Polygamy Porter wrote: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.
At least they don't block links from this board to theirs (like MAAD does).
"And yet another little spot is smoothed out of the echo chamber wall..." Bond
RfM can be like a pack of hunger-crazed hyenas. When they so much as sniff red meat, they go into a collective frenzy. There's a lot of good stuff there, but also a lot of nonsense. (If that was one's sole source of information on Mormonism, you'd come away believing that Mormonism caused the common cold.)
I don't see anything to suggest to me that Joseph Smith was a pedophile. Narcissist, absolutely. Borderline sociopath (or with sociopathic tendencies), probably.
God . . . "who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, . . . and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him ..."
When they so much as sniff red meat, they go into a collective frenzy.
I know that I probably shouldn't use this as an example but they've been topping messages for "JT" (who posted with ideation of suicide) for three weeks which is certainly admirable but they take all of three minutes to whip up a round of applause for the OP in Don's case that attacked his character without even checking sources.
Geez!!
Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.
Chinese Proverb
Sethbag wrote: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.
Sethbag, where can I find Don's list of nine arguments? I've looked for them on RfM, but the search function stinks over there. The more I read, the more I doubt Joseph Smith was a pedophile. That doesn't lessen his vileness by much in my estimation, and I'm still not convinced Joseph Smith didn't have sex with his extremely young wives - but I would be interested in reading Don's nine arguments if I can find them.
Welcome to the club, where the moderation is not a virtue to those with political agnedas. Generally, the RFM board isn't interested in serious scholarship; they just want to vent. So don't waste time over there.
I do not want you to think that I am very righteous, for I am not. Joseph Smith (History of the Church 5:401)
[MODERATOR NOTE: The RFM message board is a "framed" site, so copying-&-pasting from the address bar will NOT create a link to an individual post. It will merely create a link to the main page, as clicking on the link above will reveal.
To create a link to an individual post, right-click somewhere in the lower half of the screen, then choose "Properties." Where it says "Address (URL)," highlight everything (i.e., click-&-drag) with your mouse, then right-click on the selected text and choose "Copy."
Then you can paste it here as a link.
For example, the follow-up thread Beastie referred to would be linked to as follows:
"Finally, for your rather strange idea that miracles are somehow linked to the amount of gay sexual gratification that is taking place would require that primitive Christianity was launched by gay sex, would it not?"
Polygamy Porter wrote: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.
At least they don't block links from this board to theirs (like MAAD does).
True, but you paint a target on your post if it has a link to this site. I think they even do a search on each post for the url and toss up a "This board is moderated blah blah" message as your post quietly goes to /dev/null
I so wanted to rock when I read the OP on RfM and had put on my boxing gloves only to read on down the thread that others had come to Onan's defense and defended his character. See what can happen when your modem and router go out for two days!
In my experience on Rfm, I have found to exist a condition called trollanoia. It is like on the Seinfeld show episode with the soup nazi. If you don't approach the right way, then NO SOUP! Aside from this, RfM is one of my favorite places to participate. I have found that there are nice people who participate there for the most part. From my observations, many of the participants there didn't exit on the same avenue as many of the participants here. Yes, the road out, but a parallel avenue that led out as well. RfM isn't the place for scholarly pursuits or discussion. The sad part to me is that a board that is designed to be a place to recover from Mormonism so often allows little leeway for those whose spiritual journey is at a different pace or veers a bit from the path of those participants there who remain bitter toward things LDS or even those that consider a possibility of God's existence. It is like what I would call board bullies who are given free reign with no parameters, while those trying to feel their way out of TSCC aren't albe to be comfortable in expressing themselves without fear of being bashed by the more bitter posters. It is almost like (from the bitter posters), don't post your true feelings here, because we've already done the thinking for you. Then the board mgt. allows it. in my opinion, RfM is limited in it's ability to help one recover from Mormonism for those very reasons.
I have been meaning to follow up on the posts to this thread. Although I've dedicated some time to (ironically) defending Joseph Smith from inflated charges, my last few days have overwhelming been spent on buying, registering, and learning to drive my new car (never driven a stick before!) and on cleaning and organizing on the homefront.
I'll hop back on this thread in the next couple days.