Green Oasis

And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the LORD hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him. (Deuteronomy 18:21–22)

Meridian Magazine recently ran an article titled Answers to 50 Anti-Mormon Questions. This is my attempt to deconstruct the language of the article (my modern lit professor would be so proud) and then critique their answer.

Deconstruction

One anti-Mormon ministry suggests 50 questions as a way to deceive Latter-day Saints.

The first sentence of the article provides a ripe field for deconstruction. The word “anti-Mormon” is a telling choice. It is meant to imply to the Mormon reader that the nameless ministry is antagonistic. On an unconscious level, it probably serves to convey the idea that this ministry is against Mormons, a kind of personal antipathy. It is far more likely that the ministry opposes Mormonism, a religious and philosophical disagreement rather than a personal hatred. This choice of words only serves to prejudice the reader against the positions of the nameless ministry.

This sentence has a notable lack of a link to the ministry in question (which is most likely 50 Questions to Ask Mormons). [edit: the source of this article did link to the ministry in a footnote. (thanks, Cybr) Please take this into account when reading my analysis.] It is simple and customary on the internet to provide a hypertext link to a website when referencing it. The sentence also fails to provide the name of the ministry. Refraining from linking to the website and keeping the website nameless demonstrates a lot about the mindset of the author. The author(s) of the article show that they fear open discourse. They intentionally obfuscate the identity of the ministry in question and make it difficult for readers to find the original criticism and ponder the weight of the arguments for themselves. This fearful mindset is usually given two justifications in my experience:

1. The author(s) don’t wish to promote the opposing viewpoint by directing readers to it.
2. The author(s) believe that some of their readers are not yet ready to face an opposing viewpoint. They are concerned that the faith of the unprepared will falter when they encounter objections. (1 Corinthians 3:2)

These justifications are based on a fear of the opposing viewpoint, as though the ideas themselves are poisonous. The justifications also assume a superior relationship to at least some of the readers, seeking to control the flow of information to protect those that they suppose are weaker than they. It prioritizes their concerns for the faith of their readers over the readers’ right to information that pertains to their religious choices.

Also, the word “deceive” is another prejudicial choice. The intent of the nameless ministry is more likely concern for the faith of members of the LDS church, the same kind of concern that motivated Meridian Magazine’s article in response. If my suspicion about the identity of the nameless ministry is true, this is what they have to say about their motivation.

Questions are a great way to witness to Mormons. Most cultists will turn you off if you begin to preach to them, however, asking questions gives them hope that you are genuinely interested in learning more about their religion. It also is a great way to get them thinking about things they may have never thought about and researching into the false teachings of their church. Questions are great seed-planters that the Holy Spirit can make grow in their hearts and minds and, ultimately, lead them to Christ. They are also great conversation starters.

The only note of deception is in the phrase “asking questions gives them hope that you are genuinely interested in learning more about their religion” which in context is a pragmatic deception to avoid having Mormons disengage from the conversation. This is indeed deceptive and unlikely to produce the hoped for results, but it is not the kind of malicious deception that the language of the Meridian article implies. In all fairness, the following sentences clarify exactly what the author(s) mean by deception:

These questions feign an interest in learning more about our religion. The real intent is to introduce anti-Mormon material intended to “de-convert” LDS.

The overall unconscious impression left with the reader, however, is likely to be the feeling that the nameless ministry’s intent is wholly deceptive not only in its tactics but in the arguments underlying the questions.

The use of the term “Latter-day Saints” for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints seems straightforward at first, but hidden within that language is a self-image of superiority over people who don’t share that membership, people who in times past were seen as “Gentiles”. In this context, the term serves to place a contrast between the deceptive anti-Mormons and the godly Saints. The first sentence of the article prejudices the reader against the position of the opposing view, not through logic and reason, but through appeals to emotional language.

Looking further into the article, we find:

Faithful LDS, when first confronted with such anti-Mormon questions, may not know that these questions have been answered.

There is an air of decisiveness to saying that the questions have been “answered”. While it may be strictly true that answers have been proffered, this language gives the impression that all those concerned have accepted those answers as the last word on the matter.

