Mormon Apologetics - A Guide for the Perplexed

Mormon Apologetics - A Guide for the Perplexed by bob mccue Feb. 19, 2006

My karma ran over your dogma. Anon

Apologetics starts with a proposition that must be true (a dogma), and defends it against all evidence no matter how compelling. Apologists are driven by the same impulse that causes soldiers to volunteer for armed service during times of war – they are defending the truths upon which the very existence of their community depends. Tempers and emotions run high in apologetics, as in war, causing truth to be an early and frequent casualty.

Apologists do their work primarily by:

· questioning the evidence marshalled against their dogma;

· questioning the ability, credentials, bona fides, parentage and anything else that may help regarding anyone who challenges them (this is war, remember);

· insisting that even if the evidence appears to disprove their dogma that it is insufficient;

· using post-modernism to question our ability to know anything and hence out ability to question their dogma;

· alleging that the dogma they are defending had been misunderstood and changing it to something that can be more easily defended but that does not harm the authority on which their community depends;

· and if all else fails, claiming that in God’s wisdom he is testing our faith as some believe he has by putting dinosaur bones that seem to be millions of years old into a 10,000 year old Earth and causing JW leaders to falsely predict a second coming of Christ on many occasions.

In short, anything that makes the case contra the apologist look more uncertain and fearful will be used. The more fearful believers feel when thinking about charging their beliefs, the less likely they are to do so.

It was once said that for the fight promoter Don King, the simplest truth requires at least a three rail bank shot. I would say the same of the apologetic enterprise. This is both the apologists’ irony and dilemma. Apologetics is required because of dogma. Dogma is by definition certain. The apologetic defence of certainty requires the creation of uncertainty with regard to all competing theories and evidence. And yet somehow, this uncertainty must be prevented from spilling back into and so questioning the dogma that the apologist defends.

Though religious apologetics only directly influences a small percentage of believers, they are a crucial part of the defence system around dogma based religious groups. They are also tools used by these organisms to explore their environments and test the strategies available to them as they compete for resources.

The Internet has dramatically changed the nature and influence of the apologetic community within Mormonism. If at one time Mormon apologists were a “thin blue line” around a football field that restrained chaos, it is now yards thick and will become nothing but thicker for the foreseeable future. This will blur distinctions between who is in authority and who is not; will open up countless new avenues through which counsel can be sought and given; will create new opportunities to express faith and doubts; and will create, confuse and clarify countless other issues.

This will continue to trend seen in many social groups in the developed world toward a decrease in institutional power and increase in individual choice. Mormonism, as a conservative social group, will continue to lag in this regard thanks in large measure to the apologists who will continue to do what they can to protect their community. However, the winds of change will blow within the community of apologists as well as elsewhere, and so monitoring the apologetic community is a wise strategy for those interested in the nature of change that should be anticipated within the Mormon community.

Introduction

When I read religious apologetics of any kind I am bothered by a vertiginous feeling. This is largely the result of the need apologists have to obscure the evidence scientists and other scholars unearth that contradicts the dogma that apologists must defend. The feeling is like what Lewis Carroll portrayed in Alice so well as she experienced alternative “realities” through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole.

The purpose of this essay is to two-fold. First, I will outline how the religious apologetic enterprise works, using Mormon apologetics as an example. I will argue that apologists play a crucial role in the maintenance of belief and obedience within religious communities, and the development of new beliefs and behavioural standards. I will also suggest that the Internet is radically enlarging both the size of the apologetic community and the role it will play in depending and shaping Mormonism and other similar communities.

My second purpose will be accomplished if I do the first job well. That is, I hope that my explanation of how apologetics work will help those who occasionally deal with apologists to understand what to expect and hence find the experience less frustrating. If the apologists are successful, they baffle those on the inside and frustrate the outsiders. Understanding how this works facilitates the formation of realistic expectations which in turn reduces frustration. This will help those on the outside, but regrettably, is unlikely to do anything for those within a belief system since one must be able to see the system’s boundaries and understand how they work to understand the apologist’s role. Since a true believer’s sight typically ends at her world’s boundary, not only can’t she understand the apologist she is likely to avoid trying to do so.

