So I had some fun with the online mishies earlier today. I spent the longest time gushing with them about how beautiful their temples were and how I visited one of their temples a few weeks ago and just wanted to tell them what a great experience it was.

It was their beautiful spiral temple in Independence. We took a tour of it and listened to the beautiful organ, etc....

I had them going for a while until one of them finally said something like "hey, that wasn't our temple."

F'n hilarious.

Hahahahahahaha! Brilliant!

I didn't realize the Community of Christ had an organ in their temple. I will have to go see it if I am ever in Missouri. That is one place we didn't go when we did a tour of church history sites back when I was in high school.

har!

I didn't realize that you had dialed in to them when I read this - I misread your post. I thought you had just been interacting with missionaries who had been bothering you.

Honestly I think doing that is in very bad taste. Just like the thread today that it would be in bad taste to go into a Mormon church and preach to them there...

Much of our biggest frustration with Mormons is how badly they behave to those who leave. I see no reason to exacerbate that by behaving badly towards them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/12/2012 12:53AM by bc.

Here's what I see on the boards this evening. A few threads complaining about a troll who came on here and stirred up some trouble. And a thread about trolling the missionaries. I'm not sure that there's any difference in the two activities.

I personally wouldn't do it, but I'm not sure it's a parallel comparison.

This board does not exist to convince people to leave TSCC, and there is a specific rule about participation that no preaching of the faith is allowed.

On the other hand, missionaries exist to get people to talk to them so they can preach about TSCC. They have a very specific agenda.

While I don't condone it, I don't think it's my place to condemn someone else for having done it. It's easy to jump to conclusions based on a snippet of someone's life that is shared in a post.

I wouldn't have said anything, but where I appear to be encouraging it I wanted to clarify that I'm not "for it".

And yes I agree that example overstates it - it's more like punking a call center.

In fact now that I see he was solicited by them I stand by my initial comment of - Har!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/12/2012 08:22AM by bc.

Hilarious!!

How is what you did not trolling?

Yes, to all the preachers on here, I'm sure my little stunt on behalf of the CofC damaged those poor mishies for life. Not like TSCC didn't do enough of its own REAL damage to me. And I was simply responding to an annoying popup ad that told me to talk to a mishie online.

Dear me, I'm human.

Still, go ahead and castigate me. I don't care. It was funny and it was fun and I enjoyed it. So sue me.

You are right - I take it back - especially knowing it was a pop-up add you were responding to. No different than punking a telemarketer IMO.

I actually think that was perfectly fine (and hilarious) that you did that. I don't think they would see it as people who have left or aren't members of the church being bad. In fact, what it probably seemed like to them is an innocent non-believer was being convinced that they had an amazing church and then *BAM* he throws that in there and they realize they're not the only one's with beautiful temples and they don't feel as much of their arrogant superiority because they were just humbled by the fact that they're not as special as they think.

I'm encouraged that my true motivations with my little mishie exchange weren't entirely lost on everyone here. An occasional conk on the side of one's self-important head every once in a while never hurts. All the while I was playing the part of an innocent nevermo.

Truly though, before they asked me which temple I visited they were all completely taken in, and were telling me all about the great things that go on in their beautiful temples... And I only gradually let them in on the fact that what I was describing was a CofC temple... And then crickets once they realized and told me what I was describing. I let the session hang silent for a full 10 minutes before they finally asked me "So do you have any other questions about our church?" To which I said, "Well, I was going to ask where in my area I might attend one of your services. But since the place where I visited wasn't your church, never mind."

And it ended there...

they solicited you then...you didnt do anything wrong in this nevermo's opinion...pretty innocuous if you aske me.

just opining!

I appreciate your opinion. The way I look at it, every hour these mishies spend with an exmo like me is one less hour they can spend getting some other unsuspecting soul caught in the cult. And every time I get another one of those annoying popups, I solemnly pledge to take them up on it. I'll report back...

"Well, I was going to ask where in my area I might attend one of your services. But since the place where I visited wasn't your church, never mind."


It didn't even leave them room to build a short talk for a testimony meeting.

It seems fair to me they should be exposed to the fact that others have temples and there are people out there not interested in their product when it doesn't measure up in beauty, grandeur, and loveliness found elsewhere in other religions. They don't have the corner on the market of good or lovely or of good report!

Nor do they have the corner on claims to be the true church of jesus christ as revealed to joseph smith. You could have gone even further IMO:


Nail: So you're not the mormons who built that Temple? How many mormon groups are there?

Mishes: Well we're the only legitimate group.

Nail: It says on the internet that the Temple I went to is from www.cofchrist.org, that's not you?

Mishes: No

Nail: I went to http://www.thechurchofjesuschristoflatterdaysaints.us/. Is that you?

Mishes: Nope

Nail: How about www.thechurchofchrist.org?

Mishes: Nope

Nail: How about www.theremnantchurch.com?

Mishes: Nope. Ours is www.lds.org.

Nail: How many mormons are there? Wiki says there are over 80 sects!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brighamite#Followers_of_Brigham_Young


If missionaries are out there telling lies, even naively, in order to ensnare innocent victims, they are fair game. I would argue that mormons are not passively promoting a benign, non-threatening and non-coercive way of life or belief system. The entire design of mormonism is to convince innocent people of false events and false ways of determining truth in order to manipulate and gain control of them. I would vigorously resist categorizing mormonism as a benevolent group that should be respected and allowed to practice its religion peacefully. The "religion" is predatory by definition and introducing as much dissonance into its practice and as much sabotage into its deceptive methods and practices is a duty.