My raison d’ être
“… convince us of our errors of doctrine, if we have any, by reason, by logical argument, or by the word of God, and we will be ever grateful for the information, and you will have the pleasing reflection that you have been instruments in the hands of God for redeeming your fellow beings from the darkness which you may see enveloping their minds.”
Apostle Orson Pratt
Righto Orson.
I have asked many questions in my ‘A Letter to an Apostle‘ that as Orson indicates. ‘by reason and logic’ are difficult to reconcile.
I am not asking out of ignorance, and while President Russell Nelson might label me as a ‘lazy learner.’ I have, at least to the extent of my limited abilities, diligently explored, researched and investigated each of the concerns and difficulties that are at issue for me. I have tried to uncover the most recent, reliable material related to each of my interrogatories. I have also tried to carefully cite my sources.
As I have already said, most of the facts I quote as well as the commentaries I reference come from church-friendly sources – LDS historical documents, church newspapers and periodicals, as well as the Journal of Discourses, Lectures on Faith and History of the Church.
I have also gone to the letters of learned and some less learned church leaders, and, of course, the scriptures themselves.
The rest of the facts, data and information I have garnered come from serious and often meticulous research conducted by leading scholars in several scientific disciplines and, of course, professional historians. You will not find reference to the many mean-spirited articles posted on the Internet by those whose obvious purpose is to mock and despoil.
When it comes to questions of a purely scientific nature, matters relating to archaeology, anthropology, palaeontology or genetics, admittedly I have given greater credence to the considered opinions of non-Mormon scientists because these scholars have fewer biases or predispositions that might impede their willingness to go where the truth leads them.
An examination of the confirmation bias in the archaeology department at BYU is reflected in the following statement from one of its professors, Dr. Kerry Muhlestein as reported in a recent Deseret News article:
“I start out with an assumption that the Book of Abraham and the Book of Mormon, and anything else that we get from the restored gospel, is true,” he said. “Therefore, any evidence I find, I will try to fit into that paradigm.”
It is also no secret that at BYU and all other LDS owned post-secondary institutions, criticism of the Church, its policies or its leaders is strictly ‘verboten.’ Even though those who teach at these schools may consider themselves to be free Americans, should they espouse, even privately, any opinions of which the ‘brethren’ disapprove, they run the risk of the termination of their employment.
Ruthie Robertson, a professor of political science, discovered this was the case when she placed a post on her personal Facebook page supporting the LGBTQ community.
BYU demanded she retract her comments, and when she refused, she was summarily dismissed.
When asked by a reporter to comment on what this says about the state of academic freedom at BYU, the church released the following statement:
“All good LDS, including scholars, must accept the judgment of the Church’s General Authorities. If it is what the brethren want, then good LDS must say it is appropriate. This may be difficult for scholars, but obedience is an important concept.”
Salt Lake Tribune , May 26, 1983, p. B4
Also, one must recognize that non-Mormon archaeologists and anthropologists publish and are thereby subject to peer review. In contrast, it is extremely rare that a paper on archaeology or anthropology coming out of BYU would be accepted for publication by the three leading scholarly journals in those disciplines, let alone survive withering examination by their non-Mormon peers.
Finally, before we begin, a word about a word – Mormon.
In 2018 President Russell Nelson, as is tradition, based solely on seniority, became the seventeenth man to become the President of the LDS church.
In addition to Nelson’s shortening of the agonizingly long Sunday services that the faithful long endured, he also claimed to have awoken from his nonagenarian repose one night, ‘impressed,’ that, from that moment forward, the use of the word ‘Mormon’ should be removed from the lexicon.
President Russell would have people henceforth refer to Mormons as ‘Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.’
This is was not the first time the LDS church changed its moniker. It has actually gone through several rewrites in its short history.
It was initially named, ‘The Church of Christ’ by Joseph Smith on April 6, 1830, The same name, incidentally, as the church at Dartmouth College, the prep school of which his brother Hyrum attended.
