Dealing with Anti-Mormon Literature, p. 14

[_barrelomonkeys]

Dr. Peterson,

I don't think the problem is with the people on this board confusing what the overlap is. The problem is with the people that don't get on discussion boards and think about such issues. They're told to avoid anti-Mormon literature and how do they know what that is? It seems they would just avoid everything.

How to know which is which? That's easy. If it's sold in a Deseret bookstore, it's okay. If not, beware.

I may have to find one and visit it. I find half.com takes too long to get my books sometimes.

Oh! It's online. :)

[Guest]

I don't think the problem is with the people on this board confusing what the overlap is. The problem is with the people that don't get on discussion boards and think about such issues. They're told to avoid anti-Mormon literature and how do they know what that is? It seems they would just avoid everything.

It's likely that some do. My bet is that such people aren't great readers in any event.

But many don't. The University of Illinois Press hasn't decided to make Mormon-related publications a serious focus of its output because Latter-day Saints were refusing to read what it produces. Nor have Terryl Givens's successes with Oxford University Press come without Mormons buying his books.

How to know which is which? That's easy. If it's sold in a Deseret bookstore, it's okay. If not, beware.

I doubt that that is true for any serious Mormon reader. It certainly isn't the case in my neighborhood. Nor is it true of my extended family. Nor -- again with the proviso that we need to be talking about actual readers -- does it seem to accurately characterize the Latter-day Saints with whom I grew up in California, nor the Latter-day Saints I've met while traveling (in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Latin America). If you have evidence to support your claim, I would enjoy seeing it.

I think they are far more worried about the writings of G. Palmer, Charles Larson, Fawn Brodie, Southerton, etc. or even Todd Compton and M. Quinn.

I don't know that that's true. I suspect that it's not. Or at least not entirely or even primarily. While Palmer and Larson have caused some problems here and there, so have Ed Decker and the Tanners, Bill Schoebelen and Dr. Dr. John Weldon, and others of that sort. Simply because you (and I) may find such writings silly doesn't mean they aren't effective with certain kinds of people.

Incidentally, I would never list Mike Quinn or Fawn Brodie as an "anti-Mormon," let alone my long-time friend Todd Compton. And I may, modestly enough, be one of the more important single arbiters of such usage in Mormondom.

They did use the word "literature" after all.

I routinely use the term anti-Mormon literature to refer to even the low-brow stuff. I'm sure that I've done so in print, and probably many times.

Anyway, if you want to put much weight on the word literature, I certainly don't think that Grant Palmer or Charles Larson ranks up there with Jane Austen, Dante, or the Beowulf poet.

In anycase, the appeal to feelings is misguided.

I disagree. I think it has a limited but important value, much the way that impressions of people have constrained, fallible, but significant utility. If X strikes me as a cunning slimeball, even when I can't quite put my finger on precisely why, I'm probably going to be better off having no serious involvement with him. And it strikes me as an important question, though only one of several to be asked, whether a worldview is repulsive or deeply attractive. I may reluctantly conclude that a profoundly unattractive worldview (e.g., yours) is true, of course, but understanding the implications of that worldview for my overall orientation to life is a very important part of deciding whether I should adopt it or not. In cases where the evidence is more or less evenly balanced, I favor William James's advice to err on the sunny side of doubt. As I've said before, if liberation from my religious views will make me like some of those I've observed on the so-called "Recovery" board, I'd prefer to spend the few pointless remaining years before I sink into oblivion among the Saints.

[_harmony]

How to know which is which? That's easy. If it's sold in a Deseret bookstore, it's okay. If not, beware.

I doubt that that is true for any serious Mormon reader. It certainly isn't the case in my neighborhood. Nor is it true of my extended family. Nor -- again with the proviso that we need to be talking about actual readers -- does it seem to accurately characterize the Latter-day Saints with whom I grew up in California, nor the Latter-day Saints I've met while traveling (in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Latin America). If you have evidence to support your claim, I would enjoy seeing it.

1. the type of folks you meet in your travels would seem likely to be the same sort of folk you are: educated, erudite, upper middle to upper socio-economic class. They're likely not the average Mormon.

2. the folks in your neighborhood are likely to also be educated, upper middle to upper socio-economic class. Again, not the average Mormon.

3. we're talking about average folks. Folks with a little education, folks who are simply putting one foot in front of the other, folks like the people in my stake and my surrounding stakes. Lower middle to middle class folks who don't have a lot of time or money to spend on books. So they go with what they know has passed the Prophet-test: anything in Deseret Book.

Not everyone is like you and your circle, Dr Peterson. You live in a different world than most members, just like our leaders. You are not the average. You don't even come close to the average. So how can you profess to speak for the average Mormon? How would you ever know what he reads?

[_Tarski]

As I've said before, if liberation from my religious views will make me like some of those I've observed on the so-called "Recovery" board,......

But it wouldn't.

.....I'd prefer to spend the few pointless remaining years before I sink into oblivion among the Saints

You could always choose to sink into oblivion (or ascend to oblivion) in the company of some good folks like Steven Hawking, Carl Sagan.
(Why is oblivion pictured as a place to descend to rather than to ascend to--it isn't really a place anyway)

Anyway, outside of Mormonism being true there remains an infinity of possibilities. Picking a specific elaborately detailed one out of this infinite set of possible cosmic stories may not even be the point of life.

For example, perhaps consciousness is an eternal connected reality in which we participate in a way that if understood would make death seem more like an ascent to a higher Self than descent into "oblivion" (whatever that is).

I should mention that my view of time (inspired by spacetime physics) make death a bit less monstrous.

