Ray A wrote:B23 wrote:She's taking a break as far as I know. Although I'd bet it's a permanent one, more or less.
Zack, why do you think Nevermos lose interest in Mormon-related boards? What's your opinion?
For the most part it's not in their blood. Know what I mean? Something about growing up in a religion or spending time in meetings or whatever makes you part of the clique and you know [REALLY KNOW!] what's going on. For nevermos, no matter how much you read Mormon stuff or study the Mormon scriptures, you still feel like someone who stands at the door listening to a discussion. NO matter how good you can hear you're still an outsider to the discussion. Being an outsider just makes it difficult to become emotionally invested, at some point I think most nevermos will throw their hands in the air and go "whatever" and do something else. Particularly secular people like myself or Moniker.
But it's mostly a passing fancy, something of interest that goes away after a while that is tough to maintain due to lack of personal investment that exmos so totally understand in terms of money, time, family/friends, social network, and personal...whatever you want to call it. A bit of their soul? A bit of themselves? But there seems to be a intensely personal aspect of dealing with the "being duped" or being "lied to" that leads to personal offense that takes alot of time going over. Frankly I think they are quite justified in their offense, but the problem is the people they get all pissed off at [The Mormon hierarchy] don't know they were selling a crock because they bought the same crock long ago. Exmormons end up holding a bag of anger, but they can't vent because the guys who cooked it up are all dead. How do you rant at a dead man?
You can't, so you look for a substitute to release some of that indignation. Enter the Mormon leader and more directly the Mormon apologist [who incidently doesn't think themselves to be selling a crock either, they have a valid testimony of Mormonism and thus are defending their perspective, as the exmormon is]. The Mormon leader you won't reach, but you can get at the Mormon apologist via boards, and thus the critic/apologist relationship that takes part on these boards. Just my thoughts of course on that end... but nevermos can never enter into that relationship like Exmos and Mormons. Sure they can attack the Book of Mormon or whatever, but they are yelling that message through the door. The Mormons and exmormons are the only ones who are really inside the room.
For my part I was interested, now don't care. In Moniker's case she had a family connection to Mormonism that has since been severed, so when you don't have real connection and have to manufacture a desire to take part in the board at some point you just say "whatever" and go off.
The only nevermos I see hanging onto these boards are the Christian critics who have the emotional investment of saving people for Jesus. Even those people seem to burnout after a while...then there is the nevermo outlier known as Jersey Girl. How she has maintained interest is beyond me. She must get B12 injections or something. ;)
Whatever appears to be against the Book of Mormon is going to be overturned at some time in the future. So we can be pretty open minded.-charity 3/7/07
MASH quotes
I peeked in the back [of the Bible] Frank, the Devil did it.
I avoid church religiously.
This isn't one of my sermons, I expect you to listen.