LDS FAIR Apologetics - Anyone seen this before?

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I am in the midst of an ongoing conversation with a Mormon friend of mine who has brought up several issues relating to the Catholic church. He mentioned that there is an apologetics department at BYU, so I quickly did a search for “LDS Apologetics” and came across the following website: fairlds.org/

I was wondering if anyone has added to any of the conversations in the forums. If not, I thought this might be a helpful link for those who are trying to get a better understanding of the Mormon church in order to better defend the Catholic faith. 👍
 
Mormons quote from this site a lot. I have been to the site many times. It is pretty weak apologetics. It is not their fault, their subject is a weak subject. They have some pretty odd conjectures and hypothesis for many of the troubling LDS issues. Most of their apologetics have been proven incorrect.
 
zaffiroborant said:
This used to be FARMS right?
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FARMS is a subsidiary of the Maxwell Institute. A year or so ago the consolidated a lot of their scholarly efforts into a single entity, but FARMS is still a discrete unit within, having its own organization and its own publications.

SirThomasMore is right to say that they have pretty weak apologetics, but that does not mean it isn’t tricky. I have participated on their discussion board for ages, and they can be very hard nuts to crack. I’m not going to go into all the details, but I would advise no one to participate in their forums or without first doing a good study of their apologetics as well as a lot of reading in Catholic literature on the same topics. You must be armed in advance and able to control to conversations, or they will drown you in a deluge of arguments - the sheer volume of claims you must know how to refute is daunting, even when the actual arguments are terrible.
 
soren1 said:
FARMS is a subsidiary of the Maxwell Institute. A year or so ago the consolidated a lot of their scholarly efforts into a single entity, but FARMS is still a discrete unit within, having its own organization and its own publications.

SirThomasMore is right to say that they have pretty weak apologetics, but that does not mean it isn’t tricky. I have participated on their discussion board for ages, and they can be very hard nuts to crack. I’m not going to go into all the details, but I would advise no one to participate in their forums or without first doing a good study of their apologetics as well as a lot of reading in Catholic literature on the same topics. You must be armed in advance and able to control to conversations, or they will drown you in a deluge of arguments - the sheer volume of claims you must know how to refute is daunting, even when the actual arguments are terrible.
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It’s a challenge to post over there and I agree that you need have a firm understanding of your own Catholic faith.

I’m glad you stop by over there on occasions soren. I haven’t seen you over there lately. Or have you been banned?
 
How can you have Apologetics with so much evidence that the church is all false to begin with?
 
blueadept said:
It’s a challenge to post over there and I agree that you need have a firm understanding of your own Catholic faith.

I’m glad you stop by over there on occasions soren. I haven’t seen you over there lately. Or have you been banned?
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Thanks, blueadept, I appreciate your contributions there too. No, I haven’t been banned; in fact they promoted me to “pundit,” for whatever that’s worth. The reason I haven’t been posting has more to do with time than with interest. I am doing PhD work now, and it is all-consuming. Also, I’ve been giving more attention to responding to atheism of late. Plus my kids are bigger. The reason I have switched to Catholic Answers for now is also for reasons of time. There are fewer Mormons to respond to here, so I don’t have to field a half-dozen rebuttals to my posts. This leaves me with more time for all that other stuff.
 
TikiTokiguy said:
How can you have Apologetics with so much evidence that the church is all false to begin with?
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One would have to step out of their Catholic thought and realize that LDS believe in an Apostasy and that there was a need for Joseph Smith to “restore” the priesthood keys. It’s not your typical protestant disagreements of the RCC. They have a growing Apologetics group and since they do send many missionaries into the field, they don’t arm them with nothing to explain their faith.

The missionaries I have the most fun with though, are ones that use to be Catholics. When I question them about their previous faith, I never seem to be impressed with their knowledge of it. I enjoy correcting the folks at the LDS apologetics site about misconceptions about the RCC as well.
 
