Hey, Droopy---
How's it coming on finding all those posts where Scratch criticizes the LDS Church per se, rather than apologetics about it?
You know, backing up your assertions and all that.
I suppose you're actually serious? You are? Well, I guess that's just par for the Cesspark. You, like Graham, are going to insist that I provide the evidence that you, yourself, could easily provide by a quick trip to the archives, but which, for some reason, you want me to do for you.
Fine. Let's begin near the beginning of this board's twisted life back in 2006. Let's take a look at some threads, and some posts within them.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=107You will notice immediately that this
entire thread is a broadside attack on the Church
qua the Church as to its general moral and social teachings, on the subject of one of Scratch's favorite preoccupations, homosexuality and its relation to the gospel. One will note as well that this was posted at the same time that Scratch's now infamous paranoid, Oliver Stonesque ravings concerning the "SCMC" were still in the air. It should be noted, at the outset, that Scratch's obsession with the SCMC and his claims about it was a direct, feverish attack upon the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints as a church and its leaders, collectively, as human beings. It was not about "mopologists" or intellectual defenders of the Church.
The link above is a thread who's primary purpose is to attack and impugn BYU and the church that it represents and of which it is a part. It is not an attack on apologists or the apologetic world, but on BYU and the Church. This, it should be noted, was just a warm up to years of such postings.
Of course, a lie detector at BYU, in addition to the Orwellian SCMC, Church Security, espionage teams at BYU, filters at BYU-I---it gets one thinking as to just who, exactly, is paranoid. Likewise, stories told in church about Satan having dominion over the waters, and various other superstitions---all of these things add up to a general culture of paranoia and fear, it seems to me.
Keep in mind again, that this is just a bare warm up to years of posting activity. Or we could look at this thread:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=204&p=3079#p3079Where we see:
Over on FAIR, Her Amun has begun a thread discussing the very high number of google searches for both "porn" and "Jesus" in Salt Lake City. To my mind, this dovetails perfectly with a number of LDS cultural beliefs, practices, and attitudes...
Get the drift? LDS theology/culture leads to indulgence in pornography (not avoidance of it).
Then of course, there are those terrible, terrible politically incorrect GAs:
...the Church has made a concerted effort to elevate the status of the President/Prophet ever since the administration of David O. McKay. There is a good passage in Quinn on this called, I think, "adoration of the LDS President." Second, a frequent criticism leveled against the GAs has to do with their typically advanced age. In other words, critics maintain that they are still living in the 1950s, etc., and are in effect well behind the times.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=298&p=5587#p5587Keep in mind here that Scratch has long been clear regarding his anti-Mormon intentions, and why he criticizes the Church in such an aggressive manner:
My reason is simple: I enjoy discussing these topics, and hope that in some small way, I can help to affect change in the LDS Church.
What Scratch has long desired to help bring about is the mass apostasy of the general membership and the reinventing of the Church as a kind of LDS version of a thoroughly secularized, politically correct liberal mainstream Protestant denomination. That entire project is only peripherally an attack on "mopologists" (some of whom are very liberal indeed), but upon the Church proper, the vast majority of its active members, and its culture (I also note that it was in this thread (and perhaps some others at the time) that Scratch introduces his fabrication of his claimed advanced degrees and claims to be a PhD, but that's another story).
Scratch wants an escape hatch here by claiming his primary focus has always been on apologists, and not on the Church. The reality is that it would be difficult, looking through all the old posts which are extensively aimed at apologists and apologetics without running continually into criticisms of gospel doctrines, and, to the point, pretty much all of them. What would one expect, however, given that the entire point of LDS apologetics is to defend church doctrine and teachings from its critics. What, for just one example, does Scratch think of the doctrine of work for the dead, specifically baptism?
Apologists for the practice usually justify it on the grounds that it is well-meaning. Nevertheless, it's not as if the people performing the ordinance are sending out announcements, letting relatives of the deceased know that these baps are taking place. There has been an element of sneakiness to the whole affair, in my opinion. And ironically, TBM apologists let loose with all sorts of outrage when they learn of Jewish researches heading into the archives in order to check up on whether the Church has held to its agreements not to baptize Holocaust victims. (One such researcher discovered, of all things, that Mickey Mouse had been baptized by proxy.)
The practice, you see, is sneaky, furtive, and sinister. Then. of course, there are all the Salt Lake conspiricies and star chambers:
I believe that the "boys in Salt Lake" are well aware of this, hence FARMS, FAIR, BKP's "The Mantle is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect," the Strengthening Church Members Committee, and so on. It seems that the Brethren want very much to control all aspects of LDS history, and I believe that if they had to ability to completely alter the historical records, they would---or else they would limit the material in such a way that it totally guaranteed an absence of apostasy.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=414&p=7659#p7659Scratch, indeed, less the apologists who defend it, has a long laundry list of complaints and belly aches against the Church per se. Race, class, gender, and sexual orientation, the holy trinity plus one cherub in the modern postmodern/cultural Marxist pantheon of mortal sins are all well represented in his posting history. He gives a short list of his feminist complaints here:
Nevertheless, the Brethren have long taught that women are dependent upon men for exaltation in a way that doesn't cut both ways. (Think about who pulls whom through the veil.)
