As an apologist I wanted to know as absolutely much as possible in order to defend truth which I possessed I hadn't realized that thinking I had it would actually shape how I work through so-called evidences and historic materials and writings. But it really does.
On my mission I discovered Hugh Nibley. I was so enthralled I couldn't hardly stand it. I told the Lord if he would lead me I would gather all that this man writes and begin sharing it. I went to Ricks College in Rexburg Id, and went to my classes just enough to get passing grades because I had discovered the mother lode, all of Hugh Nibley's materials in the old Improvement Eras and other church magazines. I photocopied them all for days and days and days. I kept my eye out for his other books and photocopied all of them as well. This was pre-internet days so I had a lot more leg work to do and I was on cloud 9 doing it. I also gathered as many sources of FARMS as I could since they had started out a few years before my mission and I had a lot of catching up to do, so I got on their mailing list and ordered everything I could of theirs.
And then 4 and a1/2 years later went through a nasty divorce. I was so devastated. My kids were kept from me, the bishop and stake president didn't support me, I ended up with all the bills, debt, etc., and they always reinforced me paying my child support, but never her allowing me to see the kids. It was the most horrific thing I could have imagined.
Fast forward to my second marriage (still going strong after 32 years! Yeah baby) and I was feeling so guilty a few years after my divorce I told the Lord I would defend his church for him. And through much mailing and correspondence I was discussing stuff with all kinds of ministers, people, etc. Writing newspaper columns in local papers. Then the internet showed up and I jumped on it.
Through time as I was answering questions, and finding others who were doing the same, and some of them way better than I was, we all sort of got together behind the scenes and studied together to get the most powerful answers to critics. After a few months we realized we were all just answering the same old questions that were being asked, so we decided to start a website where we could put all the answers to and then just point to it. It was brilliant! Thus started FAIR.
Now being the egotist I was I recognized that there were so many people who knew so much more than I did, that I really had to buckle under and study, so I did. I had received a B.S. in history from Idaho State University in 1995, so I figured I could take those skills and become the most learned apologist there was, since I was also very familiar by now with Hugh Nibley's arguments and was also gathering the sources he used so I could do so as well. I read voraciously for several years, and typed almost nonstop building up the FAIR site, and my own website.
Then one of the guys started a message board which ended up being so much fun! It was the Zions Lighthouse Message Board as a challenge to the Tanner's own anti-Mormon website and message board. It was through this that I then once again realized that I didn't know all that much because there were plenty of people who refuted us and it bothered me immensely. (I left out my activity on a very early message board, can't remember the name of it right now, but I was gung ho on it for several years)
Anyway, it was on ZLMB that I saw my interpretations were of a certain kind, and other LDS had knowledge of Mormonism and early church history that I was unaware of. Through time in the private email group for FAIR I was beginning to ask a lot of troubling questions that no one had answers to, and then eventually, I realized FAIR was not for me. That's making a long story short.
So, that kinda in a generalized way gives you a little about me as an apologist. I had focused hard on the Book of Abraham because it was such a specialty scripture, and I poured myself into the study of the Egyptian facsimiles in the Book of Abraham. Presented a lot of firesides, and talks, and papers, and stuff like that. Through time, I came to recognize the faultiness of my approach which I did not even realize when I was an apologist, and with the coming of Robert Ritner against John Gee, and the materials of Dan Vogel, and Brent Lee Metcalfe, and Ed Ashment, etc., I realized it was useless to defend the indefensible.
Now, once Mormonism is realized to be wrong, there is nowhere to go but to atheism. Because none of the other churches are right, therefore I got heavy into atheism for about 6 years. Read dozens and dozens of their materials, and recognized that they really have won the war. It's over, apologists don't realize it yet. And yet, for all that, I just cannot, for the life of me, agree that atheism has the last word. Soooooo, I see myself now as a seeking agnostic, emphasis on the seeking. I honestly don't know, and its honestly O.K. to say so, because that's the fact. But Nihilism simply cannot be right. I read several arguments both for and against, and Nihilism just doesn't work, not for me.
Because of this weird place I find myself in, I am studying the East and finding it as if I had a lot of missing old friends. The Buddhist, Zen, and Theravada ideas are electrifying to me. The works of Alan Watts, D.T. Suzuki, Joseph Campbell, Mercea Eliade, and many others are now seeming to me to give me a second wind. The themes of mythology as the mythic scholars describe it and attempt to teach it seems to me to have something going for it after all.
Ironically, I also really, really do enjoy studying science and trying to make sure I learn as much in that area as I can.
So, lets just say I am on my own personal hero adventure for spirituality, and it's a blast going through it all. I know nothing, but it's fun to try to.
I have many books I want to review, some Mormon, some not, and sometimes I try to be really serious and scholarly, and other times whimsical and attempt lamely to use humor. So bear with me, I really am sort of just a ding a ling idiot who really doesn't know anything or how to articulate it either. Yikes!
Now that I have bored you all plenty, I apologize for wasting your time, you could have been reading in a good book...
)
