It's sad that the only options BYU sees are keeping the aggressive and often-ludicrous apologetics of the past or replacing it with Religion Department pablum.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24551&p=604118#p604118
Please explain this, Brian Laundrie, in light of your claims to have sympathetic feelings toward the Church and its people, and to be devoid of bigotry toward it and its people.
If you think about it, the church doesn't talk much about the "meat" anymore. Sunday School and priesthood/Relief Society meetings are watered-down, correlated chunks of the same empty platitudes. Hell, we don't even get told that Christian ministers are working for Satan anymore.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24540&p=604228#p604228
Describe these "correlated chunks of empty platitudes" and then elucidate what you would replace it with, and why.
Agreed on all three points. BYU seems to be afraid of real scholars dealing with religious issues. That David is too unorthodox for them is not surprising, but it does show their stupidity. He would be more of an asset to them than they will ever know.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24551&p=604195#p604195
What is it about David Bokovoy's beliefs and interpretations of doctrine/scripture that attract you, and why, specifically, do you think they would not be considered appropritate at BYU?
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=24572&p=604828#p604828
Above, "Bob," rushes to the defense of single-payer healthcare (and displays a gross ignorance of both economics and the relevant political ideologies at the base of this initiative) and then, in a curt, closing remark, claims he doesn't support it.
"Bob," says:
bcspace's stupid response to the obvious racism in the Book of Mormon Stories book made me wonder something. If you went by what we see among Internet apologists/defenders of the LDS church, you would think Mormons were arrogant, aggressive, mocking, racist, misogynist, right-wing lunatics. Do any of these guys think this is an attractive image for potential converts?
Most Mormons i have known are not like this at all but are good people trying to do good and follow Jesus. They would be sickened by the antics of too many of the apologists. No wonder Elder Uchtdorf told them to stop it. I say go for it!
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24591&p=605246#p605246
So here Brian Laundrie comes out in open, total opposition to the established, settled doctrines of the Church rearding questions of morphology and lineage in the Book of Mormon, while savagely attacking "apologists."
Reading through many of his posts, it begins to strike one that, while Bob claims to like Mormons and have some affinity for the Church (which specific doctrines and teachings he is never clear on. We only get a view of his ferocious, four-letter laced diatribes against those he doesn't like) he despises any member of that church who actively and openly defends its doctrines, teachings, and central truth claims against critics.
He hates apologists and apologetics (for some reason), but continues to claim that he likes the Church and the "good people trying to do good and follow Jesus" but who do not defend the Church against people like Bob Loblaw.
I think a bit of a psychological profile and underlying agenda is beginning to gel here.
Loblaw, who claims to be a "conservative," here takes the classic far-Left position and attacks President Bensen (using the old, threadbare smear of associating him with the early Birch society, before Bensen and most other conservatives left it) for warning Americans about what decades of scholarship already knew and a substantial corpus of recent, post-Soviet Union collapse scholarship has confirmed: that a vast, sustained, and multitudinous effort of the Soviet Union and its fellow travelers, sycophants, and dupes in the West and in America among the American Left had been underway for a very long time to subvert and destroy the nation from within, and had already been very successful in infiltrating the United States government (since the 30s, but the fifties were the high point) and corrupting some of its core institutions.
He attacks it, but doesn't really tell us why. As with all of Loblaw's arguments, nebulousness is the coin of the realm. He hides in plain sight. Sometimes he's conservative (he talks the talk, at least on a rudimentary level), but most times, does not walk the walk. Sometimes he likes Mormons, and other times he hates them (BYU, FARMS, all of apologetics, and apparently, most of its salient doctrines).
He harbors deep, bitter, visceral hatred for a number of discreet individuals in the Church, most of them appearing to be those who are its intellectual defenders. No, they aren't the "good people" who do good and follow Jesus (whoever they are), but anyone who dare defend the doctrines and principles of the Church against...
Him. Him and other anti-Mormon critics like many of his comrades whom he defends and makes common cause here against me and any other apologists who dares, not just live the gospel, but openly and actively defend its against criticism from its critics.
And the Brethren?
You're assuming that God is leading the LDS church. Whether or not that's true, the leadership can change the church, but the members cannot.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=24538&p=604879#p604879
Be a Mormon, "follow Jesus," and shut-up. That appears, for some odd reason (which thus far he has never elucidated) to be the philosophy of Bob Loblaw. Don't defend it. Don't critique the claims of its critics. Don't be critical of the criticizers. Leave them alone. Leave Bob alone when he tears into the Church with fangs flashing, or the Brethren, or the apologetics movement (which key Church leaders, including Gordon B. Hinckley, have openly supported and accepted), and shut-up.
Then there's his faux righteous indignation at the alleged sins of the hated FARMS scholars, his mean-spirited ill will toward anyone who defends the Church at all, his four-letter put downs, and the vitriol, rancor, and general attitude of hostility and contention he brings to almost every post.
A pattern would, indeed, seem to be forming.
