Recently, a critic of the LDS Church moaned, via twitter, about my (correct) accusation that a friend of his and fellow anti-Mormon lacked intellectual integrity, relegating this down to mere "rhetoric." I will let readers decide to see if my accusation lacks merit by reading the paper:
What is intellectual integrity? As one source defines it:
Intellectual integrity is defined as recognition of the need to be true of one's own thinking and to hold oneself to the same standards one expects others to meet. It means to hold oneself to the same rigorous standards of evidence and proof to which one holds one's antagonist--to practice what one advocates for others. It also means to honestly admit discrepancies and inconsistencies in one's own thinking. The opposite of intellectual integrity is intellectual hypocrisy, a state of mind unconcerned with genuine integrity.
One characteristic of one who holds to intellectual integrity would be "being open to the truth just because it is the truth. To be open to the truth is to be willing to admit that you are wrong" (source).
On the latter, Mike Thomas and ROT fails, as they instead continue to repeat to this day the slanderously false claim Joseph Smith plays a greater role in LDS theology than Jesus Christ, as just one example (see the email exchanges Mike Parker, Daniel Peterson, et al., had with ROT on this issue)
On the former point, Mike Thomas (as with most other Evangelical critics of the Church) is guilty of intellectual hypocrisy in ignoring the overwhelming evidence vis-à-vis the formation of LDS doctrine and how Latter-day Saints approach their leaders, and instead, desperately holds to the straw-man of “for practising Mormons, when LDS leaders speak, the thinking for LDS is done .” In my response, I spent some time carefully refuting this, so I will not repeat my points here. However, to understand the level of intellectual hypocrisy/lack of intellectual integrity displayed by Thomas, let me rework his criticism of LDS beliefs into a critique of Evangelical Protestantism:
For Evangelicals, it is difficult to get a straight answer about the Trinity. The first question a Protestant asks is not, "What does the Bible teach about God?" but "what does my pastor tell me to believe?"
For Evangelicals, they are actually Modalists, not Trinitarians. Now, this has fallen out of fashion in some circles now, as has so much old fashioned Evangelicalism, but it is still proudly said in many Evangelical circles, as one honest Evangelical wrote:
If I polled members of most evangelical churches in America today, I’m afraid I would discover that most are basically modalists in their understanding of the Trinity . . . A modalistic concept of God that confuses the Father, Son, and Spirit is far too common among evangelicals today. (source)
The (unofficial) Evangelical apologetics site ROT has attempted to refute the idea that this is "official" Evangelical teaching, even dragging out from the archives the Council of Nicea and various Protestant confessions of faith, but it doesn't wash because anyone who has dealt with Evangelicals, more, anyone who has been an Evangelical will tell you this is the theology of the average True Believing Evangelical to this day.
Now, if I actually presented this as a serious argument against Evangelical Protestantism, such would display a large level of intellectual hypocrisy, as I clearly know better than this; in the same way, Mike Thomas et al., are guilty of lacking intellectual integrity by their deceptive caricatures of LDS theology.
Instead of being mere rhetoric, the accusation that Mike Thomas lacks intellectual integrity is a statement of fact that my article substantiates beyond dispute.
While I don’t claim to be infallible, do
compare and contrast such intellectual hypocrisy with the following pieces that
demonstrate I try my best to display intellectual integrity, even when it
results in having to critique my fellow LDS apologists on various issues; the reader should compare and contrast my approach to the issues with Thomas et al. and make up their own minds:
