This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
| See also: | 14 Antimormon Hoaxes On Wikipedia |
I was shocked to read Wikipedia’s article on patriarchal blessings in the church. Almost every sentence was either highly skewed or outright false. A person reading it would walk away with an incorrect and negative impression about the church. We all know that an encyclopedia supposedly open for anyone to edit is untrustworthy, and that’s why teachers and professors usually do not accept Wikipedia as a source in school assignments. But even I was surprised by how bad its content about the church has gotten. They are pretty much neck and neck with the internet’s top Antimormon hate sites in terms of bias and negativity. Why is this? I believe Wikipedia’s structure makes it an echo chamber for a popular but often false narrative that is directed by powerful influence entities.
Agenda Of Wikipedia Editors
Recently, someone noticed that Wikipedia’s article on the church’s Family Proclamation does not actually have the text of the proclamation included. Just the header of the document. When I looked at the article’s editing history, I noticed that various people tried to add it but the same Wikipedia member would delete it and then they would get banned. Over and over again this happened. I had read about Wikipedia banning people for taking a certain side on social justice issues, Wikipedia’s dark side of censorship, and ideological bias. And I was aware of pro-church scholars (from FairMormon) battling Antimormons for control of content about the church. Wikipedia members made no secret of their bias in favor of Antimormons and against church experts: “Every time you start citing Wikipedia rules, I tune them out as Mormon smokescreen,” said one Wikipedia editor. Considering Wikipedia is #1 in search results for pretty much everything, I started to look at what Wikipedia today has to say about the church and I was horrified. I found that the top Google search result for “Cumorah” is Wikipedia’s entry which propagates an obviously-false hoax about where the name Cumorah comes from. An image of some old map obviously says something different than what the article claims, and when I looked at the page’s editing history I found that the person behind the hoax has a history of Antimormon bias, including petitioning to retain a section on Wikipedia titled “Satanic ritual abuse and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” Then I found at least 14 major Antimormon hate-hoaxes being propagated across Wikipedia.
How bad has this gotten? I wondered. How dangerous are the implications?
Wikipedia was supposed to be a place where anybody could make edits to improve information, and that sounds nice in theory, but the reality that the people in charge at Wikipedia edit the articles to become less informative, and they ban people actually helping. Why? I believe it is not about accuracy and sharing information. It is about controlling information.
Intellectual Feudalism
Medieval Europe built its economy of feudal lords who owned land and resources and rented them out to serfs who used the resources to produce goods which they gave to the lords in exchange for a basic livelihood. This arrangement was upended by Capitalism, which allowed each person to own their own land and resources, and produce for their own profit. Karl Marx took this upheaval even further by equalizing resources between social classes. But ironically, the insertion of Socialism in recent years has only brought us back to Feudalism. The same thing happened in ancient Rome. The state takes control of resources in order to ensure “fairness” and ends up establishing a caste system of lords and serfs where serfs may indeed enjoy “equality,” but only because they are equally laborers under the dominion of a lord. Instead of a lord in a castle, today it is a government body or international corporation that rents out resources, and ensures we all have a lifetime of debt to keep us producing for them while we retain only a basic livelihood. Less people are owning their own house–less people are owning anything really.
This modern Feudalism is manifest in our education system and information resources, such as Wikipedia. In Medieval times, the lords restricted what information was available to the public. People, such as William Tyndale, went to prison and were executed for printing bibles. The free flow of education was considered subversive to the state, as it enabled people to lift themselves out of the serfdom caste, and every part of a lay person’s education had to be approved by their masters so they didn’t get any wrong ideas. Is this same kind of thing is why people at Wikipedia refuse to provide the text of the Family Proclamation? Information is soundly under Feudal control in our society, though we don’t like to admit it. Instead of accurate information, Wikipedia provides a lengthy rebuttal from an LGTBQ “advocacy group” against the Family Proclamation, and the reader’s opinion about the issue is likely pushed in a certain direction. This is what’s known as “bias.” This keeps them in control of the narrative, where they decide how people will feel about the issues involved. It is not so much about censorship–though that is certainly utilized if necessary–as it is about controlling intellectual resources.