TikiTokiguy said:
How can you have Apologetics with so much evidence that the church is all false to begin with?
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That is why they need apologetics. One costly error that people who talk to Mormons often make is to assume that because their teachings are so transparently false that they cannot defended. In reality, most Mormons are quite confident that every objection ever made to Mormonism has been refuted at some point in their apologetic literature. In the sense that every type of criticism has been commented on by LDS apologists, it is true, but not a meaningful refutations have consistently been offered. There is also the big field of Book of Mormon Evidences, which mostly has to do with subjects of Mesoamerican archaeology that are too obscure for people to know how to engage. LDS apologetics is not persuasive or self-consistent, but it is out there, and Catholics need to know how to respond to it. The alternative is to land in the embarrassing position of being found ignorant and then judged as bigoted by the Mormons we talk to.
 
blueadept said:
One would have to step out of their Catholic thought and realize that LDS believe in an Apostasy and that there was a need for Joseph Smith to “restore” the priesthood keys. It’s not your typical protestant disagreements of the RCC. They have a growing Apologetics group and since they do send many missionaries into the field, they don’t arm them with nothing to explain their faith.

The missionaries I have the most fun with though, are ones that use to be Catholics. When I question them about their previous faith, I never seem to be impressed with their knowledge of it. I enjoy correcting the folks at the LDS apologetics site about misconceptions about the RCC as well.
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These are excellent points. Catholics often underestimate the radical difference between the Mormon and Protestant mindset. For instance, people always quote “You are Peter, etc.” to Mormons and are amazed that this doesn’t impress then. The reason is that they have defined the Apostasy in way that makes it difficult for them to see why this verse is a problem for them. Even further, Joseph Smith provides his own exegesis of this verse in D&C, and they automatically consider that single fact as a definitive response to Catholic claims from this verse. Smith had authority and we do not, so why even worry about the Catholic interpretation? In many cases, Mormon theology is so narrowly defined that only a few carefully targeted arguments really hit home. Nothing fails faster than just transferring the arguments we have learned to make against Protestants and expecting them to succeed with Mormons.
 
I’ve perused their info before, and have found a few things of value. Some of it borders on the outrageous.

I saw this one immediately:

The Iliad and the Book of Mormon

forums.catholic-questions.org/newreply.php?do=newreply&noquote=1&p=6793961

Unfortunately, modern archeology has found the actual site of Troy, including occupations ranging from 3000 BC to 1st century BC.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of Zarahemla or Bountiful.
 
scipio337 said:
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of Zarahemla or Bountiful.
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The best evidence that LDS can show in regards to archeological evidence is the theory of where Bountiful is on the tip of the Arabian peninsula and showing the Lehi->NHM-> Bountiful connection. For LDS, showing that beginning of their BoM could be true, as far as the travels from Jerusalem to Bountiful, helps confirm that the story could be acceptable. For myself, I would prefer evidence found in the Americas since that IMO is the difficult part to accept (where is Zarahemla?). Individuals who have looked at the evidence admit that the best evidence for the BoM is not in the Americas but that doesn’t really matter for many LDS. My viewpoint is at least respected over there even though they believe I’m missing the boat.

Oh well, I’m fine with that.
 
blueadept said:
The best evidence that LDS can show in regards to archeological evidence is the theory of where Bountiful is on the tip of the Arabian peninsula and showing the Lehi->NHM-> Bountiful connection. For LDS, showing that beginning of their BoM could be true, as far as the travels from Jerusalem to Bountiful, helps confirm that the story could be acceptable. For myself, I would prefer evidence found in the Americas since that IMO is the difficult part to accept (where is Zarahemla?). Individuals who have looked at the evidence admit that the best evidence for the BoM is not in the Americas but that doesn’t really matter for many LDS. My viewpoint is at least respected over there even though they believe I’m missing the boat.

