Of course, I only defend Mormonism because I’m a mercenary hack.

Twice within the past few days, in the comments sections of two Utah newspapers in two distinct northern Utah cities, I’ve read the claim that I earn my living by defending The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

This is false.

I earn my living as a professor of Islamic studies and Arabic.  This term, I’m teaching three classes, which is pretty much the standard teaching load in my department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages.  They are “Introduction to the Religion of Islam,” “Introduction to the Humanities of Islam,” and “The Qur’an in Arabic.”  You can read the course numbers — most easily, of course, if you enlarge the photo accompanying this entry — on the teaching schedule posted outside my office door and reproduced above.  I also chaired a department rank and status committee that just completed and reported on its work this past Friday afternoon.

However, on the basis of that false claim, one commenter flatly stated, while the other commenter insinuated, that what I write isn’t to be trusted.  I’m a mercenary, you see.  I’m in it for the money.

But even if the Church were paying me to advocate my religious beliefs, the proper way to test what I write and what I say would be by the adequacy of my evidence and the soundness of my logic.  Declaring that I can’t be trusted because I’m paid, or because I’m a Mormon, or because I’m a white male, or because I teach at BYU is an ad hominem irrelevancy — no different, really, from saying that somebody’s theories on physics can’t be trusted because he’s a Jew, or that women aren’t rational enough to be allowed to vote.

The charge will never die, of course.  Such fallacious reasoning is quicker and easier to post than marshaling actual evidence and formulating logically sound arguments would be.