http://www.libertypages.com/cgw/2012/07 ... eek-story/
The summary of the article is basically this. The Business Week article is wrong because it critiques the LDS church for being too involved with material things and this prevents it from being involved in spiritual things. This is wrong because LDS doctrine does not draw a distinction between the material and the spiritual, therefore the article is wrong (and one implicitly assumes that the LDS church is justified in building malls, running hunting reserves, owning hotels, etc.). Here's the relevant quote.
Put succinctly to the outsider (including secularists who may even be atheists) there are some activities that inherently can’t be spiritual. To claim they are is to engage in a kind of blasphemy. (Once again, even to the secularist who might reject the ontology of their cultural roots but still embrace a lot of the methodology that comes out of their particular Christian heritage’s history).
...
For Mormons there’s fundamentally no dualism to existence. Thus spirituality ends up being more a mode of being rather than fully compartmentalized things or activities.
This is the kind of crap that makes me despair of ever talking to Mormons in an intelligent way. The questions that most people would ask in this situation are ones like: Should the church be building a multi-billion dollar mall?, Should the church be involved in so many business ventures?, Should the church spend more of its resources on charitable work?, or Should the church be more transparent with its finances? But instead of asking these questions, he seems happy to give the church an escape clause because Mormons don't separate the spiritual and the temporal. The reporter got that part wrong, therefore there is no need to ask the real questions.
This is a dodge for the church. Even if true, none of this makes any difference. In fact, I think it makes it worse. If there is no distinction between the temporal and the spiritual, then it seems to me you should be really wise in how you handle your material goods, erring on the side of being charitable, transparent, and honest. But that's not the point of the post, the point is to get you to stop paying attention to that man behind the curtain.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb45tJhz ... ure=fvwrel
Like I said, this makes me despair of ever talking to Mormons in an intelligent way. This really isn't any different than so many FARMS tactics, this is just the liberal/bloggernacle version of it. FARMS liked to divert attention away from books critical of the church by ignoring the main thrust of the facts and evidence by focusing on minor irrelevant details (you can't trust this book, there's a spelling error on the dust jacket!). This isn't any different.