The ‘Church of Christ’ lasted just four years.
In 1834 Joseph had to face the fact that he was not the first to coin that name and it had better be changed to avoid if not litigation, certainly confusion.
Not to be caught in the same bind again, the name was quickly changed to ‘The Church of the Latter Day Saints,’ completely removing Jesus Christ.
That name only lasted another two years (1834 to 1836), before it would seem Joseph recalled that the Lord had stated in the Book of Mormon that His church should carry His name. Consequently, it was renamed once again to, ‘The Church of Christ of Latter Day Saints,‘ which was used for another two years – 1836 to 1838.
Although it was still being referred to as the Church of Christ and the Church of Latter Day Saints, nevertheless in 1838 it was again changed to, more or less, its current name, ‘The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.’ In 1851 Brigham Young signed off on the final change, ‘The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.’ adding a hyphen and reverting to the British-style lower-case “d.”
I will respectfully be ignoring President Nelson’s admonition.
Besides taking 58 keystrokes to write each time, the loquaciousness is irritating to the reader, and the continuous use of the full name might lead one to actually think that I am mocking the church.
I suspect there is perhaps more to the name change than Nelson lets on. Some Mormon neo-apologists are beginning to move toward the view that the Book of Mormon is less an actual history of real people than it is more an inspirational or metaphoric script. This is often referred to as the middle way. I think President Nelson recognizes that the use of the word Mormon unavoidably pushes to the forefront the Book of Mormon narrative, that many see as improbable as a result of the Internet. Something the church may very well want to distance itself from in the future. The Church’s website has now been changed to churchofchrist.org eliminating the ‘of Latter-day Saints’ altogether. I believe the current church administration has begun the slow process of total rebranding.
The mass exodus from church pews nationwide has been studied at length in recent years by the Pew Research Center. In tracking religious trends by state, religion and faith. Pew researchers have shown that sadly many of the record number of Mormons leaving their church, abandon not only the LDS Church but also vacate their belief in God.
This is not solely a Mormon phenomenon. Ms. Hatch tells us that ‘millennials‘ of all religious backgrounds are leaving the faith of their fathers at a rate never seen before.
To give a better understanding of where LDS millennials are coming from, she shares the comments of a Utah millennial she interviewed named Shelley:
“I’m definitely not interested in any religion as far as religions that exist, I consider myself a secular humanist.”
Shelley says she has no need for religion in her life. This former BYU student joined the LDS church as a teen and said that she, “loved her church so much she wanted to be a bigger part of it. I joined what I thought was this perfect religion, the true church.”
Now, she says, “I feel like I’m way too logical now to be religious.”
Millennials like Shelley are not leaving because they’re lazy, they want to sin or simply can’t obey the ‘Word of Wisdom‘, rather they just don’t believe it anymore.
Indeed, for many young people today the question is not, “which church is true.” but rather, “why religion?“
Research has shown that a majority of ex-Mormons, or post-Mormons, do not self-identify as members of another faith tradition, rather choosing to describe themselves as agnostic, atheist or apatheist – someone who is not interested in accepting or rejecting any claims that God exists or does not exist.
Again, quoting Pew, in 2015 they found that 36% of those born Mormon left the religion, with 6% becoming Evangelical Protestants, 9% converting to another Protestant, Catholic, or a non-Christian faith and 58% of all ex-Mormons simply becoming unaffiliated.
It has been my experience that many Mormons are remarkably ignorant of the history of their religion and the actual behavior and character of its founder Joseph Smith Jr. Even some bishops and stake presidents are unaware of many of the facts that I present herein.
I would contend that my directness in asking WHY or discussing troubling, hypocritical and contradictory evidence associated with the church’s history is not, as FairMormon suggests, prima facie evidence of criticism. By FairMormon’s logic, if your son asks, “why did our dog have puppies?” he is criticizing reproduction.
