that they drive me insane. It is therefore difficult for me to imagine having a favorite among them, but rather a least unfavorite.
Here we go with some of Hiram's cyber-Mormon favorites:
In the category of ex- or anti-Mormon I have three current favorites.
1) Tal Bachman: Tal is at #1 right now, partly because I just discovered him, and partly because he is just so cool. He has written a number of excellent posts on Recovery from Mormonism that have been compiled at The Mormon Curtain blog.
2) Bob McCue: Bob is a Canadian attorney whose exodus from Mormonism created a good deal of local publicity. Bob has a website where he has made his writings documenting his exodus from Mormonism available to others. Some of them are quite long, but they are well worth the effort.
3) Richard Packham: Richard is the godfather of the ex-Mormon movement. He started the Ex-Mormon Foundation. Richard is the best guest that The Church Is Not True's podcast has ever had, with Bob McCue taking a close second.
In the category of Mormon apologists I have two favorites:
1) Kerry Shirts: half the time I can't tell exactly where Kerry is coming from, but this is a good thing. Most apologists are so predictable. The truth is that Kerry is a mystic. Since discovering mysticism, Kerry has opened up to different views.
2) Kevin Graham: Kevin also thinks outside of the box. It is a joy to watch him get into fights with other LDS apologists, especially Dan Peterson.
3) Benjamin McGuire: Ben has a very interesting approach to scriptures. He is very tolerant of those who think the Book of Mormon is inspired fiction.
In the category of favorite Mormon podcasts:
1) Mormon Stories: John Dehlin has managed to get some great guests and he regularly addresses interesting topics. His aim seems to be to help thinking Mormons stay in the Church. It's a tall order.
2) Sunstone's two podcasts: usually the new podcasts are the better of the two, but the Jan Shipps podcast is one you shouldn't miss.
3) The Church Is Not True: a couple of their shows are amazing, mostly because of the guests. In my opinion these guys are a little strident in their criticisms and loose with their facts. The child testifying to the falseness of Mormonism is wearing thin.
Here we go with some of Hiram's cyber-Mormon favorites:
In the category of ex- or anti-Mormon I have three current favorites.
1) Tal Bachman: Tal is at #1 right now, partly because I just discovered him, and partly because he is just so cool. He has written a number of excellent posts on Recovery from Mormonism that have been compiled at The Mormon Curtain blog.
2) Bob McCue: Bob is a Canadian attorney whose exodus from Mormonism created a good deal of local publicity. Bob has a website where he has made his writings documenting his exodus from Mormonism available to others. Some of them are quite long, but they are well worth the effort.
3) Richard Packham: Richard is the godfather of the ex-Mormon movement. He started the Ex-Mormon Foundation. Richard is the best guest that The Church Is Not True's podcast has ever had, with Bob McCue taking a close second.
In the category of Mormon apologists I have two favorites:
1) Kerry Shirts: half the time I can't tell exactly where Kerry is coming from, but this is a good thing. Most apologists are so predictable. The truth is that Kerry is a mystic. Since discovering mysticism, Kerry has opened up to different views.
2) Kevin Graham: Kevin also thinks outside of the box. It is a joy to watch him get into fights with other LDS apologists, especially Dan Peterson.
3) Benjamin McGuire: Ben has a very interesting approach to scriptures. He is very tolerant of those who think the Book of Mormon is inspired fiction.
In the category of favorite Mormon podcasts:
1) Mormon Stories: John Dehlin has managed to get some great guests and he regularly addresses interesting topics. His aim seems to be to help thinking Mormons stay in the Church. It's a tall order.
2) Sunstone's two podcasts: usually the new podcasts are the better of the two, but the Jan Shipps podcast is one you shouldn't miss.
3) The Church Is Not True: a couple of their shows are amazing, mostly because of the guests. In my opinion these guys are a little strident in their criticisms and loose with their facts. The child testifying to the falseness of Mormonism is wearing thin.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Why ask why?
There are certain issues that will never be resolved. In spite of that truth, I can't help digging into those issues. Take Mormon apologetics, for example. The attempt to convince others that Mormonism is plausible or not by use of academic tools really bothers me. Still, I find myself hanging out at FAIR. Will someone come to my rescue, please?