[Guest]

1. the type of folks you meet in your travels would seem likely to be the same sort of folk you are: educated, erudite, upper middle to upper socio-economic class. They're likely not the average Mormon.

Evidence, please?

My travels have typically taken me to ordinary wards in ordinary stakes in Los Angeles and Centerville and Perth and Hong Kong and Zürich and St. Louis and London and Taipei and Charlotte.

Of course, as I said, we have to be talking about serious readers. If you want to argue, based on your impression of Mormon wheat farmers and plumbers, that Mormons don't read Nietzsche and Kant, I respond that non-Mormon wheat farmers and plumbers don't tend to read Nietzsche and Kant, either. Neither LDS nor non-LDS residents of the slums of Lima devote much attention to Bertrand Russell.

2. the folks in your neighborhood are likely to also be educated, upper middle to upper socio-economic class. Again, not the average Mormon.

That's true about my neighborhood. And their reading habits are just about what I would predict for non-Mormons of comparable socio-economic class. They don't actually read much on Mormonism, whether from Deseret Book or anywhere else. But they've all read The DaVinci Code, Angels and Demons, and the Harry Potter books.

3. we're talking about average folks. Folks with a little education, folks who are simply putting one foot in front of the other, folks like the people in my stake and my surrounding stakes. Lower middle to middle class folks who don't have a lot of time or money to spend on books. So they go with what they know has passed the Prophet-test: anything in Deseret Book.

That casual readers aren't particularly adventurous readers should come as no surprise to anybody.

The question is, are Mormon reading habits much different from analogous non-Mormon reading habits? Who keeps evangelical bookstores in business? Who reads the Left Behind novels, and Frank Peretti? How many mainstream Christians have been buying up Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett and Christopher Hitchens? My bet is, not many. Though their sales numbers are quite good, relative to the overall number of potential American readers Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, and Hitchens actually haven't sold all that many books. Is this because Southern Baptists, marginal Catholics, lukewarm Methodists, and non-church-going Presbyterians are obeying implicit or explicit orders from their denominational hierarchs, or merely because few people read much, and even fewer people read adventurously?

Not everyone is like you and your circle, Dr Peterson. You live in a different world than most members, just like our leaders. You are not the average. You don't even come close to the average. So how can you profess to speak for the average Mormon? How would you ever know what he reads?

My relatives are construction workers, truck drivers, builders, farmers, welders, insurance agents, housewives, engineers, accountants, businessmen.

You know virtually nothing about me. You never have, though you've issued confident declarations about me for many years. Your notion that I live in a protected bubble is pure illusion.

[_cksalmon]

That's a good find, Seth. It definitely confirms what I've read many critics affirm and many TBM's deny: that the Church actively discourages interaction with controversial material.

Don't confuse "controversial material" with "anti-Mormon literature."

The two sets certainly overlap, but they're not identical.

Hi Dan--

My fear is that the percevied overlap among some TBM-LDS approaches something close to 100%.

In my own religious upbringing, I was taught virtually the exact opposite epistemology: Don't trust your feelings at all; they're inherently deceptive. Instead, trust only the Bible.

I've come to realize that both approaches, as given, are wrong. Feelings are more than annoying psychological miscreants to be shunned; "trust only the Bible" must not be construed as "trust only what you're told the Bible teaches," etc.

But the amount of epistemological weight feelings must necessarily carry in the LDS worldview is, to my mind, disproportionate to their limited inherent value as arbiters of truth.

On the other hand, try to convince an EV defender of libertarian freedom that theological determinism (or any other sort, for that matter) is true and you'll be met with outright rejection--a rejection almost entirely motivated by feelings. ?

Best.

CKS

[_Yoda]

Anyway, outside of Mormonism being true there remains an infinity of possibilities.

Tarski, I'm curious. Do you think that it has to be an "all or nothing" proposition?

Does Mormonism have to be all true or all false? Can we not take truths from Mormonism as well as other religions as part of that "infinity of possibilities"?

For example, perhaps consciousness is an eternal connected reality in which we participate in a way that if understood would make death seem more like an assent to a higher Self than decent into "oblivion" (whatever that is).

I should mention that my view of time (inspired by spacetime physics) make death a bit less monstrous.

Interesting view about death.

[_Daniel Peterson]

My fear is that the percevied overlap among some TBM-LDS approaches something close to 100%.

That's probably true for some, just as it is among evangelicals.

Read the letters to the editor section in almost any issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review, and you'll find some angry fundamentalist canceling his or her subscription because an article failed to toe the inerrantist line. "I'm shocked that a Christian magazine would publish such anti-biblical propaganda," he or she will write to the BAR's Jewish editor, Herschel Shanks.

[_Yoda]

I think one of the most shocking moments for me in dealing with "out there" LDS points of view happened when I was attending a Pearl of Great Price class at BYU.

We were discussing the creation story, and the professor got off on a tangent about how God the Father and Heavenly Mother came down to earth and had a little "honeymoon" and that's how Adam and Eve came into being.

I was appalled, and dropped the class.

[_Tarski]

Tarski, I'm curious. Do you think that it has to be an "all or nothing" proposition?

No

Does Mormonism have to be all true or all false? Can we not take truths from Mormonism as well as other religions as part of that "infinity of possibilities"?

Sure. The trick is to figure out what is likely true. I have a problem with just accepting supernaturalistic ideas based on feeling and intuition and without down to earth, objective, intersubjectively available, evidence. So that knocks out a lot of stuff in Mormonism unless one wants to just silently take a lot of it as not literally true but rather a kind of edifying fiction--like Tolkien's world.