I am not suggesting that all of FairMormon’s responses to my online letter are of no value. Some of their apologetics are reasonable and even instructive. However, too often when these anonymous defenders of the faith, lacking any convincing answer would nevertheless proffer a defense, no matter how irrational or implausible, rather than just say, “we don’t know.” In these cases, if FairMormon’s goal is member retention, I wonder if they, like FARMS before them, might be doing more harm than good.
FairMormon exists to justify statements made, and actions taken by church leaders past and particularly present and to protect the church’s ‘good name.’ You will never see them write, ‘that was probably a mistake;‘ or ‘President Nelson is no expert in that area,’ rather they dispense superficially plausible apologetic ‘snake oil,’ that they know will be eagerly swallowed by members who just crave enough elixir to dull their pesky cognitive dissonance.
I believe the boys at FairMormon correctly recognizes that true believing or chapel Mormons are not looking for a deep dive into truth claims of the Church. Truth can destabilizing. Rather they seek just enough conjectural adhesive to keep member’s shelves from collapsing.
FairMormon searches for, interprets, and favors only that information and those data which confirm their pre-existing beliefs or hypotheses. Their conclusions had been set before they have given ear to any argument or evidence. This is called ‘confirmation bias, ‘and it is intellectually dishonest.
I have been around long enough and have studied history and human nature long enough to feel that well-meaning zealots seldom do much to advance the cause of truth and often do much to harm it.
So, instead of taking these apologists’ avowals as ‘gospel,’ I have commented where I feel their responses to what I have written are misleading or lack credulity or plain old common sense. My standard is simple – what would a reasonable man or woman find more compelling and believable.
To apply this standard, I have devised a rating system based on Occam’s Razor.
As you are no doubt aware, Occam’s Razor (also Ockham’s Razor) sometimes the “Law of Parsimony,” is a philosophical problem-solving principle first attributed to William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347), an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher.
His ‘law’ can be interpreted as, ‘from among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.‘ It is the most likely to be true or at least the most correct – until proven otherwise. It is the principle taught in medical school, “when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras!’
‘Occam’s Razor’ then is the test, and I have distilled it into the following rating scale to test the apologist’s efforts.
The Mormon church is an immensely wealthy, powerful and somewhat secretive organization seeking to secure the time and acquire the treasure of sincere, honest people who are, more often than not, no match for the church’s well-oiled and richly funded PR machine. So, forgive me if I do not pull any punches in presenting facts and evidence that raise doubts about the church’s narrative or the truthfulness of its past or present leadership.
Many times, I sang the touching LDS hymn, “Oh Say, What is Truth?” The first verse reads:
Oh say, what is truth? ’Tis the fairest gem
That the riches of worlds can produce,
And priceless the value of truth will be when
The proud monarch’s costliest diadem
Is counted but dross and refuse.
Notwithstanding the sentiments expressed in this hymn, I don’t believe it unfair to point out that honesty has never been a core value for Mormon leadership; and I am not just talking about Joseph Smith, Brigham Young and John Taylor or Joseph Fielding Smith who it can be easily proven made many statements that were clearly untrue, but recent, LDS leaders as well. As Boyd Packer’s said in his fabled talk, “The mantle is far, far greater than the intellect,” that, “Sometimes the truth isn’t very useful.”
Gordon B. Hinckley is viewed with great affection by many members, I met him once and he seemed to be a nice man.
But President Hinckley too was certainly a practitioner of “situational ethics.”
In an interview with Time Magazine in August 1997, president Hinckley was asked, “Is this the teaching of the church today, that God the Father was once a man like we are?”
He responded, “I don’t know that we teach it. I don’t know that we emphasize it. I haven’t heard it discussed for a long time in public discourse. I don’t know. I don’t know all the circumstances under which that statement was made. I understand the philosophical background behind it. But I don’t know a lot about it, and I don’t know that others know a lot about it.”
“I don’t know if we teach it?” Could he have missed what Joseph Smith said about it:
“God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted man, and sits enthroned in yonder heavens! That is the great secret, and He was once a man like us; yea, that God himself, the Father of us all, dwelt on an earth, the same as Jesus Christ Himself did; and I will show it from the Bible.”