We see from these examples that this is not a neutral examination of the question. This should be a surprise to no one, but it is important to see how the language of the article can prejudice the reader on a subconscious level. The language serves to divert attention and discussion away from the question rather than to clarify it, examining it objectively. The reader’s mind, now properly prejudiced, is prepared to accept the article’s viewpoint less critically.

Critique

The only question the authors address in this article—they promise more answers in the future—is a question of failed prophecy:

Why does the Mormon Church still teach that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God after he made a false prophecy about a temple being built in Missouri in his generation (Doctrine and Covenants 84:1-5)?

These are the two verses at the heart of the question:

Verily this is the word of the Lord, that the city New Jerusalem shall be built by the gathering of the saints, beginning at this place, even the place of the temple, which temple shall be reared in this generation. For verily this generation shall not all pass away until an house shall be built unto the Lord, and a cloud shall rest upon it, which cloud shall be even the glory of the Lord, which shall fill the house.

The proffered answer centers on two tactics:

1. casting doubt on the meaning of the word “generation”
2. casting doubt on whether this passage was a prophecy or a commandment centered on the definition of “shall”

The authors then assert that virtually all critics of Mormonism make the following errors:

1. misunderstand or misread LDS doctrine or scripture
2. give unofficial material the status of official doctrine
3. assume that Mormons must have inerratic [sic] ideas about scripture or prophets as conservative evangelical Protestants do
4. apply strict standards to LDS ideas, but use a double standard to avoid condemning the Bible or their own beliefs if the standard was applied fairly to both.

While I’ll leave it to you to judge whether I will commit any of those errors, I must first warn that the first two criteria are impossible to meet in practice. First, no matter how well a critic understands Mormon doctrine and scripture, an apologist can always assert that they don’t know enough. Second, there is no clearly defined source of official doctrine. Even if criticism was limited to the LDS Standard Works, finding the official doctrine therefrom is a matter of interpreting those scriptures correctly. There is no official standard by which anyone can determine if an interpretation is correct. In other words, official LDS doctrine is an impossible target to hit because it is so ill-defined. Now, let me turn to my opinion about their answer.

The authors offer that a generation may be more properly interpreted as a long period of time rather than the common definition which invariably involves the idea of a single cohort of contemporary individuals. The authors ask the reader to accept a special definition of the word that is not attested in any of the eight dictionaries that I consulted. The most generous definition was from a Bible dictionary that stated that the ancient Hebrews reckoned a generation to be 100 years. That time has passed almost twice over since 1832 when this prophecy was recorded.

To justify this special definition, the authors appeal to biblical prophecies of Jesus’ immanent return within the span of a generation in Matthew 23:36 and 24:34. This objection may work on those who believe in the truth of those prophecies, but not on disbelievers. From my perspective, it looks like trying to justify one false prophecy with another. The promise of Jesus immanent return throughout the New Testament has failed even more resoundingly than Joseph Smith’s prophecy of a temple in Independence, Missouri. Supporting one with the other is an ironically fruitless tactic.

Also note that the passage reads “For verily this generation shall not all pass away until an house shall be built unto the Lord”. (emphasis mine) The word “all” clearly indicates all of the generation of people then alive as the common definition indicates. If “generation” were intended to be a period of time rather than the lives of the people of the time, then “completely” or “entirely” would have expressed this thought, or perhaps leaving out the word “all” would have done the same.

The authors next wish the reader to accept that the word “shall” is a commandment here. Here is an explanation of the traditional use of the words “shall” and “will”:

—Usage note The traditional rule of usage guides dates from the 17th century and says that to denote future time shall is used in the first person (I shall leave. We shall go) and will in all other persons (You will be there, won’t you? He will drive us to the airport. They will not be at the meeting). The rule continues that to express determination, will is used in the first person (We will win the battle) and shall in the other two persons (You shall not bully us. They shall not pass). Whether this rule was ever widely observed is doubtful. Today, will is used overwhelmingly in all three persons and in all types of speech and writing both for the simple future and to express determination. Shall has some use in all persons, chiefly in formal writing or speaking, to express determination: I shall return. We shall overcome. Shall also occurs in the language of laws and directives: All visitors shall observe posted regulations. Most educated native users of American English do not follow the textbook rule in making a choice between shall and will. (dictionary.com, adapted from the Random House Unabridged Dictionary)

In other words, the use of the word “shall” in the third person (as it is used in these verses) expressed a determination on the part of the speaker, in this case purportedly God. It is also used in directives as explained in the quote. So it could be either meaning: a directive or an expression of determination. The reader is left to wonder which meaning was intended.

