No Defense Like A Disingenuous Defense

Elder Robert S. Wood of the Seventy wrote a little piece in the most recent Ensign entitled "The Quest for Spiritual Knowledge." Wood begins his article by talking about how the divine witness he received of the Book of Mormon he had received at the age of 16 was almost immediately challenged by a nameless non-LDS friend who happened to have a list of Book of Mormon anachronisms on him. He boldly declared that his friend was "too late" because he already had God's witness. Nevertheless, Wood told his friend he would keep the list.

Wood then goes on to say that over the years item after item on the list has dropped off as the discoveries of academics have vindicated his divine witness. Only one item, which he does not specify, stubbornly remained. Never fear, however, for just a few years ago he mentioned this list while speaking at Cornell University, and a 'distinguished professor' (unnamed) said to him, "You can remove your last item, for our (who?) studies indicate that it is not an anachronism." Wood then poses the question, "What would my life have been like had I withheld my conviction of the Book of Mormon until I resolved all the questions my friend had given me?"

So, what on earth does this guy think he is doing? Is he *trying* to look like he's full of crap? Is he not aware that in an attempt to use evidence to prove one's case it is useful to actually discuss the evidence in question? What was on this list? How were these issues settled? What was the final stubborn item? Who is the 'distinguished' Cornell professor? Is she or he LDS? Let's look at some evidence! Or, if we aren't going to do that, let's quit using non-evidence as though it were evidence.

You see, in most places bold claims require more than, and I mean literally, "I heard it from some guy that the thing in question wasn't a valid argument against my claim to a miracle." Either the Ensign has a supremely daft editorial staff, or this guy really thinks that the fact he said all of this unspecified stuff happened really means anything. I am sorry, Mr. Wood, but it does not. You either come up with the facts, or you don't tell the story.

The problem is that Wood's target reader just may give him a pass on this. After all, that is what they, and most religionists, are trained to do. It's not just the fantastically implausible tale of the Book of Mormon, but also the vast sea of things improbable to damn near impossible that are written in the Bible or the Quran. It seems that if someone gets God involved in telling an improbable story, there are always plenty of folks who will hang around to listen, and a few who will buy the book, join the club, and drink the koolaid. Why? Because God is just that important.

I think Trey Parker and Matt Stone got it essentially right when they depicted Martin Harris saying in response to Joseph Smith's claim that God would not let him retranslate the plates because God was angry, "Gee, if God is angry with him, he *must* be telling the truth!" But let's be perfectly clear about this. The claim that God is in the works is not a license to suspend good judgment. The supreme irony is that the very same people who make fun of Jim Jones and the koolaid will tell you that they would happily hand over their wives to Gordon Hinckley if they believed God had told him to ask for them.

As my atheist friends are wont to say with no small amount of wisdom, "fantastic claims demand only the best evidence to back them up." It is too bad that in our weakness and humanity we hope so badly for things to be other than they are that we are just waiting for someone to pass the koolaid. I know, koolaid is an extremely provocative term, but koolaid it is when the decisions that result cause the misery and death of so many people. I am not saying that religion is uniquely culpable. No. And I think that the exercise of a responsible spirituality can be a marvelous thing. But today we see a rash of hucksterism that reaches into the highest office of the land that has played the religion card almost incessantly. That being the case, I have little patience for Mr. Wood's brand of "evidence."

The Best Part...

So, in my book the PBS documentary "The Mormons" was a wonderful thing. One of the best parts of it, however, may not get a lot of attention. For this reason I have decided to post a link to this awesome resource: the documentary interviews. These interviews are longer versions of the material that went into the documentary. Even these interviews are edited, and I dearly hope that PBS gets wise and puts together a resource for accessing all of the interviews in their unedited entirety.

Here I will quote some of my favorite bits from the Gregory Prince interview. Prince is co-author of the recent biography of David O. McKay. His views match my own so well that I wish I had half a dozen people like him in the boundaries of my ward who were active and reasonably vocal about their views. I might even go to Church again, if that were the case. Anyway, here is Prince...

