Benson blows Monson's Arthur Patton tale out of the water

[_Steve Benson]

Good luck, folks. I appreciate your comments, pro and con. It's good to get various perspectives. Movin' on.

[_Bret Ripley]

You have been in this process for over 2 years.

Yes, and apparently in exactly the same manner that I am in the process of earning my first billion.

[_Shiloh]

Good luck, folks. I appreciate your comments, pro and con. It's good to get various perspectives. Movin' on.

Must be gettin' too hot for Mr. Benson here in the MDB kitchen.

Of course, we all know that Mr. Benson doesn't know a thing about "Movin' on" given that he is now entering his 20th year of "recovery" and is still regurgitating the same stuff he started peddling back in his clever "pray, pay, and obey" days.

God speed, Mr. Benson.

[_Darth J]

In any event, props to Steve Benson for pointing out that anyone who is skeptical of his ideas is part of the conspiracy. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, eh?

Sadly, I was thinking the same thing. I wish I were not.

What conspiracy? Shiloh said it involved Dr. Pepper. Monson is a Pepsi drinker. Please get your conspiracies right.

Perhaps it's the conspiracy that only a believing Mormon would dispute, or at least fail to explicitly agree with, any particular point that you are trying to make.

Although I am still not sure what that point is. That Thomas S. Monson sometimes tells BS, self-aggrandizing stories that don't offer any particular insight into anything? That Thomas S. Monson sometimes is somewhat liberal with the factual details of his anecdotes? That LDS leaders in general do one or both of these things?

Was it your understanding that nobody had considered any of the above before you started borrowing other people's efforts to sleuth out the Arthur Patton thing?

For hell's sake, I know believing Mormons who think Thomas Monson's stories are BS. And that they fail to reach even a Joel Osteen level of cotton candy theology.

So, much like Monson himself, I must ask what is your point ? Keeping in mind that this board already noticed the implausibility of the Arthur Patton story nearly two and a half years ago, without any of the pastoral guidance you offer your disciples on RfM.

[_Uncle Ed]

Steve Benson is not a prophet of God who writes using heaven-sent peepstones and angels to deliver his messages. When Mormons can't defend the mistakes of their God, they fall back to comparing their God to a man in terms of abilities and frailties and imperfections. Which is what this God always was--a man

And that man was Joseph Smith, the guy who invented the Mormon god in the first place.

Pithy, but begging the question of what prophets are and what they do. You seem to have a pov about "prophets" that is unrealistic.

The whole religion-making ball of wax baby is manmade pronouncements upon the ineffable. Where is it even possible to be right about those pronouncements and still do more than declare and write down a beginning? "God Is Infinite" so all of our religions are only beginnings. Just because weak, finite human beings find themselves in a position of oracular "authority" doesn't change what God Is compared to us. We remain finite forever, and "God Is Infinite" throughout all of spacetime, i.e. while the world of humans stands; and outside of that finite piece of creation, "God" never stops creating.

Just because some guy is hailed as a "prophet" and believes it, or pretends to, doesn't make him especially gifted in plumbing the depths of Existence. He will be enticed to make pronouncements, his people expect it of him. And, being human, his pride will make him do it even when he only wants to take a nap instead.

So just how much could even a billion JSs reveal about "God"? Only a beginning!

And here you are worrying over something not even up to the description of "fly specks". You're so mad at your botched Mormon upbringing and subsequent confirmations that your feelings are justified that you can't even go study something else that might make you feel high. Instead, you grouse some more and repeat yourself....

[_Darth J]

Given your propensity to shove your policy prepared on everything in people's faces it looked to me like you were making one of your not so subtle digs, this time about derailing SB's thread to discuss the changes to the Book of Mormon.

SORRY, Darthy....

You mean you're allowing your emotional gut reaction based on arbitrary personal grudges against complete strangers to fill in the blanks for you, and responding to that instead of what someone actually said? Yeah, I already knew that.

[_Darth J]

pronouncements upon the ineffable

Perhaps they could explain this even more by giving us drawings of the invisible.

[_Uncle Ed]

Given your propensity to shove your policy prepared on everything in people's faces it looked to me like you were making one of your not so subtle digs, this time about derailing SB's thread to discuss the changes to the Book of Mormon.

SORRY, Darthy....

You mean you're allowing your emotional gut reaction based on [experiential] personal grudges against [virtual] strangers to fill in the blanks for you, and responding to that instead of what someone actually said? Yeah, I already knew that.

And now, so do I.

THANKS!...

[_Darth J]

[experiential] personal grudges

U mad, Uncle Ed? Do you think there is any relationship between your making fatuous, demonstrably wrong assertions about various things and your "[experiential] personal grudges"? If you don't think so, maybe you should contemplate the ineffable infinite of the being of existence some more.

