Kind of painful to read over there - many saying it would be easier to keep testimonies if more honesty in church history. Of course, miss the obvious conclusion it is all BS.

http://www.ldsfreedomforum.com/viewforum.php?f=1&sid=28695a70690051c2cf549b8b2756be79

Sorry if off topic but I laughed at this (at the bottom of the page)

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So much for freedom eh?

If you want to register there and post, feel free, but if you troll it, don't bring them here... We've learned from long experience that board wars are useless wastes of bandwidth... The old FAIR, MA&D, and Mormon Dialogue boards always had or have the same rules in the case of the latter, which still exists.

That said, calls for more honesty from a site like this one are always pretty empty.

They'll insist on it, but they'll throw up--or go crazy--when the apologists start to add their spin.

And as soon as the "meat hits the fan" with authentic history however, the cries of "Anti-Mormon Lies" will be raised once again, and the revisionists and denialists will hold sway. There's always been an undercurrent at the various apologist sites that "blame the questioner" for not having learned the actual history. That one happened to me on the D-News (before I was banned, and they went to registration) when I innocently noted I'd been taught next to nothing on Mountain Meadows but did admit there was a copy of Juanita Brooks biography of John D. Lee.

This site has been a "laugher" here for two or three years, an example of "Your brain on Mormonism." Here's a thread from just a few days ago...

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,965233,965233#msg-965233



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/25/2013 10:10PM by SL Cabbie.

Standard forum boilerplate for a not logged-in user.

Register, and most? of those restrictions will go away. RfM is one of the few places that allows anonymous / unregistered posting.

"RfM is one of the few places that allows anonymous / unregistered posting"

Never really thought about that, but hell yeah!

Fight the power!

Let 'em speak!

Let 'em speak some more!

Not afraid!

Fight for the little guys!

Thanks a lot!

TSCC is trapped in that it claims divine inspiration and looking at its history honestly will conclusively show that there is no divine inspiration.

The Big 15 know this so they are just playing damage control.

FROM THE COMMENTS BY JBALM:

Suppose I approached TR interviews the same way the church approached its own history, meaning:

- I only volunteer information that promotes faith in me. All those things I may have done that make me unworthy, I just don't mention. After all, some things that are true just are not useful, right? Not to me anyway. I'm not necessarily concerned with how useful the truth is to the person trying to evaluate my worthiness.

- If the interviewer finds out some unsavory parts of my past from an outside source, I will simply point out how flawed that interviewer is for talking to other sources besides me. I may go as far as to admonish the interviewer not to ask anyone but me anything about me ever again.

- If that doesn't get interviewer back in line, I will just tell him that I don't know why I did those things. Maybe someday, God will tell me why I did them, and I'll be sure to let the interviewer know as soon as I find out. In the mean time, let's not dwell upon them, and let's get that TR issued.

- Most importantly, I never admit I did anything wrong. Everything I did was because God wanted me to do it. We just don't know why--yet. Maybe, just maybe, God wants me to do bad things to test the interviewer's faith. Did he ever think of that?

Would that be acceptable? Doubtful.

Faith cannot be built upon deception. Omission of relevant facts and promulgating half-truths are deceptive practices. Fabricated faith promoting stories are even worse.

The church needs to exhibit the same forthrightness and fidelity it expects from the members. If not, it's influence will continue to wane.

Yeah, I loved that comment as well. Normally posts on LDSFF make my head want to explode, but there is some intelligent discussion on this particular topic.

Brilliant really. I'm surprised it can live as posted on that forum. Brings out how sociopathic the LDS church is, because if an individual could compartmentalize for TR interviews as JBALM suggests, that'd be unnerving and a bit scary to me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/26/2013 06:16PM by derrida.

I think some of these people deserve respect for trying to understand it all.

Sure, some are hard boiled TBMs, but a bit of empathy wouldn't hurt. Who knows, it would probably help them

I've been on lots of LDS web sites through my journey. You can post anything there, as long as you frame it as discussion.

They only ban people who dump on other posters.

As we all know, those people tend to be the holier than thou morbots TBs.

Most of the threads aren't worth the time, bit there ate a few that are.

Maybe this particular site acts as a type of "baby step" until some of them graduate to RFM.

However, one poster really got my goat. He/she said that compared to other atrocities in other religions, the Mountain Meadows Massacre was not so bad.

The actual quote was:

"...comparing to what other religions have done we are doing dang good."

Aaaargh!

"Nan" is nuts.

Nan writes, "The biggest problem is not have a strong testimony." There it is. Blame the victim. If you question the LDS church, then you are the problem. You aren't good enough, strong enough, perfect enough--you aren't enough of a fricking piece of fruit on the end of a stick.

I'm glad they actually have a place to go to talk about things like this. Where else do they have to go to do that? At least they can say what they feel. There are going to be LDS folks who don't like people sharing anything other than the party line. You can tell how frustrated those posters get when people aren't bearing their testimony and silencing shady history. I find those people quite amusing.

We shouldn't laugh at them. I'm glad they're calling for the church to be more open about its history. I wish other members would do the same.

Nan is 72 and doesnt trust men. But you can imagine she has reasons why.
I know most of the people there.

A great many of the TBMs are just pure morons, in or out of religion.

There are a lot, such as those in this thread (search for thread "exodus from the church, and also see the tithing is on surplus thread").

These are honest, giod people.

There are also a few who are culturally LDS, but basically fine followers of Christ. I know plenty here are just asocking of that.

Again, some people ate trapped in the church for various reasons aand making it the best that they can.

And absolutely, you can say anything there, as long as it is not pure bashing without context of discussion.

Fwiw they were discussing this month's ago.
.
http://www.ldsfreedomforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=28601&p=374541&hilit=sweden#p374541