Simon Belmont: This is what "quote mining" means

[_Chap]

And Liz, your question suggests that I don't know what it is like to be an active Latter-day Saint who really believes this stuff. Just because you are anxious to bail out Simon, on even the most banal of points, does not mean you have to adopt his mentality.

Did it possibly occur to you that the reason I asked is because I know that you know what it is like to be an active LDS who really believes this stuff, and that is why the assertion made no sense?

I guess not.

Be fair, now. That was a final point in a long post. Near the beginning he made his first and main point, beginning:

Liz, I know you want to relieve Simon from the fatuousness of his own statements, but that doesn't mean you have to deliberately misconstrue what is happening. Please do not insult the intelligence of people reading this thread by trying to invert Simon's fallacious statements and make it as if I am making some argument about people looking at the Church's website.

Simon says (ha ha!) this:

It's not as if the other 14 million members of the Church don't have access to LDS.org -- in fact most probably do, and most come to very different conclusions than you do

This was Simon's assertion, not mine. It is a combination of the bandwagon fallacy and argument from ignorance.

The bandwagon fallacy component of this statement is that if most of the 14,000,000 alleged members of the LDS Church researched church teachings and came to different conclusions than I did, it must mean that their conclusions have superior truth value on the basis of there being more of them. That is the only reason he would make this statement.

[_Yoda]

Be fair, now. That was a final point in a long post. Near the beginning he made his first and main point, beginning:

I didn't have a problem with the rest of Darth's post. I would like him to address my concern, if you don't mind.

[_Darth J]

Be fair, now. That was a final point in a long post. Near the beginning he made his first and main point, beginning:

I didn't have a problem with the rest of Darth's post. I would like him to address my concern, if you don't mind.

Liz, your "concern" is one that is contrived out of thin air. Perhaps I was too subtle the first time I responded to your "concern." Let me see if I can be more blunt:

I NEVER SAID THAT A PERSON COULD NOT STUDY LDS TEACHINGS AND MAINTAIN A BELIEF THAT THE CHURCH IS TRUE.

You are still inverting Simon Belmont's statement, then expressing "concern" as if I am responsible for stating the corollary of what he said. It was Simon who explicitly stated that I am the only person who has studied LDS teachings and ceased to believe. From page 13 of this thread, with my emphasis:

In context, other faiths have nothing to do with the fact that many people have access to LDS.org, but conveniently, you are the only one who gravely misinterprets the words of church leaders past and present to support your agenda.

And yet, in your desire to rescue Simon from his own vacuousness, you are continuing to demand that I justify a statement that I never made, instead of commenting on the sheer ludicrousness of Simon's assertion.

What an interesting irony in a thread about unsupported accusations of quote mining.

I wonder, Liz, if you have any "concern" that Simon has gone on for pages and pages of this thread saying that I misrepresented LDS doctrine when I said that the Church teaches Jesus suffered all of our pains in a way we don't understand, then said that he believes Jesus suffered all of our pains in a way we don't understand.

Or, perchance, did you have any "concern" that if someone really were a believing Latter-day Saint, talking about Jesus having a vagina and being literally raped trillions of times would be too horrifically sacrilegious to say even in jest?

[_sock puppet]

I find it interesting that a couple of TBMs, asbestosman and liz, have found the need to try to stop a thread in which Simon cannot stop himself. Could it be that each of them realizes Simon's testimony is just about to implode and they fear it may happen before their eyes in this very thread if they do not intervene to save Brother Simon?

It could be that private pleas by them to Brother Simon to stop have gone unheeded.

Or, have liz and asbestosman convinced Brother Simon to remain quiet for now--but fear that Brother Simon will be baited into coming back into the thread by Darth J's provocative posting, if it continues?

[_Drifting]

Simon suffers from a severe case of "Belmonism"

Belmonism - a sporadic form of intellectual blindness, usually related to religion. Symptoms include; ignoring a topics substance in favour of ponderous single word or phrase examination.

Note: There is no known cure for Belmonism...

[_Yoda]

I NEVER SAID THAT A PERSON COULD NOT STUDY LDS TEACHINGS AND MAINTAIN A BELIEF THAT THE CHURCH IS TRUE.

Thank you for clarifying.

Look, I don't really care what Simon answers, or doesn't answer. He is a big boy. He can take care of himself. This is what you stated, and I asked for clairifcation:

For 30 points, explain how insinuating that 14 million Latter-day Saints have reached different conclusions than Darth J does not suggest that among those 14 million who have access to LDS.org, they all got on, extensively researched LDS teachings, and determined that Church teachings means something other than what is meant by the plain words in front of their faces.