In that same passage, “shall” is used in ways that are clearly not intended as a directive to the hearers. The passage reads “For verily this generation shall not all pass away until an house shall be built unto the Lord”. If we assume that “shall” is meant as a commandment here, God commands the generation to not pass away (this generation shall not) until they have built the temple. It doesn’t make sense for God to either command the people not to die until they have completed the temple or for the current age (if we accept their definition of “generation”) to avoid ending until the temple is completed. Then the passage reads “a cloud shall rest upon it, which cloud shall be even the glory of the Lord, which shall fill the house.” Again, if “shall” is meant as a commandment, then God is commanding the cloud to rest on the temple, to be the glory of the Lord, and to fill the temple. Again, that makes no sense. This entire passage reads like a prophecy of things to come, not a directive to Joseph Smith’s followers (or to time or a cloud).

Further, the language in Matthew 24 that the authors tacitly accept as being a prophecy of Jesus’ return uses “shall”. It would be silly to assert that God was commanding Jesus to return again in these passages.

I grant, though, that I cannot offer an ironclad proof that this passage was not a commandment no matter how improbable that idea seems. If it was a commandment, I wonder why God would not have fallen back on the traditional “thou shalt” or “let my servant” or other similar usage to express a commandment. If, as the authors claim, God’s intent was to issue a commandment, it seems that he did so clumsily, in a way that was open for easy misinterpretation. It is as though God, the Creator of the universe, Lord of heaven and earth, was incapable of speaking precisely so as to be understood.

It is immaterial that Joseph Smith recorded another revelation years later that excused the Mormon faithful from building the temple. The simplest explanation is that a false prophet was seeking to cover his tracks by subtly misdirecting attention away from his attempted prophecy. The revelation does nothing to prove that Joseph Smith intended the previous revelation to be a commandment.

In the end, the authors do not offer a truthful examination of the evidence. They address themselves to the Mormon faithful in order to quiet doubt by offering possible but improbable explanations for problems in Mormon history and doctrine. Their answer to this question is not so airtight that no further debate is necessary, though that is the impression that they seem to want the reader to leave with. Their unlikely excuses and appeals to equivocal language do little to convince those outside of Mormonism of Joseph Smith’s prophetic call, nor do they address the other instances of Joseph Smith’s plainly false prophecies. Their tactics remind me of Nephi’s warning about those who would seek to lull the members of the church into carnal security.

I’ve been mulling over Sam Harris’ talk at the Atheist Alliance International Convention (video: part 1 and part 2). I avoided commenting on it while the debate crested in the atheist community because I wanted to think it over.

Up to that point, I’d begun to think Sam Harris a bit overzealous. This talk changed my opinion. The response from the leaders of the atheist community seemed largely to misunderstand what I thought Harris had said. I took away from his talk that by labeling ourselves as Atheist (or Bright, Humanist, etc.) we become incapable of seeing nuance in complex situations and finding common cause with our religious brothers and sisters.

So, let me make my somewhat seditious proposal explicit: We should not call ourselves “atheists.” We should not call ourselves “secularists.” We should not call ourselves “humanists,” or “secular humanists,” or “naturalists,” or “skeptics,” or “anti-theists,” or “rationalists,” or “freethinkers,” or “brights.” We should not call ourselves anything. We should go under the radar—for the rest of our lives. And while there, we should be decent, responsible people who destroy bad ideas wherever we find them.…

Atheism is too blunt an instrument to use at moments like this. It’s as though we have a landscape of human ignorance and bewilderment—with peaks and valleys and local attractors—and the concept of atheism causes us to fixate one part of this landscape, the part related to theistic religion, and then just flattens it. Because to be consistent as atheists we must oppose, or seem to oppose, all faith claims equally. This is a waste of precious time and energy, and it squanders the trust of people who would otherwise agree with us on specific issues.