On gay rights and the marriage amendment:

"The question is, what is the real issue about gay rights, about same-gender marriage? Is this really a threat to the institution of marriage? No. That's a straw man. The threat to the institution of marriage is heterosexuals who either thumb their noses at marriage in the first place or who don't take the marriage covenant seriously. To put all of that on the backs of gays who want to establish a legal union is cruel, and it's wrong. ...

There is irony if you step back and look at the current situation regarding gay marriage, and another situation that also involved marital relations, and that was 19th-century polygamy. ... Where we've come down on the two is quite different, and yes, I think there is irony in that. ... And yet if you are stepping back, each one of those is a reinterpretation of the traditional family. ... There is irony in comparing them a century apart."

On Joseph Smith:

"No matter which way you cook it, Joseph Smith is a bundle of contradictions, an unschooled, roughhewn frontiersman -- which is what New York was in 1820 -- who founds a church that has become a worldwide church. It shouldn't have happened, but it did. ...

[Joseph Smith] was what he was, and it doesn't really bother me. I look at great leaders, particularly religious leaders before and since, and they've all got blemishes, as do political leaders, particularly the charismatic ones. Joseph, if nothing else, was charismatic. And that just seems to be the inseparable baggage that these great people bring with them, and you have to be able to deal with it. …

Some people in the church, even sitting at a high level, tend to reduce it almost to a geometric equation. If Joseph Smith wasn't this, this and this, then the church can't be true. That does us a great disservice, because it turns out not to be as clear-cut as that."

The Book of Mormon:

"Perhaps the most prevalent viewpoint in the church is either the Book of Mormon is a literal history of the Americas before Columbus or it's wrong. There is an alternative somewhere between those two. If you look at the Bible, some of the greatest books of the Bible -- and in my mind in particular the Book of Job, which I feel to be one of the greatest books in world literature, is fictional. Its message is independent of its historicity. That's the key in dealing with the Book of Mormon. Whatever its message is, it continues to resonate with the people who encounter it.

It's not because of its doctrinal sophistication, because if you look at the Book of Mormon compared to the Bible, the level of theology of the two is quite separate. So that's not the attraction. It's not the historicity, because the people who read it don't come away from reading it thinking, "Well, that was an interesting history." It's that there is truth within that book, just as there is truth within the Book of Job that is, in fact, a fictional book. ...

That's the message that people need to get. Forget about the container for a while. Get inside of it and grab the truth that's in there, regardless of the form that it's in, regardless of how it got to be in that container -- and then you win. ..."

On being a Mormon intellectual:

"Being an intellectual in this church is a hard way to make an easy living, for two reasons. One is the wealth of source material: If you go back and look at the history, it's enormous -- and troubling, because it doesn't always square with the public relations version of things. The second reason it's difficult is there is an anti-intellectual bent in the church that in some cases has gone so far as to push people out simply because they were thinking people, either overtly pushed them out by excommunicating them or sending the message that they're not welcome and we'd be a lot happier if you'd just have the good grace to leave, and leave quietly.

So it's not an easy lifestyle, but people don't tend to choose that lifestyle. You are that, or you're something else. I don't think you choose to be an intellectual. It's the way you're wired. It's the way you view the world. So there you are, and if you're going through that journey alone, it's a very perilous and lonely journey. It turns out there are many other people in the church with a similar mind-set, but they are a loose amalgamation at best. It's been with difficulty over the decades that those of us who consider ourselves within that philosophy try to hang on to the church for ourselves and try to hang on to others and keep them in."

On Mormon "certainty":

"There is a strong thread within the church that clings to the notion that I have to be able to say in public, "I know," regardless of what the "I know" involves. Unwittingly that has created a culture that says to the other ones who can't say that in honesty, "Gee, there must be something wrong with me, because I can't say, 'I know,' if I don't know." I think that the desire to be able to go up to the pulpit and say "I know" is not unique to Mormonism. I think that pervades the entire world, and it's why fundamentalism in whatever clothing -- Christian, Judaic, Islamic -- is a dangerous thing, because it gives a false certitude to people. They think that the tough questions in life can all be reduced to one-line answers, and they can't. If you think that's where the world is and you try to live in that world, it's destructive ultimately. So we have to be able to move at some point from, "Oh, yeah, I know," to, "Listen, here's where I am. I think I know some things, and I've experienced some things, and there are a lot of things I don't know. But I'm here for the duration, so let's move forward together and help each other."

