why me wrote: I have to disagree with you. Apologists do not attempt to give rational explanations nor do I think rational explanations play a part in apologetics. Now it may be true that people outside of apologetics seek rational explanations to matters of faith but seeking such explanations would be a mistake by the questioner. I do not believe that there can be rational explanations when the subject is faith. How can one explain god and his workings? Most faiths do not respond well to rational explanations.
I refer you to the mission statement of the Maxwell Institute:
The Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship exists to:
• Describe and defend the Restoration through highest quality scholarship
• Provide critically edited, primary resources (ancient religious texts) to scholars and lay persons around the world
• Build bridges of understanding and goodwill to Muslim scholars by providing superior editions of primary texts
• Provide an anchor of faith in a sea of LDS Studies
What is scholarship? Anything to do with faith? If you try to provide “an anchor of faith” through scholarship is that not trying to build rational explanations for faith?
why me wrote: The main component of faith is doubt. Rational explanations seek to confirm known truths but what known truths can a religion hold when the existence of god as yet been proven.
I’m not talking about the existence of God. I am a believer in God, and no rational or scholarly explanation has ever persuaded me to keep that belief. It is my personal experience and
belief, and I seldom if ever join debates about the existence of God, because I consider them futile. I’m talking about things like trying to “prove” (build a “scholarly” case) for the Book of Mormon through chiasmus (as one example). Ask any Chapel Mormon if he/she knows what chiasmus is, and you’ll see what I mean. In any case I consider the chiasmus “proof” dead in the water, and even Quinn pointed this out years ago.
why me wrote: Apologetics attempts to answer interpretations of history. For example, polygamy, the first vision, the 11 witnesses, persecution, the rumors that were spread at the time of Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon and who wrote it etc. If one searches FARMS or FAIR, many articles and essays deal with historical interpretation.
And those “interpretations” are often very biased. Do you understand why Signature Books (a.k.a., “Korihor’s press”) was created? Because people got tired of whitewashing and hagiography, and wanted the truth. Quinn demonstrated this in his 1985
Dialogue article about polygamy post-Manifesto. To that time nothing had appeared in print that so clearly showed the deception and public lying that accompanied polygamy. After that article appeared Quinn became a marked man, and was spied on by Church security. All of the “alternative” journals like
Dialogue and
Sunstone provided realistic histories and commentary, without an apologetic bent. Their aim was to let people make realistic judgments based on facts, not
spin. As a result of this, Signature,
et al, apologists were
forced to lift their game. FARMS turned to defense of the faith, and did the unthinkable – they took the Tanners seriously,
contrary to the advice of Church leaders like Le Grand Richards and Marvin J. Ashton. FAIR was formed in response to this large and growing body of “anti-Mormon” literature. They had no choice but to take them seriously, because they were producing first rate scholarly literature, even on formerly taboo subjects like the origin and history of the temple ceremony, something the Church would never have done. Because many were hungering for factual information, not spin.
why me wrote: Apologetics has not been a failure. Has it proven the Book of Mormon true? No. Has it proven that Joseph Smith actually saw the first vision? No. But it has given explanations about why it can be believed. And that is the job of apologetics.
In other words, “an anchor of faith”, and therefore you just refuted your own argument. Those who turn to this “anchor of faith” are seeking rational explanations to support their faith, which may be failing. In this sense the “ignorant” Chapel Mormon has far more going for him/her, because they don’t need this “anchor of faith”. They are the ones who get up every Fast Sunday and bear their testimony without having read the latest
FARMS Review, and many of them don’t even have a clue who Hugh Nibley is.
In the 1960s the Tanners were saying that there were multiple accounts of the First Vision. No one in the Church took them seriously. Later it was indeed shown to be the case, and in the late 1970s the Church published those accounts. Why? Because the Tanners backed them into a corner and they could no longer deny it. Hesitation and denial like this did their public image no good, and bit by bit, over many years, they were forced to respond to critics, who were constantly digging up more and more “skeletons” in the closet.
Where apologists have gone wrong is by continuing to try to place biased interpretations to make obviously damning accounts look “positive”. You saw the link I posted in the “Mormonism’s greatest downfall” thread? A few FARMS scholars are now, finally, acknowledging that there is “persuasive” evidence that Joseph Smith had “conjugal relations” with at least eight plural wives. Yet before this they have been outright denying it! Why didn’t they look at the history realistically years ago? Why didn’t they take Quinn seriously? Why did they shut him up? Why do they do all they can to make him look like a second rate historian? They pick and nibble at everything they can find to “defend the faith”. And blind Freddy can see through these lame and distorted defenses. That is the kind of apologetics which has failed, miserably.