I’m still considering dropping the atheist label and speaking out against ideas that I disagree with as nothing but myself.

Recently, I experienced the business end of the blunt instrument of atheism that Harris had observed. The Eloquent Atheist recently ran a four part memoir of growing up in a small Idaho town. Included in this memoir are some assertions about Mormon beliefs and history, many of which were in error. The inaccuracies disappointed me because I naïvely expected better from fellow atheists. I submitted the following comment.

Warning: A lot of petty back-and-forth follows, but if a blog isn’t good for getting pettiness out of my system once in a while, then I don’t know why I bother. Please skip to the end if you have better things to do.

As a former Mormon, I found your perspective as an outsider interesting, but as a former Mormon, I noticed that the historical and doctrinal information presented was riddled with inaccuracies. I’m as critical as the next guy of Mormon history and doctrine, but it’s a better education tool when it is presented as it really is. Otherwise, Mormons can justifiably charge that their critics are ignorant of the truth. Please fact check your memories and impressions before presenting a seemingly authoritative essay.

I admit that was quite blunt and confrontational. I had just finished reading Nonviolent Communication, so I knew a better way to dialog, but I was lazy and went the more familiar violent approach.

Somehow, I was mistaken for a Mormon apologist and challenged to provide proof of God and to produce the Golden Plates. Color me nonplussed. I then submitted the following comment (which has been removed from their website):

I regret that my comment didn’t make my position more clear. I’m not arguing that Mormonism is verifiable, but that the history and doctrine presented here are inaccurate. A believing Mormon (which I am not) could legitimately object to the inaccuracies of this series which aims to be an exposé. Allow me to give two examples from part 3:

they are white cotton underwear, somewhat similar to long johns, except that they are in two pieces, a “blouse” and pantaloons, which both men and women wear continually, after baptism, for the remainder of their lives.

This can be falsified by reading the Wikipedia article on temple garments. There seems to be some confusion in part 3 over whether the garment is worn after the receiving the ordinance of the Endowment in a temple or after receiving baptism which is received outside the temple. The garment is only worn after the Endowment.

Needless to say, only Mormons can enter any of three levels of Mormon Heaven.

This is an inaccurate and unfair statement of Mormon belief. Mormons are exclusive, but not quite that exclusive. The Celestial Kingdom is reserved for baptized Mormons, but the other two degrees of glory are open to all depending on their virute. In fact, vanishingly few people (no more than a dozen some have speculated) end up in Hell in Mormon eschatology. Even murderers end up in the lowest degree of heaven.

I worry that with inaccurate portrayals like these cropping up on the internet, believing Mormons will stop listening to the critics who do know what they’re talking about. I want them to hear the truth, but they might start to form the opinion that all critics are ignorant of the facts. I hope that all critics will inform themselves before taking up the pen.

Again, I confess to being in attack mode, and it had the ungratifying result of gaining me a place of dishonor: they took the trouble to devote an entire post to denouncing my theism, my Mormonism, caricaturing my statements, and refusing to allow any further comments until I could produce proof of God.

Mr. Blake, however, insists upon arguing about a few points of religious “history” and Mormon “philosophy” ad infinitum, apparently not understanding that we should not and do not care about the small points until the broad issues have been settled. As an example of a broad point I submit the following for Mr. Blake’s consideration: “There is no god.”

Yet Mr. Blake insists that we concern ourselves with the material out of which the magical Mormon royal undergarments are made. Now, Mr. Blake has sufficient unmitigated gall to tell me that I do not understand his point.

Well… that’s what I’m saying, yes. He misunderstood on a very fundamental level and then proceeded to argue against my nonexistent belief in God. I imagined him with his fingers in his ears saying “La La La La. I can’t hear you. There is no God. La La La La.”