On the Book of Abraham:

"One response that has been a very loudly stated response ever since then was, "Those were the wrong papyri." It doesn't address the fact that some of the diagrams, the facsimiles that were part of the Book of Abraham, were with those papyri, and they are the right ones. ... An alternative explanation is to say this is all fiction. ...

There's plenty of ground in between -- and that's the ground that I live on -- that says: "Why does there need to be a one-to-one relationship between historical artifact and modern Scripture? Isn't it the product that we're looking at, and the effect of that product on this community of believers?" And if that is the essential question, and I think it is, then we don't need to worry about the literal relationship between [the artifacts and the Scripture]. ..."

On problems facing the LDS Church:

"Another area is the challenge of feminism; that you have, particularly in the American church, tens of thousands, if not more, women who are not out there picketing, but who are aware that their position in the church is not what they would want it to be. They're looking at this issue different than their mothers or grandmother did.

You have the challenge of intellectualism, and this is a challenge that does not just come from within. Mormonism, because of its importance as an American-born world religion, is ripe for scholarly inquiry. You have scholars, Mormon and non-Mormon, believers and nonbelievers, all focusing their tools on studying this important religion. ... Those are some of the challenges we face now, and not one of those is easy. ...

The strategic problems facing the church don't face me personally. ... The problem I deal with, within my own family, is boredom. My kids ... say, "Dad, this church is boring." When I talk to other kids, they use the "B" word also. If we can't move those kids out of that mind-set, we can lose them. There are so many more alternative voices that they can listen to. You've got hundreds of channels on cable TV. You've got the Internet. It's not the world we grew up in, where you had few competing voices. There are hundreds if not thousands of competing voices, and they are sophisticated and attractive. And if we can't take the essential message that we have and somehow package it in some way that is not so boring to them, we're going to lose them."

On homosexuality and the family:

"We have not yet gotten to the point of understanding the biology of homosexuality, to the point where that understanding enlightens the policy and the behavior of individual Mormons toward homosexuality. ... Are we going to tell [gay individuals], "You must live alone for the rest of your life because you can't fit in this other mold," or are we going to let those people live as what they are, even if it is different than what we are? I hope we can get to that point. What we call it, how we structure it, I don't know. But I think it is cruel to apply different standards of behavior to one group than we do to other groups. ...

The church did a survey 10, 20 years ago and found that half the members of the church were of single families, which means that one-third of the adult membership of the church is single, either never married, widowed or divorced. So to cling to the notion that the only acceptable family unit is a mother, father and children flies in the face of reality. We can accommodate single parents in the church; we should be able to accommodate other forms of family life that are strong, that are nurturing, that are faith-promoting and that are enduring -- but we haven't been able to do that yet. ..."

Reacting to the Whitney PBS Documentary

I finally finished watching "The Mormons," the 4-hour PBS documentary about the LDS Church by Helen Whitney. I very much enjoyed it. Sure, there were some inaccurate, oddball, and annoying aspects to it, but on the whole I thought it was quite positive. Big plusses in my book were the insights and experiences of Sarah Barringer Gordon, Kathleen Flake, and Margaret Toscano. I am ready to run out and buy professor Gordon's books. I was also pleasantly surprised that Whitney used such a positive quote about Joseph Smith by Ed Firmage. Yes, Firmage is ex-Mormon, and yet you never would have known from his statement about Joseph Smith in which he compared the Mormon prophet to Mohammed and Isaiah.

The faithful Mormon response is somewhat predictable. Many, if not most, of them did not like it. In fact, you can follow the link in the title of this post and read Deseret News' collection of largely negative responses to the documentary by a host of faithful LDS people.