Really, the list of ways in which sexism is present in the Church goes on for quite a ways:
---polygamy
---No priesthood for women
---No passing the sacrament, or administering ordinances
---The Church's opposition to the ERA
---excommunication for praying to Heavenly Mother
---Sunday school lessons which seem aimed at cementing a "Madonna-Whore" mentality into girls, such as the "chewed-up gum" lesson
---No female equivalent of the Boy Scouts
---Draconian restrictions on girls' appearances (such as the two earrings thing)
---material limiting women's roles in the POTF
---the old restriction against women praying in Sac. Meeting
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=374&p=7351#p7351Any apologists present here? Me, Will, Wade, Pahoran, Bob, Hamblin, Gee, Rhodes, DCP, anyone? No. This is an ideological/personal attack on the Church's beliefs, theology, and practices. I thought Scratch didn't do that sort of thing?
When Scratch isn't insinuating, or clearly asserting that a high percentage of LDS men are porn addicts, he's saying things such as:
In other words, "Shut up ladies, and get back to work." Much the same advice was doled out to complaining Blacks prior to the lifting of the ban. Thus, in a likewise manner, more fomenting on the part of women would likely lead to new revelation, much like "stirring the pot," lawsuits, threat of losing tax-exempt status, etc. led to (or at the very least contributed to) the 1978 revelation.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=374&p=8450#p8450As there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that Scratch has never actually been LDS, the thrust and intent of his criticisms is clear: he doesn't believe in or like the vast majority of what it teaches, and wants to see that changed to suit his own ideological predilections. This has nothing to do with apologetics, which is only his primary foil in the arena of debate, but with the Church
qua the Church.
Back to Scratch's and most apostate leftist's favorite subject, sex, we have Scratch attacking the Church for years across a broad swath of politically correct iconic themes. All the way back in 2006, we have:
Mormonism provides a whole panoply of options when it comes to rationalizing away unpleasant or embarrassing aspects of history and doctrine. It relates to the whole "no systematic theology" thing from the ironically named FAIRboard. One can view the GA statements as "not prophetic" and merely coming from man; one can say that the "sex" was "celestial" or merely "symbolic"; one can say that Mary was transfigured, etc. There is a whole range of ways to deal with it. The best one, in my opinion, is to just accept that this is the teaching, and that Heavenly Father and Mary really did go at it. Sex has long been a crucial (and radical, from an orthodox Christianity perspective) part of LDS theology, so why not celebrate that? The present Brethren mentality is too Victorian, and marked a wrong turn in LDS leadership, in my opinion, culminating in SWK's silly condemnations of, among other things, oral sex.
Here we have a huge cornucopia of obscure, unestablished, unofficial doctrine slung into a hopper, traditional anti-Mormon style, and allowed to spew out again through centrifugal force onto the walls. Scratch, a non-member, leftist anti-Mormon polemicist, presumes to pronounce on the nature of LDS leadership, and on obscure, isolated theological speculations (of the kind I have traditionally found are so over his head in general depth that he need water wings just to get past the first few syllables) as if he really understood the implications of what he was saying, and as if there were no specific apolgetics movement at all. He's preaching to a choir here on the awful thing that is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints and its teachings, not attacking his favorite whipping boys like Danial Peterson.
Further, Scratch's paranoia and hostility toward Church doctrines could hardly ever be severed from his paranoia and hostility toward the Internet apologetics movement at its alleged control/manipulation by the Brethren:
You know, this is all very troubling indeed. In fact, I would be willing to bet that the FP or SCMC was in some way involved with FAIR's severing its relationship with the old MB. Of course, DCP, juliann, "Scottie Dog" Gordon, and all the rest of the crew will never, ever admit to it, but I would not be surprised if the Powers that Be in Salt Lake City are going to start applying pressure throughout cyberspace.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=468&p=8617#p8617Scratch' participation in this early thread should disabuse anyone of Scratch's claim that the only target of his polemical attacks has been apologetics. This thread is a fundamental criticism of the Church across the entire spectrum of its divine truth claims and orgins, claims with which Scratch is in fundamental agreement and spars with Wade over at length.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=501&st=0&sk=t&sd=aHere, Scratch takes the standard Signature Books/September Six/EV critic narrative of the wholesale illegitimacy of the Church and runs with it through his entire participation in the thread. This therad is only one of countless threads like it, making or reiterating similar themes and points, from that time to the present. Mining them would take vast amounts of time, which I do not have to make what should already be (and are) obvious points.