Chalk Up Another MAD-Influenced Apostasy

[_moksha]

Mr. Scratch - just as Nehor, Harmony, Gaz and Jason Bourne here have also supplied - the insistence on the fact that the member is to blame will always be the first card played by Mormons.

I would like to add one more: They have never been able to clearly define their own set of beliefs in the first place and need to begin this process. Who knows, this process may either lead them back to the Church or to something else of their own choosing.

[_beastie]

Oh, please, we were all Mormons, charity, go sell your "Mormons have more fun" than anyone else to people who don't know better.

Put your shoulder to the wheel, push along... endure to the end! It's just so much FUN.

[_beastie]

I don't respond to every post in a thread because I don't have time for shotgun attacks and tag teaming. You are trying to poison the well. My theory is completely consistent and coherent. Your main strategy whenever I put up an argument you can't knock down is to scream that I am incoherent.

And I don't laugh at you. You are too sad and pitiable to call forth laughter. I am much more likely to cry over the situation.

Yes, I know, the noble and great ones cry over the lesser lights, don't they?

Your don't have a coherent theory, but I wouldn't expect you to recognize it even when it's pointed out to you. Look at the recent rape thread - you insist that the standard for whether or not a woman has been raped is whether she thinks she has been raped while simultaneously bringing up examples of women who thought they had been raped but had not.

There's nothing to "knock down" in your argument here. This is inconsistent. It is not a coherent whole. And you do it repeatedly. Your own words "knock down" your arguments.

Another recent example - you insisted no church teachings ever included ideas about Book of Mormon geography. After repeatedly raising your own bar when I kept providing examples, in response to the Hill Cumorah example, you replied that maybe the final battle really was in New York, after arguing in support of LGT!

An example from a few weeks back - you asserted that people only insult in discussions when they know they've lost the argument. Then a few days later you began slinging insults at me right and left. I reminded you of your previous assertion, cited all your insults, and asked if you'd lost the argument. You replied that you were merely demonstrating the flaws in my argument.

The sad thing is that I didn't even have to think hard to come up with these examples, and they were all quite recent. Imagine how many I could come up with if I did a search and looked further back on MAD!! Even sadder is that even with these obvious examples you will be incapable of recognizing the truth of my words - you aren't consistent in your theories, and your theories do not form a coherent whole. Well, I guess you could say your overall theory is "the church is true and antis are wrong". That is the only, and I mean only, argument you're consistent about, but that doesn't work too well with apologetics.

[_charity]

Oh, please, we were all Mormons, charity, go sell your "Mormons have more fun" than anyone else to people who don't know better.

Put your shoulder to the wheel, push along... endure to the end! It's just so much FUN.

Really, beastie, there is a big difference between LDS and ex-mormon. And yes, you can be an ex-mormon in your heart, even if your name is still on the rolls.

And you need to know the difference between fun and pleasure and happiness and joy.

So let's deal with maxrep's prozac theory. Just like beastie's post about rape rates, your post about depression and Utah is trying to state that the rate of depression is BECAUSE of Mormon beliefs. A simple ranking of state by Prozac use does not make any such statement. Look at the questions you need answers to before you can say what causes depression in a state?

1. How many people are actually diagnosed with depression?
2. What are the common characteristics of people diagnosed with depression?
3. What are the different treatment modalities?

A real scientist would want to know what characteristics Utah had in common with the other top 4 states: West Virginia, Kentucky, Rhode Island, and Nevada. Not big on LDS populations there. So why do W. Virginians use almsot as much anti-depressant as Utahns?

Do you begin to see how complicated it is in the real world, not the fantasy world of the anti-Mormon where every correlation means causation.

OKAY CLASS, ONE MORE TIME: CORRELATION DOES NOT EQUAL CAUSATION!

[_beastie]

And you need to know the difference between fun and pleasure and happiness and joy.

Charity, another good example of how you just don't read what others write, sometimes seemingly including yourself. We were talking about fun and pleasure.

[_Mister Scratch]

if it were really God's work, why not just shrug your shoulders at the mockers and move on?

