Doctor Scratch wrote:At first, my interest was only in learning all I could about the many things that tend to be omitted from correlated, "official" LDS publications.
Things which are readily available through Deseret Book, BYU, and many other resources, to those who wish to know.
As I did this, though, I eventually encountered the work of the Mopologists (and again, I won't name names: you know who they are by now). I don't know that I've ever been more disgusted in my entire life. Will Bagley noted rather recently, in his Mormon Expressions podcast, that he very much feels badly about the way he was treated by these figures in Mormon Studies. (He characterized them as "vicious.") I continue to believe that the Mopologists are the most poisonous and evil element in contemporary Mormonism--worse, even, in my view, than anything that the institutional Church does. Being persuaded to give up huge chunks of your time and money under false pretenses is one thing; doing this and then getting crapped on and kicked in the teeth during moments of enormous spiritual pain is quite another.
In response to what I was seeing from the Mopologists, I felt that something needed to be done. Sure: there was already a fair amount of outspoken criticism directed at these apologists, but a lot of it was ineffective. What I noticed is that the apologists tended to work chiefly in the realm of aggressive, polemical rhetoric, which often meant that "objective," scholarly response to them was fruitless. People like Dan Vogel and Chris Smith can hold their own, and they subsist like rocks in the midst of the stream, but I think their arguments are drowned out by the endless invective and attack. For non-Mormon outsiders, the arguments of Vogel and Smith are like preaching to the choir. The audience that most needs to hear Vogel, Smith, et al. are the TBMs, but the arguments, in this case, are rendered ineffective by the apologists' well-honed use of ad hominem attack, polemics, and invective.
So, like I said, something needed to be done. The scales of justice had been thrown out of whack by the 30-odd-year war that the Mopologists waged on decent society. What I realized, as I surveyed this situation, is that the best strategy was to focus on the leaders of the Mopologetic polemical movement, and so that's what I did. I concentrated my scholarly efforts on breaking down and deconstructing the rhetorical strategies and tendencies of Mopologetics' most important leaders.
Apologetics was, is, and will continue to be for the indefinite future
a response to 180+ years of criticism, anti-Mormonism, Violence and assassinations against the Mormons, extermination orders, hate publications and "ministries" of professional anti-Mormons, and of course Internet anti-Mormonism which resides in encouraging environments like MDB.
Nay, my brothers and sisters, it is not apologetics that are nasty; it never has been. It has been the 180+ years of vile criticism and villainy put endlessly forth against The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And for what? So that a people could not, cannot, and likely will continue to not be able to practice their religion in peace [which the Constitution guarantees (unless, apparently, you ask Ed Decker, the Tanners, James White, or Scratch)].
Critics wrote the book on this behavior, and sometimes the only way to fight fire is
with fire. Were it not for apologetics, critics, anti-Mormons, and tireless violence and bigotry of 180+ years would have gone uncontested. Apologetics is the answer. Apologetics is a response to critics.
Today, this leadership has retreated into near-silence, and I consider this a real victory.
This is an utter fantasy, of course. FAIR and the MI publish as much or more than they ever had. FAIR still holds their annual conference with record attendance. I still receive a meaty "FAIR journal" in my inbox regularly. Apologetics in the church is growing, and LDS scholarship with it.
Simply because people like
myself didn't appreciate the endless
ad hominem attacks by critics here does not mean he is "silent."
3-decades-long polemical assault, then I can't help feeling awfully good about my place in the grand scheme of things. This is a fundamental good. Now, I can already anticipate somebody saying that people deleting their MDB accounts or disappearing into the cyber-ether is "bad" on principle, to which I'd respond, simply, that if these folks hadn't created a poisonous atmosphere to begin with, there never would have been a need for a Mopologetics Studies Department at Cassius.
Critics and anti-Mormons, for 180+ years have created the poisonous atmosphere, and they now must sleep in the bed they made. Critics and anti-Mormons, not LDS apologetics, are the root cause here. Apologetics is a response to critics.
No critics = no apologists. There is not a simpler truth than that.