FairMormon
FairMormon, also known as FAIR (The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, Inc.), is a non-profit Mormon apologetics organization that hosts the FairMormon website and produces videos in defense of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). FAIR hosts several articles purporting to demonstrate linguistic, historical and biblical evidence that the Book of Mormon is an authentic historical document. As expected, many claims made by FAIR do not correspond with the mainstream scientific consensus.
Divinely-translated articles about Mormonism |
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Restoration by interpretation |
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Even by study and also by faith |
Following the needle of the Liahona |
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Mormon RationalWiki?
Being that Mormonism is often subject to Gish Gallop attacks from Christian fundamentalists, FairMormon sometimes demonstrates a level of erudition and rationality not often seen on apologetics websites, and has delivered credible criticisms of Christian fundamentalism. Because fundamentalist criticisms of Mormonism often suffer from the same problems as fundamentalist criticisms of evolutionary biology, FairMormon sometimes overlaps with RationalWiki in tone and tenor, going so far as to compile a long reference guide to logical fallacies on their own.[1]
Many of the scholars cited do have some level of legitimate credentials, being that Brigham Young University is a legitimate university rather than a diploma mill. Nevertheless, the fact that they are speaking out of religious rather than purely academic motivations casts their credibility in doubt.
Linguistic claims
In order to bolster the case for the Mormon religion, FairMormon contributors have made several claims about linguistics. These claims do not attract much attention outside the Mormon sphere, and risk constituting pseudolinguistics due to their religious motivation. Below is a list of the most important claims.
- That the Book of Mormon shows signs of having been translated from an ancient Near-Eastern Nephite language, as evidenced by chiastic structures and colophons in the Book of Mormon.[2][3]
- That wordprint studies of the Book of Mormon indicate that the books within the collection were written by different authors.[4]
- That the names in the Book of Mormon have plausible meanings grounded in Hebrew and Egyptian.[5]
- That Semitic languages have influenced Uto-Aztecan, a Native American language family.[6]
Historical claims
FairMormon makes several claims related to history in order to defend the LDS Church. A collection of significant claims is as follows.
Ancient history
- That there is archaeological evidence of the Book of Mormon, including sites in the Old World that resemble the description of the desert voyage taken by Lehi's family in the book of 1 Nephi.[7]
- That many alleged anachronisms in the Book of Mormon have been resolved through archaeological research, and time may reveal more apparent anachronisms to be no anachronisms at all.
External links
References
- "Logical fallacies". FAIR.
- https://www.fairmormon.org/evidences/Category:Book_of_Mormon/Anthropology/Language/Hebraisms/Chiasmus
- https://www.fairmormon.org/evidences/Category:Book_of_Mormon/Anthropology/Language/Hebraisms/Colophons
- https://www.fairmormon.org/evidences/Wordprint_Studies_Of_The_Book_of_Mormon
- https://www.fairmormon.org/evidences/Category:Book_of_Mormon/Anthropology/Language/Names
- https://www.fairmormon.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/2006-Brian-Stubbs.pdf
- https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Book_of_Mormon/Archaeology/Compared_to_the_Bible#Question:_How_does_archaeology_in_the_Old_World_compare_to_the_first_chapters_in_the_Book_of_Mormon.3F