How one ranks this is of course somewhat subjective. I tend to see slavery and a lot of justification of egregious violence and huge limits on what the majority of people were allowed to do as much worse than anything around today.

Now individual pockets may well have been more moral. But then that’s true today as well. How you compare those pockets is difficult to know. We just have to be careful not to make an apples to oranges comparison. i.e. compare one pocket of people in the past to the whole nation today.

In your point about ethical development since the 19th century, I think it is important to remember that while we have shed many of the sins of those that came before us, we do things now that they would almost certainly view as unethical and completely immoral.

It is also likely that we have blind spots of our own. We condemn racism, sexism, etc., but I am sure that future generations in future centuries will have ample cause to criticize our ethics as well. Point being, I guess, is that I don’t think we are necessarily all that more “ethically developed” than our ancestors.

http://www.mormonstudiespodcast.com/003-david-bokovoy-multi-volume-series-on-the-hebrew-bible-historicity-and-the-nature-of-scripture/

For those interested, as soon as I get a few FTP issues resolved I’ll post my podcast interview with David Bokovoy on mormonstudiespodcast.com. Historicity and the nature of scripture is among the topics we discuss.

My best,

Brent

I think this is a good and important point. I really dislike the term “literalist” since in general none of the sides are being literalist. We really need to unpack what’s going on in interpretation. What sometimes gets called “literalist” is just more a naive exegesis that assumes the text is simple can can be interpreted correctly and fully by a regular reading in suburban 2015 American context. But that’s not literalism since most such readers will recognize lots of allegory, metaphor and so forth.

I know that sounds pedantic but it’s an important point to make since the real issue tends to be about context and not literalism.

That said, I think the ethical complaint is important and I agree is a much bigger issue than historicism or the like. I think it tends to get overlooked given the way most of the intellectual debates develop.

The reality is that there is a lot of ethical development historically. Especially since the industrial revolution – especially during the 19th century, the assembly line manufacturing revolution in the 20th century, and the information revolution in the late 20th century. It’s not just looking at 19th century Mormonism with practices we now find unethical. Nor is it that the Church (and all churches for that matter) tend to develop ethically along with society and largely adopt these ethics to reinterpret its own practices. It’s that looking at the classic ancient texts we find societies massively unethical and the things focused in within their own ethical commands as missing important ethical directives. The typical apologetics on these issues (such as the Law of Moses being necessary to get the Israelites out of a pagan society that saw sacrifice of babies as ethical) seems somewhat hard to accept to the modern mind. It implied not just a strong limit in God’s power (he couldn’t persuade the Israelites better?). Rather the problem is that even if the people didn’t live the ethical commands, shouldn’t God have put them on paper to aid their development. i.e. why no comment on racism or sexisms or even stronger attacks on slavery in the Bible?

I think there are apologetic answers for this, but they don’t get around the problem that if religion is primarily about ethics, their texts seems largely irrelevant for the 21st century and secular ethics offers more. Now I personally think the solution to this quandary is that religion isn’t primarily about ethics except in a secondary way. But I do agree that for most people the real issue is the practical relevance of religion and not these historicist debates.

My point is simply (pun intended – what can I say?) that when we talk about simplicity we have to ask, simple in terms of what formulation. And by injecting simplicity in terms of parallels rather than simply events you’ve made a decision that goes beyond simplicity. As I said that’s completely fine. We just need to be clear that what we’re doing is making a decision that goes beyond simplicity. I *personally* don’t find parallelitus terribly persuasive – whether it be the Nibley type or secularists comparing to other 19th century events. From my perspective the issue isn’t whether others had complexities that we judge false but the events we’re trying to deal with. But I fully recognize there’s not a way to make the historical arguments objective in any strong sense. Our personal biases are going to strongly affect what we count as evidence and the weights we give to those evidences. I just think calling one simple and the other not a bit more complex than you assert.

That’s what I have a problem with.