However, as they say, if you can’t bring the mountain to Mohamed, bring him to the mountain. That is what the Internet is doing. Courtesy of the Internet, never has it been more likely that a faithful Mormon will suddenly finding herself looking into what usually appears to be Mordor but becomes more appealing the more often it is seen. This likelihood will go nowhere but up for at least a long while.

The Apologetic Beast In Action

The bizarro nature of the apologetic experience is nicely summarized by Dan Vogel in his response to the Mormon apologists who reviewed his book about Joseph Smith (see http://www.signaturebooks.com/excerpts/making2.html). He said:

“In reviewing my Joseph Smith: The Making of a Prophet for the apologetic journal FARMS Review, the Hedgeses have nothing good to say and clearly do not want fellow church members reading it. In their estimation, it is "everything that good history is not" and "an illustration of how not to write sophisticated history". Readers "seeking insight into the Prophet Joseph Smith," they maintain, "... will come away with nothing". Such unequivocal condemnation stands in stark contrast to the awards my book received from the two leading Mormon historical associations and more balanced reviews in two prominent scholarly journals.”

So, a book that is critical of Joseph Smith receives two awards from Mormon related historical associations, is the subject of reasonable reviews in scholarly journals, and is ripped to shreds by Mormon apologists. Nothing unexpected here. Just another day at the intellectual zoo.

Skimming Vogel’s reply to his critics reminded me that back when I was trying to make sure I was not making a huge mistake by leaving Mormonism, I stumbled across the rebuttal that Todd Compton had written to the Mormon apologists who had panned his book “In Sacred Loneliness”, which is about Joseph Smith’s wives (see http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/7207/rev.html for the rebuttal). The book had come out a few years earlier and I had not read it because after seeing a newspaper summary of the book that disturbed me, I called a professor at BYU who pointed me to the apologists’ reviews. Since the apologists were scholars, and their reviews were written for a BYU publication (just as are the reviews of Vogel’s book) I assumed that they were legitimate, heaved a sigh of relief and did not bother reading Compton’s book. This is the intended apologetic effect.

After spending only a few minutes reading Compton’s rebuttal I felt ill as the grotesque idea that people I had trusted my entire life had been misleading me came into view. I immediately looked up the reviews on the Internet and confirmed my worst fears. I felt, literally, like I had been kicked in the stomach. This was one of my defining moments on my road out of Mormonism. Having had it demonstrated to me in undeniable terms that the “scholars” at BYU had misled me, I was open to the possibility that others whom I had trusted might also be guilty of the same misdeed. As soon as I admitted this as possible, I began to see what he formerly been right in front of me but invisible. The floodgates opened. A few gut wrenching days later I had made the decision to distance myself from Mormonism but did not know how I would do that. And I foolishly assumed that what had become so obvious to me would be accepted by my family and other people whom I knew well enough that I thought I could predict their reaction.

Apologetic Foundations

What is Apologetics?

"Apologetics" is the systematic defence of a position (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apologetics) regardless of its legitimacy. Apologetics usually start from the proposition that a truth is known and must be defended. Hence, dogma (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogma), usually called sacred truth or something like that, is found at the root of most apologetic enterprises.

Apologetics is the opposite of real scholarly pursuit. Scholars seek understanding with regard to the real, the beautiful, the useful, etc. Science has proven to be the most reliable branch of scholarship in terms of helping us understand what is real and how relationships between real entities work.

The knowledge science produces, on average, is more reliable by far than anything else we have seen. While proving its reliability science has shown how unreliable many other kinds of knowledge are. This has created a healthy scepticism with regard any proposition about what is “real” or “how things work” that cannot be scientifically tested. Thus, a scientific approach to life gives both certainty and uncertainty more their due than is possible through any other means.