Joseph Smith (“King Follett Discourse,”
Journal of Discourses 6:3-4, also in Teachings
of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 342-345)
Or Brigham Young, “He [God] is our Father – the Father of our spirits and was once a man in mortal flesh as we are and is now an exalted being.” [emphasis added]
Brigham Young, successor to Joseph Smith
(Journal of Discourses 7:333)
Or Bruce R. McConkie, who wrote and preached, “…God… is a personal Being, a holy and exalted man…
Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon apostle and
theologian (Mormon Doctrine, 1966 ed p 250
Or, Joseph Fielding Smith who also taught, “God is an exalted man. Some people are troubled over the statements of the Prophet Joseph Smith … that our Father in heaven at one time passed through a life and death and is an exalted man…”
Joseph Fielding Smith, Mormon apostle and theologian,
later President of the church (Doctrines of Salvation 1:10)
Had he forgotten what he had written himself just a decade before this interview:
“The whole design of the gospel is to lead us, onward and upward to greater achievement, even, eventually, to godhood. This great possibility was enunciated by the Prophet Joseph Smith in the King Follett sermon and emphasized by President Lorenzo Snow. It is this grand and incomparable concept: As God now is, man may become!”
Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley, p. 179; “Eternal Progression.
Does president Hinckley’s deceptive statement jive with what the church preaches on honesty? Is this an example of Standing for Something as he titled his book?
“Lying is intentionally deceiving others. Bearing false witness is one form of lying. There are many other forms of lying. When we speak untruths, we are guilty of lying. We can also intentionally deceive others by a gesture or a look, by silence, or by telling only part of the truth. Whenever we lead people in any way to believe something that is not true, we are not being honest.”
Gospel Principles Lesson 31: Honesty
Further evidence of this type of deception is found in Jeffrey R. Holland’s interview with John Sweeney of the BBC about Mitt Romney’s temple oaths. Did Holland attempt to deceive?
- SWEENEY: Let’s talk about Mitt Romney, the man who may well become the most powerful man on earth. As a Mormon, in the temple, I’ve been told, he would have sworn an oath to say that he would not pass on what happens in the temple lest he slit his throat. Is that true?
- HOLLAND: That’s not true. That’s not true. We do not have penalties in the temple.
- SWEENEY: You used to.
- HOLLAND: We used to.
- SWEENEY: Therefore, he swore an oath saying I will not tell anyone about the secrets here lest I slit my throat.
HOLLAND: Well, the vow that was made was regarding the ordinance–the ordinance–of the temple...
Was brother Holland acting in accordance with what the Gospel Principles teaches on honesty, “…Whenever we lead people in any way to believe something that is not true, we are not being honest.”
There is the case of Dallin Oaks who told a reporter that he had no knowledge of Boyd Packer’s involvement in Paul Toscano’s excommunication. When however Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Steve Benson discovered President Oaks statement wrote the following:
“When “Arizona Republic” reporter Paul Brinkley-Rogers asked Oaks in an on-the-record interview about rumors circulating that Packer had been involved in backstage direction of the excommunication of Toscano, Oaks said he was not aware of any such thing, adding that such claims went against everything that he knew about Packer. Reporter Brinkley-Rogers played me the tape of his interview with Oaks and when I heard Oaks lie in this regard, I was astounded. I told the reporter what Oaks had told me in private about Packer’s out-of-bounds efforts to get Toscano excommunicated via the stake president–and how what Oaks said to me directly contradicted what he had falsely claimed to the reporter.
I subsequently contacted Oaks by fax and informed him that he had 24 hours to set the record straight, advising him that if he did not, I would publicly do it for him. Oaks called my home in Arizona from Salt Lake City but I was not there at the time (my young daugther answered, instead, and told Oaks that I was still at work). Oaks then proceeded to contact the reporter to whom he had given the misleading interview. He left a message with the reporter, who called him back through the LDS Church Office Building switchboard, reaching Oaks at his home. In that phone call, Oaks admitted to the reporter that he had not told the truth, but insisted that what he had told the reporter about Packer was not a lie; rather, he said, it had been a long interview and he had misspoken.