Seeking to clear up this persistent misunderstanding (and being quite frustrated and disappointed at this point), I submitted the following comment which was never allowed to be seen on their website:

I am afraid that I haven’t made my position known clearly. Please let me be clear on this point: God is not great and Joseph Smith was not his prophet. No, perhaps I’m trying to be too clever. Let me try again to be direct: I believe that there is no God. If you read my comments again, carefully, you’ll see that I made that clear from the beginning. So requests for me to justify Mormonism or theism are equally misplaced.

The criticism that I offered came not from a Mormon apologist, but from a former Mormon/current atheist asking for more accuracy in the criticism of Mormonism. If you want to check my godless credentials, please feel welcome visit my personal blog, or take my word for it.

I realize that those posts were mostly in the spirit of memoir. That part was fine and interesting. The posts often however stepped beyond that role into exposition of what Mormons purportedly believe in an authoritative voice along the lines of “Mormons believe thus and such”. Mormons believe lots of crazy stuff, so there’s no shortage of silly things to highlight. This makes it not only irresponsible and unfair to publish falsehoods, but kind of lazy. And memoir doesn’t cover a multitude of sins, as James Frey discovered.

I regret that my comments have provoked such vehemently defensive posts, ad hominem attacks, caricaturization of my position, and censorship.

I don’t expect The Eloquent Atheist to be a debate club; that would run counter to its apparent purpose. I’m only asking for better editorial oversight. If I want to direct my Mormon friends to this site to show them how passionate and alive atheists can be (which I hoped to be able to do), I don’t want them to find half-hearted exposés in the guise of memoir.

Let me give you more of a flavor of the kind of misinformation that I object to. Here are the first passages of part 2 titled The History of the LDS Church:

Let’s begin with a capsule history of the Church. The founder, Joseph Smith, was born on a farm in upstate New York in the early nineteenth century. [Joseph Smith was born in Vermont.] That area later became known as The Burned-Over District, a nickname alluding to the many fire-and-brimstone preachers who roamed the area delivering jeremiads to the local residents in tent shows and so-called camp meetings, urging them to repent their sinful ways lest they burn eternally in Hell. In a time of great religious fervor, now called the Second Great Awakening, Smith allegedly searched for a system of religious belief that he could justify in his own mind as legitimate, and investigated a number of the Protestant denominations that existed in the region-Methodist, Baptist, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and so on. None satisfied him as being The True Religion. [According to Smith's most widely known account (the 1838 account of the First Vision), he didn't go to the grove of trees to pray having made up his mind than no extant religion was God's true religion. He claims that he prayed to know which religion was true.] Then according to his account, in 1830, [The first vision is purported to have occurred in 1820.] while walking in a grove of trees on the Hill Cumorah, [The grove of trees reported to have been the site of the First Vision was not on the Hill Cumorah.] near the town of Elmira, [Both the grove and the Hill Cumorah are near Palmyra, New York which is over 50 miles north of Elmira.] he had a vision, in which an angel named Moroni (pronounced “mo-rōn-eye”) allegedly appeared, [While the purported vision of Moroni allegedly happened in 1830, an angel named Moroni plays no part in any account of the First Vision that I'm aware of. Perhaps I'm ignorant of one?] informed Smith that he came as a direct emissary from God, confirmed Smith’s opinion that none of the extant denominations or sects was The True Religion, [As noted above, Joseph claimed to have learned the falsehood of all religions in the First Vision rather than having a foregone conclusion.] and pronounced that Jehovah Himself had selected him (Smith) to found a church that would deliver the True Word of God to those who elected to follow him.

Smith later reputedly reported that he, like Moses, protested that he was unworthy of such a lofty and arduous task, but the angel insisted that he was to be the Prophet and that it was futile to deny the commands of the Almighty. Smith eventually acquiesced to his destiny, and Moroni instructed him where in the Sacred Gove to dig, [Another confusion of the First Vision and the vision of Moroni and also of the Hill Cumorah where Smith claimed to have unearthed the plates, and the Sacred Grove where he claimed to have seen God.] in order to recover the Golden Plates, on which Moroni’s father, Mormon, also an angel, had written, [Moroni is also the nominal author of significant portions of the Book of Mormon. Mormon didn't appear to Joseph as an angel, nor did he purportedly write the plates as an angel.] in an ancient and sacred tongue, the history of two of the Lost Tribes of Israel.…

It got much better after that, but this sloppiness was enough to appall me. Can someone give the man a Wikipedia search?

