Simon Belmont wrote:Yes, the world is not full of flowers and rainbows, Kishkumen. What makes it colorful is it's diversity of ideas. When someone misrepresents someone else's faith, as that essay did, calling one person's experiences the standard for all of Mormonism, others are free to correct. That is what the comments section is for. What DCP said was very mild, and more mild than some of the other commentators. Why harp on him?
I don't really see any misrepresentations there, Simon. I am not at all convinced that they are there. I see an uncomfortable attempt to shoehorn relevant information into a description of photos. But I really don't see misrepresentation. The way you use the term misrepresentation implies that this guy was going out of his way to say false things about Mormonism, knowing full well that they were not true, in order to harm the LDS Church. I just don't see that. I think his captions and pictures represent pretty well something in the range of normal LDS experience.
Maybe you think they have to represent the ideal LDS experience. I suppose what would make you happy is something produced by Church PR to advertise how cool Mormons and Mormonism is, like those ads on TV. Maybe if he had shown his brother skateboarding while sipping Yoo-hoo and reading the Book of Mormon with a caption reading, "Mormons are nice, edgy people that you want to be," then you would have nothing but kudos for Mr. Shumway.
As it is, I don't see how these photos could be taken as representing all Mormons, something I think everyone with half a brain and less knee-jerk defensiveness would get. "Like, wow, you are telling me that all Mormons are not exactly like this one guy's family! Like, wow! I never would have got that unless a pack of apologists had been snotty about the photos, captions, and essay. As it was, I just assumed that these guys were representative of ALL Mormons!"
"Scratch" is a pseudonym, so any reference to "Scratch" is not a reference to an actual real person.
Precisely. And this is why it is bizarre to bring him up on the TIME website, where almost no one, at least before that post, had any clue 1) who Dr. Peterson is; 2) what his connection with the LDS Church is; 3) that he has spent a great deal of time fighting with an anonymous poster on an obscure message board or complaining about him on other obscure message boards.
Thanks for making my point for me.
Rest assured, if Scratch dared to post under his actual identity, and DCP or anyone else constantly said untrue things about him for five full years, I'd stick up for Scratch too.
The point of my post is that Dr. Peterson probably would have been better off not bringing up Scratch in a forum like the TIME blog. But you continue to ignore that point like you do most everything else that does not conform to your very limited and tedious script. I know I don't have to invite you to do so.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
