I'm reading a book about Utah-famous Hugh Nibley, who was a revered member of the LDS (Mormon) religion. He was a professor at BYU, a prolific author, and—more interestingly—an "apologist" for the church.
The apologists were called upon to field any significant scientific or intellectual challenges to the validity of the church's doctrine or leaders. And do it in as quiet a manner as possible. Some of Hugh's methods of verbal reassurance and deflection included such gems as:
People underestimate the capacity of things to disappear.
Like the capacity of the sources of upwards of 70% of the footnotes in his books. Or the virginity of his then five-year-old daughter, for instance.
Of course, this blog post and anything that disagrees with church doctrine is immediately written off as conjecture on the part of whomever lurks on the other side of the LDS fence.
It's nothing new, myriad churches have claimed to be the end-all-be-all for millennia. They used to get away with beheading people that challenged them. When beheading became politically incorrect, threatened religions employed teams of apologists armed with circular logic.
One would think that truth wouldn't need apologizing.
Over the last decade or so, the internet has made it virtually impossible for someone in that line of work to remain unexposed—or, in the very least, their "apologies" to remain so. Transparency is the word of the day, and soon enough, the best they'll be able to do when someone challenges them is yell:
Hey look! It’s Mark Wahlberg!
Then run.
