Logical Fallacies in the Criticisms of the Mountain Meadows Massacre

Enemies of the LDS Church have tried to paint the Church as somehow being responsible for the tragedy at Mountain Meadows. While it is impossible to deny that these actions are the fruits of the Church, they are an anomaly. Anyone who knew Mormons then, or today for that matter, would agree that cowardly massacring men, women, and children under a flag of truce; and then trying to cover it up by blaming the Indians is not normal behavior taught or endorsed by the Church or its leaders.

My problem with our critics is when they try to blame the whole Church because of the actions of a few. This kind of reasoning is what is called a logical fallacy. A website devoted to the discussion of logical fallacies explains them in this manner:

The ability to identify logical fallacies in the arguments of others, and to avoid them in one’s own arguments, is both valuable and increasingly rare. Fallacious reasoning keeps us from knowing the truth, and the inability to think critically makes us vulnerable to manipulation by those skilled in the art of rhetoric.

A logical fallacy is, roughly speaking, an error of reasoning. When someone adopts a position, or tries to persuade someone else to adopt a position, based on a bad piece of reasoning, they commit a fallacy.

I can identify at least four errors in reasoning that our enemies use in regards to the Mountain Meadows Massacre. There are probably many more, but this should be sufficient to show the flawed thinking that they employ.

• Correlation Does Not Mean Causation is one of the errors in reasoning mentioned above. Just because all of the conspirators were Latter-day Saints does not mean that being a Latter-day Saint caused this behavior.

• Fallacy of a Single Cause occurs when it is assumed that there is a single, simple cause when in reality it may have been caused by a number of things.

• A third logical fallacy used by our enemies in blaming the Church for this tragedy is called the Historian's Fallacy. This occurs when one assumes that decision makers in the past viewed events with the same perspective and information as us in the present.

• Mostly this reasoning is a Fallacy of Composition. This arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true for part. Since some members of the Church did this horrible crime, then the whole Church is smeared by it.

If we discover that the leaders of the Church (Brigham Young et al.) were involved then that would dispute my logical fallacy argument. We will address in our next post the historical facts of whether Brigham or other high ranking leaders were involved, or endorsed the actions at Mountain Meadows.

Formal Fallacies

Formal fallacies are arguments that are false due to errors in their technical structure. These types of arguments are specific types of non sequiturs .

The first of these formal fallacies is the ad hominem attack. Ad hominem attacks are attacks on the integrity of the messenger. Rather than argue their point, they argue the messenger's character. One of the more common attacks against the Church consists of attacks on Joseph Smith. He was lazy, he was always digging for gold, he was dishonest, he was a liar, he was an adulterer, etc.... The argument then goes that since Joseph Smith was (fill in the blank with any disreputable trait) , he is not a prophet.

None of these "alleged facts" is relevant to whether he was a prophet of God. Rather than attack the message, they attack the messenger. He never claimed to be perfect. We don't claim he was perfect. What we claim is that he was and is a Prophet of God. That is the message.

The reason enemies of the Church don't attack Joseph's status as a prophet is because he meets all of the scriptural requirements. Although uttering prophecies isn't a pre-requisite for being a prophet (see John the Baptist) the thousands of prophecies of Brother Joseph that have already been fulfilled make challenging Joseph on these points rather fruitless. So it's easier to attack Brother Joseph's charcter since there is no one alive who can refute them from first-hand knowledge.

The other charges are not relevent. Besides, they aren't even true.