The Top Ten Happenings in Mopologetics, 2016

[_grindael]

For anyone interested, here is my take on Smoot (And his repeated scapegoating of Jeremy Runnells): https://mormonitemusings.com/2015/10/09 ... scapegoat/

From what I have seen of this guy, he'll be around in Mopologetics for a long time to come. Why? Hubris. Simple hubris.

Well done, Scratch! Golf Claps all around...

[_DoubtingThomas]

From what I have seen of this guy, he'll be around in Mopologetics for a long time to come. Why? Hubris. Simple hubris.

Well done, Scratch! Golf Claps all around...

I was a very devout Mormon and very into apologetics. I read FAIR (I still have many apologetic books) for years, read and enjoyed apologetics since I was a teenager.

Look at me now. I do think there is a good chance Smoot stops believing in apologetics. Again, some years ago Smoot was having some doubts about the church, I don't Smoot is completely close minded.
I predict Smoot will be debunking apologetics in the near future. He just has to read the Improbability Principle to help his mind. Someone needs to give him that book.

[_grindael]

From what I have seen of this guy, he'll be around in Mopologetics for a long time to come. Why? Hubris. Simple hubris.

Well done, Scratch! Golf Claps all around...

I was a very devout Mormon and very into apologetics. I read FAIR (I still have many apologetic books) for years, read and enjoyed apologetics since I was a teenager.

Look at me now. I do think there is a good chance Smoot stops believing in apologetics. Again, some years ago Smoot was having some doubts about the church, I don't Smoot is completely close minded.

Noted. But there are those like DCP, Nibley, and a host of others that have/did not stopped/stop "believing in apologetics."

[_DoubtingThomas]

Noted. But there are those like DCP, Nibley, and a host of others that have/did not stopped/stop "believing in apologetics."

I agree, some will continue to believe no mater what, but I don't think most Mormon scholars and scientists continue with apologetics. Look at Richard Hansen, he doesn't say anything to defend the Book of Mormon or the Mesoamerican geography.

Hansen is aware of apologetics, he even knows DCP, but it's obvious that he doesn't like it.

[_sock puppet]

I usually chime in earlier each year when Dr Scratch posts his annual top 10. This year's list comes with all the cred and proofs that we've come to expect from those of past years.

My hesitation this year is due to #1. I have no bone to pick with Dr Scratch that this entry, the death of Mopologetics and rise of post-Mopologetics, is deserving of it's place on the list. I'm just unsettled of what it might foretell. Perhaps I am more wistful than shrugging--maybe its just the time of year. "bread and butter of Mopologetics"?

Closely on the heels of the death of Mopologetics is #2, Grant Hardy's ushering in the era of nonliteral belief in the Book of Mormon. It sounds as much like a losing presidential candidate's concession speech as anything else I can think to liken it. With literalness, so too would go out the window that the Book of Mormon is a "second witness" of Christ, leaving just the good old Bible. Nonliteral Book of Mormon? God makes up stories and passes them off as if real history? knowing with god's prescience that someday it will be debunked? Tsk, tsk, god. Or, well, JSjr did, after all, make up the whole spiel about gold plates, accouterments in a 'stone box' on the hillside in New York, and Jaredites/Nephites/Lamanites etc, and the 11 'witnesses' were fudging? Ah, well. No need to fantasize anymore. The Book of Mormon is just 'good' prose. Lessons to live by, even if there are none that could not be found prior to 1829 in the Bible.

Next down the list is #3, Royal Skousen Theorizes a Book of Mormon "Ghost Committee", grasping at straws. Wistful? Sure. But soon overcome by the absurdity of Skousen's stretching. I am reminded of the lyrics of David Bowie's song that he wrote shortly after John Lennon had been murdered. In the late 1970s, Bowie and Lennon use to smoke pot and watch a local children's TV show. Post-Lennon, Bowie penned

Twinkle twinkle Uncle Floyd
Watching all the world
And war torn
How I wonder where you are
Oo-o
Sailing over
Coney Island
Twinkle twinkle Uncle Floyd
We were dumb
But you were fun, boy
How I wonder where you are

That captures just right how Skousen must feel about the time when he was dumb with naïve Mormon beliefs.

