What’s up with Mormonism? 05-Apr-2005 http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mmormon.html
Sorry to come into this so late and stir things up again – but I felt a point needed to made about this article that no one has seemed to notice. The bias comes up in a very subtle way - in the method used to present each side. Any information in favor of Mormonism is never given any evidence beyond “If you believe it, it’s so” – that’s it. Historical facts and reports of evidentiary research are only used to support the other side of the argument.
My other evidence - if not for bias then for inadequate research into such a complex problem - is that there are “Subject Matter Experts” that could have been consulted but were not. There are non-LDS historians that study Mormonism, such as Indiana University-Purdue University Professor Jan Shipps and University of Notre Dame Provost Nathan Hatch. They tend to look at the facts about the start of the church without believing it or being opposed to it – only as history. But there seems to be no attempt to get any opinions of unbiased observers.
In the words of Jan Shipps (Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition)
“… when identical accounts of the foundation events of Mormonism are set down within different contexts … the “facts” of LDS history do not necessarily speak for themselves. It is as important to remember that the very same descriptions of the very same events can take on radically different meanings when they are placed in different settings as it is to keep in mind that “inside” and “outside” perceptions of what was happening differed at practically every point in LDS history”.
Now I doubt that Rico is trying to be dishonest – It is a very hard thing to see the other side of an argument once you’ve convinced yourself otherwise – and the “Straight Dope” for this question can no more be answered by an article like this than could the “Straight Dope” of Jesus Christ’s resurrection be answered to the satisfaction of all Christians, Jews, and Muslims. I however am coming from the opposite side of the coin – I’m a former Catholic and then a former religious agnostic and skeptic; and now a returned Mormon Missionary who is still quite active and believes the traditional Mormon story.
The part that was not biased is Rico’s presentation of the LDS version – his presentation of it was brief yet covered the basics and was accurate – surprisingly a very difficult task for many people. From there he should have told the other side of the story about what many antagonistic to the Mormons thought/think about Joseph Smith being a liar and charlatan. THEN if he wanted to trot out facts he could have alternately described how each side interprets those facts and give a full account. But instead certain facts are displayed and the reader is only given one side of that story. This is like attending a trial but only being given the prosecutor’s side of it.
For Example – “There was no religious revival, as Smith claimed, in New York in 1820. There were revivals in 1816-1817 and again in 1823-1824, according to town records.” Bias can be seen in this statement alone – “town records” are not going to be able to prove that there were no revivals in the entire state of New York. Rico’s statement almost forces the obvious conclusion that Smith is a liar or is grossly incompetant. But it’s not true, and twists what Smith said. That statement is based on research that found that there were no revivals in 1820 in or very near Palmyra (the “town” mentioned above), which was the largest city around the township of Manchester were Joseph Smith lived, NOT all of New York State. When you look around within a normal day’s journey there were revivals in other smaller townships in the spring of 1820. But even so – Smith’s story doesn’t require formal revivals anyway. He said that “there was in the place where we lived an unusual excitement on the subject of religion.” So although you’re given a fact it is completely one sided.
For example – On the question of affidavits and “Smith was a notorious figure in town”. It’s true that there were 100’s of affidavits that said all sorts of things about the Smith’s and their bad behavior and superstitious nature – usually always describing them as ignorant and lazy and hundreds of other things. The truth is most reputable Non-LDS scholars (like Shipps and Hatch above) generally discount these affidavits as highly suspect, because for one they were collected expressly to be used as anti-Mormon propaganda and because further fact checking makes everything they said questionable. For example, it can be proven they were not ignorant and lazy from tax records, existing first person letters, and school records. Smith’s father taught school in Vermont, his brother was on the “school board” around that time. Tax records show how much land they cleared in a year and crops grown which are enough to prove they couldn’t have been lazy – so like a witness in court once they are found in one major lie - everything about their testimony becomes suspect. It is not just the LDS who discount them but again the general scholarly opinion of today. As for the $2.86 – it is unclear if he was convicted or had the charges dropped and if it was a fine or a court cost paid by someone other that Joseph Smith. This whole question is very much in dispute but presented as if there is only one possible conclusion.
