If you take it upon yourself to argue with Christian creationists, you have to know the regular stuff: biology, the second law of thermodynamics, flood hydrology, DNA, optics, embryology.
But if you decide to take on Mormon apologists, you have to have a passing knowledge of all of the above, plus archaeology, linguistics, and Meso-American metallurgy. There’s just no telling what they’ll throw into the mix.
I’ve just discovered Mormon Times writer Michael R. Ash. He makes money as an apologist for FAIR, a Mormon confabulation factory. His job is to disguise the lack of evidence for Mormon doctrines until the church can safely write them out of the canon. They call it ‘Mormon scholarship’, but ‘Mormon scholarship’ is scholarship like ‘Christian rock’ is rock. In his latest article, he complains about the lack of respect.
Shorter Michael Ash
Countering subversive attacks on Mormon scholarship
It’s so unfair that anti-Mormon scientists ‘poison the well’ by dismissing our arguments out of hand. But their claims are invalid because they haven’t read the Book of Mormon cover to cover.
It makes you wonder why he’s addressing the need for science at all, though, when he also claims that questions of the Book of Mormon’s truthfulness
can only be answered on a spiritual level — through faith, humility and personal study and prayer.
And only by carefully defining words like ‘true’, ‘correct’, and ‘historicity’ so as not to include anything that normal people mean when they use those words.
I’m looking forward to many cobbled-together bad-faith arguments in future.
8 February 2010 at 4:53 pm
Its kinda funny for me as this part of mormon doctrine:
"can only be answered on a spiritual level — through faith, humility and personal study and prayer."
is exactly what started me down the path of de-conversion.
Well, that and the admonition to search out truth wherever it comes from.
8 February 2010 at 6:46 pm
"Mormon scholarship' is scholarship like 'Christian rock' is rock."
I laughed pretty hard when I read that. I can't think of a more fitting comparison. 🙂
8 February 2010 at 9:08 pm
Sorry spelt something wrong in my haste.
In my search for guffaw inducing blogs I found yours, I've laughed out loud at it enough times to actually believe there is a god after all, except there isn't obviously.
9 February 2010 at 1:09 am
Good stuff, but you neglected to mention that if you succeed in engaging a Mormon apologist, you'll also need to grow a pretty thick skin. They sling insults glibly and shamelessly, and one needs to be prepared for them to question your parentage, moral character, expertise, and anything else that occurs them during their question to dodge the light of reason.
Alas, I can't tell you my secret "RFM Temple" name, but a small search on this moniker might yield an example of how they treat legitimate scholarship.
Carry on…….
9 February 2010 at 4:00 am
Aside from small book sales, I don't know how Mike is supposed to be making money as an apologist.
He's actually a pretty good guy.
9 February 2010 at 5:02 am
I'm sure he's a fine upstanding individual. So is he writing for fun? Is that, like, his blog?
9 February 2010 at 5:27 pm
Hmm. I don't know if he gets paid for his column, but if he does, it isn't by FAIR.
When I say Mike's a good guy, I mean that you'd probably like him. He's intellectually honest, liberal, scientifically minded and probably closer to you ideologically than you realise.
I readily admit that there's some dodgy scholarship in the apologetic arena, but Mike is someone who's always impressed me. …Maybe because he does such a great job evangelising Evolution to his fellow Mormons?
9 February 2010 at 11:49 pm
"He's intellectually honest, liberal, scientifically minded…"
Two of these three things are impossible with religious apologism.
10 February 2010 at 12:51 am
Exactly, Craig. Religious apologetics is a profoundly dishonest intellectual enterprise. You start from your conclusions, and then see what evidence you can enlist in service of The Theory. That's not how you do it.
10 February 2010 at 4:40 am
That's nonsense. Nobody is selling apologetics as a field of scientific enquiry; it's about offering a reasoned defense against criticisms of ideas already held.
If Mike believes the things he's saying, and he's not deliberately misrepresenting the data to defend his views, then there's nothing 'profoundly dishonest' about it.
The notion that an apologist can't be scientifically minded is bullshit too. As Eugenie Scott likes to point out: it's an emprical fact that there are *good* scientists who hold and defend religious viewpoints. You disagreeing with them doesn't mean they magically don't exist.
There are lots of bad, stupid and/or dishonest apologists. From my limited interaction with him, I don't believe Mike Ash is one of them.
10 February 2010 at 5:05 am
"If Mike believes the things he's saying, and he's not deliberately misrepresenting the data to defend his views, then there's nothing 'profoundly dishonest' about it."
I'm not saying he's lying, but rather that he's unable to be objective or truly apply the scientific method. Scientists which defend religion are no different than those which deny global warming or support homeopathy.
Belief in unsubstantiated ideas is compromising to scientific-mindedness and often dangerous regardless of what sort of idea it is.
I wouldn't completely trust a global warming denier to be objective in other fields of science, why is it different for those who are religious, especially of they engage in the ridiculous logic- and reality-devoid field of Mormon apologetics?
10 February 2010 at 5:57 am
As I've pointed out before, you can be religious and scientifically minded, but not at the same time. If you're doing religion, you have stopped doing science.
Religious apologists want to have it both ways; they borrow the trappings of science when they can because it lends them credibility, but the very second the science doesn't go their way, they claim their view can only really be properly evaluated through the lens of faith. And sometimes, they add: anybody who won't do so isn't qualified to comment.
I'm not saying they don't believe their product, but pretending to be all sciency (when their real loyalties are elsewhere) is dishonest, dishonest, dishonest.