Schryver from Kinderhook Bomb

[_Droopy]

You are, after all Jack, a consistent contributor to an anti-Mormon board, who has traditionally made anti-Mormon arguments and taken consistent anti-Mormon positions, and who has aided and abetted a much larger anti-LDS culture and worldview.

I'm sure you have a cute, sophistic, drive-by response to these claims that will allow you to hide in plain sight, as you usually do when someone attempts to pin you down on anything (except the character destruction of LDS apologists who push just a little bit too hard against the protective membrane of your own self important intellectual conceit).

[_MsJack]

No, I only stuck around for upwards of two weeks on a near daily basis defending them,

I refuted your OP four days after you wrote it, and you never replied. Try again.

All of you here, you included, lost that argument miserably, and were exposed as the pack of snapping, drooling, deeply threatened hyenas that you symbolically are.

CFR, Droopy. Link me to where this epic PWNage took place.

I've followed anti-Mormonism, EV and secular, for over thirty years now

I'm not an anti-Mormon by any definition of the word that I've ever heard---not even the loosest, most ridiculous of them---and I'm not interested in listening to you wax on about trends that you imagine you've observed among antis. Has no bearing on anything pertaining to me.

Yes but, I, Wade, and Will himself showed repeatedly that your "case" was composed of nothing more than a grain of truth bloated by the most swollen, egregious pseudo-moral pomposity I've ever seen among a gang of self interested demagogues pretending to be outraged moralists.

Nope. Didn't hap.

Any worldview that sees the restored gospel and the Church representing it as a threat to its own legitimacy as a credible worldview.

I do not see what you call "the restored gospel" or my husband's church as a threat to the legitimacy of my own worldview. Not even a little bit.

The more you make this assertion, the more restless I become.

Sounds like a personal problem, Droopy. Hope you get that checked out.

Everything, Jack. Everything.

If you say so.

You are, after all Jack, a consistent contributor to an anti-Mormon board

Do you mean this board? I've made 1920 posts here since July 2008. You've made 4044 posts here since May 2008. You're far more consistent in your contributions to this board than I am.

who has traditionally made anti-Mormon arguments and taken consistent anti-Mormon positions,

CFR and CFR. I want some examples of these traditional anti-Mormon arguments and consistent anti-Mormon positions I've taken.

and who has aided and abetted a much larger anti-LDS culture and worldview.

Please. Brigham Young did more to aid and abet "anti-LDS culture and worldview" than I ever did.

I'm sure you have a cute, sophistic, drive-by response to these claims that will allow you to hide in plain sight, as you usually do when someone attempts to pin you down on anything

You can't "pin me down" on anything because you can never be bothered to research some supporting examples to back up your wild caricatures of me. Guess you were absent for that day of class.

Gods Droopy. You are a joke.

[Guest]

I refuted your OP four days after you wrote it, and you never replied. Try again.

The Will dogpile post went on for a good two weeks, and ran out to well over 40 pages, as I recall, and I was there for the majority of it. You "refuted" nothing (Nice Grahamism there). What you did was repeat, over and over again, the same claims you made at the outset, which quickly became a mantra, a which made quite clear as the thread progressed, that your entire "misogyny" case against Will was a self interested dog and pony show.

CFR, Droopy. Link me to where this epic PWNage took place.

You know the thread, so why ask me (and there was at least one major spin-off as well, as I recall)?

I'm not an anti-Mormon by any definition of the word that I've ever heard---not even the loosest, most ridiculous of them---and I'm not interested in listening to you wax on about trends that you imagine you've observed among antis. Has no bearing on anything pertaining to me.

So now you run into naked prevarication to keep your posterior out of the proverbial sling. I suppose that's to be expected.

Nope. Didn't hap.

Yes, it did happen. You just don't see it because of that existential threat to your worldview Will initially posed, and which his defenders pressed upon you while they exposed the base motives behind the pious howls of moral outrage.