Not surprisingly, as the study of science and history progresses they often contradict dogma. This happens through two means. First, sometimes a religious dogma becomes scientifically testable. This occurred when Galileo and others began to understand planetary motion. More recently, the Book of Abraham and Book of Mormon have become amenable to scientific and historical analysis in new ways (see http://www.postmormon.org/exp_e/index.php/magazine/feature_article/2004/09/22 or http://www.i4m.com/think/history/Book-of-Mormon.pdf for example). In these cases, a true religious truth claim, or dogma, comes into conflict with science. The result is predictable. Almost immediately almost everyone who cares about the issue and is not connected to the religious community whose dogma is under attack will have accepted the scientific conclusion. And, after enough time passes the religious community itself will accept the same conclusion. It will wait as long as possible before accepting this conclusion so as to minimize the damage to its authority structure and social order. This often benefits the group’s leaders far more than its followers. In fact, it often harms the followers. The apologists job is to buy this time.

A second type of conflict is much more common than the first. That is, dogma by its nature is certain, and science suggests by inference that many things that are not scientifically testable and tenaciously believed to be true are in fact false. This is particularly the case for the kinds of beliefs that hold religious communities together. But, there is no way to use science to “prove” anything in this regard and so religious people simply tend to ignore this aspect of the scientific worldview regarding their own beliefs, while using it to debunk the claims of other religious people.

In each of the two ways just noted, the work of scientists and other scholars conflicts with religious dogma. This brings scientists into conflict with those who defend dogma – the apologists – who generally masquerade as scholars since that enhances their credibility. Academic institutions like Brigham Young University regularly lose credibility as a result of their so-called scholars participating in apologetic endeavors. An apologist in academic robes wears a particularly offensive, but to-be-expected, form of sheep’s clothing.

Humans Fear Leaving Their Dominant Social Group

At the root of most apologetic success is the fact that most people (even those who are abused) feel good enough about their social experience that they are not easily persuaded to leave their dominant social group. Humans seem to have been designed that way because our connection to a social group was so important to survival during most of human history. Hence, the "We can't really know what is going on - you'd better stay were you feel secure" approach plays nicely into the hands of social groups who are trying to slow down defections. This is, hence, the foundation of most apologetic defences. Mormons use this tactic against those who criticize them, as do other Christian groups against the marauding Mormon missionaries who seek converts wherever they can be found.

The big picture apologetic game would be pretty entertaining if it did not leave such carnage in its wake – weakened reasoning ability; broken marriages and families; damaged friendships; planes that fly into buildings; riots over cartoons published thousands of miles away; etc. All of this is due in large measure to the intellectual barricades built and manned by well-meaning apologists of countless stripes. These create bubbles of irrationality which are hard to control once they have been set up, as Jon Krakauer points out in “Under the Banner of Heaven”. There he chronicles the path that led the Lafferty brothers from faithful mainstream Mormonism, to Mormon polygamous fundamentalism, to murder as a result of their belief that God had commanded them to punish an unfaithful member of their group. More support for Goethe’s insight that: As Man is; So is his God; And thus is God; Oft strangely odd.

The Making of An Apologist

Apologists are called on to address a problem that looks something like this. We’ve got our beliefs and we know that they are true. The very nature of our community depends on these truths, so they must be true. And they are being challenged. Who will defend our community against this outrageous offence that endangers our way of life?

Of course members of a community will rise to this kind of challenge. They are driven by the same instincts that cause huge numbers of men and women to enlist in armed forces during wartime. And as is the case with war, truth is usually an early causality and regular as emotional forces dominate decision-making and action.

