From the MA&D house: LDS have no respect at funerals

[_Daniel Peterson]

I always enjoy conversion stories.

Thanks.

[Anonymous]

I think you're probably a nice guy, and that your life is way more than just LDS apologetics, and that in most areas of your life you're a decent, likeable fellow*. It's just that on the issue of whether the LDS church really is "true", you're on the wrong side of the argument. It isn't. And not only is the LDS church not true, it's obviously not true.

The reason it's not at all obvious to you is really the crux of the issue - and it comes down to your epistemology. That's really the underpinning of it all. If you would be a little more skeptical regarding the reasons why you believe that your testimony really does mean what you think it means, I think you'd start to see how flawed it really is.

*I'm not an adherent to Scratchianism, or I wouldn't have gone out of my way to try to meet you when you were down here.

[_TAK]

It's always interesting to me to see how differently things appear from different vantage points.

Yes..
Once upon a time when I thought like you do now, it was quite comforting in a smug sorta way.

[_Daniel Peterson]

I think you're probably a nice guy, and that your life is way more than just LDS apologetics, and that in most areas of your life you're a decent, likeable fellow. It's just that on the issue of whether the LDS church really is "true", you're on the wrong side of the argument. It isn't. And not only is the LDS church not true, it's obviously not true.

I enjoy hearing testimonies. I always find them interesting.

The reason it's not at all obvious to you is really the crux of the issue - and it comes down to your epistemology. That's really the underpinning of it all. If you would be a little more skeptical regarding the reasons why you believe that your testimony really does mean what you think it means, I think you'd start to see how flawed it really is.

It's interesting that you think you have it all figured out. And it's so simple, so neat.

That must be quite satisfying.

I've never even heard that thar word epsitobotomy (or whatever in tarnation it was). Certainly ain't never given it no thought.

I'm not an adherent to Scratchianism, or I wouldn't have gone out of my way to try to meet you when you were down here.

I understood that. Thanks.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Once upon a time when I thought like you do now, it was quite comforting in a smug sorta way.

I doubt, frankly, that you ever thought like I do now.

Fortunately, though, believers have a monopoly on smugness!

[_TAK]

I doubt, frankly, that you ever thought like I do now.

Perhaps you are correct.. My career is not dependent upon perpetuating myths.

Regardless of how superior you think your faith is compared to everyone else’s including what mine may have been, I do have a pretty good foundation for how Mormon’s think and believe - as do many others here on this board that you tend to mock.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Perhaps you are correct.. My career is not dependent upon perpetuating myths.

It's good to know that we have at least something in common.

Regardless of how superior you think your faith is compared to everyone else’s

I hold to my views because I think they're correct.

Don't you?

I do have a pretty good foundation for how Mormon’s think and believe - as do many others here on this board that you tend to mock.

Demonstration is more convincing than assertion.

Feel free.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

We disagree about a very great deal, Rollo. I'm fine with that.

Me, too.

[_Rollo Tomasi]

I'm wondering why you felt it necessary to twist Rollo's name? Was that intended as a personal attack, although somewhat sideways?

That was intended to signify that Scratch and Rollo are so ideologically akin that I'm not altogether sure that they're two distinct individuals, just as I'm not sure that the Scratch/Gadianton/Kishkumen Tri-Unity really represents three separate people.

This is his favorite form of insult (like he does by referring to GoodK as "goodkid" -- he doesn't mean to be nice). It's rather juvenile, but I'm fine with it.

[_Chap]

There was a time (whose span was measured in decades) where I would have latched onto LDS apologetic arguments and believed they truly made sense. What happened to change that was that I saw some pretty awful arguments in defense of the church, against some pretty good evidence, and I realized the apologists were defending the indefensible. For me that realization was like pricking a bubble - the conviction that my beliefs must be true popped like that bubble, and once I decided not to accept bad apologetics anymore and take the evidence seriously, no matter what that meant for my beliefs, it's just become more and more obvious as time went on that the church really is just as manmade as any other church, and the totally convinced apologists just as self-deluded as those of any other church, such as the JWs.

I always enjoy conversion stories.

Thanks.

That's interesting. Sethbag describes a change in his views on certain matters of fact, which he states was based on an examination of relevant arguments and evidence. DCP then refers to this as a "conversion story".

A question arises: are all accounts of evidence and argument based changes of views on matters of fact to be labelled as "conversion stories"? So when the police find that the man they caused to be convicted and executed for a murder 30 years ago had the wrong DNA to be the killer, that is a "conversion story" just as much as when someone tells us that they have been given a "spiritual witness" to the truth of the Book of Mormon? Would that not involve the loss of a useful distinction?

Here the tactic seems to be equivalent to saying "Your abandonment of belief is simply the inverse of my own adoption of belief; which course you take is purely a matter of faith-based choice, and your alleged evidential base is no more valid than my inner conviction". That would seem to make all points of view have equal validity, and to empty them of any claim to truth - but is that what the religious believer intends to convey?