Maybe because the critics won't "move on", and some find it "fun" to engage them? I don't believe any TBM (emphasis on "true") will ever lose his/her testimony. They are having fun with you, when you think it's the other way around.

If this were the case, then I highly doubt that they would feel the need to flee to the ironically named FAIRboard, or utilize Gestapo moderation, etc., etc. I highly doubt that DCP & et. al. would be so 'embarrassed' about publishing their most controversial theories in real academia. The evidence just doesn't work out in favor of your claim, Ray.

[_charity]

And you need to know the difference between fun and pleasure and happiness and joy.

Charity, another good example of how you just don't read what others write, sometimes seemingly including yourself. We were talking about fun and pleasure.

Beastie, I will let you see exactly what we were talking about. When I first posted "Morrmons have more 'fun.' " Did you notice the 'fun.' That was a reference to the old slogan "blonds have more fun." When someone puts a word in quote marks it means that there is another layer of meaning there. Good grief. You should know that.

Then I further clarified what I was talking about when I posted: "When studyiing 'happiness' one researcher wrote: What do they find? In a nutshell, they find that people who are involved in religion also report greater levels of happiness than do those who are not religious. For example, one study involved over 160,000 people in Europe. Among weekly churchgoers, 85% reported being "very satisfied" with life, but this number reduced to 77% among those who never went to church (Inglehart, 1990). This kind of pattern is typical -- religious involvement is associated with modest increases in happiness."

I said very clearly, "happiness."

Please attend and respond appropriately.

[_beastie]

Beastie, I will let you see exactly what we were talking about. When I first posted "Morrmons have more 'fun.' " Did you notice the 'fun.' That was a reference to the old slogan "blonds have more fun." When someone puts a word in quote marks it means that there is another layer of meaning there. Good grief. You should know that.

Then I further clarified what I was talking about when I posted: "When studyiing 'happiness' one researcher wrote: What do they find? In a nutshell, they find that people who are involved in religion also report greater levels of happiness than do those who are not religious. For example, one study involved over 160,000 people in Europe. Among weekly churchgoers, 85% reported being "very satisfied" with life, but this number reduced to 77% among those who never went to church (Inglehart, 1990). This kind of pattern is typical -- religious involvement is associated with modest increases in happiness."

I said very clearly, "happiness."

Please attend and respond appropriately.

The day I need to be lectured by you on "attending and responding appropriately" is the day I should be institutionalized.

So your quotation marks and subsequent quote on "happiness" indicate that you shifted the topic of conversation, hence, your entire response was inattentive and inappropriate.

The citation to which you were supposedly responding said:

Thus the effectiveness of a doctrine should not be judged by its profundity, sublimity or the validity of the truths it embodies, but by how thoroughly it insulates the individual from his self and the world as it is. What Pascal said of an effective religion is true of any effective doctrine: it must be “contrary to nature, to common sense, and to pleasure”.

Note: to pleasure.

Your response: Mormons have more fun than anyone else, and happiness quotes.

When I actually think you mean FUN by "fun", you chastise me. Silly me. I should have remembered that you don't attend and respond appropriately, and hence should not have expected that your response actually directly addressed the citation you claimed it addressed.

So I take it you concede that Mormons do not have more fun and pleasure than anyone else, and in fact, focus instead on "happiness"? (a beast still elusive to most Mormons, judging by their body language on sundays)

And, in fact, your response had nothing to do with the citation?

No comment about your obvious inconsistencies, eh?

[_Maxrep]

Oh, please, we were all Mormons, charity, go sell your "Mormons have more fun" than anyone else to people who don't know better.

Put your shoulder to the wheel, push along... endure to the end! It's just so much FUN.

Just saw this and laughed a strong laugh! Thanks.

[_cksalmon]

And you need to know the difference between fun and pleasure and happiness and joy.

The Bible makes no distinction among pleasure and happiness and joy and delight and satisfaction. It piles those terms up one atop the other utterly indiscriminately.

There is no biblical distinction between happiness and joy. I've found that those who make such distinctions tend to believe "joy" is some sort of far off, deferred, pleasure that may yet happen while not being particularly happy in the interim.

What is the difference to your mind?

CKS