In another thread, forbiddencokedrinker makes an excellent point about why evangelical christians always throw bogus anti-mormon propaganda at mormons hoping to fish their money over to their business model.

Forbiddencokedrinker: "Fundamentalist christian apologists are people who throw stones at Mormonism when there are grenades available. They avoid the grenades because both them and the silly Mormons are standing on the same mountain of gunpowder."

This is the problem I ran into during the mission. Anyone who has served in San Diego knows all about Bill McKeever and Shadow Mountain Baptist Church. They spend a whole lot of time and money using mormonism as a strawman to try to make their mainstream christian beliefs seem less batshit crazy by comparison.

The problem is they can't use any real ammo because the same things that destroy mormonism just as easily destroy any other western religion.

So here I was: more or less well-read; loved to argue; charismatic; as rational as a kid could be who maintains a belief in extraterrestrial birthrights; and Bill McKeever and Shadow Mountain were making me feel like the world's most amazingly gifted apologist by shoving crappy, easily debunked anti-mormon literature in my face every other day.

That's why I never took ex-mormons seriously. That's why I stayed in the church as long as I did. That's why I wish the christians would stay the hell out of it. They're making it difficult to educate people.

(steps down off soapbox)

Many thanks to forbiddencokedrinker for articulating something I've felt inside for a while now. :)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/25/2012 12:05PM by kolobian.

Was in the San Diego mission from 97-98. I remember old Bill McKeever. I also remembered how pissed he got when he found out there was a rumor that he was an ex-mo. He actually stopped a couple of buddies of mine, and started ranting and raving about how he had never been a Mormon. Not that a fundamentalist wack job is any better.

Right on. '03-'05 Olsen/Packer. I talked to Bill as well. I thought he was a really nice guy, actually. Not at all what I expected considering he was hyped up to be some evil agent of Lucifer by my trainer.

I started in El Cajon so Shadow Mountain was only a couple miles from the apartment.

I agree.
My experience has been that they are so extreme in their anti mormonism that they get it all wrong. I once had a neighbor who started screaming at me that I didn't believe in Jesus. I asked her how she thought she knew what I believed in. She didn't have an answer for that. I thought it was crazy that they thought they knew what I believed. They don't. They come across as more condescending and controlling than mormons.

I had evangelical friends who told me they prayed every day for me to leave mormonism. I told them I would do the same for them. They seemed a bit fanatical to me. In the end all of our prayers were answered. I'm out, and so are they.

Baptists make anti-mormonism look bad.

There's lots of real stuff to rail against, but they insist on making sh*t up.

Why argue what the bible means, when science so strongly proves that it means nothing.

it is amazing you can find even crazier people to believe in Mormonism.

Where's the like button.

Although writing a book chalk full of profanity, blasphemy, and sex jokes may not be the most persuasive thing for a TBM....

Evangelicals are every bit as whacked as Mormons. Mormons have no patent on idiotic beliefs. Spook worshipers are FUBAR.

Funny but I never met a Mormon who was able to de-bunk the tenets of Christ from the Bible.

Well, you obviously need to re-read the original post instead of projecting your christian insecurities, but I'll bite:

Exactly what original "tenets of christ from the bible" do you think couldn't be debunked? I find the original teachings of christ to be ridiculous and the stuff that's pretty ok isn't original...

Come here Notmo, and see how an exmo lays a smack down upon you.

http://pocm.info/index.html

BINGO!

This is exactly what is wrong with Christianity.

You believe in a god that condemns everyone who doesn't believe the same way you do.

I could never believe in a god that is that big of a jerk.

lived in san diego for a couple of years after college.
btw...not sure what was more laughable: the extraterrestrial cult from el cajon (unarious) or the fundamentalist xtians from lakeside area.

i agree that the anti-mormon literature is just rubbish with some made up stories but i don't mind a little fun at the expense of horny joe. at least it got me curious the first time around i read anti-mormon propaganda. it was enough for me to propel me into my own investigation from reliable sources.

either way, anti-mormon propaganda or not, i'm out of the cult and at the end of the day, that's what really counts.

Unarius was awesome! The SPACE CADILLAC IS COMING!!!

My personal favorite group of nut jobs in the SD area was the Bards. Did anyone else run into those?

