{"id":36360,"date":"2016-09-03T22:47:14","date_gmt":"2016-09-04T04:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=36360"},"modified":"2016-09-03T22:47:14","modified_gmt":"2016-09-04T04:47:14","slug":"meridian-magazine-why-i-cant-manage-to-disbelieve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2016\/09\/meridian-magazine-why-i-cant-manage-to-disbelieve.html","title":{"rendered":"Meridian Magazine:  &#8220;Why I Can&#8217;t Manage to Disbelieve&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_36361\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-36361\" style=\"width: 596px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/09\/Smith_frame_home_1.jpg\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-36361\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-36361\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2016\/09\/Smith_frame_home_1-1024x682.jpg\" alt=\"JS Sr. family home near Palmyra\" width=\"596\" height=\"397\"><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-36361\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Joseph Smith Sr. family\u2019s frame home in Manchester, New York<br>(Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I hadn\u2019t realized that this article was up (or that it was coming):<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ldsmag.com\/why-i-cant-manage-to-disbelieve\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">http:\/\/ldsmag.com\/why-i-cant-manage-to-disbelieve\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The critical responses that I\u2019ve seen to my FairMormon remarks have been fairly predictable. \u00a0One such response simply declines to engage what I said, on the grounds that I\u2019m simply irrational (or some such thing). \u00a0Another asserts that unbelievers are not obliged\u00a0to propose a counterexplanation for the Book of Mormon.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>I understand that. \u00a0Certainly, the typical <a href='https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/library\/buddhism' target='_blank'>Buddhist<\/a> in Sri Lanka, who has probably never even <em>heard<\/em> of <a href='https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/library\/mormonism' target='_blank'>Mormonism<\/a>, has no strong obligation to account for the book. \u00a0Nor does an apathetic and uncurious person who simply dismisses the book, knows essentially nothing about it, and has little or nothing to say about it.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>But people who insistently\u00a0assert\u00a0the falsehood of the Book of Mormon do, I think, have such an obligation. \u00a0At least to some substantial degree. \u00a0Or, to put it another way, if they insist that the book is the product of either hallucination or fraud, they haven\u2019t fully fulfilled their intellectual responsibility\u00a0on the topic until they explain\u00a0<em>how<\/em> fraud or hallucination produced it. \u00a0Its very existence poses a challenge.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 \u00a0 I hadn\u2019t realized that this article was up (or that it was coming): \u00a0 http:\/\/ldsmag.com\/why-i-cant-manage-to-disbelieve\/ \u00a0 The critical responses that I\u2019ve seen to my FairMormon remarks have been fairly predictable. \u00a0One such response simply declines to engage what I said, on the grounds that I\u2019m simply irrational (or some such thing). \u00a0Another asserts [&hellip;]<\/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-36360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Meridian Magazine: &quot;Why I Can&#039;t Manage to Disbelieve&quot;<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"&nbsp; 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