08AR13-42
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Apologia Report 13:42
November 28, 2008
Subject: Backlash against bestseller instructive for relativists
In this issue:
MORMONISM - further evidence of history avoided by LDS leaders
OCCULT, GENERAL - how skeptics explain paranormal belief
POP SPIRITUALITY - bestselling Eat, Pray, Love offensive to many outside America
WORD-FAITH MOVEMENT - ugly developments in Kyrgyzstan
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MORMONISM
Historical accuracy has long been a problem for devout Mormons who persistently ask important questions. Ronald V. Huggins laments that "It is very much the current sensibility and temperament among historians to write sympathetically about historical religious figures, giving them the benefit of the doubt wherever possible." He emphasizes this consistently in his lengthy three-part biographical essay "Jerald Tanner's Quest for Truth," which concludes with the Nov '08 issue of the Salt Lake City Messenger.
Huggins writes that a "sensibility that Mormons have been able to exploit in the larger world of historical publishing relates to historical distortion in the name of courtesy." Exhibit A: the case of non-Mormon historian Robert V. Remini, author of the Penguin Life Series biography of Joseph Smith [4]. At the 2002 Sunstone Symposium, Huggins asked Remini "if he would treat a figure who had no contemporary followers, as for example the nineteenth-century free-love communist John Humphrey Noyes, differently than he treated Joseph Smith, who of course still does have followers." Remini answered, stunningly, that "he would never write anything that would offend Smith's present-day followers."
Thus, Remini's claim that "As a historian I have tried to be as objective as possible in narrating [Joseph Smith's] life and work" rings hollow, "as for example when he adopts uncritically 1820 as the date of the First Vision" (the divine visitation which is said to have launched the church).
Elsewhere in this issue of the Messenger, Huggins emphasizes the problems of LDS history as in his review of Massacre at Mountain Meadows: An American Tragedy, by Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley and Glen M. Leonard [5]. In contrast with attempts by the book's authors to downplay the church's role in the Mountain Meadows, Huggins offers striking *culture of violence* examples among Mormons - including leaders - both before and after the massacre.
Most importantly, Huggins demonstrates that "the greatest enemy to good Mormon history will continue to be the LDS institution itself." He reports on the scandalous attempts of LDS leaders to cover up historical documents that reflect poorly on the Church's history - and that Turley was directly involved.
In 2002, Turley told the Salt Lake Tribune that "we should be able to write fair accurate Mormon history ... we are not concerned about protecting ... the church's image. The events are far enough away, it's time to let the chips fall where they may." But Huggins presents a devastating argument, concluding that "a book on the Mountain Meadows massacre written by historians as beholden to the LDS Church as the three authors, could not be trusted no matter who published it" - in this case, Oxford University Press.
<www.utlm.org/newsletters/no111.htm>
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OCCULT, GENERAL
"Why We Believe: Belief in the paranormal reflects normal brain activity carried to an extreme" by Sharon Begley -- presented as a "Science" feature, this article provides as comprehensive a litany of reasons for belief (in general) currently trotted out by today's skeptics as you are likely to find.
To grab your attention, Begley leads with the story of how a doctor at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Group in California (and former medical director for Unocal 76) came to accept that he was the reincarnation of American founding father John Adams.
Begley reports that "According to periodic surveys by Gallup and other pollsters, fully 90 percent of Americans say they have experienced [paranormal events] or believe they exist. ...
"[A] growing number of researchers, in fields such as evolutionary psychology and neurobiology, are taking such beliefs seriously in one important sense: as a window into the workings of the human mind. The studies are an outgrowth of research on religious faith, a (nearly) human universal, and are turning out to be useful for explaining fringe beliefs, too. The emerging consensus is that belief in the supernatural seems to arise from the same mental processes that underlie everyday reasoning and perception."
The entertainment media certainly understand that all things paranormal are the current rage: "psychics and the paranormal seem to be rivaling reality stars for TV hegemony ('Medium,' 'Psychic Kids,' 'Lost' and the new 'Fringe' and 'Eleventh Hour'). ...