The Proclamation on the Family is hugely dangerous to the narrative established by the general feudalistic powers directing western culture, because it claims personal relationships are between people and God while the feudal corporations and governments seek to define and control family and relationships. It is akin to Martin Luther’s 95 theses nailed to the cathedral door. The more they enact civil laws defining marriage and other religious institutions, the more commercial propaganda they make about what relationships ‘really’ are, the more holidays and events they make ‘celebrating’ what they define ‘love’ as–the more influence they exert, the more control they gain over how one person interacts with another person, regardless of how liberating we might consider their narrative. The celebrated liberator of today is the person in charge tomorrow.
In a truly capitalistic or democratic space, the majority would decide how issues would be framed, and content would not be arbitrarily censored. There would not be bias. Each person in America would have an equal say in what Wikipedia defines. At the very least, a minority group like Latter-day Saints would have some kind of say over how Wikipedia defines them. But Wikipedia is structured in a way that a small group decides what will be considered truth for everyone. The elite teachers of Medieval Europe whom everyone looked up to for insight were also the ones burning books.
Changeable Truth
The entire idea of allowing anything in a Wikipedia article to be revised follows the Socialistic idea that truth is a narrative and the narrative changes to whatever it needs to be in the moment to uphold the ideology. Interestingly, this is exactly one of the main Antimormon complaints about us. They claim that we revise our doctrine and history as convenient to create a new truth. “Yesterday’s prophets are today’s heretics,” is CES Letter’s slogan. It is puzzling that Antimormons make such a ridiculous claim until you consider that narrative versus eternal truth is the very issue that tripped them up in the first place to lose their faith. Antimormons have been convinced that having truth be fluid so that it upholds ideology is the way to go, and what they are saying is that we can’t claim to be any different because we do the same thing. We can’t claim eternal truth, so that places our ideology on the same playing field as Socialism, and they have chosen Socialism as the better-sounding ideology. Well, it is a lie. Policies may change to suit circumstances, but doctrine never changes and truth is eternal. The only alternative to our kind of belief system of eternal truth is a Harry Potter magic land where you wave your wand and suddenly truth changes. You can edit a Wikipedia article and poof! history is something else. To Socialists, ideology is the only constant truth and everything else becomes whatever it needs to be to propagate it. It’s much like a single-cell organism evolving to be the best possible organism at surviving and reproducing. Survival of the fittest. But when survival and reproduction are the only criteria for being, what does the organism eventually become? A parasite. And that’s what moral relativists pretty much are. Nothing matters except propagating the ideology, with the maximum page views and maximum control of the intellectual arena. Wikipedia is the great parasite of online information.
Skeptics claim we are revising truth, that we are “gaslighting” history and so forth, yet are they the ones clicking “edit” on the Wikipedia articles? Where is the edit button on our church websites? They are the ones writing new editions to their books, new Reddit strings, new podcasts, new journals, and constantly updating their narrative. Is there an edit button in our scriptures? I don’t see any. Apart from some common sense clarifications and spelling corrections, our scriptures haven’t changed. The church spent an enormous sum of money to acquire the original printer’s manuscript from an apostate splinter-sect so that it can be scanned and placed online for all to see. New scripture gets added over time, sure, but it doesn’t replace old scripture. The Old Testament is still there. We do not need to reframe, because the only thing that changes for us is policy according to circumstance, as directed from God. God may add or subtract commandments but the moral basis for commandments has never changed.
Today’s Bible Controlled By The Cathedral
In the Dark Ages, the holy bible was chained to the pulpit of the cathedral and written in Latin so that the common man could not access it. Well, Wikipedia is different because everyone can easily access it. Indeed, you can’t avoid it. It’s at the top of every search engine–Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, StartPage, etc. It’s cited everywhere you go. It’s the go-to place to find out about anything. But I think it’s still fair to compare Wikipedia to Dark Age restrictions because few people really have influence over it. The chain is still there, and the only reason we have access to read it is because it is so quick and easy for the the people in control to alter the worlds inside. Plain and precious truths can vanish in a millisecond. Imagine if the corrupt priests of olden times had this capability. So, we find ourselves in a much worse position than the Dark Ages, because at least they couldn’t rewrite the bible back then. But the truths of today’s “bible” are constantly “evolving,” and it is constantly being thrown at us wherever we go as the story we must believe and the narrative we must follow.