Oh well, I’m fine with that.
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Discussing BOM authenticity with Mormons is further complicated by the fact that they tend to assume that people who do not believe in the BOM do not have any business interpreting it. But you can’t criticize it without interpreting it. I remember once at MADB, I ran the Zelph argument, showing how the location of Cumorah on the East Coast destroys the Limited Geography Theory. (Despite the protestations of some Mormons that it is based on hearsay, Smith’s claims about Zelph are significantly better attested than the gold plates.) This in turn flips all LDS Mesoamerican theories on their head, so that they argue against the BOM, for the concentration of evidence in the Southern hemisphere alone is highly improbable if the Nephites inhabited both locations. Several respondents on that thread criticized me, not for reasoning badly, but merely for attempting to comment on the contents of a book I don’t believe in. This proprietary interest seemed to them to constitute in itself a sufficient rebuttal, even when they had no means of responding to either my arguments or the evidence I based them on. I have never figured out how to get around that kind of barrier.
 
soren1 said:
Several respondents on that thread criticized me, not for reasoning badly, but merely for attempting to comment on the contents of a book I don’t believe in. This proprietary interest seemed to them to constitute in itself a sufficient rebuttal, even when they had no means of responding to either my arguments or the evidence I based them on. I have never figured out how to get around that kind of barrier.
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Hello soren1, good evening.

No, that is not sufficient rebuttal. I haven’t been to that forum and I don’t think I will as I just can’t find the time - I have a hard enough time keeping up with this one. But, taking your word for it, I will have to say that my interpretation of that scenario is the LDS answering your comments got stumped! So, you can just relax and pat your back some for putting up a good debate.

It is prefectly acceptable to make comments on the contents of a book that you don’t believe in as long as you read the book! There’s another forum out there called lds.net. There is an entire section there dedicated to a Muslim poster who is reading the Book of Mormon and posting his comments for each of the chapter that he finishes. I enjoy reading his comments even if I don’t participate in the discussions (no time!). It encourages me to study and re-affirm my testimony.
 
pinay said:
Hello soren1, good evening.

No, that is not sufficient rebuttal. I haven’t been to that forum and I don’t think I will as I just can’t find the time - I have a hard enough time keeping up with this one. But, taking your word for it, I will have to say that my interpretation of that scenario is the LDS answering your comments got stumped! So, you can just relax and pat your back some for putting up a good debate.

It is prefectly acceptable to make comments on the contents of a book that you don’t believe in as long as you read the book! There’s another forum out there called lds.net. There is an entire section there dedicated to a Muslim poster who is reading the Book of Mormon and posting his comments for each of the chapter that he finishes. I enjoy reading his comments even if I don’t participate in the discussions (no time!). It encourages me to study and re-affirm my testimony.
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Just to clarify: the poster at LDS.net is Jewish, not Muslim. The name of the sub-forum is “A Jewish Perspective on the Book of Mormon”.
 
pinay said:
Hello soren1, good evening.

No, that is not sufficient rebuttal. I haven’t been to that forum and I don’t think I will as I just can’t find the time - I have a hard enough time keeping up with this one. But, taking your word for it, I will have to say that my interpretation of that scenario is the LDS answering your comments got stumped! So, you can just relax and pat your back some for putting up a good debate.

It is prefectly acceptable to make comments on the contents of a book that you don’t believe in as long as you read the book! There’s another forum out there called lds.net. There is an entire section there dedicated to a Muslim poster who is reading the Book of Mormon and posting his comments for each of the chapter that he finishes. I enjoy reading his comments even if I don’t participate in the discussions (no time!). It encourages me to study and re-affirm my testimony.
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Fine. Let me be clear: I am not saying that every Mormon argues this way. I am saying that it is hard to reason with those who hold a proprietary mindset regarding the interpretation of LDS doctrine. The story I gave is a particularly egregious example of something that comes up a lot in less obvious ways even with more reasonable Mormons. There is this assumption that because I don’t accept LDS Scripture, I can’t understand it and have no business commenting on it. I don’t know how many times I have read the sentence, “Don’t tell us what we believe” in response to actual documentation I have provided from LDS teaching. This has occurred even at times when I did not make an especially strong case, when rational responses to what I was saying might have been available.

Catholics, or course, can be unreasonable too, and I have seen plenty of bullheadedness and bad argumentation from our side as well, but I don’t think Catholics share this particular prejudice. We tend to assume that people *can *intellectually grasp the content of Catholic teaching even if they don’t believe - but they will not submit their will in obedience to that teaching.
 
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