Just as the champions of old tended to be those suited to the task of physical warfare, apologetic champions are suited (or at least think they are suited) to intellectual battle. They tend to be well-educated, intelligent people. And since this kind of person can be found defending virtually every hare-brained scheme on Earth – from various bizarre religions through alien abductions, Holocaust denial, the flat earth theory and groundless conspiracy theories – we can be certain that lots of education and intelligence do not guarantee the accurate perception of reality. Rather, the evidence is clear that smart people are as (or more) subject to certain kinds of bias, social proof and forms of self-deception as the rest of us (see http://mccue.cc/bob/documents/rs.do%20smart%20mormons%20make%20mormonism%20true.pdf). And, they are better able to persuade others to go along with them because their intelligence is demonstrable in other ways.

The challenge an apologist faces drives her to the edges of her belief world. That is where one must go to meet the community’s intellectual enemies. This familiarity with the edges of belief distinguishes the apologist from the run-of-the-mill believer. In most cases, a believer’s sight ends at her world’s boundary. Truman (see http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/t/truman.html) had no hope of understanding his world or those who maintained his limited perception of it until found his way outside. And so, faithful Mormons cannot understand what lies outside their belief world until they have crossed its borders.

Think of terrified, blind Ivy of “The Village”, stumbling through the forest outside her artificial world as poor retarded Noah, dressed in the stolen garb of one of their community’s manmade demons, tries to kill her. She improbably turns the tables on him and ends his life (see “The Village” at http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/master.html). We are invited to speculate as to whether Ivy will interpret her experience on the outside as real so that it buttresses the beliefs she inherited from her community. And, we are told that the story of her experience will be told so as to support the community’s belief in the demons that require all to stay within certain physical and behavioral boundaries. Noah’s death was a sacrifice justified by the role it would play in maintaining these boundaries - he would become a savoir figure.

So, Ivy left her world to face a danger that she was uniquely suited to face, and her experience on the outside will be used to convince others, if not her, of the legitimacy of the life they lead and the boundaries that have been set for them.

It is what belief boundaries do – the kind of community they maintain – that justifies them for many who are familiar with the borderlands. And so the accuracy of the stories told that maintain the boundaries is of secondary importance. The horrors outside the community are believed by the leaders to be real. But if those horrors were described accurately, their nature would likely not be understood by the impetuous young people and so the horrors around "The Village" are supercharged by being given concrete demonic form by virtue of both elaborate stories and carefully staged appearances. Panic related to these events is both incited and calmed by the leaders, whose judgement the community has been made to trust. Occasionally evidence of apparent sadistic acts committed by the demons against livestock and pets is left where it cannot be missed. This drives home the point that everyone is surrounded by brutal, capricious forces that must at all costs not be provoked by breaching prescribed behavioural and physical boundaries. The parallels between the people at The Village and Old Testament Hebrews, not to mention many present day religious literalists, is striking.

In my view, “The Village” is a useful caricature of how and why belief systems are formed and maintained. It collapses – not quite believably I might add – into one generation a process that usually takes many and nicely illustrates the principles described by the academic literature in this regard. The section below related to “Attachment Theory” provides one point of view as to why that way of using belief systems should be expected to be successful.

Apologists can be best understood as those rare birds who have flown outside the boundaries of their unreal world, have seen at least some of what is there, and choose to reject the reality outside while defending their inherited surreality. Perhaps this will be Ivy’s path. It was certainly her parents’.

Those who go the boundary of their world react in a variety of ways. Many who arrive there with the idea of becoming apologists are surprised by what they find on the outside and become non-believers - they choose reality over surreality, and generally pay a social price for doing so. This is the route I took. The transition sometimes happens soon after a would-be apologist reaches the borderlands, and sometimes after a period of time acting as an apologist. The fellow who started and for years maintained www.whyprophets.com thought his way out of Mormonism more or less in lock step with me while we corresponded over a period of about three months in 2002.