I do not see what you call "the restored gospel" or my husband's church as a threat to the legitimacy of my own worldview. Not even a little bit.

The transparent motives of the very thread under discussion, and your part in it, will simply not support that claim.

CFR and CFR. I want some examples of these traditional anti-Mormon arguments and consistent anti-Mormon positions I've taken.

You character assassinated Mr. Schryver to prevent the publication of his work. You and others here succeeded. You went as far as to slander him with what is, at all events, a bald faced lie regarding the 'c' word. The sheer extremity of your commitment to the destruction of his reputation, at whatever moral cost, is clearly indicative of a much deeper hostility to what he represents, which is the defense of the Book of Abraham as an authentic ancient text containing eternal truths and which, as such, testifies to the divine authenticity of the restored gospel and the Church that represents it on earth at present.

Run and hide, duck and cover, Jack, but your own behavior in this forum keeps screaming, "Here I am, here I am!"

Please. Brigham Young did more to aid and abet "anti-LDS culture and worldview" than I ever did.

Its gratifying, in a certain way, to see you protest that you are not an anti-Mormon and then turn around and unambiguously confirm it in only a few brief sentences. Witting or unwitting, it was a grand performance.

You can't "pin me down" on anything because you can never be bothered to research some supporting examples to back up your wild caricatures of me. Guess you were absent for that day of class.

How about, just for your initiation, what bc characterized, in a debate with you, as your "grandiose claim" of the numerous affairs Joseph Smith allegedly had with sundry woman? That's a textbook anti-Mormon position, especially given that not a shred of compelling documentary corroboration exists to confirm such claims, or ever has.

You claim:

Compton's book demonstrates convincingly that the historical evidence is heavily in favor of sex between Joseph Smith and at least some of his wives. Even FAIR and FARMS have admitted that this was likely the case. That is all that is needed for someone to decide that Joseph Smith's unions were, in some sense, adulterous. Compton also shows that in the cases of several of the wives, Emma Smith was completely unaware of the marriages. Likely she was unaware of most of them. Even the most diehard TBM would admit that a man who sleeps with other women without his wife's knowledge or consent is committing adultery.

Joseph Smith may have had sexual relations with some of his plural wives. That, after all, is one primary purpose of that institution. The utter lack of known descendants of any such relations militates against hasty inferences, however. But even if he did, these were, by definition, so long as lawfully performed under the mediation of the Melchizedek priesthood, non-adulterous by definition.

Legitimate plural marriage is biblical doctrine, and well attested in the Old Testament. To accuse Joseph of adultery requires both a deep misunderstanding of core LDS doctrine regarding the various facets of eternal marriage as well as what could only be understood as a fundamentally apostate or certainly apostate-like intellectual/psychological orientation that places one's own personal biases/prejudices and perspectives above revelation, both ancient and modern.

Joseph was no adulterer so long as he was called and ordained to the practice of plural marriage by legitimate priesthood authority. Getting rid of Joseph's ministerial legitimacy has always been, of course, pivotal to subverting the entire basis of the Church's claims to divine legitimacy as an institution.

But of course, you knew that, didn't you?

I'd be pleased to hear your pro-Mormon perspectives of the Book of Abraham, Jack.

[_Droopy]

I'd also like to hear your pro-LDS views on the following core subjects:

1.The First Vision.

2.The literal visit of Moroni to Joseph Smith and the physical reality of the gold plates.

3.The personal visitation to Joseph Smith and others of physical, resurrected beings, such as Moses, Abraham, Noah, Enoch, Peter, James, and John etc., to restore keys and ordinances.

4.The doctrine of preexistence.

This would suffice for a small initial exploration.

[_Kevin Graham]

Loran is a textbook example of self delusion.

God love him. He is the best thing the critics could ever hope for.

Every time I get into an argument about how deluded and misbehaved some Mormons are, I get to point to Loran's fine example when I'm told Mormons do no such thing.