“Civility” is a word used to exclude viewpoints, and I dislike it, particularly in the vague form it so often takes. In effect and selective application it limits the scale, particularly since nothing is less traditionally civil than categorically condemning another person’s view through name-calling.

But since, unlike binary categorical enforcement of orthodoxy, this approach has no openly hard, identifiable rules, true factors of discrimination can obtain plausible deniability. This is why I feel it is more dishonest than the first, more open, method.

This kind of categorical prohibition is often evidenced by someone saying another person’s views are fine, but that her or his actions are the problem: actions derive from belief, so to deny the one is to repress the other.

It is far better, I feel, to openly admit that some beliefs are prohibited, and that the scale is there to identify orthodoxy.

What view is closer to 0 (or 10?) than the view that there were no plates, the Book of Mormon was a 19th Century invention created with deceptive intent, and that the reported events in the Book are fiction?

What view is closer to 10 (or 0?) than the view that an angel appeared to Joseph, consistent with the account in JS-H, the translation was word-for-word with “word/morpheme/phoneme-level agreement between modern English text and pre-modern base text”, and that the Book of Mormon describes everything that happened in the Americas from 600 BC to 410 AD?

Any scale that does not include all possible opinions, I feel, fails in the purpose of a scale. I think all good scales include both 0 and 10 on them.

I don’t think the issue if historicity can be separated from the issue of the type of revelation and thinking that occurs today. Pressure builds on the more literalist interpretations because it is out of step with BOTH secular and LDS practices of today. There are no new ancient scriptures being found and very little difference between lds leaders teaching and general good advice from traditional religion. The blandness is strikingly different from the historical references. That is why some active people have doubts.

As Steve points out there is often a double standard where religious fervor and faith healing of the nonLDS is treated different than LDS claims.

Now as for getting kicked out. It all sounds a bit like “but our crap doesn’t still stink.”

“Apologetics for Mormonism seems to stop at the point of applying their logic that they appeal to in order to explain Joseph Smith and the Books of Mormon and Abraham to wider religious phenomena.”

I don’t really have any reason to “explain founders of other religions who claimed to produce other seemingly complex texts by the hand of God,” because … well, I’m Mormon. Mormon apologists don’t necessarily have any reason to do that because, well, they’re Mormon apologists, as opposed to being Catholic apologists, or Protestant apologists, et cetera. I’ll leave Catholic apologetics to Catholics, and apologetics of other religions to their respective adherents.

On the other hand, if someone finds inspiration to better his life through studying the Quran and adhering to the dictates of Islam, more power to him. I believe that, spiritually speaking, God gives good fruit, bread, and fish to anyone who asks Him sincerely, period. I don’t believe God gives me fruit while giving adherents to other religious traditions thorns and thistles; that He gives me bread while giving them stones; or that He gives me fish while giving them serpents. I don’t even believe God gives me “real” fruit while giving them something that seems like fruit but is, in fact, kinda thorny and thistly; that he gives me “real” bread while giving them something that seems like bread but is, in fact, kinda stony; or that He gives me “real” fish while giving them something that seems like fish but is, in fact, kinda serpenty. Good fruit is fruit, bread is bread, and fish is fish, period. ;

And sound apologetics doesn’t prove Mormonism; it doesn’t try to. Rather, its aim is to provide evidence and room for belief. In the end, we’re all our own triers of fact who decide on our own rules of evidence, what evidence those rules permit us to accept and what evidence those rules require us to reject, how much weight we will give to any particular piece of evidence we decide to accept, and so on. As Farrer said, while argument doesn’t create conviction, lack of it destroys belief. In the end, though, I’m a faithful Mormon (or try to be) because of a spiritual witness, and not because of any particular evidence in favor of the truth claims of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

You can say that I’m playing tennis with the net down because I don’t refuse to exclude the supernatural from the equation. I won’t lose any sleep over it. ;-D