Apologists who defend the boundaries of their world generally do so for one of two reasons. Most often this is the result of misunderstanding their experience with the “outside”. Most of them do not make it outside far enough, stay long enough, or are able to understand enough of what they experience, to accurately perceive what is there. As Einstein said, the theory we believe determines what we see. This is basic human limitation. And, most of us underestimate the power of the biases to which we are all subject in this regard (see http://mccue.cc/bob/documents/rs.denial.pdf). We are left wondering if Ivy will be one of these, or whether she will become one of the other apologetic group, who are much more tenacious and difficult to deal with. They are members of the long line of apologists as well as religious and other leaders who have decided that the maintenance of their belief worlds is so important that deception is justified in this regard. This decision often has much to do with the power or other perquisites these people enjoy courtesy of their position within a social order.

There are no doubt other reasons for apologetic behaviour as well, but in my experience these two account for the vast majority of well intentioned religious apologists.

I will save until later a summary of how the Internet is changing the Mormon apologetic community, as well as Mormonism itself.

Are Mormon Apologists Unique?

The apologists for religions other than Mormonism, as seen by outsiders, look as silly as the Mormon apologists. Go read some Young Earth Creationist drivel (God put dinosaur bones in the Earth to test our faith). The Muslim apologists tell us that they own a toll booth on the only road to heaven and if you disagree they are justified in killing you. That shuts people up, as the recent debacle related to Danish cartoons proves. It has most of the Western world is running scared. The Jehovah’s Witnesses explain that their leaders’ numerous failed prophecies that Christ would return to Earth on specific dates is just a way for God to test their faith. There are countless similar examples that could be trotted out.

This stuff all comes from the same place – the desire to prevent ideas from changing and most importantly, to preserve the communities and power that depends upon these ideas. And note the “God is just testing us” theme. When the going gets really tough, that argument is the last resort. Look for it to appear in Mormon apologetic discourse with increasing frequency.

An Apologetic Case Study: Where is the Hill (or Hills) "Cumorah"?

As an apologetic case in point, consider a Mormon classic - the so-called “two Cumorahs” theory. This explains why Joseph Smith received the golden plates from which he said he translated the Book of Mormon at a hill he called “Cumorah” in upstate New York, while scholars have now shown that this hill is an extremely unlikely candidate for the events that are believed by Mormons to have literally occurred there. Since the alternative to finding a second location for these events was to admit that the Book of Mormon is fictive, Mormon apologists have brought us the "two Cumorahs theory", as described at http://farms.byu.edu/display.php?table=jbms&id=98. This is closely connected to another masterpiece of improbability known as the “limited geography theory” of the Book of Mormon (see http://farms.byu.edu/publications/bomgeog.php).

These theories contradict nearly two centuries of Mormon prophetic statements, and would tell us that the Book of Mormon events were played out in area of Central America that:

· is small enough that it has not yet been discovered;

· large enough for battles that killed millions of people to have been fought there;

· large and rich enough to have maintained a civilization that enough muster armies like that;

· was the most scientifically and culturally advanced place in the Americas for most of 1,000 years.

It is possible – but barely – that such a place may exist. And then the story becomes even less probable. God moved the gold plates that told the history of this people to New York where Joseph Smith could find them without telling Joseph about on this, leaving him to believe and teach as God’s revealed truth that the epic described in the Book of Mormon was played out across the length and breadth of America and that all Amerindians as well as Polynesians were the literal descendents of the people the Book of Mormon says immigrated to the Americas from Jerusalem.

Joseph Smith’s teachings about the Book of Mormon were a large part of what motivated, among other things:

millions of Amerindians and Polynesians to become Mormons (I served my mission to Peru in the late 1970s and know how aggressively this sales approach was used and how successful it was);

many thousands of Amerindians to be removed from their homes through the Indian (later “Lamanite”) placement program (in which my family participated – my alcoholic Amerindian “brother” still calls me when he needs something); and

many of these same people to hopefully watch their own skin color (as well as that of their descendants) to see if it was becoming lighter as promised by the Book of Mormon to faithful Mormons, and as noted by some modern Mormon prophets as they observed faithful Amerindian Mormons. The whiter, the more righteous, the more blessed, the and of course, the better. It is hard to imagine a more backward, perverse teaching.