For example, “several of the witnesses were eventually excommunicated from the new religion, and went on to join other religions”. Very true – but the spin is that this disproves what they said – instead this fact proves the truth of their testimonies. Did Rico fail to mention that even through the years of their estrangement from the Church – None of them ever denied their testimonies of the truth of the Book of Mormon – even though they often received a great deal of pressure from the non-believers they lived with. Imagine no longer under the thumb of Joseph Smith, some with a real hatred towards him; yet they still never denied that they had really seen an angel and had really hefted and turned the pages of the golden plates. Did he fail to mention that of the 3 witnesses who say they saw an angel and were all excommunicated at some point – 2 voluntarily came back and were rebaptized; and the 3rd made sure that that his testimony of the angel and the Book of Mormon was inscribed on his tombstone – That couldn’t be because he was afraid of the Mormons when he was dead, it was as he said because of his fear of God. Did Rico forget to mention that each of the 3 is recorded as giving a deathbed confession reconfirming their testimonies? No, but out of the dozens and dozens of statements where they try to tell people that they actually say an angel as well as they see a table or the sunlight around them Rico picks up an one or two statements that “seem to say” it was also a spiritual experience. You get none of this – all Rico does is hint that they didn’t really believe and denied their testimonies.
For example, “Several alternative theories about the origin of the Book of Mormon have been advanced. One is that Smith was inspired to write the work by an 1823 book called View Of The Hebrews by Ethan Smith, the pastor of Oliver Cowdery’s church.” Well that’s not a lie - there are many many theories by critics – yet none have been able to come up with a coherent alternative that brings even the critics to a consensus. Mormons read the same works and see generalizations with as many contradictions as similarities. BYU (an LDS University) republished ‘View Of The Hebrews’ because it was about to be lost to history and they wanted to make sure reasonable people could still read it and see how thin the similarities are. Jeff Lindsay (http://www.jefflindsay.com/bomsource.shtml ) has shown how you can make more and stronger similarities with Walt Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’, written 25 years after the Book of Mormon. General parallels are not impressive to many.
For Example, “For the record, no archaeological evidence has been found anywhere in the Americas to support the existence of an ancient civilization such as that described in the Book of Mormon.” Now that’s no lie - but what a spin - While nothing has been found that directly ties in – mostly critics attack straw men, they object to early “folk ideas” of many Mormons who often thought the book was about all Native Americans everywhere over all of North and South America. Careful modern textual analysis indicates it probably covered a small area of a subculture within a larger civilization – Which becomes much harder to find direct evidence – and research of Meso-American subcultures is still in its infancy. Yet it is always surprising to me that the most strident anti-Mormons always bring this up - yet just handwave the evidence from the Old World. The Book of Mormon gives directions to two locations – a continually flowing river at the edge of the Red Sea in Saudia Arabia; and a large ‘bountiful’ area on the eastern shores of Saudia or Yeman. For 150 years this has been ridiculed by experts; they said that these areas had never been found and even that they could not exist. But they’ve both been found since 1980, and in the right place, and match all the 20 or so criteria that the Book of Mormon uses to describe them. To improve the “lucky guess” in the book - altars have been found naming a location (Nahmon) right along the route between the other two (correctly located in space and time (600 B.C.) – just as the Book of Mormon predicts. There are several internal evidences of the Book of Mormon that indicate that it would be impossible for any man in 1830 to write on his own, such as previously unknown forms of Hebrew and Semitic poetry. Even the idea of ancients writing on metal plates was laughed at in Joseph’s day – there was zero evidence for it - but only fools laugh today because other examples have been found. No one has been able to come up with a half-way decent alternative theory that can account for all this and much more that the Book of Mormon contains.
I respect the fact that all issues are debatable and if someone doesn’t believe one side or the other that is there prerogative. I have only brought up one side, but it is the side of a reason-filled belief in Mormonism that was left totally unmentioned by Rico. But by bringing up a one sided interpretation of some facts while not even hinting that there is another side to the story – is certainly biased and unfair. Rico’s response does not come close to being “The Straight Dope.”
