Many here no doubt remember the recent hot-potato, utterly insane and angry postings from the formerly calm poster known as Ray A. These days, Ray absolutely hates, with a white-hot passion, anything associated with ex-Mormonism. He hates it so much, in fact, that he puts it on a par with Nazism. There is an impending Mormon genocide on the horizon, he has intimated. So what happened to him? Rumor has it that someone on RfM slandered one of his daughters, saying that she "looks like a crack whore." Certainly, a nasty remark.
But that is not what is of interest in this story. The truth about Ray is that he is a flip-flopper, and in fact, there was a time when he absolutely hated the man he now calls his idol: Prof. Daniel C. Peterson. In an extremely fascinating ZLMB thread from a few years ago, Ray (who posted there as "Ray Ago"), threatened to "expose" DCP's personal nastiness and cruelty via a 15-page letter that DCP had written to Ray. The backstory to this is quite convoluted, but suffice it to say that Ray back then is almost a mirror image of who he is today. Get a load of this post, written some three or four years ago:
(emphasis added; mod italicization ibid)Ray Ago wrote:My enemies among the silly, braindead apologist Mormons will have all their words come back to haunt them. When I left the church in '87 I had to deal with scatterbrains like them all the time who were taunting me. Now, some 16 years later, those who haven't ended up on RFM squealing like castrated pigs have finally realised the futility of it all.
The point is, I am not trapped by a church like they are. I am not subject to spiritual slavery like they are. I don't have to offer blind obedience to ordinances and temples like they do.possible temple content rule violation In short, I don't have to be a 24 hour hypocrite as they are, by professing the name of Christ, then coming here and behaving like intellectual street thugs following Satan, quite contrary to everything their Book of Mormon teaches, but they would not realise that, because they are too thick for such thoughts to penetrate their legalistic, Pharisaic brains.
What I find quite bemusing is that I was chastised for merely mentioning the name of FT's God incarnate, the FARMS intellectual thug, who they call the "Great One". Jesus Christ is not the Great One in their minds, and it shows.
Just watch how many enemies they make for the church, then they will complain and blame "Satan".
This whole thread is an anomaly, but typical of what they have been doing since day one I arrived here. They taunt you, they tempt you, and when you "transgress" their sacred boundaries they accept no responsibility.
With people like Pent and FT in the church...does it really need enemies?
Quite stunning! It seems that Ray's position---i.e., who he sides with---is contingent upon how people treat him. If an RfMer insults his daughter, he "crosses over" to the Mopologists' side. If DCP is mean to him, he flip-flops over to the critics' side. One has to wonder: does Ray actually care about truth in argumentation? Or, for him, is it all about who treats him nicely? Are his loyalties based on principles he adheres to? Or is if far more arbitrary than that? It seems likely that his recent "reconversion" to the Church of DCP may have had to do with some behind-the-scene buttkissing given to him by the Good Professor.
In any case, I felt that this was an extremely interesting look into the past.
Sidenote: "Pent" (full screename "Pentatach") posts currently on MAD as "Confidential Informant." FT---aka "FreeThinker"--was an alias used by DCP. But that is the subject of Part II of this posting.