"As science replaces the supernatural with the natural, explaining everything from thunder and lightning to the formation of planets, many people seek another source of mystery and wonder in the world. People can get that from belief in several paranormal phenomena, but none more so than thinking they were abducted by aliens. ...
"Some 40 percent of Americans believe it's possible that aliens have grabbed some of us, polls show, compared with 25 percent in the 1980s. What makes abductees stand out is something so common, it's a wonder there aren't more of them: an inability to think scientifically. ...
"In a study published in February, scientists induced feelings of loneliness in people by telling them that a personality questionnaire they filled out revealed that, by middle age, they would have few friends and be socially isolated. After this ruse, participants were more likely to say they believed in ghosts, angels, the Devil, miracles, curses and God than were participants who were told their future held many friendships, found Nicholas Epley, of the University of Chicago, and colleagues."
Begley covers the reasons that the brain plays tricks that result in surprising beliefs. For example, "Thanks to the psychological glitch called confirmatory bias, the mind better recalls events and experiences that validate what we believe than those that refute those beliefs." Newsweek, Nov 3 '08, pp56-60. <www.newsweek.com/id/165678>
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POP SPIRITUALITY
"Having It All" is the title of Christine McCarthy McMorris's review of the bestselling Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert [6]. A summary reports: "Spirituality lite inspires love and hate on a global scale." The book has done well, selling "5 million copies in 30 languages, spent 85 weeks (and counting) on the New York Times best seller list for non-fiction paperbacks, and propelled [Gilbert] to Time's 2008 list of the Most Influential People. ...
"Cue the backlash.
"Writing in the online India Today May 22, 2007 [1], Shampa Dhar-Kamath sniffed that Gilbert claimed to get from Hinduism and yoga what real devotees believe takes more than a lifetime. Meditate for four months in an ashram in Mumbai and 'voila, kundalini shakti is hers.'
"In a December 23 New York Post commentary entitled 'Eat, Pray, Loathe' [2], Maureen Callahan wrote that what she found 'most disturbing' was Gilbert's typically Western 'fetishization of Eastern thought and culture.' No fan of New Age spirituality, Callahan asked, 'Why is it that women, in overwhelming numbers, are now indulging in this silliness?' Her answer? Gilbert's shortcuts to nirvana gave them 'a license to abandon all critical thinking.'"
The endemic shallow, self-absorbed approach to being "spiritual, not religious," seems universally repugnant. "To author Nyla Matuk, writing in the Toronto Globe and Mail April 19 [3] what distressed her most was Gilbert's portrayal of her search 'as a set of consumer choices.'" Religion in the News, Fall '08, pp19, 23. <www.tinyurl.com/5rcdqk>
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WORD-FAITH MOVEMENT
The November 2008 Centers for Apologetics Research Prayer Update reports on the impact of the Word-Faith movement in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan. The movement has resulted in the "Church of Jesus Christ," becoming "the largest Protestant denomination in the country. ...
"In recent years the movement has begun to implode" according to the assessment of Jed Gourley, a Calvary Chapel leader based in Bishkek. Problems include the lack of accountability combined with the all-too-common tandem failure, an abuse of authority. <www.thecenters.org/ministryupdate_102808.aspx>
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Sources, Digital:
1 - <www.tinyurl.com/5hqsqy>
2 - <www.tinyurl.com/6b4rz5>
3 - <www.tinyurl.com/566geh>
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Sources, Monographs:
4 - Joseph Smith, by Robert V. Remini (Viking, 2002, hardcover, 208 pages)
<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067003083X/apologiareport>
5 - Massacre at Mountain Meadows: AnÊAmericanÊTragedy, by Ronald W. Walker, Richard E. Turley and Glen M. Leonard (Oxford Univ Prs, 2008, hardcover, 448 pages)
<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195160347/apologiareport>
6 - Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, by Elizabeth Gilbert (Penguin, 2007, paperback, 352 pages)
<www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0143038419/apologiareport>
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