Literary critic/rhetorician/philosopher Kenneth Burke pointed out a large problem with any program of debunking that I believe applies to Anti-Mormons, Mormon Apologetics, and even the kind of debunking that goes on at Sunstone symposia, in the pages of Dialogue (and others), or even on the Bloggernacle.

(Warning: very long post below the fold).

Here are Kenneth Burke’s ideas on the problems with debunking (from The Philosophy of Literary Form pages 171 and 174):

“I think that the typical debunker is involved in a strategy of this sort: He discerns an evil. He wants to eradicate this evil. And he wants to do a thorough job of it. Hence, in order to be sure that he is thorough enough, he becomes too thorough. In order to knock down the underpinnings from beneath the arguments of his opponents, he perfects a mode of argument that would, if carried out consistently, also knock the underpinnings from beneath his own argument.”

This causes the debunker to create:

“an unintentional ambiguity whereby he throws something out by one name and brings it back in by another name.”

It’s easy to spot this in, say, standard anti-Mormon literature, where the attackers usually take a position of such extreme skepticism that if their theology was looked at with the same lack of charity, it too would fail utterly. Even more supposedly more sophisticated take downs of Mormon theology like the DNA and the BoM take such a radical position that to follow their conclusions would be to also accept that people in Iceland aren’t descended from their own ancestors.

The over-hyped An Insider’s View of Mormon Origins has much the same problem, since if Palmer’s arguments were “carried out consistently” then his belief in Christ couldn’t stand up to the same scrutiny.

On the ‘Nacle, there are often posts about “the majority of Mormons think X, but they’re all wrong because it’s really L or maybe C.” The problems with those posts comes that they don’t seem to realize that they often “debunk” accepting a traditional belief, only to bring back the same thing, only under the name of “what most scholars have traditionally said” or “what those in my highly educated circles say” (which are in themselves traditional beliefs of a sort).

I could go on, and pull out articles from Sunstone, Dialogue, BYU Studies, the FARMS Review, or any random ‘Nacle sight, but that’s not the real point of this post. I don’t want to attack or demean specific posts or articles, since Burke has identified a real problem that is a common feature of nearly all debunkings. (Even the ones I agree with).

Instead, as a student of rhetoric, I offer up the following suggestions to help anyone who has, will, or might write a debunking to ameliorate these problems:

1. Know your audiences. Realize your writing, especially if posted on the Internet, will have multiple audiences. Roughly, you will have: those who will agree with you and always do so, no matter how bad the argument is; those who agree with you but could have their minds changed against you, those who will never agree with you no matter how good your argument is, those who don’t agree but can have their minds changed, and those who haven’t made up their minds yet. Yet a close reading of nearly every debunking I come across, despite occasional claims to the contrary, is nearly always aimed really/only at the audience that already agrees no matter what. All these writers are aiming for (whether they will admit it or not) is a lot of “yeah! right on! couldn’t have said it better myself!” type comments.

Too much writing, especially political writing, nominally addresses multiple audiences, but really it is aimed at only one audience. Alterman’s book What Liberal Media?, for example, claims to be aimed at a general audience, but even a cursory reading shows that his audience is really far left liberals that share all the same assumptions he does. Which leads to the next point:

2. Constantly analyze what your assumptions are. Don’t assume that even the most basic statements will be taken for granted by your readers. You may have largely unexamined assumptions, or you may have figured them out over decades of intense scrutiny and debate. In either case, except for the “always agree” audience, your readers will not always have the same beliefs.

This requires some guess work, since you can’t spend time defending every assumption you make/have. But look at the context. For example, here on M*, we basically assume the church is true and the prophet is inspired. There are other places to debate that. However, whether a specific reading of some scriptures or if Mitt Romney is a good candidate is definitely up for grabs. (These assumptions can be poisonous too. I weary of the constant cries of “racism” every time someone takes certain positions on immigration. The reflexive assumption of racism just because someone disagrees with you shows a lack of understanding and charity on your part, not racism on theirs).

In addition, while the basic form of blogs, etc. on the net seem to assume the idea that free and open discussion is a good, it ain’t always so – and this ideal should be defended often rather than constantly assumed.

And finally:

3. Figure out what “level” you’re really arguing on. Here’s what I mean: In the stasis theory of rhetoric, there are various levels (or stasis). Fact, Definition, Evaluation, Proposal. The classic example is that of a murder trial. Fact: What happened? Whodunit? Definition: What do we call it? Murder? Manslaughter? Self-Defense? Evaluation: Was it a good thing, a bad thing, or how severe was it? Innocent or Guilty? Proposal: The Chair or Life?

Debates over same-sex marriage are often really debates about the stasis of definition (the definition of marriage) no matter how often they try to be about the proposal stasis. Of course, things have to be done, so sometimes pragmatics cause us to skip over several stasis, but ideally we would move through the various levels (though IMHO, the definition level is the most important, since if you can control the meaning of key terms in the debate, you’ve already got the advantage).

Too many debunkings jump all over the place, assuming definitions when they haven’t been proven, or else making proposals before the facts have really been agreed upon.

Other suggestions or critiques of the above welcome below.