For example, Mark Twain had this to say in 1890 about the Book of Mormon:
Tad Callister knows all of this, but he also knows that by using these caricatures of critical arguments, he can then try to slay that straw man to promote faith among the members reading this and wanting to be assured there that the critics are wrong. This is a theory that apologists like to use to marginalize critics because the Spaulding theory is effectively a conspiracy theory based on old interviews with witnesses who claimed Joseph directly copied an old Spaulding manuscript that was stolen from the print shop, which makes critics look like they are grasping at straws to prove the Book of Mormon a 19th century work.īut the problem is that many initial arguments about the Book of Mormon focused on how heavily it relied on the Bible along with the 19th century ideas that Joseph Smith would have been familiar with. Were there people who believed in the Spaulding manuscript theory? Sure, and there are ex-Mormons today that even bring it up from time to time, but no serious critics that I know of give it any weight whatsoever. You can see how Callister immediately tries to poison the well here by focusing on critical arguments that not only aren't made by serious scholars now, but ignoring the many valid arguments that have been made against the Book of Mormon's and its truth claims since it was published. Why the flip-flop? Because all the previous explanations for a man-made book had failed." Now, all of a sudden Joseph is a skilled, creative writer with genius intellect. This, of course, is a total flip-flop, a 180-degree reversal from the original argument that Joseph was incapable, too ignorant to write such a book. So, the current argument being made is that Joseph Smith was a creative genius who read numerous books, such as “View of the Hebrews” and “The Late War Between the United States and Great Britain” and then copied ideas and stories from them. These arguments, however, have been so thoroughly discredited that they are seldom mentioned anymore. Later, arguments arose that Joseph copied it from the Solomon Spaulding Manuscript or that he suffered from a mental disorder that somehow endowed him, an untrained writer, with superior writing skills. The initial argument by the critics that the Book of Mormon was man-made was based on the premise that Joseph Smith was too unlearned and “ignorant” to write such a comprehensive work and therefore someone allegedly much more intelligent than he, such as Sidney Rigdon or Oliver Cowdery, must have authored it. A natural question that arises at some point is whether or not this book is man-made or God-given. "This year we will be studying the Book of Mormon as part of the “Come, Follow Me” curriculum. For the purposes of looking at this article, I just want to point out where Callister purposefully misstates the critical position in order to slay that defenseless straw man he creates. Now before we get into the article, I do want to note that on this site we tend not to use or cite "logical fallacies" much at all because they are overused by many apologists as well as frequently misused in order to make a point seem stronger to their readers than it actually is. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man.""
Talk on joseph smith by tad r callister free#
For those who are interested, there's a great podcast from Radio Free Mormon on Tad Callister's presentation from last August as well.Ī very basic summary from Wikipedia is that "a straw man is a form of argument and an informal fallacy based on giving the impression of refuting an opponent's argument, while actually refuting an argument that was not presented by that opponent. When his book was released, many people online noted how Callister used straw man arguments in order make his case in a way that avoided the real issues, and this article is a perfect example of how he does it.
Callister: The Book of Mormon - man-made or God-given?" which is written by Tad Callister.įor those who don't know, Elder Callister recently wrote a book that attempts to defend the Book of Mormon as a true historical work called A Case For the Book of Mormon. On January 19, 2020, the church posted an article on their official site titled " Elder Tad R.
0 kommentar(er)
