My experience on the MAD board is that it frequently lived up to its name (as in angry rather than crazy). This was one of the few boards that allowed open discussion and debate among Mormons and their critics, although the moderation seemed more heavy-handed toward the critics as might be expected on a pro-Mormon site. It was not uncommon, in my observation, for a newcomer to be attacked and ridiculed by board regulars for bringing up the "same old criticisms that have been dealt with over and over." Rather than receiving an answer, the newcomer might be referred to articles on the FAIR site. Wading through these articles was no small feat. They were long and complex, seemed to be aimed more at obfuscation than clarity, and did not provide answers that would satisfy a critic. So "dealing with" these criticisms seemed to mean that they had been discussed ad nauseum, not that the answers were satisfactory. I can understand the believers' frustration. They probably would have enjoyed providing good, convincing answers, but their defensiveness likely indicated that they had none to offer. I also used to grow weary of trying to defend Mormonism until I finally decided to follow the evidence.
Daniel C. Peterson was a frequent contributor to discussions on the MAD board and he exemplified the rude, impatient pomposity that characterized its tone. Peterson is the former chairman of BYU's Maxwell Institute, the church's only somewhat official apologetic organization. He was let go in June 2012, shortly after word came out that he planned on publishing a hit piece to discredit podcaster, John Dehlin, founder of the Mormon Stories podcast. The rumors on social media indicated that MI wanted to move away from the type of aggressive apologetics characterized by Peterson's frequent ad hominem attacks against critics, realizing that this approach was doing more harm than good.
Being released from MI has not slowed Peterson down at all. His most recent object of attack is Jeremy Runnells, author of the Letter to a CES Director that went viral sometime after April 2013 when Runnells first composed it at the request of his CES director. Peterson gave an address on August 8, 2014 at the FairMormon conference about the CES letter. Among other things, Peterson had this to say.
I’ve mentioned, I think, here before that Bill Hamblin and I have wanted to do a film that we call tentatively, “Bill and Dan’s Excellent Adventure in Anti-Mormon Zombie Hell.” The idea is that these just keep coming back. I mean, you shoot them between the eyes and they don’t stop because there’s no brain in there, right?This is similar to the frequent responses I noted on the old MAD board when pro-Mormon posters would deride someone for asking the same questions that had already been discussed over and over. In fact, so much effort was expended on complaining about the repetitious questions that it may have been easier to have just answered the questions, if there were any good answers. The entire text of Peterson's address can be found here. In several thousand words of text Peterson fails to answer a single one of Runnells' questions, but he frequently chides Runnells for not finding the answers that supposedly exist on apologetic sites and in books written by apologists. Runnells has provided a detailed response to Peterson's address on his website entitled, "A Zombie's Reflections on That Mormon Apologist's Reflections." One of Runnells' points is that he sought official answers, which is why he originally asked his CES director rather than accepting unofficial answers from apologetic sites.
While the issues discussed in the CES letter and on apologetic sites are not limited to the Book of Mormon as is this series of blog posts, the tactics of Mormon apologists are relevant and some of the information is Book of Mormon specific. In a recent Mormon Stories interview, Kirk Caudle discussed the current state of Book of Mormon apologetics. Caudle is a former professor of religion at BYU-Idaho who was forced to resign for giving honest answers to student questions because some of his answers, while true, were not faith promoting. This led Caudle to also resign his membership in the Mormon church. Even though he is still a believer in early Mormonism, Caudle disagrees with the current church's suppression of information and its de-emphasis of many of Joseph Smith's teachings.
Caudle observes that it is no longer fashionable in Mormon apologetic circles to discuss the types of issues that I bring up in these posts. While this is quite obviously an admission that there are no good answers from a believing perspective, apologists such as Daniel Peterson try to spin it by implying that answers exist if only the critics would stop being so lazy and go find them. The argument seems to be that these issues have been around for a long time so critics are not pointing out anything the apologists did not already know. This completely misses the point. The facts I mention in these posts have never been effectively refuted regardless of how long they have been known. Furthermore, the average Mormon, who is not as informed as the apologists, may have never heard of these issues, so they are worth pointing out again. My blog does not have enough readers to attract the attention of any prominent apologists, but their responses to similar information elsewhere reveal how they would likely respond to my blog posts.
Recently the church itself has been releasing a series of essays dealing with problematic areas of doctrine and history. The only ones that deal with the Book of Mormon are Book of Mormon Translation and Book of Mormon & DNA Studies. MormonThink provides a detailed analysis of these two essays here and here. All of these essays, including the Book of Mormon specific ones, essentially admit that the critics have been right all along about the basic facts. The essays seem to be more aimed at answering the criticism that the church has not been transparent about these problematic areas rather than providing a refutation of the basic facts that critics have been pointing out for years. The church has purposefully made these difficult to find while navigating or searching lds.org. They want to address the issues from a faithful perspective, but they do not want someone to stumble upon the information who is currently unaware of the issues and take the chance that the information may shake their faith. That this is their deliberate strategy is attested by former church employees posting on anonymous message boards. For the most part, critics have welcomed this greater transparency, with some qualifications about the particular slant of the essays and the difficulty of finding them without a direct link.
This leads to the final topic I wanted to touch on in this post, Internet vs. Chapel Mormons. This idea was first suggested by Jason Gallentine in 2004, also known online as Dr. Shades. The essence of this analysis is that there seem to be two different sets of beliefs within Mormonism. The average Mormon who attends regularly and only reads church-approved materials may be completely unaware of the types of issues that critics and apologists argue about. Many facts acknowledged by apologists and by the church itself in the new series of essays are completely unknown to many "Chapel Mormons." While "Internet Mormons" are aware of the issues and have found ways to reconcile them with their faith, "Chapel Mormons" sometimes think that the basic facts on which the critics and apologists agree are "anit-Mormon lies." This disconnect can be a great source of frustration when a Mormon with serious doubts first tries to discuss the issues with a believing loved one. The church's strategy of making the essays hard to find acknowledges that Dr. Shades analysis still has some validity. I experienced some of the consequences of this phenomenon when my ex-wife refused to discuss any of the issues I was having, convinced that they were all lies and that I was being influenced by Satan. With the release of the essays, many fringe and former Mormons are feeling a degree of vindication, although the feeling may be shallow because of how difficult it is to get a "Chapel Mormon" interested enough to read one of these essays, even though it is published on the Church's official site.
I have acknowledged from the beginning that there is nothing original in my series of blog posts. I have been aiming more for breadth rather than depth, and providing links for further in-depth reading. My aim was to provide a readable and concise introduction into all the converging lines of evidence that examine the claim that the Book of Mormon is a genuine translation of an ancient record. In the next post I will be back to examining the book itself.
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