Simon Belmont wrote:I don't simply "disagree" Morley, I want Scratch to be responsible for his words. No one ever holds his feet to the fire like he holds DCP's. Why do you think that is?
I have a few ideas:
1. We have no idea who Scratch is, so holding his feet to the fire achieves exactly nothing. Admittedly, holding an apologist's feet to the fire has only a marginally greater potential for being productive, but there you have it.
2. We are generally struggling Mormons, critical non-Mormons, and ex-Mormons, and apologists have on the whole done a crummy job dealing with these demographics. In fact, most of us have either experienced or witnessed the kind of dog-piling that occurs when struggling Mormons ask questions online and apologists are around. The struggler gets roughed up pretty badly. So, whom do you think we, who sympathize this group of struggling Mormons, will tend to identify with? People who who ripped into us and those like us? Not likely.
3. We share with the non-MDB commenters at TIME the realization that apologists often come off like hyper-defensive jerks, whether they intend to or not. Of course, as in the case of those other commenters that must be our fault. However you account for it, though, the simple fact is that it happens. The apologists can be perfectly right and still have a public image problem. That problem seems to provoke a negative response that gets played out most fully here.
4. Most of the LDS people here started out expecting more from the people who defended our religion. We never had such high expectations of an anonymous sock puppet named Doctor Scratch. And, whether that is fair, or right, or justified is really beside the point. It is simply the truth. We were never really invested in Doctor Scratch the way we were invested in the religion of our youth for which we sacrificed by serving in the mission field, in callings, etc.