Though it hardly seems possible, this story becomes more bizarre yet. Recently Mormon apologists have taken license from the two Cumorahs theory and are extending its reasoning from Central America to Malaysia (see http://www.sunstoneonline.com/magazine/issues/131/30-34_a_Olsen_book%20of%20mormon%20lands.pdf). That’s right – three Cumorahs, and one of them in Malaysia. And who knows how many more before we are through.

Were this a joke, it would be funny, as are the fringe Mormon classics that find credible evidence of Near Eastern linguistics in Dr. Seuss books and Book of Mormon civilizations on islands in Utah lakes. However, rather than treating us to a good laugh, the Malay Cumorah theory illustrates the principle that those who play fast and loose with reason put themselves in a position where nearly everything is “provable”. The corollary of this principles is that when everything is provable, nothing is. For example, if our definition for the word “dog” is so unclear that any animal can be made to fit within it, this enables those who want to prove that horses are dogs to do so, and at the same time prevents anyone who think that horses are not dogs from proving his position. Our definition is, hence, useless. In rational discourse, we want definitions and tests of knowledge that will allow us as much certainty as possible as to what we are dealing with.

What Do the Prophets Say?

One can be forgiven for wondering why literalist religious leaders, who generally exercise as much control as possible over their followers, would allow the kind of shenanigans just described to go on. This question is particularly compelling in the Mormon case where the leaders are believed to be God’s own prophets – His only authorized representatives on Earth. One would think that they would have something to say with regard to questions like “how many Cumorahs are there?”, particularly in light of the fact that the credibility of Mormonism’s founders seems to be at stake.

Religious leaders in general and Mormon leaders in particular have surprisingly little to say these days about anything specific. There was a time when they would wade into almost any issue. Brigham Young and other early Mormon leaders were notorious for this (see http://www.i4m.com/think/history/mormon_history.htm), and their successors are wiser. Hence, they keep quiet. This is the trend across the religious world. Religious leaders have seen hard lessons learned by those who make statements that may eventually be contradicted by science or history. So most try not to expose themselves to the chance that they may be made to look foolish at some point down the road. Much can be explained by remembering that rule and thinking about the needs it creates.

For example, religious leaders will tend not to say anything that may be contradicted by science. And yet they need to be in charge. And the forces of science and scholarship need to be resisted in order for them to stay in charge. Someone has to do that. So, the apologists are called upon to play this and other crucial roles.

This also explains why Mormon leaders, ironically called “prophets”, stay as far away from prophesying as possible. Instead, they focus on the kind of platitude that made Gordon Hinckley’s “Standing for Something” useless to anyone who did not venerate him, while defending when they must the positions prior prophets took before the foolishness of the prophetic approach sunk in.

And what about the extensive use Mormon leaders make of polling data that I used to hear about while I was a bishop and in other LDS leadership positions? I heard enough about these to believe that Mormonism’s highest leaders took seriously the job of marshalling data from which to forecast at least certain kinds of behaviour, particularly when it came to the effect of advertising programs, missionary programs, and encouraging greater meeting attendance and payment of tithes and offerings. But while I heard about those studies, I never saw them and to my knowledge they have never been made public. I would be willing to bet that there are many other studies of which I have not heard that relate to issues of concern to Mormonism’s highest leaders, as evidenced by what they speak about when broadcasting their most important messages. These would include personal bankruptcies, female depression, spousal violence, divorce rates, sexual behaviour of various kinds, tax evasion and other forms of dishonesty, the reasons for declining missionary and activity rates, etc. Why would this useful information not be made available to the average Mormon leader or member? The essence of being a prophet is access to privileged information. If God no longer reveals such information (or if the current state of human knowledge no longer permits the illusion of information of this kind to persist) then perhaps a reasonable substitute can be created to preserve at least some of the information differential that defines prophethood.

