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A few days ago, I published a post here in which I replied to the silly atheist slogan \u201cScience flies men to the moon. Religion flies planes into buildings.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0 Responding to my response, an occasional participant on the Peterson Obsession Board who does not appear to be as reflexively hostile to theism as many of the others there \u2014 an (American?) physicist teaching in Germany who has never been a Latter-day Saint \u2014 offered an alternative slogan: \u00a0\u201cReligion builds hospitals. \u00a0Science builds hydrogen bombs.\u201d \u00a0Given his profession as a physicist and the recent box office success of the biographical film Oppenheimer<\/em>, it\u2019s a fairly obvious riposte. \u00a0And it\u2019s certainly at least as \u201ctrue\u201d (which is to say, at least as much of a caricature and very nearly as false) as the first one.<\/p>\n However, one of the regulars on the Obsession Board quickly answered that the revised slogan isn\u2019t really available to Latter-day Saints, since the (greedy, unfeeling, uncharitable) Church doesn\u2019t build<\/em> hospitals.<\/p>\n But this is deeply misleading. \u00a0As the Wikipedia article on \u201cIntermountain Health\u201d explains, \u201cIntermountain Health [initially \u201cIntermountain Healthcare\u201d] was founded on April 1, 1975, after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a> donated fifteen hospitals, as a system, to what would become Intermountain Health.\u201d \u00a0Moreover, the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u2122 positively overflows with examples of the Church not only providing humanitarian aid around the globe but donating cash and medical equipment and the like to clinics in impoverished areas. \u00a0I\u2019ve been posting account after account after account here of such donations.<\/p>\n In a curiously related matter, I read a post online at another location in which a critic blamed Utah\u2019s high rates of obesity and diabetes on Latter-day Saint culture. \u00a0Others immediately joined the chorus of condemnation. \u00a0So l looked up data, by state, on obesity<\/a> (also here<\/a>, where Utah ranked thirty-seventh of the fifty states) and diabetes<\/a>.<\/p>\n My question is whether\u00a0the folks who make such allegations ever consult anything, before they post, beside their burning hostility toward the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I\u2019m always astounded when I see confident declarations that there simply were no Book of Mormon plates. \u00a0One might imagine, given the consistent testimony of multiple, seemingly credible eyewitnesses to the literal, tangible, physical existence of those plates, that folks who flatly deny that existence would want to cite some evidence or present some kind of an argument.<\/p>\n Although I judge them to be manifestly losing<\/em> arguments, I can easily understand those who want to contend that all of the seventeen or eighteen witnesses (or more) who claim to have seen, hefted, and\/or handled the plates were either hallucinating or lying. \u00a0But one should probably advance some evidence and an argument to that effect, if one cares at all about being taken seriously. \u00a0I can also imagine arguing that there were plates, but that they were in some sense bogus<\/em>. \u00a0In such a case too, though, one should probably at least nod in the direction of evidence and rational argument.<\/p>\n But to simply, complacently, announce \u2014 without even the slightest attempt to justify the assertion \u2014 that Joseph Smith never possessed any actual plates of any kind? \u00a0That\u2019s not worthy of being taken seriously. \u00a0It\u2019s not a serious position.<\/p>\n In response, I offer the relevant historical works of Richard Lloyd Anderson as a starter (notably Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses<\/em><\/a>), as well as the films Witnesses<\/em><\/a> and Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon<\/a>, the Interpreter Foundation\u2019s series of Insights videos<\/a>, and the Witnesses of the Book of Mormon<\/em> website<\/a>. \u00a0After that, I can point to still more.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Let\u2019s assume, for the moment and for purposes of discussion, that absolutely every accusation made against Tim Ballard and Operation Underground Railroad is true, even the most lurid ones. \u00a0(I have no particular reason, personally, to believe that any<\/em> of the accusations is true, but I could easily be wrong.)<\/p>\n Over on the Peterson Obsession Board, my Malevolent Stalker is suggesting that I resign from my role in the Interpreter Foundation and with the Foundation\u2019s Six Days in August<\/em> film project because of the cloud that my close association with OUR and Tim Ballard has put them under. \u00a0My close association? \u00a0Somebody over there even described us as \u201cclose friends.\u201d<\/p>\n But, so far as I\u2019m aware, I\u2019ve never met<\/em> Tim Ballard nor even corresponded with him or spoken with him. \u00a0I read about OUR\u2019s efforts to liberate children from sexual servitude, thought it an exceptionally noble cause, decided to donate money to support it, and decided to invite others to do so. \u00a0That\u2019s it. \u00a0(Also at about that time, I did the same with respect to what is now called the Bountiful Children\u2019s Foundation<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Baseless suggestions that I was attracted to OUR precisely because<\/em> of its allegedly abusive and corrupt character \u2014 relatively recent charges that are, as yet, quite undemonstrated \u2014 are too contemptible to merit serious comment.<\/p>\n Another charge that is being leveled on the Obsession Board claims that the alleged actions of Tim Ballard are indicative of the evils done by religion. \u00a0To which I respond, Really? \u00a0Seriously? \u00a0In the cases found in the illustrious Hitchens File<\/em>\u2122, the actions described are motivated by religious belief and, quite commonly, sponsored and\/or organized by a religious organization. \u00a0Can anybody seriously maintain that Tim Ballard became too physically intimate with women other than his wife (as some have charged, though thus far over his denials and without demonstrating it to be true, and without indictment, let alone conviction) in accordance with the teachings of his Church rather than in direct opposition to them?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n But let\u2019s get back to some relatively recent materials from the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u2122:<\/p>\n That should do for now to give at least some slight sense of the horrors inflicted upon humankind by religions and religious people. \u00a0When will it ever end?<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Posted from Park City, Utah<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 A few days ago, I published a post here in which I replied to the silly atheist slogan \u201cScience flies men to the moon. Religion flies planes into buildings.\u201d\u00a0 Responding to my response, an occasional participant on the Peterson Obsession Board who does not appear to be as reflexively hostile to theism as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":32804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2905,788,36653,743,36650,3358],"class_list":["post-101948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-latter-day-saint","tag-mormon","tag-operation-underground-railroad","tag-religion","tag-tim-ballard","tag-violence"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a>
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