Criticism of Mormonism - FARMS Scholarship Questioned

FARMS Scholarship Questioned

Main article: Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies

Critics say the LDS Church is academically dishonest, because it supports biased research conducted by the church-owned Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS). FARMS is a research institute within church-owned Brigham Young University that publishes Mormon scholarship. Critic Matthew Paulsen faults FARMS for limiting peer review to members of the LDS Church. He states that FARMS's primary goal is to defend the LDS faith rather than to promote truthful scholarship. Molecular biologist Simon Southerton, a former LDS bishop and author of Losing a Lost Tribe: Native Americans, DNA, and the Mormon Church said, "I was amazed at the lengths that FARMS went to in order to prop up faith in the Book of Mormon. I felt that the only way I could be satisfied with FARMS explanations was to stop thinking.... The explanations of the FARMS researchers stretched the bounds of credibility to breaking point on almost every critical issue".

FARMS supports and sponsors what it considers to be 'faithful scholarship', which includes academic study and research in support of Christianity and Mormonism, and in particular, where possible, the official position of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Critic and ex-Mormon Steve Benson (grandson of Ezra Taft Benson) quoted church apostle Neal A. Maxwell as telling him that "one of the purposes of F.A.R.M.S. was to prevent the General Authorities from being outflanked by the Church's critics."

Read more about this topic:  Criticism Of Mormonism

Famous quotes containing the words farms, scholarship and/or questioned:

    “A feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. The strong man sees the possible houses and farms. His eye makes estates, as fast as the sun breeds clouds.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “American universities are organized on the principle of the nuclear rather than the extended family. Graduate students are grimly trained to be technicians rather than connoisseurs. The old German style of universal scholarship has gone.”
    —Camille Paglia (b. 1947)

    “I parted from my beloved because there was one thing which I had to tell her. She questioned me. She should have known all by sympathy. That I had to tell her it was the difference between us,—the misunderstanding.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)