RFM v. Midnight Mormons—Debate

[Dr Exiled]

Tactically, the debate was a wash.

It's interesting to me that MM appear to have a narrative strategy that they successfully followed.

The bullet proof vests are part of this narrative strategy that, while gimmicky and even outrageous, land for those who were the intended audience of said narrative strategy.

The need is to articulate the narrative so one understands when one is playing into it and can, if appropriate, counter it.

That being: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a welcoming shelter in the rising storm brought on by the turmoil of our times and the nihilistic influence of secular atheism and extreme individualism. Those who would use the complicated history of the church to separate you from the safety and joy found in the church do not have your interests at heart but are instead bitterly attacking the church out of negative motivations and not out of concern for the people involved. They are doing this, not because they care, but because they hate. This hate is manifest in virtual attacks against the church and literal attacks against church property and it's members. The storm is increasing and those who follow the Pied Piper song of the critics will find themselves abandoned among hate-filled and hurting nihilistic individuals with no community bonds to share besides when they flock together to shower spite and hate at the church.

It's goal isn't to win converts though it could appeal to some in the conservative community in western democracies who view the progress of pluralism as an assault on the order they feel the past represents. It's main goal is to discourage those who are within the fold already, warning them the calls they hear are really those of wolves who will rend and tear them, leaving them to bleed out in misery if you are deceived into trusting them.

ETA: It was RFMs failure to recognize this and counter the strategy rather than play into it that was most disappointing to me. Getting caught up in reacting tactically is how one loses a game after capturing a queen.

What would be a good counter other than directly attacking the false narrative Kwaku & Co. raised? In debates like these, sometimes a good tactic is to calmly point out the hysteria and how there is no proof for it.

1. The rising storm is like Fox's war on christmas like so many other media frenzies. It just isn't happening and people wouldn't know it was happening unless idiots like Kwaku and his masters told them. It's manufactured hysteria.
2. Calmly and forcefully say that the motivation is to point out the truth. Venturing into the unknown is better than living with an abusive parent that constantly hides realty from you in order to stunt growth. Also, the Mormon guilt is washed away by leaving. Sure, there is a transition and it shouldn't be an excuse to live like rock stars, partying the night away, trying every drug, etc., but it is certainly better than being shackled to an authoritarian church.

[Dr Exiled]

Do people here think that Consig has a duty to provide a landing point for those who leave? Does he need to start an alternative religion or organization?

Joseph Smith himself said "I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves." That was how I understood RFM's point. If adults have to be guided step by step all through their lives, that proves brainwashing man. No one is under obligation to do that. Kwaku completely missed the point of RFM's theme. He has nothing to do with getting people to leave the church, if they do so, that is their choice. No one is obligated to then turn around and guide them to a new belief. RFM is also teaching correct principles and letting them govern themselves. RFM is teaching them HOW to think, not WHAT to think. Is it worse helping them see they are being deceived and giving money to a cult, or in informing them with actual knowledge and evidence and letting them make their own decisions? McCraney's loaded question is from the Evangelical perspective which Mormons also hold, and RFM's response was absolutely correctly perfect.

Yes, I obviously agree that RFM and others don't have to create an alternative. Perhaps the quick answer to McCraney's question would have been to do what McCraney wanted and promote McCraney's church as a landing spot. RFM could have said, I am here to just point out the inconsistencies, untruths, and where Mormon claims don't stand up to scrutiny (which is pretty much all of them). Then he could have asked McCraney to plug his church as the alternative. The crowd would have loved the quick response.

[Marcus]

Kind of a weird question, I know, I apologize, but was Kwaku wearing pants? From the picture, I can't tell.....

[Alphus and Omegus]

In a way the multi-mega-questions being crammed into one big one from McCraney was rather problematic, but the idea was to get as much information into the debate as possible I suppose.

My biggest gripe of the night was the questions. McCraney did a pretty good job of keeping the interruptions down but the questions were often borderline incoherent, especially at the beginning.

Their lack of focus made it much easier for the Midnight Mormons Churchofjesuschristoflatterdaysainters to give meandering responses that completely tried to sidestep factual discussion.

McCraney should also have reined them in when they began slandering various people. That job should not have fallen to RFM.

[dastardly stem]

Agreed that it was a wash.

I thought the debate was supposed to be about "is Mormonism true". Instead as it comes off the debate was about two groups battling about opinions to win over more followers or something. The gimmicky style the Mormons led with seemed to be picked up by rfm.

