Defending the Faith: Religious apologetics has its place in history

Some critics of Mormonism have declared that a truly strong religion needs no apologetics; only weak ones do. But, if so, no truly strong religion has ever existed, since every religious tradition of any size has produced literature and people arguing for and defending its claims. Atheists have no reason for smugness, though, because the declaration can easily be turned against them: Unbelief, too, has its apologists; Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris have only continued the project led by Bertrand Russell before them.

Accordingly, C.S. Lewis saw apologetics as a moral obligation for those properly equipped to do it: “To be ignorant and simple now — not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground — would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defense but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen. Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.”

Daniel C. Peterson, professor of Islamic studies and Arabic at BYU, is editor-in-chief of the Middle Eastern Texts Initiative and the founder of MormonScholarsTestify.org. His views do not necessarily represent those of BYU.