It seemed to me that you were inferring, based on what is italicized, that any member who had a brain would have no choice but to conclude the same things you concluded based on "the plain words in front of their faces".

If you are alowing that current members of the Church can still be intelligent, have studied to the same extent you have, but have come up with different conclusions, that is all I needed to know.

[_Yoda]

I find it interesting that a couple of TBMs, asbestosman and liz, have found the need to try to stop a thread in which Simon cannot stop himself. Could it be that each of them realizes Simon's testimony is just about to implode and they fear it may happen before their eyes in this very thread if they do not intervene to save Brother Simon?

It could be that private pleas by them to Brother Simon to stop have gone unheeded.

Or, have liz and asbestosman convinced Brother Simon to remain quiet for now--but fear that Brother Simon will be baited into coming back into the thread by Darth J's provocative posting, if it continues?

As I stated to Darth, I really don't care what Simon decides to post or not post. It is of little concern to me. Simon is an adult, and is free to answer or not answer any post that concerns him.

I wanted clarification on a specific statement of Darth's and I got it. That was all I was after.

[_Darth J]

I NEVER SAID THAT A PERSON COULD NOT STUDY LDS TEACHINGS AND MAINTAIN A BELIEF THAT THE CHURCH IS TRUE.

Thank you for clarifying.

Look, I don't really care what Simon answers, or doesn't answer. He is a big boy. He can take care of himself.

As he has proven again and again!

This is what you stated, and I asked for clairifcation:

For 30 points, explain how insinuating that 14 million Latter-day Saints have reached different conclusions than Darth J does not suggest that among those 14 million who have access to LDS.org, they all got on, extensively researched LDS teachings, and determined that Church teachings means something other than what is meant by the plain words in front of their faces.

It seemed to me that you were inferring, based on what is italicized, that any member who had a brain would have no choice but to conclude the same things you concluded based on "the plain words in front of their faces".

If you are alowing that current members of the Church can still be intelligent, have studied to the same extent you have, but have come up with different conclusions, that is all I needed to know.

Liz, the objective fact of what a religion teaches is a separate question from whether you personally believe those teachings. The "conclusions" to which Simon are alluding are not whether the Church is true, but whether the Church even says that.

Daniel Peterson makes a living teaching people about Islam. I'm going to venture a guess that he does not believe that Islam is God's true religion.

John Gee is an Egyptologist. Probably he does not pray to Anubis or Osiris when he goes to bed at night.

But there is some magic reason why Simon Belmont cannot stand the thought that an infidel could objectively determine what the LDS Church teaches, and that magic reason is called Mormon apologetics. Mopolgists cannot allow anyone to pin down LDS doctrine on anything but the most vague, metaphysical terms: Heavenly Father and Jesus are nice, Joseph Smith was a prophet in some sense that allows him to have not understood what he was doing a lot of the time, etc. The purpose of disputing whether the Church even teaches some given claim is that if what "official doctrine" is remains a perpetually moving target, it cannot be falsified or criticized. Thus, the Mopologist Patronus of, "That's not official doctrine!"

This Mopologist strategy is related to the Mormon defense mechanism of refusing to allow the possibility that a person could really understand and formerly have believed in the Church, and yet eventually arrive at a conclusion that the Church is not true. That's why you so often see Mormons insisting that I, and other apostates, never really understood the Gospel. In other words, the Mormon version of the No True Scotsman Fallacy.

This entire thread, including Simon Belmont's moronic jihad over the last several pages, is about Simon Belmont saying that I am "misrepresenting" what the LDS Church teaches when I provide an in-context quote, with a hyperlink, of official LDS curricula and/or statements by General Authorities to show what the LDS Church teaches.

Were you not aware of what this thread was about when you became "concerned" about my "statements"?

[_Yoda]

Were you not aware of what this thread was about when you became "concerned" about my "statements"?

Not really. *yawn* It is 14 pages long. I clicked on it to make sure I didn't need to moderate anything, and noticed that one statement that just didn't seem to hold true to other things you have said. That is why I wanted clarification.

Get the chip off your shoulder and relax.

[_Chap]

... *yawn* ... Get the chip off your shoulder and relax.

Well, since that bit was not in red, I suppose it is within the rules to retort that anyone who tries a put-down like that on a poster as substantive and thoughtful as Darth J. looks a bit as though they needed to cover their backside to prevent it being hit by the door on the way out of the thread.

But I don't think I should say that kind of thing, so I won't.