Back when Wikipedia first started I was excited because I thought it would be a democratic collective overturning the manufactured narrative decided by wealthy powers. But I quickly realized that this wasn’t the case, because the primary sources Wikipedia only allows come from the controlling powers. Big media corporations, newspapers, universities, interest groups, and wealthy foundations run by the world’s elite control the sources. I don’t expect anything I write here will ever appear on Wikipedia because I don’t have a big corporation or powerful billionaire backing me. If a newspaper doesn’t like something I say because it contradicts their narrative and if they find I do not serve their ideology, they can simply publish a hit-piece smearing me as racist, and then that will enter the Wikipedia annals and become indisputable truth to the world. Serfs like me do not have the means to contribute or control information. Wikipedia thus becomes the propaganda outlet for big feudalistic powers. It is the bible of today’s cathedral.
The more I think about it, the more this structure of the internet freaks me out because it is just begging for hegemony. It is not democratic at all. It’s not even aristocratic. There is no diversity of thought or belief. There is little dialectic, debate, or critical analysis. There is little explanation for why a source is considered authoritative or why it should be believed. Zero accountability. Just, a certain narrative is backed by a powerful group and the editor has decided that is what’s truth. The freaky thing is we are talking about the entire globe. This is what everyone will now consider indisputable truth. No vote. No debate. No explanation. No critical thought. They tell you what to think and what to believe, and you don’t need to worry about anything else. This is not God’s way for finding truth.
This is very convenient for Antimormons because their messages so often defy logic and wilt at the first critical glance like dew before the summer sun. It’s much better for them if they can just claim something, cite some book, and not have to endure a critical response. The reason I believe Antimormon narratives are so often adopted on Wikipedia is:
- The church often contradicts the feudal collective’s narrative and fundamentally threatens a Socialist ideology. Certain people consider us an existential threat (and rightly so).
- The Antimormons cleverly conform to the popular narrative and craft their lies to not only fit into but perpetuate the narrative.
The Church Essays – The church has responded by opening up the archives and vaults of the church and providing everyone unprecedented access to all evidence. This is smart because it is easier than ever for the common man to critically analyze, think for himself, and reach his own conclusions as it becomes harder to do with Wikipedia. This brilliantly casts a contrast with Wikipedia’s structure and makes it easier for us to see Wikipedia for what it is. Unfortunately, some unhelpful characters (in my opinion) were chosen to contribute to this monumental effort and it still needs a lot of work, but it has still helped many see through the lies on Antimormon hate sites. One can easily spot one lie using just a bit of critical thought and recognize them as bad sources to be discarded.
Still, there are many who can’t even muster a little bit of critical thought. Some skeptics hound me because “this expert says this” contradicting my conclusions and “you aren’t a credentialed expert and they are.” I reply with a thorough explanation of my rationale and evidence, but they refuse to listen to a word. They don’t care about rationale and evidence, as they have been taught since kindergarten to avoid critical analysis, and they are afraid to think independently. They were taught to memorize and fill in the bubble on the test sheet, always ask the teacher if you don’t know something, and trust in their authorities. They can’t make decisions for themselves, and that is probably the whole reason they left the church in the first place. The church failed to direct every facet of their lives and deliver talking points for every little issue that arises. And so they turn to an authority that is willing to direct everything they say, do, and believe, and that authority is Satan. These skeptics often battle my conclusions with the dismissal: “But the church’s own essay says this!” Again, no consideration or glace at my data or research. I do not think the church’s essays were meant to be a ‘Mormon Wikipedia’ that gives easy and malleable truths that we don’t need to critically think about. It’s not about establishing a narrative. It is about being transparent and showing all pieces of evidence for various issues as we come across them. So, the church may cite a source claiming something, but it is up to us individually to analyze these sources and claims and judge the veracity. Sometimes the claim turns out to be weak and the source unreliable, and that’s okay. We must not turn the church essays into a Wikipedia. We must not. We are agents for ourselves and while the church provides helpful resources to figure things out, as the church has always done, there is no substitute for rigorous research and careful thinking to find out truth. I don’t have any problem with the essays, but I do not consider them to be a universal narrative as Wikipedia is. They are academic research.
