Has the LDS Church outgrown itself?

[Guest]

-

[_Gadianton]

The LDS Church does seem to have 'grown' to a point where a sanctioned, funded appendage of "the Church" does this. NAMIRS is certainly not something that exemplifies the image of good neighbors, good society that the PR dept. has sought to cultivate

It's totally true that the Church is too big to have a hatchet shop defending them and the negative PR isn't worth it, especially when it's members in good standing the apologists are going after. The fact that the massive ziggurat the apologists sought to erect to their own glorification was never built shows that the Church/apologist relationship is complicated to say the least. Well, I do think the MI control's their itchy trigger finger when it comes to going after Chapel Mormons much in recent years. They really had to spend the time dialing in the shot before going after FIRM. Let alone the polemics, it's also clear the Church is not interested in the can of worms a legitimate Ancient Scripture department would open up. Certain recent events prove this. But also, just the fact that there are no young scholars taking up the torch shows that Mopologetics is all but dead. Oh, wait, I believe I recall the mention of one Gen Y scholar who might fill a role, but there were at least, what, fifteen from the old Skinny-L crowd? Going from fifteen to one isn't what I call expansion, or even survival.

[_Kishkumen]

I think Kish will be the first to admit that he hasn't been the most diplomatic here, either, along with many others.

I really don't see what mea culpas have to do with this OP and thread. The day I start accepting LDS Church funds to undertake my mission of critizing apologetics is the day I will find this particular statement pertinent to the issue at hand. Until then, yea, I am a snarky guy on a fairly regular basis, and what of it?

What does that have to do with published slams on members of the LDS Church in good standing as funded by the LDS Church itself?

Am I to understand that the LDS Church tacitly supports slams on its own members in good standing?

Well?

I have said, and I will repeat, that these guys can be as nasty as they like in sandboxes that the LDS Church does not fund. I think my point is pretty straightforward.

What amazes me is that it continues to be confusing to so many people.

[_MCB]

With so many leaving "because they have been offended" how else do you expect them to react except by turning on each other?

[_why me]

If you want to go back to Mormonism Ray, then just do it. I support your decision 100% if that is what makes you happy. There is no reason to keep hanging around here while bitching and moaning about so-called abuse you think comes at the hands of LDS critics.

But he has a good point. The bullying on this forum is extreme and this is the reason why traditional Mormons do not want to post here. It is confrontational and the LDS members are bullied.

[_why me]

With so many leaving "because they have been offended" how else do you expect them to react except by turning on each other?

You are in good company since you also come from the catholic bully board. I have noticed that on the Mormon threads in the catholic bully forum that the Mormons have disappeared. The board has become a group of catholics mentally stimulating themselves with bashing posts about the Mormon church. They seem to be very orgasmic while doing so. I can hear their panting like a pack of dogs in heat.

[_why me]

The younger generation can access this information with their cell phones, and since it is the truth it can't be swept under the carpet forever.

Actually, the young generation can access this information and read all sorts of critic interpretations about it. But that doesn't make it true. All critics are united by one factor: to get people to leave the LDS church. They live each day for this. They fantasize about it and they have white form coming from their mouths like a rabid dog looking to bite someone.

Here is the point: the Book of Mormon has not been proven false. We have 11 witnesses that never retracted their testimony regardless if some considered Joseph a false prophet. We also know that the head in the hat was one way that it was translated but not the only way.

[_why me]

Please elaborate, because I'm not seeing a connection.

You know the problems this board has had with lawsuit threats. And there is a reason for this: certain posters throw bombs at other posters or they attempt a posting 'gang rape' to put it crudely. So, the traditional Mormons have disappeared which have made Mormon discussions rather lopsided. But this is also the same for the catholic board: bully the Mormons, mock their religion, throw bombs at the Mormon posters until they are banned or leave. For this board it is only leave.

[_sock puppet]

I think Kish will be the first to admit that ... . There are more "orthodoxies" here than you can shake a stick at.

Ray, the OP was not about Rev. Kishkumen, or this MDB board. The OP was spawned by a notion that Rev. Kishkumen voiced. His list of LDS complaints included but one. He finds it unbecoming for a tithe-supported, outer appendage of the LDS Church, i.e., the Maxwell Institute, to use its tithe-fueled budget to publish "reviews" that defame members of the LDS Church in good standing. Sure, the Brethren on occasion reel the Mopologists in once in a while, but I think the fact that FARMS (privately funded, separately managed by Welch, etc.) became NAMIRS (a part of BYU, that is itself part of LDS Inc) is problematic. The rabid gang go after tithe-paying, good-standing members who are vocal in ways that are now embarrassing to the Mormons in academia. That is, members who dare to continue the Mormon traditions set forth by Brigham Young, John Taylor, etc.--when they were sitting prophets, from the general conference pulpit and without hedging that they were, when speaking these thoughts, only 'speaking as men, not prophets.'

It is not these members, the ones being excoriated by NAMIRS, that have left or strayed from core Mormonism. It is these giddy, sneering mopologists, and the Brethren that not only suffer them, but fund them with tithe dollars. The Brethren of today are ashamed of what the Brethren of yore proclaimed definitively as from god. NAMIRS is, in my view, the LDS frontline, intellectually speaking. The Brethren like cowards hide in the COB and on stake conference weekend sorties, looking to see which of the scores of Molotov cocktails that the NAMIRS lobs at scholars and other critics might catch fire. It seems that the only ones are ad homs.

