beastie wrote:And the beast is this: as long as the LDS church continues to teach that it is the ONE TRUE CHURCH and that any sincere person can find that out with CERTAINTY from GOD HIIMSELF, then people who no longer believe in that truth will be viewed with suspicion and antagonism. And those negative biases will be duplicated on the side of the exbeliever.
With Mormonism as the topic, there is not only the simple belief-nonbelief gulf that separates those that would discuss the issue from either side, but there is this other, acidic dynamic that beastie mentions here. It's an either with us or against us (or perhaps pity them) attitude that this teaching engenders among its faithful.
On the other side, non-believers that will engage believers in discussing Mormonism have just a few motivations too. Trying to get people that we think are yet under the spell of Mormon leaders to wake up and smell the coffee, is one of them. My own Mormon belief bubble took many, many incoming shells before at last it burst. It was like opening one's eyes after cataract surgery--the patient had not until then realized how much his or her vision had been slowly clouded over until all at once it was cleared.
TBM have their chapels to go to on Sundays for comraderie with other TBMs. We non-believers here are rather cohesive, because there are not shades of Mormonism to sort out with each other. Others think we are dog piling, when it is each of us responding to the TBM's or NOM's statement.
NOMs have it the toughest. How do you find others that believe just what you do? The lonely problem is that as you discuss it with other NOMs, you find out one believes yet in the historicity of the Book of Mormon, but not polygamy, for example. If you think the Book of Mormon is simply a divine inspired allegory, you haven't found a fellow traveler of your beliefs. You inevitably start discussing, and then perhaps arguing, and then perhaps lobbing personal insults at each other over the historicity of the Book of Mormon as the two of you only agree on polygamy being bupkis.
In this way, NOMs who discuss with other NOMs are just going to find themselves with nothing left but the lowest common denominator: the Book of Mormon makes me feel good, inspires me to be better. Gone are JSJr as a prophet to whom god or Jesus talked, and all that has followed down all the way to the hallowed corporate corridors at the COB.
This is all an emotionally charged process.