I listened to the tape of that phone call between the reporter and Oaks, since the reporter had made the recording and later allowed me to listen to it (I have the tape of that phone call–which the reporter eventually gave to me–from which I made a written transcription–which will be quoted later in this post).
I eventually decided to go public with what Oaks had actually said, via a guest column I authored for the “Salt Lake Tribune.” I faxed Oaks again and explained that he had broken his trust with me by lying in public about what he had told me in private, that he had not come clean in his phone call he made to the reporter and that I therefore had decided that I not be a partner in his attempted cover-up.”
https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1775564,1777160
President Nelson too has the gift for ’embellishing’ rather pedestrian events and experiences to make them, if not out-and-out miraculous, at least faith-promoting.
One example is a story he tells about his experience in Korea, that appeared in LDS Living and was scheduled to appear in his book published, of course, by the church owned Deseret Books. The article reads:
“Young Lieutenant Nelson performed many operations in less-than-optimal conditions. One day a nurse named Beverly Ashcraft approached him at the end of an operation in which she had assisted him. “What makes you different from all the other surgeons I work with?” she asked, likely assuming that he would have a straightforward answer.
Dr. Nelson thought for a moment and responded much differently than she expected: “Well, I don’t know that I’m different, but if I am, it’s because I know the Book of Mormon is true!’
… out of a sense of duty that she accepted Dr. Nelson’s offer to borrow the one and only copy of the Book of Mormon he had at that time. Her husband, Derwin, was a fellow surgeon, and a few days later she returned the book, tossed it to Russell, and muttered a feeble “thanks.”
“That is a totally inappropriate answer for someone who has read the Book of Mormon, “Lieutenant Nelson responded. “You didn’t read it, did you? I’m asking you and Beverly to read it, and when you have, then I want my book back.”
The Ashcrafts did read the book, and, over a period of time, Lieutenant Nelson taught them the gospel. In 1951, he baptized them, and then he lost track of the Ashcrafts.
Fast-forward 30 years to when Russell Nelson had become Elder Nelson, a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles who had just been asked to take a last-minute assignment to fill in for Elder Neal A. Maxwell at a stake conference in Tennessee. Elder Nelson headed for Tennessee, arriving at the airport where members greeted him with ‘Welcome to Tennessee, Elder Maxwell‘ signs.
During the Sunday morning session of the conference, Elder Nelson was drawn to a woman wearing a large hat and sitting on the left-hand side of the chapel. He asked the stake president who she was; the president didn’t know but managed to learn that her name was Beverly Zitting. When Elder Nelson went to the pulpit, he felt prompted to call this woman to join him. “How long have you been a member of the church?” he asked her with the congregation looking on.
“Thirty years;” she responded. “Who baptized you?” he then asked. After a brief pause, she answered, “You did, in 1951!””What is your name again?“ She explained that when Elder Nelson had baptized her, her name had been Beverly Ashcraft and her husband’s name Derwin. After he died, she had remarried, and now she had a large family who were active in the Church. “Beverly, how many people connected with you have come into the Church since I baptized you?“ Elder Nelson asked. “You won’t believe this;” she told him and the congregation, “but two nights ago I had a dream that Elder Maxwell would ask me that very question.” So she had come prepared, and she pulled out of her purse a paper with the names of all the people who had come into the Church as a result of her baptism. The number was 80.
What a great story, how inspiring, but sadly it does not comport with the facts.
The actual truth is told in an article by Ryan McKnight entitled, “False Story Removed From Newest Book on the Life of Mormon President Russell M. Nelson:”
Ryan writes, According to Leslie and Katie McKenzie, daughter and granddaughter of Derwin and Beverley (whose name is spelled wrong in the LDS Living article), that is not what happened.
