This kind of bad reasoning needs to stop MD&D/FAIR

[_MrStakhanovite]

Moksha,

Please forgive me if I get this wrong, but the Church has always defined some words differently than the common meaning. When FAIR says anti-mormon, they mean someone who opposes the ideas or claims of the Church and its leaders. This may not jive with how the term anti-mormon would fit with other similar usages of the term anti-[whatever], but that is the definition they are never the less using. Thus all who openly disbelieve can bear a much more heinous title than merely being a critic. FAIR has learned from experience that when you crawl in the trenches you learn to throw mud.

This issue is not how they define it, the issue is their appeal to etymology. Specifically here:

It is somewhat strange that critics of the Church wish to somehow divest the term "anti-Mormon" of its clear meaning.

Meaning does not depend on etymology, such a justification is simply fallacious.

[_MrStakhanovite]

I wonder if YahooBot/Bob has lectured Pahoran on the whole anonymous coward bit?

[_beastie]

Pahoran is the most blatant offender for equivocation of the term that I'm aware of.

On the one hand, he offers the definition in the OP.

On the other hand, he'll offer a separate connotation over and over that implies an anti-Mormon as something more akin to a particularly vile anti-Semite.

Then he'll use this game to argue that anyone who opposes/criticizes the LDS Church is akin to a particularly vile anti-Semite. It won't be hard to find examples of him implying that anti-Mormons as a group are liars, condone murder, etc. I think at one point he actually had a quote in his signature saying that anti-Mormon just means opposed to Mormons and not "liar" or "condones murder" specifically to give a middle-finger to people who knew that's what he likes to imply.

Yes, he created that sig in response to my criticism over his statement that Analytics -who, of course, by any sane measure is a calm, reasonable poster - would be "OK" with the murder of Mormons since he's an anti-mormon.

I couldn't find that particular thread, but did find the one where he tried to build a case against anti-mormons by using a gruesome murder committed by an excommunicated Mormon who happened to be schizophrenic (which, of course, Pahoran left out, as well as the fact that he was still some sort of believer). It's just as entertaining.

http://pacumenispages.yuku.com/topic/64 ... 8D0YrBfEyQ

Ha. ZLMB is full of his blatant connections between lying and being an anti-mormon. Like this one:

Call for references, please. I'm sorry, but an unsupported assertion by an anti-Mormon is statistically more likely to be false than true.

http://pacumenispages.yuku.com/topic/43 ... 8D12bBfEyQ

[_thews]

And for the record, Peterson is much too much of a wet blanket to be evil. The most evil Mormon who ever lived was Joseph Smith.

+1

To the OP, Mormons are taught to immediately reject an opposing position they've been told to accept, or, more succinctly, the interpretation of the facts. The facts are watered down to them, followed by the "correct" way to interpret them. The opposing viewpoint is then deemed "anti" to get them to immediately reject the possibility that the opposing view is, in fact, valid. A case in point would be the "translation" of the Book of Abraham. The papyrus that is known to exist is not translated as Joseph Smith claimed; I think Paul O has mentioned this a few times? While Will, Wade and DP attempt to twist the facts into something they hope the lemmings will swallow, the facts stand as a testament to what is actually true, and not some reverse-engineered way to interpret them as false... they are facts. If this position is "anti" in the eyes of the faithful LDS, it's because the interpretation of the facts doesn't fit the concocted reverse-engineered theory of how one could, if all the stars aligned, believe that what seems to be most logical based on the facts, is actually an incorrect interpretation of what actually happened.