I hate to be the one to break it to you, Droop, but no one takes MAD seriously, except the inhabitants of that particular asylum. But we'll keep the light on for ya, so you can find your way back to sanity occasionally.
Oh, I disagree. Very many people take MAD seriously. Maxwell Institute scholars and LDS, as well as non-member intellectuals take it seriously enough to participate there in a substantive way, and in most cases, civilly, on a regular basis. However, in no venue is MAD taken more seriously than here. The MAD boards are taken as seriously here as any subject ever has been, if not more so. It is a focus and fixation for many here, and the subject of a vast corpus of postings over the last several years.
Indeed, for a few here, it is an obsession (among others).
That's probably true, Droop. Trix has handed them their heads so often, they don't dare engage her any more. She knows what she knows, they know what she knows, and you?... You don't know what you don't know and it shows.
Beastie is an intellectual charlatan, and the vast majority of intellectually astute LDS apologists know it.
More than a few have given up debating her because of her manifest inability to follow arguments with any degree of intellectual rigor, and the substantial exaggerations (and omissions) that plague her use of evidence (especially in the Book of Mormon area).