Yes, the coming Era of Smoot, a.k.a. post-Mopologetics, holds promise of more twists and turns. But as the torch passes to a new generation, I get a bit misty eyed thinking of the old goats whose efforts have obviously gone for not, even if I think they've been misdirected all along.

[_Gadianton]

Thanks for another outstanding peer-reviewed top-ten list, professor. I'm sorry for making you watch the Ninja Turtle special last year, and then right after breaking out the Wii U and making you play the Ninja Turtle game while eating pizza, instead of lobster tail as I had hinted at prior. I'm also reminded of the time long ago when the three of us, You, I and the Rev, picked up W. F. Albright from the airport and headed to the Church Office Building to meet with the First Presidency -- as we often did back then -- and discussed Book of Mormon geography. Why, right there Albright expressed skepticism about Book of Mormon geography and you predicted the rise and fall of Mopologetics -- I guess David O. McKay owes you 10$ now! He never thought something like FARMS would ever exist, that's for sure. He would have paid up, too. Ah, good times.

This year saw some strange developments as you said. To clarify on item #3, while the apologists tried to back out of the translation committee in the spirit world, we all know they strongly believe in it. Much of their beliefs exist in a cloud of deniability. Why, they don't deny evolution, right? Not outright. Well, ask them which is more likely to be true: the spirit world committee or Darwinism? Any bets on what every last one of them will pick? And this same weird bubble also holds their apparent belief that one can be saved without believing in a literal Book of Mormon.

Well, that last one is interesting. They believe it in front of Grant Hardy, but it's with some nuance. They believe it's possible, just like it's possible to get from SLC to Australia in ten hours without flying a jet, but they don't think anyone has actually succeeded in this kind of belief. It's a mere logical possibility they don't deny. The believe that only a literal Book of Mormon has actually ever succeeded at motivating faith to salvation, and specifically, a limited geography Book of Mormon. Other geographies are likely to lead to apostasy in the long run.

The mention of Hardy is very appropriate. For some reason, the apologists fear him greatly, which only proves all the more Mopologetics is dead.

[_DrW]

Thank you, Dr. Scratch. Your annual top 10 is very well done - as always.

[_Markk]

Hey Doc,

By far this is the best work you have done in that you really did not have much to work worth...next year you may have to write the top ten ways to put on our socks in the morning.

If I had not read your list, off the top of my head the biggest news for me was the leaked videos and how they showed youth membership declining and in turn how the brethren received their information. Also how the brethren had a US senator in their back pocket.

You just made chicken salad out of chicken poop...great job, and mopolgy is truly dead, or asleep at best.

[_lostindc]

Well done Dr Scratch, God dammit, well done!

The release of the Top Ten Happenings in Mopologetics always reminds me that the holidays are upon us. This year is in fact an important year. Perhaps more important than previous years because the mopologists have conceded in ways many would never of imagined (see Dr Scratch's list). We leave this year knowing that the mopologists no longer believe a literal Book of Mormon is necessary and that Mormon apologetics are no longer going to be continually sustained. What a year! If an angel with a sword came in January and told me three different times that the top ten list would occur I would never of believed.

Merry Joseph Smith to all!

[Guest]

My most esteemed colleague, Doctor Scratch. You really are an institution unto yourself. How your scholarship graces the laurels of our beloved Cassius U! Words shall forever fall short of your grand contributions to the study of Mopologetics. In this latest addition to the field, you have pointed out several items that are, yes, Watershed Moments in its history, as we move forward into that undiscovered country of post-Mopologetics:

5. Spying, or "The more things change, the more they stay the same": Maybe we are still on the cusp of the Post-Mopologetic Period, and so that is why we see that the folks of FAIR are yet referring to their spying efforts on behalf of the COB in the perfect tense, suggesting that this practice is still very much alive. My hope is that we see less of this kind of activity as time passes. More likely is its descent to an underground that is never openly discussed by clumsy surrogates.

