Don Bradley on MormonThink

[_zeezrom]

I hesitate to say this... It is just my not-very-informed opinion after 10 minutes on the site.

My first impression was: I wish I had visited this site before leaving on my mission. It may have helped me realize that a mission really isn't like the movie "Called to Serve".

[_sock puppet]

What if my companion is lazy?
Being a missionary from sunup to sundown is exhausting! Even the most dedicated missionary has a slow day. Be understanding, but also be motivating. If it gets too bad, talk to your leaders.

Now that one pushes it over the line, doesn't it? I mean, to think they'd undermine the corporation-like mission leadership rules with a more humanistic suggestion that a prospective missionary be understanding because the dawn til dark work is exhausting. I suppose the good Mormon family that sent a missionary out would eschew him and tear the family apart if they learned their son did this suggested insubordination to the LDS Mission rule to just go directly to snitching on your companion.

[_thews]

Jesus, thews. I wonder if you could make a point without being such a nasty bitch. for the love of god. So you think Kish is a hypocrite. Now stop sharpening your fangs and nails. Goddamnit.

Piss off observer. You have no idea what you're dealing with... I do, and Kish is a hypocrite by definition. Maybe he thinks seer stones are nifty? Either post what you object to, or keep your BS false objection to yourself... do you understand that part of this discussion?

[_Mayan Elephant]

Whatever, thews. You made some great points here. Perhaps the most exclaimed point made is that you can be a douchebag. I don't agree with everything kish has said here on this thread and I agree that he is saying stuff that isn't supported but it is your douchenozzling that is most over the top.

[_Bazooka]

Why? Why is this criticism deserved? Post an example... you can't and it's why you don't. Your problem with Mormonthink is they're telling the truth. Either post something you disagree with, anything, or shut the hell up already.

Because it is luring young people into a site designed to destroy their faith on false pretenses. It poses as a site to help young people prepare for their mission. I don't see why that is difficult to understand.

Kish, by informing the prospective missionary of some of the information he/she is going to encounter whilst serving they ARE helping them to prepare. And they aren't luring anybody anywhere. People reading that site have sought it out either directly or indirectly because they are looking or soe help or information that the Church doesn't give them.

[_Bazooka]

It seems to me the objections about www.futuremissionary.com could be equally levelled at LDS.org and Mormon.org.
Those sites seek to lure unsuspecting non Mormons in by presenting a picture about Mormonism that isn't correct.
Should we be advising all our friends that those sites are anti-catholic/Muslim/Semite etc?

[_dblagent007]

So Kish will get pissed if anyone sets up a website (a website!) directed at youth that teaches things that are contrary to what Kish teaches them? That sounds overprotective at best and super cultish at worst.

Maybe a better solution is to teach kids to think critically and give them the freedom to consider websites that contain a variety of points of view, even deceptive ones like josephsmith.net and futuremissionary.com.

[_madeleine]

Deceptive website= Mormon.org ....blacklist it using the firewall software you've installed to keep your kids away from Bad Things on the internets. That site is always sitting there all spammy in Facebook for any minor to click on.

(Though there's a good chance a 17 year old knows a way around the super duper firewall,)

[_DonBradley]

Kishkumen,

I appreciate your efforts to better understand my objections to both MormonThink and FutureMissionary. I do see a kinship between the sites, though not a moral equivalence. FutureMissionary looked to me like a spin-off of MT, and of course they link to one another.

However, it's not unlikely that FutureMissionary was merely modeled on MormonThink, though targeted (more perniciously) at a different audience. Given that LDS missionaries are now typically going to be embarking around the time they turn 18, for the boys, and 19, for the girls, and that the site is aimed at prospective missionaries, its primary audience will be 17 and 18 year olds.

Why?

The obvious answer, and one confirmed by the timing when the site was started, is that this is a MormonThink-style counter to the church's missionary "surge." The thinking is, evidently, that something must be done to counter the church's increase in the missionary force, so we (meaning these dedicated critics) need to find a way to counter this by getting these kids to hear the critical case against Mormonism before they ever actually embark on missions--so that hopefully they will decide not to, and perhaps even lose faith altogether.

One of the many problems with this approach is that it deceives individual LDS kids as a way of countering the LDS institution. Like mugging Mormon kids in order to hurt the church's tithing revenues, it takes aim at innocents and treats them like they're embodiments of the faceless corporation rather than individual human beings whose decisions should be treated with dignity.