In a phone interview with the Truth & Transparency Foundation (TTF), Leslie and Katie, told the real story behind their mother and grandmother’s conversion, a conversion story that has been a source of pride in their family for nearly seven decades.
Leslie and Katie say that their family have always been proud that their first exposure to Mormonism was through Nelson, the man who would later become President of the Church. They saw him as a spiritual giant, great leader, and the man that changed the legacy of their family forever.
They were aware that Nelson occasionally used the story of Derwin and Beverley as a faith promoting example of missionary work. The story even appeared in a 1984 Ensign article and in Nelson’s biography on lds.org. However, in these versions, there is no mention of Korea, Beverley being a nurse, or a serendipitous encounter at a stake conference in Tennessee.
According to Leslie and Katie, Beverley was never a nurse, she never lived in Korea, and she didn’t know Nelson until her husband introduced her to him.
Derwin met Nelson when the two were working at Walter Reed Army Military Medical Center in Washington D.C. They were both doctors performing research, Derwin a veterinarian and Nelson a medical doctor. They became friends and Nelson later met Beverley who worked in the same hospital as a transcriptionist. Nelson introduced them to the Mormon Church and baptized them.
There was an encounter in the 1980s at a stake conference. Shortly after Nelson was called to be an Apostle, he traveled to Knoxville to speak at the conference. Leslie and Katie were both living with Beverley in Knoxville at the time. When they heard Nelson was coming to town they made sure to attend.
They remember that Nelson was aware of who Beverley was and knew she was in attendance. He did call her up to the podium during his talk and told everyone about her baptism story and about how there are many members of the church today as a result of her conversion.
There was no dream the night before, there was not a prepared note in her purse, and there was no confusion on the part of Nelson as to who she was. Katie adds that her grandmother” has never worn a hat to church and did not have a hat on that day.”
Katie was first made aware of this new version of the story in early March when a family member sent her a screenshot of the article. She showed it to her mother and, when she realized that it was part of an upcoming book, immediately reached out to Deseret Book and LDS Living. She sent both companies a document with annotations pointing out the incorrect information.
Katie was eventually contacted by a representative from Deseret Book and another from LDS Living. The representative from Deseret Book thanked her for bringing this to their attention and that since it was so close to the release date they would just remove the story entirely instead of trying to fix it. The representative told Katie that this would require a reprinting of at least some of the books as the final printing process had already begun.
For those interested, you can read the April, 2019 article by Ryan McKnoght:
A simple Google search will uncover other examples of Nelson’s self-aggrandizing ‘tales,’ like the simple robbery in Mosambique that just weeks after the fact suddenly has angels saving Russell and wife Wendy from certain doom.
My favourite of Nelson’s tall tails is his near death experience aboard a small twin engine plane flying from Salt Lake City to St. George. As the president tells it, half way through the flight the right engine bursts into flames spewing oil everywhere and putting the aircraft into an incipient spin. Everyone was panicking but not brother Nelson. Miraculously the dive blew the flames out and the pilot at the last moment regained control of the plane and managed to land in a farmer’s field.
Wow, I have had a pilot’s licence of over fifty years and have never had such a harrowing experience but the facts as reported in the Civil Aeronautics Board Incident Report ( https://www.google.com/books/edition/_/wNa3AAAAIAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA1090&dq=skywest+incidents+1976 )would suggest that neither did President Nelson. The report shows that: The pilot of the Piper experienced a rough starboard engine, which he then feathered. There was no explosion. There was no dive. The plane was never on fire. The second engine was never off. And, the pilot landed at the Delta, Utah airport only as a precaution as outlined in the company’s operations manual – not in some farmer’s field.
But it was Joseph Smith Jr. who institutionalized the practice of, ‘lying for the Lord.’. He instructed church leaders to deny he was practicing polygamy and polyandry. The prophet’s stamp of approval allowed church leaders to deceive with a clear conscience; blasphemously believing that God permitted and even encouraged lying.