It dawned on me, way too late to claim I am really an intelligent guy when all is said and done, that Mormon apologists are not interested in discovering the truth. "They are not committed to the truth?", you disingenuously ask. Certainly they are committed to the truth they believe they already know. They are committed to proctecting the LDS Church from challenges to its truth claims, which they take very personally as their own. What they are not interested in is discovering any truth that might contradict the truth as the LDS Church presents it. Since the LDS Church ideally defines their worldview and perception of the truth, one might say that it is almost impossible for them to entertain the idea that there might be another way of looking at things. So deep is their conviction.
If you go over to FAIR, you will see quite of bit of cheering for any rhetorical maneuvre or 'discovery' that bolsters people's belief in what they already accept as true. I can recall a handful of occasions when I brought up facts that were not consistent with some people's visions of Mormonism. I was pounced upon as though I were the mythical 'underhanded, deceitful and nasty' anti-Mormon. On one occasion, I brought up the fact that early presidents of the LDS Church from Joseph Smith to John Taylor were made kings. Immediately someone asked me from which anti-Mormon book I had gotten that information. Sigh.
Familiarity and comfort are the new standards of truth at FAIR. Bring up anything that is unfamiliar and that makes the faithful uncomfortable, and wham! you are accused of being an anti-Mormon or asked to write the equivalent of an academic article with complete bibliography to back up your pesky contentions. Raise any goofy theory that tickles the ears of the faithful, and you have a real hit.
Once an apologist claimed that in the Zeezrom trial Amulek was citing a scripture from Nephi when he spoke about no unclean thing entering the kingdom of God. I argued that Alma, as the author of the book, was likely the one who either taught Amulek this or put it into Amulek's mouth. You see, as a priest Alma had his own reasons to be concerned with the issue of clean and unclean, and he mentioned how unclean things cannot enter heaven four times in his own book. The apologist's response? Silence. When I asked him directly if he would address the issues I had raised, silence again.
Yes, I am bragging. But hey, I am rarely so clever that I even feel like I can brag.
It dawned on me, way too late to claim I am really an intelligent guy when all is said and done, that Mormon apologists are not interested in discovering the truth. "They are not committed to the truth?", you disingenuously ask. Certainly they are committed to the truth they believe they already know. They are committed to proctecting the LDS Church from challenges to its truth claims, which they take very personally as their own. What they are not interested in is discovering any truth that might contradict the truth as the LDS Church presents it. Since the LDS Church ideally defines their worldview and perception of the truth, one might say that it is almost impossible for them to entertain the idea that there might be another way of looking at things. So deep is their conviction.
If you go over to FAIR, you will see quite of bit of cheering for any rhetorical maneuvre or 'discovery' that bolsters people's belief in what they already accept as true. I can recall a handful of occasions when I brought up facts that were not consistent with some people's visions of Mormonism. I was pounced upon as though I were the mythical 'underhanded, deceitful and nasty' anti-Mormon. On one occasion, I brought up the fact that early presidents of the LDS Church from Joseph Smith to John Taylor were made kings. Immediately someone asked me from which anti-Mormon book I had gotten that information. Sigh.
Familiarity and comfort are the new standards of truth at FAIR. Bring up anything that is unfamiliar and that makes the faithful uncomfortable, and wham! you are accused of being an anti-Mormon or asked to write the equivalent of an academic article with complete bibliography to back up your pesky contentions. Raise any goofy theory that tickles the ears of the faithful, and you have a real hit.
Once an apologist claimed that in the Zeezrom trial Amulek was citing a scripture from Nephi when he spoke about no unclean thing entering the kingdom of God. I argued that Alma, as the author of the book, was likely the one who either taught Amulek this or put it into Amulek's mouth. You see, as a priest Alma had his own reasons to be concerned with the issue of clean and unclean, and he mentioned how unclean things cannot enter heaven four times in his own book. The apologist's response? Silence. When I asked him directly if he would address the issues I had raised, silence again.
Yes, I am bragging. But hey, I am rarely so clever that I even feel like I can brag.
Friday, February 17, 2006
Darron Smith fired from BYU
I *just* found out about this. BYU cancelled a class taught by Darron Smith, black scholar on race and Mormonism, without warning. They also terminated his employment as an adjunct at BYU. According to Darron, he was told by a representative of BYU's administration that some of the Brethren were 'uncomfortable' with issues he was raising.
Brother Smith maintains a firm belief in Mormonism in spite of this decision. He has been advocating that the Church clarify its theological position on blacks. Formerly, Mormons were taught that blacks had been non-committal in the great conflict between God and Satan in the premortal existence. For this reason their lineage was denied the priesthood. Of course, Joseph Smith observed no such restriction. African Americans were ordained to the priesthood under his leadership. It was later that men like Heber C. Kimball (who was a racist) claimed that Joseph Smith imparted the historically dubious teaching about blacks as premortal 'fence-sitters.'