Rfm lost because there was no attempted focus to remind everyone of their burden, that is if the debate was supposed to be about " is Mormonism true". They have to give good rational basis for their claim that Mormonism is true. As it played out though, they didn't even have to defend their claim. They simply had to point out that no matter how many criticisms there are its still possible there is a god who magically made Mormonism true, whatever that's supposed to mean. And they didn't even have to call thatboyt. Rfm didn't, as far as I saw, attempt to remind them of their burden and call out all the fallacy they relied on. Indeed at one point rfm fell for their distraction about his belief on God and he had no better answer for his belief than they had for theirs.

It was a mess in terms of rationality. The Mormons got small wins because they led with distractions and distraction was all what followed. How they got away with making it all about Mormonism vs secularism, religious positions vs heathen positions and rfm didn't call out their distractions is disappointing.

I haven't gotten all the way through it, so hopefully it gets better. That rfm insisted he speak 3 times more than everyone else didn't work out well. He lost too much focus, but I'd wonder if he didn't speak so much, filling so much time, if he prepared to focus more he'd have fared better. Or if he allowed others to participate it would have come off better.

Anyway, it is at least a conversation of sorts. Something we don't get enough of.

Rfms attempted rebuts of their slanders of Bill and dehlin, while nice to his friends didn't help. The moderator shouldn't have allowed that anyway. That was pathetic cheap shots.

[honorentheos]

What would be a good counter other than directly attacking the false narrative Kwaku & Co. raised? In debates like these, sometimes a good tactic is to calmly point out the hysteria and how there is no proof for it.

1. The rising storm is like Fox's war on christmas like so many other media frenzies. It just isn't happening and people wouldn't know it was happening unless idiots like Kwaku and his masters told them. It's manufactured hysteria.
2. Calmly and forcefully say that the motivation is to point out the truth. Venturing into the unknown is better than living with an abusive parent that constantly hides realty from you in order to stunt growth. Also, the Mormon guilt is washed away by leaving. Sure, there is a transition and it shouldn't be an excuse to live like rock stars, partying the night away, trying every drug, etc., but it is certainly better than being shackled to an authoritarian church.

I'd argue the above plays into it, assuming the role of the wolf. The trick isn't to try and dismiss the storm. Whether or not a person experiences turmoil in life is largely independent of their faith status. When one is experiencing turmoil it's genuinely nice to have community to lean on for support and security.

Contrary to the direction of this thread I do think post-Mormonism has to offer something. I just don't think the paradigm is that of my organization or the one you left. I don't think it should be an alternative communtiy. It does need to offer hope, though.

As you get at in point 2, a big part of that is tools and choice. Libertarian freedom with risk of failure but also being treated like an adult who doesn't need lied to in order to be kept safe. Escape from Big Brother isn't escape to utopia. Leaving the matrix can seem like giving up steak for mush, orgy parties for civilization. But it's also being a Neo of truth seeking where freedom from the matrix doesn't demand exclusion.

Take Kwaku wanting RFM to explain what RFM meant when he used to say he knew the church was true before. While he has his reasons that never came out in the debate I am guessing he intended to use RFMs answer to defend it's use by members while attacking RFMs changed stance. I think RFM could have used that question to make a couple of critical contrasting points, though.

First would be to contrast the epistemology of Mormonism with that of philosophy and science. Saying I know in Mormonism is akin to saying I have felt the truth of it so it must be true. But that's making subjective experience the threshold for evidence that is easily manipulated.

Second, Mormonism deals with absolutes when reality is more about probabilities. Mormonism judges on a scale of 1 to 3, 1 being something isn't true, 2 being one genuinely has not leanings and doesn't know either way, and 3 being it's true. In that paradigm saying I know is akin to saying this is the side of this issue I'm on. When one leaves one is likely to realize that's not am accurate reflection of how human beings interface with evidence. Our biases and limited meat brains should, if we value integrity, acknowledge limits that mean we often are choosing between scales of 1-10 where what may have been a 3 in Mormonism is a 7 in terms of the degree of justification we can assign to a belief.

There's more, but the point is one doesn't defeat this kind of strategy by dismissing it. One has to truly understand it and counter it, often by showing how the true counter isn't an opposite but a paradigm shift away from it. The opposites it proposes are part of the strategy. The hope available isn't security but more closely what Mormonism declared to be the purpose of existence. The relationships and community available ones of positive affirmations of what one truly values, ones hobbies, interests, and openness.

