FAIRwiki vs Dr. Shades

[_Daniel Peterson]

So... got any idea when it might happen?

Long before you have anything of substance to say, I hope.

[_christopher]

by the way, do you consider yourself a deep thinker?

Wasn't "deep thinker" one of DCP's many anonymous monikers over on the old Zions board?

[Alf'Omega]

So... got any idea when it might happen?

Long before you have anything of substance to say, I hope.

Well, the first thing you might try is getting over yourself, growing up a bit (you know... past adolescence), and freeing yourself of your concern of what other people think of you.

But then, you wouldn't nearly be as easy to laugh at, so it doesn't really matter to me either way (although I do admit that sometimes, I pity you a little for your demonstrated lack of genuine self-confidence. But that quickly passes).

[_Some Schmo]

by the way, do you consider yourself a deep thinker?

Wasn't "deep thinker" one of DCP's many anonymous monikers over on the old Zions board?

Oh man, that's funny... if so, it wouldn't surprise me a bit.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Wasn't "deep thinker" one of DCP's many anonymous monikers over on the old Zions board?

No. That was "Freethinker."

I decided, a few times, to try using a pseudonym, for relatively brief periods, to see if I could avoid having each and every conversation turn to the topic of Me. (Hard to imagine why I thought that ever happened, but, well, I did.) Almost everybody else uses pseudonyms, so I didn't realize that it would be a monumental crime for me to do it.

I soon gave it up, though. Preserving my anonymity (or pseudonymity) soon demanded a level of deviousness that I was uncomfortable with. So I went back to what I had always done before and what I have done since: I use my own name. This permits the Scratchii and others to make almost every thread a referendum on Me again, but it's nonetheless preferable to sneaking about trying to hide my identity. (The wisest thing, without question, would simply be to give up participation on message boards altogether.)

[_Dr. Shades]

Similar to Nehor, I found myself answering "c" to most everthing. Each question seemed to set up a false dichotomy. Maybe FAIR should create a rebuttal anti-mormon quiz with questions such as:

Is BYU's student body intellectually rigorous?

A) Yes, they are on par with the students of Yale, Stanford, Princeton, and other fine institutions.
B) No, they are all complete idiots
C) Don't know / undecided / not enough information

The only question I saw that your comments would apply to was the question about birth control. I didn't feel the need to go into a long soliloquy about the exceptions due to medical conditions, etc.

That aside, which questions did you see as false dichotomies, and why? To my knowledge, I purposefully avoided making them.

Its apparent purpose is to create a tool, useful in debate, that drives a intellectual and cultural wedge between one group of Mormons, the supposed literate, educated, and enlightened variety (and this always involves the implication that these Mormons are much more "liberal" and more likely to question official Church teachings and hold avant garde views on various issues), and the other variety; the pitchfork waving, uneducated, intellectually unsophisticated (unlike Shades), easily lead, philistine variety that populate the chapels and Stake Centers of the Church on Sunday's soaking up the whitewashed history and fairy tale theology fed to them by their semi-literate Bishops and gospel doctrine teachers.

You're approaching it the wrong way. I think we critics are far more sympathetic to the Chapel Mormons, since they are the one's taking the Lord's mouthpieces at their word. We're not declaring the Internet Mormons to be our intellectual brethren, as you appear to believe.

Educated, literate, computer savvy Mormons are also, in the modern age we live in, chapel Mormons, i.e., faithful, committed members of the Church.

*sigh* Here we go yet again: "[T]he adherents of these separate schools of thought can be termed 'Internet Mormons' and 'Chapel Mormons'--not because of the only places they inhabit, of course, but because of the places one is most likely to encounter them. Lest anyone be confused, I also acknowledge that Internet Mormonism--at least in its embryonic form--has been around much longer than the Internet itself has. Again, the name 'Internet Mormonism' merely calls attention to the place at which one is most likely to encounter this brand of Mormon thought. It also pays tribute to the fact that the Internet was the catalyst for the recent explosion of this particular brand of Mormonism."

When Shades comes up with some serious empirical evidence for such a cultural divide in the Mormon world, we can talk.

Okay, here's some empirical evidence for you:

The Lord's mouthpieces have, via both the spoken and the written word, clearly, consistently, and unambiguously taught that Noah's flood was a global event--a temporal baptism of the earth by water, removing all sin from the face of the earth. Were the Lord's mouthpieces wrong, or were they right?

('nuff said.)