This news is upsetting. If Darron's representation of the circumstances of his termination are accurate, then the Church has made a poor decision in firing him, and on grounds that had nothing to do with academics. Now more people will be encouraged to think of BYU as a place where academic freedom is not respected and racism is an institutional problem.
Brother Smith maintains a firm belief in Mormonism in spite of this decision. He has been advocating that the Church clarify its theological position on blacks. Formerly, Mormons were taught that blacks had been non-committal in the great conflict between God and Satan in the premortal existence. For this reason their lineage was denied the priesthood. Of course, Joseph Smith observed no such restriction. African Americans were ordained to the priesthood under his leadership. It was later that men like Heber C. Kimball (who was a racist) claimed that Joseph Smith imparted the historically dubious teaching about blacks as premortal 'fence-sitters.'
This news is upsetting. If Darron's representation of the circumstances of his termination are accurate, then the Church has made a poor decision in firing him, and on grounds that had nothing to do with academics. Now more people will be encouraged to think of BYU as a place where academic freedom is not respected and racism is an institutional problem.
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Just the way I want it
Being an active Mormon doesn't usually include being frank about Mormonism. What you like or don't like about your Church. Since the assumption is that the whole thing is God's one and only true Church, guided by a prophet who receives revelation from God, very few people criticize the Church in the open. Obviously, I am no exception. What I offer is one person's view and opinion. Not an 'Insider's' view. The Mopologists (Mormon apologists) had a field day with Grant Palmer for claiming to offer that. It is simply my view. You may find it illuminating and you may hate it. You may have any number of reactions depending on who you are, what you believe, and whether you like your mattress or not. It is here for you to read if you so choose.
So what kind of Mormon am I? My ancestors joined the Mormon Church as far back as the mid' 1830s. Several of them were in the infamous Martin handcart company that got caught in extreme winter conditions, costing the lives of many who sought to join the saints in Deseret (Utah plus). I served a mission in California, married a wonderful woman in the temple, and graduated from BYU. Over the course of my time in Provo, I became increasingly weary of Happy Valley, its wards, and the school that dominates both landscape and culture: BYU. I also started to question the whys and wherefores of the Mormon faith. I remain an active member to this day, but I won't kid you. I am nowhere close to happy with the LDS Church.
So what I am doing here is telling you how I see it, regardless of outside influences. I doubt many will agree with everything I have to say, whether they be anti-Mormon, TBM (true blue or true believing Mormon), liberal Mormon, ex-Mormon, or what have you. Some of this is a riff on things that I have read on one of the big Mormon discussion boards like ZLMB or FAIR. My intention is not to pick on individual participants from these boards. It's true that I often disagree with them. My aim instead is to have a place where what I say will not be moderated. I rarely said anything that the average person would find offensive, but I regularly found my posts edited by moderators at FAIR. You should see the moderating on FAIR. The rationale behind it, if you can call it that, escapes interpretation. Anyway, if I do this thing right, and represent my views as they actually are, nobody should be perfectly happy. That's just the way I want it.
So what kind of Mormon am I? My ancestors joined the Mormon Church as far back as the mid' 1830s. Several of them were in the infamous Martin handcart company that got caught in extreme winter conditions, costing the lives of many who sought to join the saints in Deseret (Utah plus). I served a mission in California, married a wonderful woman in the temple, and graduated from BYU. Over the course of my time in Provo, I became increasingly weary of Happy Valley, its wards, and the school that dominates both landscape and culture: BYU. I also started to question the whys and wherefores of the Mormon faith. I remain an active member to this day, but I won't kid you. I am nowhere close to happy with the LDS Church.
So what I am doing here is telling you how I see it, regardless of outside influences. I doubt many will agree with everything I have to say, whether they be anti-Mormon, TBM (true blue or true believing Mormon), liberal Mormon, ex-Mormon, or what have you. Some of this is a riff on things that I have read on one of the big Mormon discussion boards like ZLMB or FAIR. My intention is not to pick on individual participants from these boards. It's true that I often disagree with them. My aim instead is to have a place where what I say will not be moderated. I rarely said anything that the average person would find offensive, but I regularly found my posts edited by moderators at FAIR. You should see the moderating on FAIR. The rationale behind it, if you can call it that, escapes interpretation. Anyway, if I do this thing right, and represent my views as they actually are, nobody should be perfectly happy. That's just the way I want it.
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