[_AZBoy]

I grew up in the '80s in Phoenix, AZ. Steve Benson played a huge part in my journey of doubt (although I'm still active). Quick story:

During the time-period I'm remembering, I was a 14-15 year old paperboy, delivering the Arizona Republic. Evan Mecham was our Governor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Mecham). I lived down the street from a couple of Mecham dealerships (maybe only one - Mecham Pontiac - although I think there was another) and many of Evan's relatives were in my stake. In fact our Stake President was related to Evan through marriage and his brother Willard was in our neighboring ward. I went to scout camp with nephews of Evan. In short, I lived in a very pro-Mecham area. When he was elected I remember all the adults around me - namely my parents and their friends - being so proud of his Mormonism, that a Mormon was now Governor of AZ. By extension I felt the same pride.

When he started getting attacked by the public and media for various things, the adults around me went into pure "he is [and by extension, "we are"] being unfairly persecuted" mode. The Arizona Republic was full of left-wing lies and people out to get Mecham. There were seemingly daily articles "attacking" his character. I remember the adults' apologetics of him using the word "pickinanny" referring to black people ("he grew up in an area where that was a common phrase") as well as other apologetics for his behavior. The impeachment trial was again a bunch of lies spewed by the Republic and other Mecham enemies (who were by extension enemies of the Mormon church in my parents' eyes).

I only occasionally read those "hateful" articles, but me and my friend did open up to Steve Benson's cartoon every morning while folding our papers. We were well aware that he was Mormon as well as Ezra Taft Benson's grandson. He seemed like a huge traitor - my 14 or 15 year old mind couldn't wrap my mind around him being an active Mormon. I remember adults saying the same thing, saying that apparently he had a high calling and was very active. Yet not only did he attack Evan often, but he seemed to take shots at the church while there. I know I could look all this up, but I'm going off of memory here. I remember in one cartoon Evan holding a book titled "The Book of Moron". Completely irredeemable in my eyes, I felt attacked by this traitor. Yet my friend and I read him daily.

I'm thinking it was a year or two after the Mecham era when Benson "exposed" his grandpa's senility. At the time I couldn't understand what the big deal was, we all knew President Benson wasn't lucid... but it clearly was a big deal to those around me. Another data point that this Steve Benson dude wasn't really one of us. And I believe he left the church around that time. Maybe another year, but I remember there being an article about it in the paper. It seemed right, he never seemed to believe anyway (I remember thinking).

So I lived my life for nearly 20 years after that (BYU, mission, temple marriage, kids, callings, etc) almost entirely outside of AZ with the Mecham/Benson stuff a forgotten memory. But sometime close to 2007 the era randomly popped in my head and I thought it'd be interesting to read up on it as an adult... see if the biases from my youth held up. After reading up on Mecham I googled Steve Benson. The google hits sent me to his and his wife's exit story on exmormon.com, a fascinating read for someone not at all exposed to those kinds of stories. More damning yet (to my testimony) was clicking on the surrounding interesting looking links on that website ("Joseph Smith and his 14 year old bride!"; "Brigham Young murders hundreds in one day!"). I'm sure it's a common story, but it was a few months of reading exmormon.com links a couple of hours daily, reading everything I could. Throughout, I read most of what I could find that Benson wrote. His gossipy, insider stuff was irresistible and the Oaks/Maxwell story is pretty epic. In summary, Steve Benson is the impetus for me lurking on internet Mormon message boards all these years.

So, the point of de-lurking from this website and actually typing all of this: how fascinating is this Steve Benson dude? I've long wanted to hear a Mormon Stories type interview of him to see how mentally there he is. He's clearly competent, remaining employed by a major newspaper and seemingly one of the top political cartoonists in the country (although honestly I have no idea if that's true or not). He graduated cum laude, per this thread. All that and being a very close relative to a prophet... it's difficult to dismiss someone out of hand with credentials like that. Yet juxtapose that with how outrageously amateurish his internet postings and "articles" are. He clearly sees himself as a journalist, man of science, wanting nothing but the facts. Yet the way he writes (even when typing truthful or interesting things) is just so dopey...

Examples: how he calls people names in his "articles" - ie "Tall Tale Tom." Is that funny? Does the exmormon audience eat that up? Or how his articles have menacing titles that give away his biases right away. Or how anything written remotely negative about his writings and he responds like a 13 year old kid (the name calling, heavy reliance on the word "cult," the retreats to memorized facts that have nothing to do with the criticisms leveled at him (in the case of this article, him continually retreating to the 4,000 Book of Mormon errors). It makes you wonder what his co-workers think of him, if his boss has ever pulled him aside and said maybe it's best you stay off the internet for a time. You know, lay low.

This would all be ok if he were some ordinary internet dude. But he's not, he's a public figure and quick to pull the "I'm a journalist, I work for the AZ Republic" card. So you hold him to a different standard.

Which I suppose is why he's got the cult of personality, at least with me. I will click on most links that have his name attached to it, out of curiosity. This particular thread seems quite popular, certainly because it's got Steve Benson's name in the subject line. Etc. He's an exmormon celebrity and, like I wrote, a fascinating dude.

From my perspective he's a fancier version of Samuel the Utahnite (if you've heard of him). Another dude that I'd love to hear interviewed.

Anyway, for some reason I felt the urge to type all that out.