I have a mixed opinion of the premise of this thread. Validity of religion aside I can agree that orthodox Christians do fail in achieving their objectives in much of their literature about Mormonism. My experience on both sides of the issue is that firstly, I think it extremely difficult to even begin to understand all the nuances of Mormonism if you have never been a member. No amount of reading or study can replace actual experience inside Mormonism. Secondly, most ordinary people reared within orthodoxy have only a scant knowledge of Mormonism and usually an inaccurate understanding based based on what they perceive as the more bizarre beliefs gleaned from bits and pieces they have heard over the years rather than from a real study.

In the generation before, it was Ed Decker that insulated us from anti-mormon crap and kept us pleasantly inhaling the farts from SLC.

I curse Decker for doing that when there were plenty of good sources decades and decades ago.

Seriously. Sometimes I feel like Ed Decker is a danite double agent doing his part to make sure kolobians retain their testimonies and don't bother researching church history for themselves..

He desperately wants to be the guru/pastor/svengali of exmos, and he never will be, because it's obvious how batshit crazy he is.

I was given a pamphlet called "To Moroni With Love" by Ed Decker from a couple of evangelicals in Belfast during my mission. I didn't know what to make of it. Half of it was a collection of evidence showing how Mormonism isn't really Christian, to which I thought "Not your version of Christianity, anyway." The rest was stuff I had never heard of because I was totally ignorant about my own religion, or what I considered to be quibbling with minor issues like "Who is Oliver Granger?"

That pamphlet was written with someone like me in mind, and it was a failure. I was ready to leave the Church right then with enough evidence, because I was so unhappy in it. But the sort of well-researched, scholarly book that eventually helped me to leave is ludicrous to someone who never was a Mormon. Imagine what a nevermo would say to "An Insider's View of Mormon Origins" or "Losing a Lost Tribe." My Roman Catholic cousins would say "You need a scholarly book to tell you that your man Smith was a charlatan? Hello! Peep stones, magic underwear and the planet Kolob! God, you're dense." And they would be right.

Anti-Mormon literature is typically written with nevermos in mind, because they are the most likely people to influence, and it's very easy to put together. Just mention a few of the crazy doctrines of Mormonism, and it's enough for most people. Unfortunately, some of it is a bit ignorant, as you said, and stuff gets added that isn't true. Or maybe it was true and you didn't know it at the time. I was very ignorant about the Mormon church when I was in it, and I would have scoffed at the things I know now. Convincing Mormons that their church is hogwash is very, very difficult and not really worth their time.

Is it needs to read "Why most evangelical 'anti-Mormon' literature sucks."

I've never had much of a problem sticking with the secular stuff; I still hold to some modest "spiritual beliefs" (at least when times get tough), but using the Bible or other scripture against the BOM, etc. amounts to a lot of circular crap that often reduces to "My Jesus can beat up your Jesus."

It's as silly as using the Bible to argue against evolution and the science of molecular biology. Or listening to "Bigfoot believers" argue whether Sassie arrived here on a UFO or was descended from "gigantopithecus."

I generally refuse to concede the "anti-Mormon" point, since that's how Mormons keep themselves "thinking inside the box." And my take is they would far rather debate with the evangelical crowd than the secular folks...

Agreed. I too was turned off as a mormon by evangelical anti-mormon stuff. It caused me to truly believe that intelligent information that goes against mormonism did not exist.

Thank you internet.

+1

Truth is not POV dependent. If you only listen to atheists, you're cutting yourself off from a lot of valuable information.

That may be true Steve, but when you start your argument with "this is why Mormons are not Christian," you have already lost the debate. It's kind of like calling people you don't agree with Nazis. Everyone sees it as so off the wall, that they shut down everything else you say.

The fundies are as usual confused, far afield, unclear on the question.

The question is not, does Mormon doctrine conform to historic Christian doctrine. Any more than we ask whether Islam doctrine conforms to Hindu. It makes no sense to ask whether one major world religion is a subset of another; they would not be two major world religions if that were true.

The question is, does Mormon doctrine present itself honestly to the outside world, or does it pretend to be substantially more similar to a mainstream religion than it really is? The answer is of course the latter.

The fundies are unlikely to get this.

I very much agree with what you are saying Kolobian.

But I'm also going to throw some stuff written by ex-mormon's under the bus too.

Sorry, Steve B but I read some of your stuff long ago and it was so snarky and abrasive that I didn't give it any credence.

Exmo's aren't immune to writing bad "anti-mormon" literature. Perhaps for exmo's the challenge is that sometimes too many emotions get tied up in it and it is difficult to not let the frustration come through.

It was very helpful this time around to find so much higher quality information out there on the internet like mormonthink.org, 20truths.info, articles on this site, etc.