{"id":35382,"date":"2016-07-26T11:55:23","date_gmt":"2016-07-26T17:55:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=35382"},"modified":"2016-07-26T12:01:14","modified_gmt":"2016-07-26T18:01:14","slug":"answering-one-of-the-silliest-arguments-against-the-book-of-mormon-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2016\/07\/answering-one-of-the-silliest-arguments-against-the-book-of-mormon-ever.html","title":{"rendered":"“Answering one of the silliest arguments against the Book of Mormon Ever”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Dublin,<\/a>
St. Saviour\u2019s Church, Dublin
(Wikimeda CC photo by Andreas F. Borchert)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

In my experience, theistic anti-Mormonism is largely (though not entirely) a conservative Protestant or evangelical enterprise. \u00a0(Secularist anti-Mormonism is increasingly visible and influential, but it\u2019s another story completely.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although there is some Catholic anti-Mormon activity \u2014 heck, I\u2019ve even seen a Muslim<\/em> anti-Mormon pamphlet \u2014 Protestants are, by and large, the folks who set up \u201cministries,\u201d publish newsletters, broadcast radio shows, travel on the lecture\u00a0circuit, churn out pamphlets, teach divinity school\u00a0classes, produce videos, hold public seminars, offer online courses, organize picket lines, air television shows, sponsor \u201cmission trips,\u201d author books, and run a myriad of websites aimed at criticizing Mormonism, and who, in a comparatively small but surprising number of cases, earn their livings by attacking the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thus, it\u2019s not unexpected, given\u00a0all their undertakings, that\u00a0fundamentalist and evangelical Protestants have\u00a0come up with most\u00a0of the stupidest<\/em>\u00a0arguments against Mormon beliefs<\/a>. \u00a0(At some point, I\u2019ll probably share an example or two of what I mean.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although the Muslim pamphlet that I once saw was fairly unimpressive, it at least attempted to mount a sober argument, and the few Catholic criticisms that I\u2019ve seen have always been at least a cut above many evangelical attacks. \u00a0Sometimes, in fact, they\u2019ve even been fairly interesting<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

But our Irish friend Robert Boylan<\/a>, who might understandably be more attentive\u00a0to Catholic criticisms of Mormonism because of his location near Dublin, has located what surely has to rank\u00a0as one of the most obviously laughable anti-Mormon arguments that I\u2019ve ever seen, and it\u2019s from a Catholic<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

http:\/\/scripturalmormonism.blogspot.com\/2016\/07\/answering-one-of-silliest-arguments.html<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019m grateful to him for pointing it out. \u00a0I\u2019ve kept something of a mental list of such particularly ridiculous arguments since the day on my mission in Switzerland when, in a small bookstore in the Berner Oberland, I ran across the claim of a nineteenth century woman to have escaped from white slavery in a Mormon harem by leaping from a western window of the Salt Lake Temple into the Great Salt Lake and swimming to freedom. \u00a0I had heard<\/em> about such stories, but had always assumed that they were joking exaggerations. \u00a0However, there it was\u00a0. . . in a serious book \u2014 well,\u00a0from its looks and its tone, it was intended to be\u00a0taken<\/em>\u00a0seriously\u00a0\u2014 designed to rebut the claims of Mormonism and to cast doubt on the integrity of Mormons<\/a>. \u00a0(I regret that I no longer remember the woman\u2019s name. \u00a0Presumably, she went on to set all sorts of track and field records; anybody capable of\u00a0a standing broad jump of at least twenty miles, even if she did<\/em> have the advantage of leaping from an upper window, would have been \u2014 to put it mildly \u2014 an athlete to reckon with.)<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Incidentally, the Cowdrey, Davis, and Scales book to which Brother Boylan refers was pretty funny even back when it was published in 1977, both because it was very bad and because Wayne Cowdrey was claiming to be a descendent of Oliver Cowdery. \u00a0(He explained the difference in the spellings of their names \u2014 Cowdrey<\/span><\/em> versus Cowdery<\/span><\/em> \u2014 as a merely family variant that was without significance.) \u00a0Alas, though, Oliver Cowdery had only one child, a daughter. \u00a0Had she married, she would almost certainly have taken the name of her husband, which presumably would have been neither Cowdery<\/em> nor Cowdrey<\/em>. \u00a0But she died unmarried, and she never had children. \u00a0Which is to say that, if Wayne Cowdery was a descendent of Oliver Cowdery, it must have been through some absolutely unaccountable miracle.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

And this was absolutely fitting, because the Cowdrey, Davis, and Scales book was pushed and publicized by the late \u201cDr.\u201d Walter R. Martin, a then-famous evangelical Protestant countercult impresario who had built up a very large ministry (headquartered only a relatively short drive from where I\u2019m writing) based not only on his own charisma but, among other things, on his possession of a bogus doctorate and on\u00a0a demonstrably\u00a0false claim of direct descent from Brigham Young.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Posted from Newport Beach, California<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 In my experience, theistic anti-Mormonism is largely (though not entirely) a conservative Protestant or evangelical enterprise. \u00a0(Secularist anti-Mormonism is increasingly visible and influential, but it\u2019s another story completely.) \u00a0 Although there is some Catholic anti-Mormon activity \u2014 heck, I\u2019ve even seen a Muslim anti-Mormon pamphlet \u2014 Protestants are, by and large, the folks […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n"Answering one of the silliest arguments against the Book of Mormon Ever"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    In my experience, theistic anti-Mormonism is largely (though not entirely) a conservative Protestant 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