It is particularly ironic that recent targets of many of those NAMIRS Molotov cocktails are members who have the audacity to remind the Church and the world of the traditions, quirky as they are, that in the past the Church, the Brethren, and the members proudly embraced. If you dare to contradict the recent decades deification of JSJr by the LDS Church with the historical record and understanding of JSJr as a man with faults that early decades Church members accepted, you will be a NAMIRS target. That is because NAMIRS (and the cowardly Brethren hiding behind the NAMIRS' skirt) are ashamed of the actual JSJr.

If a member has the balls to stand up for the tradition and now-quaint teachings of Brigham Young and John Taylor, to remind the world of what Mormonism until not long ago proudly displayed as badges of its peculiarity, NAMIRS (the alter ego of the current Brethren, those ashamed of the facts of their predecessors) will go after that member like hounds chasing a rabbit.

If a member points out that that apostles and prophets as recent as G A Smith, D O McKay and M E Peterson explicitly claimed that the black priesthood ban was a god-given directive, rather than take the current apologetic spin that is now in vogue that it was a misunderstanding of prior LDS leaders, that member is trampled upon by hooves of the NAMIRS stampede (with the spineless Brethren of today agitating those NAMIRS stallions to keep the stampede going).

If a member claims that the Book of Mormon Hill Cumorah is that hill in upstate New York, consistent with what several 'god-inspired' Brethren of yesteryear explicitly proclaimed, he is steam-rolled by NAMIRS, with the bloated Jeff Holland, for example, smirking all the while--you know, the same Jeff Holland who was disheveled by just a couple of well placed questions by the BBC reporter.

The OP asks, in essence, why the current Brethren, who let the hatchet men at NAMIRS do their dirty work for the Brethren are so quick to run from Mormon traditions that until about 1980, LDS leadership continued to honor, defend, and embrace? Why have the modern Brethren, and the Mormon 'intelligentsia', become so ashamed of the very things that allowed the LDS Church to be founded and grow in the first place, for a century and a half? The teachings that differentiated Mormonism from mainstream Christianity?

The LDS Church asks its members to follow the Brethren implicitly, as god-directed men. This aspect continues from the time that JSJr had to consolidate power and claim all revelation would be funneled through him. But this 'blind allegiance' (remember, pray harder if god hasn't made your bosom burn when you've asked for confirmation of whatever those old dottering fools in SLC say) stands in stark contrast to how willing the current Brethren are allowing their predecessors in the ranks of apostles and prophets be discarded. Brigham Young is just dismissed with condescension these days. Young taught the same blind allegiance principle. Members for decades took his pronouncements as gospel truth, in line with the procedural directive that they would never lead the membership astray. Today, however, we hear that the Brethren of old were wrong, misinformed, misunderstanding men. But members of today, you should yet blindly follow what the current Brethren say.

When I ask if the LDS Church has outgrown itself, I am pointing up the fact that its leadership is no longer comfortable with what it has, until only recently, always meant to be Mormon.

I find it ironic that instead of you, Ray, addressing the substance of the OP, you chose instead an ad hom attack on Rev. Kishkumen. How befitting of a defender of NAMIRS like yourself to go the ad hom attack route rather than address the idea. That methodology is part and parcel of the OP, as it is a part of Rev. Kishkumen's point which I quoted.

[_thews]

The younger generation can access this information with their cell phones, and since it is the truth it can't be swept under the carpet forever.

Actually, the young generation can access this information and read all sorts of critic interpretations about it.

Missionaries can't. Aren't they instructed not to use the internet?

But that doesn't make it true.

What's true is true based on facts.

All critics are united by one factor: to get people to leave the LDS church.

The critics just want the truth to be known. You'll spin this into "attack" as LDS are instructed to dismiss truth as "anti" to keep the truth from them.

They live each day for this.

You live each day to find a way to spin it.

They fantasize about it and they have white form coming from their mouths like a rabid dog looking to bite someone.

Ouch baby... very ouch. You continue to claim "some" Mormons seek the truth and "don't care about it" while continuing to ignore that the LDS church lies to its members. Why not acknowledge this whyme? Show me one LDS picture of Joseph Smith with his head in hat using seer stones... just one. Can't? I know why you can't, because you think it's OK to lie to people and keep the truth from them.

Here is the point: the Book of Mormon has not been proven false.

Yes it has. Please present one shred of tangible evidence that the Book of Mormon historicity is based on evidence... just one. Not some woulda coulda shoulda argument, but just one piece of evidence. You can't, and that in-and-of-itself proves Joseph Smith a liar.

We have 11 witnesses that never retracted their testimony regardless if some considered Joseph a false prophet.

You never tire of evading the obvious. Regarding the above statement, you are lying:

http://www.mormonfortress.com/whitmer2.html

If you believe my testimony to the Book of Mormon; if you believe that God spake to us three witnesses by his own voice, then I tell you that in June, 1838, God spake to me again by his own voice from the heavens, and told me to ‘separate myself from among the Latter-day Saints, for as they sought to do unto me, so should it be done unto them.’ In the spring of 1838, the heads of the church and many of the members had gone deep into error and blindness. I had been striving with them for a long time to show them the errors into which they were drifting, and for my labors I received only persecutions. (Whitmer, 27.)

We also know that the head in the hat was one way that it was translated but not the only way.

Yes it was the only way. Please provide one piece of evidence to prove otherwise.

In conclusion, you admire Joseph Smith . I believe you admire him for his accomplishments and his quest for young girls... he is your hero. You aren't even a Mormon whyme. Your endless garbage based on untruth can only be attributed to the actions of a sociopath.