Ken Jennings Responds

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Golly if I didn't get an email from Ken Jennings the other day. This, of course, in reaction to my posts responding to his post. I can only hope he's not too pissed about me publishing it.

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Pete,
Thanks for the note. I already saw your post(s) thanks to the miracle of pingbacks. I'm afraid I don't have any particular response to the substance of them, because, as rebuttals go, they seem totally unrelated to anything I wrote.

I'm no knee-jerk defender of all things LDS, and never considered my post as an attempt to convince anyone of the capital-T truth of the LDS church, which seems to be how you took it. I don't spend much time trying to convince skeptics and atheists of the validity of Mormon belief, much less disaffected Mormons. (No offense, but I had you pegged after a quick skim of the first post--something about the reflexive nature of the barrage and how disconnected it was from what I actually wrote made it sound like there was a personal story to tell there).

Here's what I told some exMo type who posted something similar on my site:

I definitely don't want to be read as saying "no religion should be criticized." I especially don't want to be read as saying "my religion, uniquely, should never be criticized."

I do want to be understood as saying:
1. Mormons shouldn't be made indiscriminate targets of snark and insults that would sound disrespectful if applied to other religious traditions. (Or no-religion-at-all...I was pretty shocked at those recent poll numbers on how few Americans would vote for an atheist.)

and

2. The criticisms should be substantive--writers can't just take it as given that everything about Mormonism is patently crazy and work from there. You should probably explain that crucial first step first, or it sounds like bigotry, whether it is or not.

I would have thought that neither of those points would be that controversial, or require an "Internet to Mormon guy" rebuttal. Oh well.

Best,
Ken

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Silly me, I thought addressing each of his numbered points one at a time pretty much made my points directly related. I guess I was mistaken. Let me try again by responding the two items above:

1) I don't think indiscriminate snarkiness is necessarily disrespectful even when applied to other religions. I don't think there's a double standard being applied. At least not in my case. I think patently ridiculous and disprovable superstitious and outrageous beliefs are fair game no matter who holds them. I happen to have personal daily experiences with Mormonism so they are more frequently my snark-target.

Also, snark is fun to say.

2) I'm not sure how my previous posts have been less-than-subtantive. I have never taken the starting position that Mormonism is crazy-by-default and worked from there. In fact, when I began this journey, nothing could have been further from the truth. I begged for it to be true and hoped beyond hope that my suspicions were wrong.

On the other hand, don't ask me (not that he has) to dismiss unsavory or untoward facts about Mormonism simply because it doesn't support the believing position. I mean... Mitt Romney does wear funny underwear. Just because this is their holy cow doesn't mean it is mine.

I don't come to this debate with a lack of foundational information. There's no ignorance on my part here. I come from the starting position of someone who once believed. I know the ins and outs. I'm not mocking something I don't understand. In fact, my understanding of it makes so much of it that much funnier to me. The more you know the goofier it gets.

Ken makes a good point at the end there though. It is important to not sound like a bigot if you want your point heard. I will work very hard on that.

Thanks, Ken for responding. It actually means a lot to me.

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