It's not a harbor in a storm, it's a horizon.

[Alphus and Omegus]

First would be to contrast the epistemology of Mormonism with that of philosophy and science. Saying I know in Mormonism is akin to saying I have felt the truth of it so it must be true. But that's making subjective experience the threshold for evidence that is easily manipulated.

I agree with this point very much. Mormon activists, like those of other fundamentalist religious groups, have shifted their tactics to be less about trying to "prove" their very weak truth claims. They realized that a lot of people do not actually care about facts. Instead, they care about identity and group belonging. That is the reason they attacked RFM for not providing an alternative.

Overall, he did very well, but I do think that RFM should have called out his opponents for abandoning facts and retreating to identity politics. The central conflict in society now is between people who believe facts should be most important and those who believe feelings should be most important.

MMs explicitly said repeatedly that they don't think facts matter. That was an unused weak spot because a lot of people whose epistemologies are feeling-based wrongly think that they are fact-based. Finding that cognitive dissonance and using it was a missed opportunity.

Here's an essay on the abandonment of facts in a political and Mormon context for those interested:
https://flux.community/matthew-sheffiel ... nservatism

[Kishkumen]

Tactically, the debate was a wash.

It's interesting to me that MM appear to have a narrative strategy that they successfully followed.

The bullet proof vests are part of this narrative strategy that, while gimmicky and even outrageous, land for those who were the intended audience of said narrative strategy.

In other words, cheap stunts and character assassination continue to be the best Mopologists can come up with, but it does a remarkably good job at scaring the wavering faithful back in line, sadly.

[jfro18]

I haven't been able to listen to all of it yet but have been checking it out in chunks, but it feels like what you would've guessed it would be heading in.

If you're a believing member, you'll identify with the MMs constant appeal to emotions over facts. If you are not Mormon, you'd see that there are absolutely no reasonable answers to the problems with church history.

RFM did a good job - it's hard in that format to force anyone to stay on message, so I don't think there was too much he could do. There were a lot of outright lies I've already seen about the Book of Abraham, Book of Mormon, etc but again it's hard to go back to those point by point 5-8 minutes after they're said.

What I've heard so far has been interesting, but my biggest takeaway is that this is why Mormon leaders and apologists absolutely refuse to engage knowledgeable critics in a public venue - there are just no good answers.

[Dr Exiled]

Agreed that it was a wash.

I thought the debate was supposed to be about "is Mormonism true". Instead as it comes off the debate was about two groups battling about opinions to win over more followers or something. The gimmicky style the Mormons led with seemed to be picked up by rfm.

Rfm lost because there was no attempted focus to remind everyone of their burden, that is if the debate was supposed to be about " is Mormonism true". They have to give good rational basis for their claim that Mormonism is true. As it played out though, they didn't even have to defend their claim. They simply had to point out that no matter how many criticisms there are its still possible there is a god who magically made Mormonism true, whatever that's supposed to mean. And they didn't even have to call thatboyt. Rfm didn't, as far as I saw, attempt to remind them of their burden and call out all the fallacy they relied on. Indeed at one point rfm fell for their distraction about his belief on God and he had no better answer for his belief than they had for theirs.

It was a mess in terms of rationality. The Mormons got small wins because they led with distractions and distraction was all what followed. How they got away with making it all about Mormonism vs secularism, religious positions vs heathen positions and rfm didn't call out their distractions is disappointing.

I haven't gotten all the way through it, so hopefully it gets better. That rfm insisted he speak 3 times more than everyone else didn't work out well. He lost too much focus, but I'd wonder if he didn't speak so much, filling so much time, if he prepared to focus more he'd have fared better. Or if he allowed others to participate it would have come off better.

Anyway, it is at least a conversation of sorts. Something we don't get enough of.

Rfms attempted rebuts of their slanders of Bill and dehlin, while nice to his friends didn't help. The moderator shouldn't have allowed that anyway. That was pathetic cheap shots.

I think Consig did a fine job. It's tough to deal with emotional kids in a public "debate." Consig certainly came off as the adult in the room compared to Kwaku and the others. Kwaku spouting about Consig's professional life was a childish tactic indeed. Sure, he could have made better attempts to control the direction, but, perhaps that is a function of the format. In the debates I've watched in the past, each side gets to pose questions to the other side. That would have been the area to bring the "debate" back from appeals to emotion and fear to can Mormonism's claims be defended or not. However, I wouldn't be surprised if Kwaku refused to be cross-examined by a seasoned trial attorney.