previous: Question 7
"Okay, so maybe you have the right to disseminate your honest opinions. But you're not honest. How can you justify the lies you tell about us?"
You say potato, I say pomme de terre.
You find it convenient to call me a liar when I suggest that Joseph Smith didn't translate the Book of Mormon from ancient plates of gold. You find it convenient to call me a liar when I suggest that there were never horses or steel swords in the Western Hemisphere during Book of Mormon times. You find it convenient to call me a liar when I suggest that Joseph Smith secretly married more than thirty women and then illegally and unconstitutionally destroyed a press that attempted to reveal this fact.
The fact is, I'm not lying. I may possibly be mistaken in my beliefs (though I doubt it), but I'm still expressing an honestly held opinion that I've come to after extensive examination of the available evidence. If you call me a liar, you're implying that I'm deliberately making statements I know to be false in an attempt to deceive and mislead. And that, my friend, is just not the case.
Here's what I think. I think you find it too disturbing and threatening to credit that someone can look at the same historical sources as you and come to a radically different conclusion. I think it's easier for you to shut your eyes and shout "Liar!" than it is for you to confront the idea that I'm sincere in my beliefs. You just can't accept that my intentions are anything but sinister.
Well, wake up and smell the Postum. Not everyone who thinks differently from you is an enemy, and not everyone who says things you don't want to hear is a liar, comforting as those notions might be. The emperor is naked, buddy, or at least that's how it looks from where I'm standing. And when I'm honestly reporting what I see, that's no goddamn lie.
next: Question 9