When accused of practicing “polygamy” Smith always denied it, rationalizing that it was “celestial marriage” that he was engaged in, something Smith would have people believe was altogether different than marriage.
If his accusers in and out of the church did not frame their allegations using precisely the right terms, he and his followers felt justified in prevaricating.
Like many, I have never been a fan of Boyd Packer, but since we are discussing truth and honesty among the ‘brethren,’ let me provide one of his gems:
“I have a hard time with historians because they idolize the truth. The truth is not uplifting. It destroys. I could tell most of the secretaries in the Church office building that they are ugly and fat. That would be the truth, but it would hurt and destroy them. Historians should tell only that part of the truth that is inspiring and uplifting.”
Boyd K. Packer, Faithful History:
Essay on Writing Mormon History, p.103, fn.
Does this sound like something Peter or Andrew or a true Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ would utter?
But Boyd Packer is hardly representative of rank and file Latter-day Saints, and we should not condemn a whole church because of the foolish or imprudent pronouncements by one man.
But what does it say about the character of Mormon prophets and apostles when we find so many examples of lying and misrepresentation?
As I say in my letter to President Uchtdorf, which follows, I have always found that, with few exceptions, everyday Latter-day Saints are honest, kind, sincere and decent people. But religious fervor, or a strong, “testimony” should not be our only standard when searching to know what is true, the only arrow in our quiver?
Romans Chapter 10, Verse 2, tells us, “For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge.”
Nor do I accept the Orwellian mantra hoisted on an already cowed people by Dallin Oaks that, “Not everything that’s true is useful.”
Useful to whom and for what purpose?
It would seem that Oaks has not considered that the corollary to his puerile statement must also hold, “That not everything that is false is NOT useful!”
Is it possible that president Oaks never heard of the ‘Law of the Excluded Middle,‘ espoused by Bertrand Russell? The law states that if ‘A is B’ is false, then ‘A is not B’ must be true.
If we accept that Oaks statement in the affirmative that, ”A – Not everything that is true” is ”B – Useful,” then the negative corollary, ‘ ‘Not everything that is false is not useful,” must also be true.
There are many examples in the Mormon experience where things that are known to be wholly untrue are nonetheless very useful.
Joseph Smith’s denials of his illegal polygamous and polyandrous marriages, and the lies he told the Saints and even his wife. False statements? Certainly, but very useful – to him and his agenda!”
The many paintings hanging in Mormon chapels, visitor centers and temples across the globe and the pictures still being reproduced in Church books and manuals, showing a young strong-chinned Joseph Smith studiously examining the ‘Reformed Egyptian’ characters on the golden plates while his faithful scribe sits across from him writing down his ”translation.” A much more inspiring image than reality – Smith bent over, with his hat in his lap and his head in his hat.
Which of the following two images might move an ”investigator” more?
The church has always known that the images it prints, and displays are not true representations of reality, but they continue to be reproduced and hung because they are useful.
FairMormon in what seems to me a rather desperate attempt to justify the use of these inaccurate, misleading images suggests that the church wanted their artists to create something closer to reality, but their artists simply chose not to.
Anthony Sweat in his essay “The Gift and Power of Art” quotes artist Walter Rane as saying:
“At least twice, I have been approached by the church to do that scene [Joseph translating using the hat]. I get into it. When I do the drawings, I think, “This is going to look really strange to people.” Culturally from our vantage point 200 years later, it just looks odd. It probably won’t communicate what the church wants to communicate. Instead of a person being inspired to translate ancient records, it will just be.”
Does FairMormon really expect us to believe that the brethren, would defer to the imaginings of their retainers, in something this significant? Are we to believe that in an organization where decision-making is more centralized than North Korea, that those in power would hand over this kind of control?
So, forgive me, but I intend to call bullshit where I find it, whether it comes from Dallin Oaks, FairMormon or Joseph Smith himself.
That said, in the words of that great dame Bette Davis, “Fasten your seatbelts, this is going to be a bumpy night!”
Paul A. Douglas