The Mormon leadership system and mindset, however, imposes limits on how much wisdom Mormon leaders should be expected to create or be able to use. The larger and more diverse the group that works independently to solve a given problem, the more quickly and accurately information is likely to be produced relative to its solution (see James Surowiecki, “The Wisdom of Crowds). Groups of this kind will almost always outperform their smartest members. Apologists tend to work under conditions that are the opposite of those shown to enable groups of people to produce accurate information. Mormon leaders are even worse. They are as far from diverse in their point of view as possible; they speak by order of seniority on all important matters; they are required to follow tradition; and unanimity in a group of 15 very old men whose primary virtue is conservatism is required to change anything of substance. Science and some other scholarly pursuits, on the other hand, are designed with the principles of sound group decision making and learning in mind, so that over time error should be reduced as fruitful new ideas come forward. The track records of science, religious apologetics clearly indicate which should be trusted, and which not.

Most Mormon apologists are connected in some way with the Mormon Church. Most are either employed by BYU or the Church Educational System (CES). Hence, they are financially dependant on the leaders of the Mormon Church, who have on many occasions fired BYU professors who do not adequately toe the line. The most recent is Darren Smith, an African American Mormon who refused to stop speaking and writing about race related topics relative to Mormonism. He departed BYU earlier this month.

So, while it would not be fair to assume that Mormon leaders approve of everything their BYU based apologists do, it is fair to assume that they do not take strong exception. This is important regarding issues like the two Cumorah theory that literally overturns countless “prophetic” pronouncements. Why would Mormon authorities not protect their turf from something like this?

Religious leaders may wish to say the kind of ridiculous things I outlined above regarding the two Cumorah theory, but they restrain themselves because of the risk that they will be proven wrong at some point in the future and lose credibility as a result. So let the apologists have at it. If they are shown to be wrong, so what. They were just “intellectuals” playing the intellectual game. And in the meantime, they will have the effect of slowing down the defection rate and maybe even helping to earn converts, though the issues that the apologists address are kept as far under wraps as possible during the conversion process.

By allowing the apologists for forge ahead in areas such as “how many Cumorahs are there?”, the religious leaders have the ability to gauge the reaction of their followers. If the apologists provoke a firestorm of protest, they can be told to stop. In fact, they could be publicly rebuked in a show of religious authority that will make it clear who is in charge. However, the apologetic palliative often eases the pain that shattered belief causes in one generation while another grows up with an entirely different set of teachings. This is what happened when polygamy was abolished in a series of painful, halting steps between 1890 and 1904. A combination of information suppression, obfuscation and apologetics got those who believed in polygamy through this crisis while causing their children and grandchildren to be raised with little understanding of the prior state of belief and affairs.

And perhaps more importantly, by floating ideas some of which grow roots in the Mormon community, apologists assist in the development of both theology and social practise. A negative example of this relates to the diminution of respect for rational thought, science and scholarly pursuits in general that is coming to characterize Mormonism. This is caused by the apologetic tendency (discussed in some detail below) to disparage anything that questions sacred Mormon dogma regardless of how rational or scientifically rigorous the critique may be. Those who accept this approach are likely to be unreasonably sceptical of the entire scholarly enterprise. The structure of BYU itself is a large part of this problem. While studying there students are taught both by real scholars in the sciences and some arts, and by apologists masquerading as scholars who teach an anti-rational, anti-intellectual approach to knowledge and reality. This breeds a compartmentalized form of thinking – one kind of reasoning for religion and another for everything else. This compartmentalization breaks down, however. The emotional basis for religious “knowing” (see http://mccue.cc/bob/documents/rs.denial.pdf at page 7) tends to slop over into other areas, likely resulting in bad financial decision making, for example. This could explain why Utah leads or nearly leads the US in unflattering categories like financial fraud, personal bankruptcies, tax evasion and multi-level marketing participation.