He's a life-saver in so many ways.

[_DonBradley]

Hi Droopy.

You'll recall that after nearly five years outside the church, I announced here and on MDD last summer that I had been rebaptized.

One of the wisest and warmest of the many kind responses I received, and the one that meant the most to me, was this:

Don ~ After my husband and I had been married for almost a year, he came to me and rather suddenly asked for a divorce. I fought him on it, but we wound up legally separating and I finally reached a point where I stopped fighting and told him to just give me the paperwork and I would let him go. In my mind, our marriage was over and it was time to get used to the stigma of being young, evangelical and divorced (which could quite possibly be worse than the stigma of being evangelical and married to an "unbeliever").

The paperwork never arrived. My husband had a change of heart, he moved back in with me, and we decided to give things another shot. This November will mark our seventh anniversary.

I can honestly say that our marriage has been much happier and more satisfying since we went through our separation and near divorce. When we got married, I think we were both naïve and came to the table with some very unrealistic expectations on how our marriage would function. When we got back together, we'd seen each other at our worst and knew exactly what we were getting into, and we accepted each other in spite of that.

I bring this up because I think making a church work is a lot like making a marriage work. Some people enter into it with naïve or false expectations, which they may have very well formed because of what they were told by the church, and they leave because it didn't live up to their expectations. Some people find that the religion was a horrible match for them from the start and leaving is the only reasonable option, for both parties. We can go all kinds of places with this analogy.

I think you've seen the LDS church at its worst, Don. You know the problems as well as any of us, and yet you've still decided to embrace it in spite of these flaws and give a relationship with the church a second try. I'm wishing you the best of luck on this second attempt. If you ever need someone to talk to about your "marriage," you know where to find me.

The author was Jack.
_______________________

I understand that sometimes in the heat of these online discussions we sometimes let some things fly that aren't what we would say in our calmer and more reflective moments. I'm going to guess that your calling Jack an anti-Mormon was made in the heat of discussion, rather than being really thought through.

Know, in either case, that making Jack out to be an anti-Mormon would be a very, very, very hard sell. Perhaps you aren't aware that Jack went to BYU, and is married to a Latter-day Saint? I've known her online for seven or eight years, used to chat with her frequently on ZLMB, and have spoken with her in person. And in my experience Jack is very fair and charitable. While being devoutly part of Evangelical Christianity, a faith of which so many of the adherents are anti-Mormon, she has managed to be a friend to Latter-day Saints. Would that all Evangelical Christians were as "anti-Mormon" as Jack!

Don

[_DonBradley]

I'd also like to hear your pro-LDS views on the following core subjects:

1.The First Vision.

2.The literal visit of Moroni to Joseph Smith and the physical reality of the gold plates.

3.The personal visitation to Joseph Smith and others of physical, resurrected beings, such as Moses, Abraham, Noah, Enoch, Peter, James, and John etc., to restore keys and ordinances.

4.The doctrine of preexistence.

This would suffice for a small initial exploration.

Droopy,

You are confusing not being anti-Mormon with actually being LDS.

By the definition implied in the questions above, everyone who doesn't believe in the restoration is "anti-Mormon," in which case we are condemned to live in a world in which 99.95% of the population is anti-Mormon, God help us.

Jack isn't Mormon; that doesn't make her anti-Mormon anymore than your not being Hindu makes you an anti-Hindu.

Don

[_Droopy]

Loran is a textbook example of self delusion.

Brilliant, Kevin. You're scintillating philosophical depth leaves me reeling...

God love him. He is the best thing the critics could ever hope for.

Truth be told, the worst thing critics can possibly hope for is Sargent Graham's anti-Mormon Misery Tour, with all of its flamboyant narcissism, faux scholarship, grandiose intellectual posturing, and venomous hostility.

The Kevin Klux Klan continues its march to infamy, post after post, ad hominem attack after ad hominem attack.

