[Edit:] This is a trivial post — a rant — tossed off in a few minutes in the wake of the personal experience of having been shocked? embarrassed? startled? by how long it took me to recognize what sort of website I had been reading as a result of a Google search. Far from being dismissive of those who take to Google with sincere questions or honest doubts, I better understand — sympathize — can more easily put myself in the place of — those who have more questions or doubts after reading some of what is out there. I wasn’t searching to resolve any doubt, but as a shortcut to finding some statements I knew had been made in the past. Otherwise, I think my experience was much the same as a sincere questioner. But as I skimmed down a page, picking out the needed quotations and their sources, something felt “off.” It took me several minutes, and a more careful reading and critical evaluation than my initial skimming, to identify what was wrong: I was on a website masquerading as informational, but in actuality one that was more disinformational in nature, a site meant to deceive and disillusion. (There’s no point in denying, as some would-be commenters have claimed, that such sites do not exist.) Because the material was written without obvious hostility and scorn, I had misunderstood where I was, and I had a powerful negative emotional response to having been manipulated, having taken so long to recognize what was wrong. Hence the rant, focused on half a dozen lines as an illustration, not an exhaustive catalogue of the site’s manipulative techniques.

Now a day after posting my hasty reaction, I’m getting a lot of drive-by comments by strangers who see me as paranoid, as having a persecution complex, as having the shallowest awareness of Mormon history, of expressing hatred for those who have questions. I’ll shrug off the first few accusations, but not the last: This post is not about honest questioning; it’s about dishonest presentation.

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Some anti-Mormons are so dishonest and sneaky and lying. I see how people turning to the internet with questions are deceived, and I have greater empathy tonight than I’ve had before.

I’m looking for past Church statements about the Creation and Fall. Orson Pratt’s name showed up in the bit visible in Google results for one site, and the website name – I won’t give it here; if you find it, please do not name it in comments – seemed at first blush to be a Mormon blog. I had scrolled through several pages before I realized how deceitful it actually was, and I might not have realized it had I not already run into many of the same statements quoted there.

They want to confuse readers by showing that there are contradictory statements in LDS publications, as if we didn’t all know that some wild statements have appeared in the past (Journal of Discourses, anybody?). But their aim is to cast doubt on current teaching. For example:

They present an accurate quotation from Gospel Principles, and from the Bible Dictionary:

Gospel Principles says, “When Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden, they were not yet mortal. In this state, they would have had no children (2 Nephi 2:23). There was no death. They had physical life because their spirits were housed in physical bodies made from the dust of the earth (see Moses 6:59; Abraham 5:7). They had spiritual life because they were in the presence of God. They had not yet made a choice between good and evil” (chapter 6, p. 28) But page 29 says, “Because of the Fall, we are blessed with physical bodies, the right to choose between good and evil, and the opportunity to gain eternal life. None of these privileges would have been ours had Adam and Eve remained in the garden.” Since there was no death, how did they already have physical bodies (page 28) when the Fall is said to have brought death and the blessing of a physical body (page 29)?

You have to read carefully to realize how they’re misrepresenting that Gospel Principles statement:

1. A mortal body (“they were not yet mortal”) is not the same as a physical body (“we are blessed with physical bodies”). That same page in Gospel Principles makes the distinction between having physical bodies “made from the dust of the earth” on the one hand, and on the other hand a mortal body subject to death, a condition brought about by the Fall. But by ignoring the difference, or pretending that there is no difference, they create a discrepancy that actually does not exist.

2. Similarly, they ignore that some paragraphs (like the first one quoted above), always using the pronoun “they,” refer solely to Adam and Eve, and that other lines (like the second quoted paragraph), always using the pronoun “we,” refer to the descendants of Adam and Eve. We indeed would not have been born into this world with physical bodies, according to scripture (2 Nephi 2:23), without the Fall. But our physical lives post-Fall do not define Adam’s life pre-Fall. They had physical bodies given by God before the Fall; we have mortal physical bodies after the Fall. This website pretends there is no difference, when that is the major point of this section of the Gospel Principles lesson.

The website contains many, many more instances of such misrepresentation. I limit this post to a single example to illustrate.

(Before some skeptic objects, it makes no difference to the argument whether the scriptural accounts of Adam and Eve are completely literal, completely figurative, or something in between. Gospel Principles is consistent with itself. The doubt-sowers aren’t arguing the literalness/figurativeness of the accounts; their aim is to create mistrust of the Mormon teaching by misrepresenting it as contradictory and unreliable.)

I suppose I’m ranting here because I’m embarrassed it took me so long to realize I was reading an anti-Mormon site, and because it took me a couple of readings to understand how they were misrepresenting our teaching when they accurately quoted that teaching. I suppose I’m arrogant enough to believe that if they could fool me, even for ten minutes, they can fool many other people with less gospel experience and less training in critical reading, for much longer.

Be careful out there.