Kishkumen wrote:beastie wrote:We agree that 18 is too young to serve a mission. But the point is that the LDS church does not believe that it is too young, and the LDS culture seem to largely agree with that. So, in my opinion, they don't have the right to object that 18 is too young to be exposed to the more problematic side of LDS history and beliefs.
Well, I disagree.
If an eighteen year old is old enough to make such a momentous decision about his/her life, then he/she is old enough to deal with the problematic history of the church.
This reminds me of one thing I found particularly troubling about the temple. You're asked to decide whether or not you're ready to make the most serious covenants of your life before you even know what those covenants are.
Of course there are a couple of separate issues here. One issue is whether or not an 18 year-old is ready to deal with that sort of information. The other is whether or not the authors of the site are being forthright about their intentions. I agree they're not being forthright, although the idea of a parody is interesting. But I adamantly think believers cannot logically insist that an eighteen year-old is too young to be exposed to problematic church history but old enough to serve a mission.
Others have already noted this, but it does seem a bit odd that believers are protesting that 18 is too young for such information, and claiming that the authors of the website have to pretend to be believers because otherwise the target audience would simply view it as "anti-Mormon" and know to avoid it, but at the same time claim that everyone knows the problematic parts of church history, anyway, and that the church doesn't tell members to avoid anti material. Something isn't adding up here.
