You Rock!!

[_Mercury]

I posted a comment on the follow up thread.

http://www.exmormon.org/boards/w-agora/ ... b_recovery

I understand that people who are just discovering that the LDS church is not what it claims, and they have invested inordinate amounts of time, money, and life-style choices in a religion that is just as man-made as the others, are going to be angry. I was angry. And they may need a place to vent - better vent there than in real-life. The problem as I see it is the mix of this emotional venting with discussions that should be academic, not personal, like whether or not it is justified to call Joseph Smith a pedophile.

I suggested dividing the board into two forums, one for venting alone, and one just for academic discussions about LDS truth claims.

I have no idea if anyone who could follow up on it would find it worthwhile, but I would reconsider participating there if they did so (because I do have information I think can help doubters or investigators concerning the Book of Mormon in Mesoamerica). I can't participate there regularly in the state it is currently in, and believe it probably drives as many people away as MAD does.

The picture I got from the probing I did while invlved with exmormon.org taught me that they are generally speaking a bunch of people who are the unwashed internet-is-my-life types. ya know, the unwashed basically. Although they have a VERY successful site It is sad to say that the people who run it are tools. They are clique-ish smarmy types who hold onto their power and keep it close.

[_Polygamy Porter]

When posting on RfM, do not make even a mere mention of Dr. Shades or his board, as your post will either be heavily editted or completely deleted. A link to this board is flagged immeadiatley.

Yet, the will allow links and all sorts of discussion from MAAD and LDS/Mormon.org

Does anyone here understand their reasoning for this? I asked and never got a repsonse.

[_Bond...James Bond]

When posting on RfM, do not make even a mere mention of Dr. Shades or his board, as your post will either be heavily editted or completely deleted. A link to this board is flagged immeadiatley.

Maybe their admins are jealous because we rule so much over here (plus we don't delete posts after 10 days, very cool).

[_Jersey Girl]

Hey Don!

I couldn't BELIEVE those folks! Talk about non-thinking mob mentality! The OP acted like you trotted out your credentials and waved them around just to impress/intimidate people when you were actually ASKED by "Matt" for them. And then in that thread, "Matt" acted like he was surprised to see them when infact, you'd already posted them at his request. Fool!

I actually went to Amazon and searched inside that book and as I recall, the index or whatever only listed the "A's"...bluff much? I also looked up the Mormon History Association (too bad the OP didn't do that,eh?) and saw that it says that it's open to folks of any sort of background...In other words you don't have to be LDS to be part of the association.

I LOVED defending you and hey, I was BORN to jump into frays! May the OP stuff down that breakfast of crow and may your cockles always be warm, hot and spicy!

Jersey Girl
;-)

[_Bond...James Bond]

I couldn't BELIEVE those folks! Talk about non-thinking mob mentality!

Kinda MADesque....don't ya think?

[_gramps]

Don, you are very welcome.

You definitely don't deserve the crap they laid on. I don't know you, at all, but like your style.

Keep it up!

[_Jersey Girl]

Exactly so, Bond! They were so quick to judge Don because they want to believe that anyone who doesn't follow the RFM party line that requires one to HATE all things Mormon, to pepper one's posts with rancid insults leveled at anything that remotely resembles a positive or rational thought, to appearl to the baser thougths of anti-Mormonism (Joseph Smith was a PEDOPHILE!!) and hot dang... is some kind of troll and form a mob and attempt to "out" them!

Egg on your face, much? Nah!

Just for the record here, there is no reason at ALL to believe that Joseph Smith was a pedophile. NONE. He may have been many things but pedophile is not one of them.

But you can't say that on RFM! You can't HAVE a rational thought that doesn't fit the PROFILE they create of Joseph Smith and if you do...they fit YOU into a profile of yet another sort!

Anyone could have searched up some of the OP's references like I did, but that must be too much like work for some folks! Better to jump on that bandwagon folks no matter how foolish it makes you look in the end!

Whew! That was way too much fun!

Jersey Girl

[_Sethbag]

For what it's worth, this illustrates pretty much why I don't go back to RfM to read, much less post, very often at all. I posted there for a few weeks maybe a year and a half ago, but I pretty soon got tired of the "trash the church with anything you can think of, or you're an apologist" mentality of some, but not all of the posters. I believe in trashing the church with only those arguments and facts that actually make sense. :-)

In reaction to Joseph Smith's manipulation into marriage of a 14 year old and some others not much older, I recall before having thought that Joseph Smith was a pedophile, however as Don has pointed out, that term actually has some very specific meanings that simply don't apply to Joseph Smith. I thought Don's list of nine arguments were devastating in their power. Don came out the winner of that argument by far, if I am the judge. Joseph Smith liked women - lots of women. He had women - lots of women. But as Don shows, they were almost universally convincingly mature and fully-developed women, and not undeveloped or pre-prubescent children, and this is simply not the pattern of a true pedophile.

Also, I think Don is an uberly awesome critic. He can always back up what he says, and his arguments are devastating. I like Dan Vogel this way too. I think the RfM crowd don't know what they're missing when they diss these two.

[_beastie]

Sethbag, you are totally correct on every point, in my opinion.

The reason I occasionally go back to try and make this point - ie, that when exmormons glom onto any and every argument or assertion, no matter how weakly based in facts it is, as long as it is BAD, then they are behaving just like True Believers who do the inverse - is because it is such a popular site that I hate that people who are really looking for legitimate information about the church might be so turned off by that atmosphere that they reject any information obtained there.

Yet much of the information offered there, particularly by posters who have studied certain issues thoroughly, is very reliable.

So I'd really like to see them change this, but it may not be possible.

[_Jersey Girl]

I was thinking about all of this. The problem with some of those people on the Bradley thread is that they deal in absolute/black-white thinking that leaves no room for rational or reflective analysis of an issue.

You see it here to a much lesser degree when someone says (I will be classy enough not to name names- Porter/Mercury ;-) to someone like me that I'm uniformed, wishy washy or lack street cred in every day life with Mormonism (I'm afraid Craig Criddle would be the very first to disagree with that, sorry to disappoint!) based on nothing more than the fact that I don't go around spewing venom all over TBM's.

People like Craig Criddle, Don Bradley, Beastie, truthdancer, Dale Broadhurst and Shades (and others like them) are examples the finest top of the line of LDS critics. They do their homework and frame their work and conclusions in such a way as not to offend their tribe and the value in that is making their tribe receptive to what they might have to offer.

If anyone doesn't think that some of the RFM posters are a mirror image of some of those that they see on MAD, you need only to look over that Bradley thread.