Case in point: Stephen Smoot, the young man carbuncular who has begun to comment on the FAIR Blog.
http://www.fairblog.org/2012/07/30/lear ... #more-3197
This is worthy of a read for any serious student of Mopologetics, since it shows how well Young Mr. Smoot has appropriated the Mopologists' techniques:
There are so many problems with Krakauer’s book that to enumerate them here would take some considerable time. So instead I would direct the reader to this useful review of Krakauer’s book by Craig Foster. (Also don’t forget the Church’s posted review on the LDS Newsroom website.)
Smoot is responding to an airily-written article on Mormonism from Business Insider. As usual, one wonders just what, exactly, Smoot means to accomplish with his approach. Does he hope to embarass Blodgett, the author of the piece? Maybe so:
The one place where it would have been good for Mr. Blodget to use quotation marks would have been “magic glasses”, since neither Joseph Smith nor anyone else associated with the coming forth of the Book of Mormon ever identifies the instrument used by the Prophet with such a deliberately dismissive and derisive description.
Mr. Blodget would like his readers to get the impression that Harris was something of a sorry victim to Smith’s fraud, when in fact Harris was anything but.
This account of the founding of Mormonism from Mr. Blodget is highly garbled and unnecessarily negative. We would hope that Mr. Blodget does not continue this methodology for his next installment on the history of the Book of Mormon.
(A quick tip for Mr. Blodget would be to actually “read” the Book of Mormon itself, if he has not already done so, before he commits to providing a commentary on its contents.)
Since Mr. Blodget asks if there “is there an important other side to these stories” and “what should people know about Mormons and Mormonism?”, I humbly submit the following.
1. To get a more balanced view (or, as Mr. Blodget describes it, the “other side”) of the history of Mormonism from someone other than an agnostic/atheist critic of religion (Krakauer), I would suggest the minimum are necessary sources:
[...]
That should give plenty of stuff for Mr. Blodget to work with. Of course, if Mr. Blodget is feeling especially bold, he can even go directly to the primary sources surrounding the founding of Mormonism themselves, and not have to rely on secondary commentary.
All the ingredients are there: a sense of Smoot's having been overly offended by the article; the bristling rage and anger over things being "misrepresented"; wild scrambling to discredit the article's main source (i.e., Krakauer); the adoption of a royal-sounding (and here, wildly misplaced) sense of authority (..."That should give plently of stuff [sic] for Mr. Blodget to work with."); nitpicking at minor details (the use of quotation marks); demanding scholarly precision and accuracy from an article that's clearly aimed at a lay-audience. I suppose that one cannot help but be slightly impressed that he's managed to do such a solid job of imitating the "classic-FARMS" style--his blog entry could have easily been written by Hamblin or Matt Roper.
Thus Smoot joins Bryce "I Love You, Man" Haymond as perhaps the most visible young "Heir to the Mopologetic Throne." One wonders if there is a bit of healty competition brewing between these two young men. If so, Smoot clearly has the upper hand at the moment, given his apparent journeyman status as evidenced by this entry. But there is another reason, too:
http://www.fairblog.org/2012/08/21/the- ... #more-3286
Consider the ambition of this--the hubris, even. Smoot is going straight for the heart: the Book of Abraham controversy. And just check out his first paragraph:
The Book of Abraham continues to be a hotly debated book.... There does not seem to be any end in sight for this controversy.... The most recent salvo aimed at thrashing Joseph Smith’s interpretation of these documents comes in the form of a respected Egyptologist publishing his highly critical material with a press known for being, at times, extremely hostile towards Mormon orthodoxy. This Egyptologist’s conclusion? “Except for those willfully blind… the case is closed.”[2]
That seems to be it for the poor Mormons.
Well, maybe not.
With all due respect to this professor, who has rightly earned praise and respect for his work on Egyptian history and religion, I am trouble by this mentality, and think it is premature, hasty and uncharitable.
Following Smoot's endnote leads one to this:
[2]:See “Scholar Says Mormon Scripture Not An Egyptian Translation,” online here.
And the link? It sends you here:
http://signaturebooks.com/2012/02/schol ... anslation/
That's quite a few hoops to jump through, no? Would it have been easier to simply identify the comments author? One Robert Ritner, of Yale and U. of Chicago fame? Of course, in doing this, Smoot may have felt pressured to acknowledge that Ritner was the former doctoral advisor for top Mopologetic Book of Abraham Mopologist John Gee, and there are fairly obvious reasons why he wouldn't want to do that. Still, why all the hoops? Why not just mention the book and the author? Even given all this byzantine messing around, I'd still be willing to cut Mr. Smoot some slack, and then I'm drawn back his other FAIR Blog entry, which contains a lot of criticism along these lines:
Besides the information he has omitted, such as the events surrounding the restoration of the Priesthood and the experience of the witnesses of the Book of Mormon, as we have seen, Krakauer (from whom Mr. Blodget takes his information) is a notoriously unreliable source to draw from.
If Mr. Blodget would be so kind as to provide a source for Joseph Smith’s self-profession as a “psychic”, we would be much obliged.
Unfortunate, no?
For the time being, Smoot seems to be the main rising Mopologist to have adopted this sort of thing whole-heartedly. Haymond has certainly demonstrated his devotion to the cause, but I've yet to see evidence in his writing that he's interested in pursuing the route of hostility like Smoot is doing here. Plus, we have to bear in mind that some of the better-trained Mormon Studies people were once quite similar to Young Steve here, but they changed their ways after entering graduate studies.
In any case, I will be interested to see if Smoot is allowed to continue posting to the FAIR blog, and whether or not he continues in this vein. It may be that he is the Mopologists' last hope. Will they lavish praise on him in the hopes of keeping him in the fold?
Stay tuned.....
