So what's the motivation to be an apologist, taking up the 'good fight' against Mormon critics whose criticisms only get attention in Happy Valley because you give them attention? Why not ignore the criticisms, and do as most BYU professors and students do, just go about your studies, academic endeavors, and teaching?
Why engage in Mopologetics when you are in the rarefied Mormon confines of Happy Valley? What drives and motivates you?
Is it, dare I say, cognitive dissonance? As Ugo Perego observed, in why he would not comment when asked why science works in Italy (DNA having recently pointed to Turkish ancestry for the Etruscan people) but not in America (why DNA does not show Middle Eastern, but clearly Siberian, ancestry, in support of the Book of Mormon narrative):
Perego wrote:How dare I say anything on this very subject, having a PhD in population genetics, with a dissertation on Native American DNA, and having researched extensively about the origin of Native Americans through DNA, publishing the results with international collaborators in a peer-reviewed journal with a considerable high impact factor.
Yes, Dr Perego, how dare you say anything that would be informed by that background?
Is the Happy Valley ensconced professor/student that raises the shield in defense of Mormonism a secret doubter? Does he need to enter the foray of mopologetics, investing himself with time, effort and intellectual application towards refuting these troubling criticism so that these nagging voices in the back of his head will be quieted?
Several apostates took the apologetic route out of Mormonism. Several are MDB posters. (Your author did so, in the most amateurish way, keeping his 'publication' to one on one discussions with other Mormons, and for a very short time before the dissonance was too much and the break with Mormonism ensued. It was helped along by the Hoffman forgeries and the powers of discernment of Mormon god's braintrust--that's your cue Paul to post the picture again!)
The career Mopologists just seem unable to progress to the next stage, stuck as it were in this limbo between settled belief, ignoring the criticism and leading a pastoral, Chapel Mormon life, and short of the intellectual courage to stand and say, 'Mormonism doesn't make sense; enough for me.'
Mormon scripture implies all in due time, per god's table, will such be revealed. Are the Mopologists simply impatient, unwilling to wait for elohim to at last give the last pieces of the puzzle, those that will somehow reconcile all this dissonant information?
If the Mopologists are 'called' to do this work and doing it because they are, like Jake and Elwood Blues 'on a mission from god', then that just moves this inquiry from the Mopologist to the ecclesiastical leaders that have called the BYU professors/students to this 'calling'.
by the way, I've heard it said that Mopologists so engage critics, to give wavering TBMs reason to remain faithful, needing only point to a small perch of possibility for the wavering TBMs to stop their descent from Mormon believe into--reason. While that may be the best self-justification by the Mopologist for what he is doing, it also serves as a tremendous indictment of incompetence. With but relatively few exceptions, it ain't working.