Every time I get into an argument about how deluded and misbehaved some Mormons are, I get to point to Loran's fine example when I'm told Mormons do no such thing.

That's the problem, Graham, you have no idea how to actually argue in a philosophical manner. All you really ever are is merely argumentative.

[_Droopy]

Droopy,

You are confusing not being anti-Mormon with actually being LDS.

By the definition implied in the questions above, everyone who doesn't believe in the restoration is "anti-Mormon," in which case we are condemned to live in a world in which 99.95% of the population is anti-Mormon, God help us.

Jack isn't Mormon; that doesn't make her anti-Mormon anymore than your not being Hindu makes you an anti-Hindu.

I'll wait to see Jack's response to the questions asked. She has avoided, in the past, clear positions on unambiguous doctrinal claims, enough at least, to ask for CFR's against any claim of negative analysis of church concepts. The above questions can be considered as representing central, and at the very least, settled, established truth claims within the Church's overall theological system.

She appears to claim to be, in some sense, at least non-anti-Mormon. Her behavior in the now infamous Will "dogpile" megathread causes me to wax dubious. How much neutrality is possible here? I don't mean to assert that anything not pro-LDS is, by definition, anti-LDS. However, I do not fully subscribe to Jack's rather diffuse and vague denials of intellectual hostility to the Church and its key concepts, given her past history.

Her views of Joseph Smith's plural marriages is, as those things go, little different, if a bit updated perhaps, than classic Fawn Brodie or any number of critics who are, by any definition "anti-Mormon."

I'll wait and see what develops.

[_Droopy]

I understand that sometimes in the heat of these online discussions we sometimes let some things fly that aren't what we would say in our calmer and more reflective moments. I'm going to guess that your calling Jack an anti-Mormon was made in the heat of discussion, rather than being really thought through.

Know, in either case, that making Jack out to be an anti-Mormon would be a very, very, very hard sell. Perhaps you aren't aware that Jack went to BYU, and is married to a Latter-day Saint? I've known her online for seven or eight years, used to chat with her frequently on ZLMB, and have spoken with her in person. And in my experience Jack is very fair and charitable. While being devoutly part of Evangelical Christianity, a faith of which so many of the adherents are anti-Mormon, she has managed to be a friend to Latter-day Saints. Would that all Evangelical Christians were as "anti-Mormon" as Jack!

I appreciate your personal anecdotes and feelings toward Jack, and certainly you have more experience with her than I do. However, my core experience of her, at least as an internet personality, has been her utterly egregious defamation of Will Schryver.

I am not, by any means, the only member of the online apologetics community who views her, after that experience, which was, frankly, among the worst witch hunts I've ever seen among LDS critics that I actually know (in cyberspace) in over a decade online, in a less than warm and fuzzy light.

There's no point in going over all of it, as you are probably already aware of the gist of most of it, and the original thread in which this debacle developed, and in which Will had several core defenders, among which I myself, ran out to many pages and was wholly personal in nature for the duration of the meltdown.

I've been attacked (not by Jack) by others here in a similar manner, though not with in any sense the vehemence demonstrated in that instance. Jack was at the center of that storm. No one, including me, has exonerated Will for using, on rare occasions, some rough language regarding individual woman he finds particularly unlikeable. But he's also done the same to men here who have really irritated him. So have I. So have others.

The whole "misogyny" claim I consider to be nothing more than a libel, and a deeply tendentious, if not mendacious one at that.

The whole episode bore all the marks of a well orchestrated political smear campaign against a opposition candidate or public intellectual, with all the ugly implications inherent in such behavior outside the Church.

As I say, I'll just wait and see where it goes. Perhaps I'll just let her speak for herself, if she will, in a clear and concise manner regarding her views of the Church, and not let her behavior as part of the anti-Will "posse" here color my biases as much.

But that may not be as easy said as done.

Loran.