Thought you might enjoy reading some general public views on Mormon cosmology and Glennbeckites. I posted a few facts about Beck's beliefs and there was great interest in "Anagrammy's List."
Some posters thought Mormonism is no better/worse than any religion. Well...
Great stuff. I used to listen to Art Bell in the mid-90s, before George N. took over and before Art's wife died. I always loved the way Art would let the wildest kooks have their say and their point of view; he'd enter their frames of reference and probe, not so much to embarrass them or prove them wrong, as to hit up against points of genuine wonder.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/2011 02:07AM by derrida.
Anagrammy, I am surprised you let the general get in a couple of those 'it's all lies' jabs.
It's a tactic I see whenever I debate a TBM... if they dont know about it, it must be a lie.
despite the fact that mormons are taught so, so little of their own culture/history.
the general wrote: "and the gay electroshock therapy is not true."....... what he actually means is "I didn't know about that"
when he responds to your list, he says: "I mean, a lot of this stuff just isn't true"........ what he actually means is "I didn't know about that"
later he says "I just hate to see lists like that where 90% of it is not true." and, dismissing your facts he says, "Internet is not really a good place to research this. There is all kinds of made up shit out there."
I am a bit touchy about being called a liar, myself - I have stated a couple of times how I was called a Liar in a SS class for stating that Smith had a gun, and shot a couple of people, when he died (we had just watched a church movie of the 'martyrdom', where a gun was conspicuously absent). More recently, I have also been called a liar, by a TBM, for relating that story. Apparently, everyone knows he had a gun and it is even taught/discussed in institute classes now.
Ad Hominem seems to be a tactic much used by Mormons, and it has obviously had a great impact on 'the general' as he uses it a lot
I had to wait a day to reply. Here was my strategy: I posted links which he refused to follow. I posted references which he ignored. I called him on failing to follow my links and he made a disparaging remark about the internet.
Which in the Coastgab forum is the equivalent of singing Pink Floyd "I don't need no eddy-cation" at the top of your voice. Or maybe proclaiming, "I be a curmudgeon."
There was an interesting topic going there for a while in which the definition of education was discussed. I decided that to me, an educated person hears something new and involuntarily the mind tosses up patterns and matrices from books read and subjects studied, lists of symptoms or characteristics of this or that, and in a few seconds the person can decide yes or no, do I have enough facts in my background upon which to base an intelligent opinion? Y/N?
If no, you shut up until you do. Now, the uneducated person (whether they've gone to college or not has no bearing) hearing something new decides if they LIKE what they heard? Y/N? If it doesn't fit their TRIBAL POSITION, they reject it. In other words, the decision defaults to an emotion like or dislike instead of to facts.
That's what the General is doing, having assumed that what he knew 20 years ago is all there is to know and that nothing interesting or different has happened since then.
bodies of water and the devil in D&C, and I found a link to the FAIR wiki on it. They handled the textual and interpretive problem well I think, but they didn't adequately address the bizarre life of this piece of folklore. Evidently some people keep believing such nonsense.