If Mormon kids decide for themselves that they want to read critical literature on the Internet, that's their decision. It's a decision they should be trusted with. And if Mormon kids decide for themselves that they want to read faithful LDS sites that tell how to help investigators with tough questions, that's also their decision, and one they should be trusted with. But "FutureMissionary" tries to reverse these kids decision, fraudulently leading them places they personally chose not to go.

One excuse offered by defenders of such deceit is that these kids have been indoctrinated, so the only way to get past their culturally-crafted defenses is through the sort of bait and switch that FutureMissionary does.

The fact is that we live in a free society where we allow parents to acculturate their children to just about any religious, political, or other ideological system. So, we are all surrounded by people who've been acculturated differently than we have, and who are therefore often unwilling to listen to our message. (People's political affiliations, for instance, are about as resistant to change as their religious affiliations.) Who among is not, then, by the logic used to justify FutureMissionary's trickery, licensed to hoodwink our fellow citizens in order to supposedly enlighten them?

If the neighbors were raised as staunch uber-liberal Democrats and I'm a Republican, should I offer to take them to hear Bill Clinton speak but then take them to hear Glenn Beck?

If the Dawkins family down the street indoctrinates their children with a hatred of religion, should my Baptist neighbors counter this by putting on a fake skeptics camp to dupe the atheist kids into religious indoctrination?

The problem is that if we're seeing interaction with others as a way to counter their ideological institution or group, we end up not treating them as individuals to whose autonomy we are morally obliged to respect. A democracy, a decent society, doesn't work this way. If the people in the Hindu, Pentecostal, Constitutionalist, socialist, vegan,... - take your pick - family next door don't want to hear what I have to say, then my responsibility is to either come up with a way to persuade them to voluntarily hear me out, or to just lump it and accept that in a free society people are free to ignore me for whatever reason, even if (as will almost always be the case) those reasons are to a great extent provided for them by their larger social group.

So, there, in part, is my objection to FutureMissionary.

I object to MormonThink on similar grounds, though not nearly as strenuously. While it is duplicitous of the MT folks to claim to be Mormons and to claim to be trying only to fairly represent "both sides," when their site's content shows that they are critics who purposely stack up one side and skimp on the other; that duplicity is mild relative to the deception perpetrated at FutureMissionary. MT falsely presents itself as sympathetic but neutral. FM falsely presents itself as "pro-Mormon" and as a group of paternalistic returned missionaries trying to help Mormon high schoolers or new graduates learn the ropes of how to help investigators learn the truth of the gospel despite the hard questions.

MormonThink is (decidedly) to the critical side while claiming to be neutral. FutureMissionary is overwhelmingly on the critical side while claiming to be overwhelming on the positive side.

The creators of both sites pretend claim to be Latter-day Saints, with the connotations that claim has to believers, in order to capitalize on the trust that believing Latter-day Saints are willing to place in other believing Latter-day Saints. The idea is to use that trust to undermine the very thing on which it is founded: shared commitment to the LDS faith. Like the use of church membership to run a scam, it is a manipulation and betrayal of trust.

If the creators of these sites really want to empower people, why try to hoodwink them? Why not instead respect the intelligence and autonomy even of people we disagree with, and begin our appeal to them on those terms? To see what a real attempt to empower others in making their own religious decisions looks like, see Roger Loomis's "Unauthorized Investigator's Guide to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints": http://www.lds4u.com/

Or, if one prefers to try to make an active case against Mormonism, rather than lay out both sides, why not be honest about the purpose? Why engaged in an honest and respectful contestation of Mormon beliefs? As my friend Randy Paul, of the Institute for Religious Diplomacy, argues, we don't have to assume the worst of others or be our worst selves in order to disagree over religion and try to persuade one another. We can be, as he calls it, "trustworthy opponents": http://irdialogue.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Inter-Religious-Diplomacy-Paul.pdf

I don't begrudge the people at either MormonThink or FutureMissionary their beliefs, nor their efforts to advocate for the way they view things. I wouldn't ask that they take down the information they've meticulously compiled. I'd just ask that they be honest about who is selecting the information and to what ends.

That's all.

Don

[_DonBradley]

And, I'm very glad--and not a bit surprised--that you feel the same about people trying to undo the faith and self-chosen goals of teenage kids, particularly minors.

You've stated, reasonably, pointedly, and passionately, what I think I would have said if I had been engaging all the posts you have.

Kudos, my friend.

Don