Fall Of Academia
Brian Hauglid declared in this Facebook post that Joseph Smith created the Book of Abraham based on the Egyptian papers, which Egyptologists agree do not provide correct translations of Egyptian. So essentially that would mean it is a fake translation. Brian Hauglid goes on to call the academic work of the church’s top scholars “abhorrent.” This guy is an Associate professor at BYU, editor of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies, and part of the Joseph Smith Papers project.
As a scholarly production which attempts to use academic sources for its claims, Wikipedia suffers from what all of academia today suffers from: idealism, out-of-touch arrogance, and narrow vision. As our educational system in America collapses, it takes a certain kind of person to want to be a professional full-time academic. It is not nearly as glamorous or respectable as it was a hundred years ago, partly due to the Bill Nye types who crave the spotlight to push an agenda. Most people prefer to be in the field rather than standing in a college hall lecturing about it. I know I do. I don’t have time to go around editing Wikipedia articles. Who does? The education system in the west in general is deteriorating, and those who choose to remain do so often because they like to tell people how it is–they like the intellectual power, authority, and glory of teaching.
Of course, this is a huge generalization, and there are still plenty of great academics, but I think church studies is a field particularly experiencing deterioration, and this is reflected by what we see on Wikipedia. A couple decades ago new journals were popping up left and right with awesome new discoveries and intriguing investigations. Now, there is only a small handful of journals or resources worth glancing at. There is little new being discovered. “Mormon studies” has almost entirely been taken over by a bunch of Bill Nyes.
Wealthy Groups Determine The Narrative – Recently I noticed a pastor for a certain splinter-sect from the church attacking the prophet Russell M. Nelson’s trip to Rome on social media. With multiple exclamation points, she ridiculed him for handing the pope a copy of our church’s Proclamation on the Family. I pointed out to her that the pope used similar language in a speech soon after, but she only continued to scoff. I noticed this pastor had a podcast so I checked it out. It sounded very much like NPR. You know what I mean–the subdued thoughtful voice and elitist intonations, as if they were announcing a golfing tournament. I quickly got bored, but then I noticed she was talking about the importance of “narrative.” It’s all about how you develop the narrative, she said. This is something I never heard in the MTC, but the more I thought about it, this is common practice from media corporations and popular cultural influences.
This is what popular academia has become as well. It’s all about pushing a narrative. Joseph Smith started polygamy because of this and this. It’s important to you because of this and this… And that’s why you should vote Democrat/Republican. Wikipedia is pretty much the establishment’s narrative about the church. It’s the manifesto of these academics who want to remodel the church to fit some agenda and push some kind of reform. It is not about study and research anymore. But academia has always been this way, hasn’t it? You can’t study unless you get a research grant, and the wealthy group giving you the cash decides what your conclusion needs to be, or you are out of a job. Scientists have always needed a benefactor and they are rarely open to any result.
Due to lack of transparency we don’t know who are the money sources pulling the strings, and that is very troubling. A good scientist reveals who his influences are and the extent of his influences. We need to know who is behind this deterioration of church studies and why they are doing it.
Sensationalism – A well-researched and balanced book about Joseph Smith with full context will get much less attention than a book that relies on poor sources and talks about Joseph Smith’s “treasure hunting” without proper context explained. Sensational claims of occult divining and ‘New England traditions’ of magic unfortunately have overcome the Latter-day Saint community’s value of critical analysis, because these claims are exciting, easy to understand, and cool to talk about with your friends. That’s what ends up on the shelf of the bookstore and that’s what get you interviews with newspaper reporters. But sometimes the truth is boring. Sometimes it is complex and hard to understand. Sometimes we just don’t know. It’s a natural tendency to jump toward the sensational, but this has become a huge problem because before we know it these spurious claims are written into all of the history books as indisputable faith. The mainstream is eager to jump on whatever paints us in a negative light.