One aspect of the documentary that has produced some unintended humorous consequences was the choice not to identify commentators by their Mormon (non-)affiliation. This has led to some complaints about that Islamic Studies professor *Daniel Peterson* who should not have been consulted, according to the unhappy viewers, about his bizarre views of their faith. Yes, folks, these faithful Mormons had no idea that Peterson is the most prominent Mormon APOLOGIST of our day. This funny mistake reflects badly on the general LDS membership, but quite well on Peterson, who comes off much better in person than the jackass persona he has carefully cultivated on the internet.

I must admit that I was being somewhat inaccurate in my description of the LDS interaction to the documentary, when I said they 'did not like it.' Truth be told, many were enraged by it. Their vitriol toward Ms. Whitney and PBS reminds me just how far outside the Mormon mainstream I am. Even if we are kind enough not to identify it as the mainstream, there are so many Mormons who apparently went apoplectic over the show that I am more convinced than ever that I do not want to hang out with these people. You should know, gentle reader, that I doubt they miss me anyway (at least most of them).

At the same time, I have a great deal of sympathy for these folks. After all, they are conditioned to prize obedience to their Church leaders as the only safe way to navigate these treacherous days of apocalyptic wickedness. Then they are fed a version of their own history and image in the world that would make Walt Disney jealous. In other words, it is calculated to produce a certain positive emotional effect (that I cannot denigrate as being insignificant), and it does so with almost mechanical effectiveness. Finally, they are told not to listen to what anyone outside of the LDS Church has to say about their faith.

I hope this helps to explain why so many Mormons offered the moronic 'insight' that people shouldn't go to a Chevy dealer if they are shopping for a Ford. Who came up with that? If I go shopping for a car, I check out all of the makes and models. Of course it would be stupid to go to a Chevy dealer to ask about Fords, IF MY MIND WERE ALREADY MADE UP. But, going out to shop with your mind made up is to ask to be ripped off. We clearly need to look elsewhere if we want to discover why there are so many successful Mormon businessmen. Once again, however, this is a mantra that is habitually intoned in LDS discussions about how non-Mormons, especially representing other faith traditions, generally misrepresent Mormons. Can you blame them for knowing their culture so well and acting accordingly?

To my Mormon friends who are unhappy with the PBS documenary I offer a simple recommendation. Read the title of the series of which this Mormon documentary is a part. It is "The American Experience." If you think about it, that helps us contextualize this particular presentation of Mormonism. The PBS documentary was not written to make you LDS people feel like you just attended General Conference. It was not supposed to be a missionary tool designed to draw more people into the LDS waters of baptism. Instead, this documentary places the phenomenon of Mormonism within the context of the larger American experience. It therefore offers not only those inside voices that praise Mormonism to the skies, but also those of outsiders who have been impacted by Mormonism in some way. In other words, we get to see how America (and others in the world) responds to Mormonism, and from some pretty brilliant folk.

Ex-Mormons are part of that picture, and I thought they were edited quite tastefully. To those of you who hated Margaret Toscano, all I can say is that you are damned lucky Whitney didn't stick a Sonia Johnson interview in there. At least Margaret still loves Mormonism and feels a part of the faith and culture. The fact that she has been exiled from the LDS Church does not seem to have utterly soured her on it. For those of you who are angry that Ken Clark was on, all I can say is that I am mystified by your objections. On the whole, I thought he was quite mellow. It is obvious he does not believe, but I did not find his statements especially disparaging in tone or content.

For those of you who are angry about all of the time devoted to the Mountain Meadows Massacre, I have two words for you: September Dawn. Mormons should be dancing in the streets and sending personal checks to Helen Whitney for having presented a generally unsensational and balanced view of this dark chapter in Mormon history. Why? Because that is certainly not what you will get from the film September Dawn, and unfortunately many more people will watch that film than the number who tuned in to the documentary. September Dawn was co-written by a Born Again Christian, and we all know how much these folks love Mormonism. One last thing--you have to consider the context when you ask why Whitney gave so much attention to the MMM. We live in a time when religious zealots are blowing themselves up for their faith. How the extreme and pernicious devotion that led to the MMM should not be pertinent in our day is mysterious to me.