3. The Ghost Committee: This is my personal favorite. My personal research into the fields of Hermeticism, the Occult, and Early Mormonism dovetails quite nicely with Royal Skousen's theory. I don't know why he has shied away from it. It makes all the sense in the world. If the workings of the LDS heaven are to offer a task for every good girl and boy, and God exercises his compassion in ways that correspond to our individual talents, then surely there is a place for John Dee and Edward Kelley to exercise their scrying and Enochian mojo.

1. The Death of Mopologetics, or The Big One: This is the single most important historical event that Doctor Scratch has documented and identified for Mopologetic scholarship. There is a perceptible change indeed. All historians are aware of the danger of identifying neatly bounded periods of history, for changes rarely line up so neatly that one can simply draw a point on the timeline to nail it down chronologically. And yet, 2016, in my view, saw the last gasp of classic Mopologetics. Our dear Doctor has outlined some of the most crucial events that will come to represent its death. Jenkins, The Late War, the New Maxwell, all of these things point in the same direction. What remains to be seen, however, is the dawning of a viable future for Mormonism. I don't see it yet. For all of the encouraging changes, there is yet lacking a vision of Mormonism that has the vitality and inspiration to carry the religion forward on an enduring basis.

So, in the remaining bit of my post, I will gesture toward what I see as Mormonism's hope. My colleagues must forgive me, since I know very few people will be genuinely interested in this. Even those who are may look upon it with a wry smirk of tested indulgence.

Of course, Jenkins' drubbing of Hamblin and data on The Late War are absolutely devastating to the idea that there is an ancient Book of Mormon in the literal sense most assume. Taken together, these events show that there is little available evidence that supports the ancient Book of Mormon and much that militates against the antiquity of that book. However, just about every community identity is anchored in an imaginary--the shared unreal vision of the world that represents the sum of the myths, theologies, idea(l)s, hopes, fears, dystopias, etc., of the group.

For example: "We hold these truths to be self evident; that all men are created equal; that...," and so forth. All poppycock, but the poppycock people believe in because it endows the group with a lofty sense of purpose and a grand identity. This imaginary can be argued, redefined to an extent, stretched, researched, excavated, and so forth ad infinitum, but when it is substantially jettisoned, that civilization, that community, has lost its identity. It effectively no longer exists as what it was.

For the Romans this time may have come when St. Augustine reinvented Rome in his City of God, which placed the entire notion of what Rome was and why it existed on an entirely new footing. Zosimus would later respond that Rome was Rome so long as the emperors remembered to perform the Centennial Games (traditional pagan rituals of purification and renewal), and Constantine brought that all to a screeching halt when he neglected to do so.

Mormonism is in a crisis because modern ways of thought have caught up to the fundamentalism that has sustained it in its post-polygamy period. Fundamentalism replaced Mormonism's unique theology and way of life. Fundamentalism has not withstood a certain kind of modern intellectual scrutiny because it is frankly ludicrous. But, modern thinking, replete with its own silly prejudices, cannot sate or quash the believer's yearning for identity and meaning within the community of faith. There will always be those who yearn for these things, and we should want them to find them in their very best possible form, regardless of how poorly each of us may regard these yearnings.

So, Mormonism must once again tweak its imaginary to meet new demands. Many of the answers to Mormonism's problems can be addressed effectively by reinterpreting its traditions in a way that maintains and sustains them, while also acknowledging and putting behind it the flaws manifested in its history. Only by jettisoning fundamentalism and other structures of thought and institution that suppress and assail the human spirit can Mormonism find its way to a sustainable future as a faith. As long as these problems persist, the LDS Church will out of necessity turn to tactics that frustrate and undermine Mormonism's loftiest principles and aspirations.