Most people think I’m crazy to suggest Joseph Smith only used the Urim and Thummim to translate the gold plates into the Book of Mormon. After all, look at what the academics say! Look at what’s on the church’s own essay about it! What about the church’s own essay? As I look over my full analysis for the hundredth time of all the historical evidence and quotes, I am shocked that I’m the only one to find each piece of evidence about “treasure hunting” and “digging up seer stones” to be unreliable and likely false. Where are other people’s academic rigor? Where is their analysis? How did they come to their conclusion? How am I reaching a different conclusion than all of those experts? When did simple logic change? Why can’t we even just talk about this without getting laughed out of the college lecture hall? Why am I the only one?
Antimormon Infiltration In Academia – Almost always, when I peer into a mainstream Christian volume on theology or watch a lecture by a non-Latter-day Saint academic, I am surprised to be hit with skepticism and outright atheism. I know, I know, they are attempting a scientific approach and that means objectivity. Objectivity and scientific rigor without personal bias is certainly important for any field of study, but what’s happening is the bias is turning around to the other direction; it’s not disappearing. Unfortunately, this is where “Mormon” studies is going as well. They are out to prove why the church isn’t true.
Why would someone who doesn’t believe in the church and gospel dedicate their lives to studying it? Well, this is something I don’t get. But they that’s what they do. The only answer I can think of is that it gives them a platform to attack the church. What better way can you think of to destroy the church than to gain a professorship at BYU and indoctrinate impressionable Latter-day Saint students with Antimormon propaganda? If I hated the church to the point that it was my life mission to get as many members as possible to apostatize, that’s what I would do. Plenty of hostile Antimormons waste hours every day preaching hatred for us on Twitter. Well, how much more effecitveto do it from a position of authority like a research journal or book? As the quality of higher education in American degrades and people hold scholars in lower regard, this becomes easier for the Antimormons to achieve.
I think what is also happening is faithful or semi-faithful church academics cave to the pressure of academia, which is strongly dominated by atheists and Anti-Christians. Day after day, they are hearing lectures and reading papers attacking religion and traditional values. Every person has a breaking point, as Satan is well aware. The academic is less likely than most to admit that his personal beliefs are influenced by others because he wants to believe he can be a strong stalwart intellectual amid all persecution and pressure. But really we are all like impressionable teenagers hanging out with the wrong crowd. Eventually we will drink and try pot like our bad friends. These academics crave the respect of their peers and are tortured by the persecution they endure. And it is persecution. Little by little, they will adopt false narratives–small narratives at first that eventually to big lies, like branches of a tree that lead to the trunk. Satan will attack them with a thousand paper-cuts, hoping that at least one of them will cause the academic to doubt and wedge him away from his faith.
This is what is happening, and the way things are going within five years “Mormon studies” will be known by most as a euphemism for Antimormon propaganda. It already is to a large degree. It’s hard to imagine this level of hatred and bigotry for a religion. How many anthropology academics do you know of who fight against anthropology? How many math experts do you know of who hate math? Why do “Mormon experts” hate “Mormonism”–or rather why do Antimormons prop themselves up as Latter-day Saint academics? Now, a hostile academic would insist that they aren’t against the church. They just are being realistic and maybe want some reform. They are activists. Well, I think this is what makes Christian studies a unique field of study. Academics are always out to leave their mark, improve their field, and make the world a better civil society. But students of Christian studies can’t do this, because they are not priesthood authorities who receive revelation on behalf of the church. Any interference will make the church worse, not better. We are all like watchmakers who happen across a clock built by someone much more sophisticated, but some of us think we can tweak the clock to make it better. What happens the moment they open it up and start messing with the gears inside? They mess it up, and that’s what people do when they try to reform the church as academics. The more they mess it up, the more they pridefully double-down thinking they are right, and the more bitterly they turn against the church.