Once it was mistakenly determined that I was a theist, they didn’t care to read what I said, not carefully at least. Once they presumably realized their mistake, they seemed to cover their tracks by deleting the comments that made their mistake obvious. They weren’t open to nuanced discussion. I had expected better than censorship, dishonesty, and intellectual laziness from my supposedly enlightened fellow atheists.

Is this how some atheists treat theists? Alas, I think Sam Harris was right that labels like “atheist” are useless and probably harmful if they can cause people to turn off their critical thinking and circle the wagons like that.

Don’t ask me why I thought it would be fun and profitable to research Jaredite genealogy. Perhaps it was to determine if “descendant of” meant something different than “son of”. For whatever reason, I sat down one day years ago to trace out the genealogies in the Book of Ether. I made a table similar to the following:

After compiling the table, I scanned over the results and realized that I must have written down the information for generation 24 wrong: the two names conflicted. So I checked Ether 1:12: Shiblon. So I thought my mistake must have been at Ether 11:4. Turning to that verse, my heart skipped a few beats: Shiblom! I hadn’t written it wrong, there was an error in the Book of Mormon!

This moment was an important transition for me. Prior to this discovery, I believed that it was entirely possible that the Book of Mormon was the inerrant, letter-perfect word of God. In a moment, I realized that this could not possibly be true.

I believed that the Bible had errors of translation, but the Mormon Article of Faith 8 implied that the Book of Mormon was immune from this problem: “We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.” There was no caveat regarding translation errors in the Book of Mormon.

Of course there were scriptures like Mormon 8:17 which indicated that there might be some problems.

And if there be faults [in the Book of Mormon] they be the faults of a man. But behold, we know no fault; nevertheless God knoweth all things; therefore, he that condemneth, let him be aware lest he shall be in danger of hell fire.

I had always assumed that this was false modesty or that Moroni was talking about the human frailties recounted in the Book of Mormon stories. I hadn’t considered that there would be such a glaring spelling error.

This may seem silly that I was disturbed over such a little thing as a probable scribal error. The two names do sound a lot alike. I could easily imagine Joseph Smith rattling off names while his scribe mistook “Shiblom” for “Shiblon”, an honest mistake.

But please remember my beliefs at this time. I believed that God had ensured the letter-perfect transmission of the Book of Mormon from ancient prophets to me. It doesn’t take much evidence to destroy an absolute belief like that, so this spelling inconsistency took on mammoth importance in the story of my faith. While I retained my faith, it was the first step down from absolutist, fundamentalist Mormonism.

If there was one error in the Book of Mormon, then there could be others. If God didn’t ensure that everything was perfect about the Book of Mormon, maybe he didn’t ensure that every General Conference talk was perfect either. Maybe some of the things the prophets had said were just their personal opinions.…

I think you can see where this is going. That seed of doubt bore fruit years later in my utter rejection of the Mormon claims to divine investiture.

Cr@ig eloquently expressed my frustrations and fears that motivated my letter about the new Joseph Smith manual:

It hurts that the church continues to whitewash and doctor its history even today.

It hurts that those leaders whom millions of faithful church members regard as prophets, seers and revelators and look to as a standard of truth are in fact the ones responsible for keeping the truth from these same members through the practice of promoting a “Faithful History”.

It hurts accepting the realization that those telling the truth about the church were the very ones that the church had accused of doing all the lying.

But most hurtful and painful of all is the reality that the church continues to hold my family…who refuse to listen to anything I have to say regarding the claims of the church…and who remain mega uber active Truly Beliving Mormon’s.

OK, so I’m infantile. I can’t be the only one who thinks God swearing is funny.

• Part 1
• Part 2

Artwork courtesy Make-O Your Own Stinko!