http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2010/10/19/when-in-doubt-shout-%E2%80%93-why-shaking-someone%E2%80%99s-beliefs-turns-them-into-stronger-advocates/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+DiscoverBlogs+%28Discover+Blogs%29

Ash's incredibly rude response to ex bishop Steve Bloor found here...
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VHhFg9ZZloEJ:stevebloor.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/resignation-letter-as-bishop/+http://stevebloor.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/resignation-letter-as-bishop/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&source=www.google.com

...reminded me of the above article. When you experience doubts about your beliefs, what do you do? Proselyte. Shout Louder! Become Michael Ash

I remember early on in the peace that Michael Ash described going through a real faith crisis. This was before he published his faith-shaking book or started writing his faith challenging column for Mormon times.

Anyone have this recorded somewhere?

I loved Ash's play coming right out of JS's BoM playbook:

Ashie: "I’m not one to publish frequently on blogs or message boards. Quite frankly, life is too short, I have too many irons in the fire, and I have precious little time to work on projects that I feel are more worthwhile than arguing with others."

Of the same order as: "And behold, I would write it also if I had room upon the plates, but I have not; and ore I have none, for I am alone." except ash is even more windy for someone with no time and no patience.

It reminds me also of all those sacrament speakers that spend the first five minutes of their talk, talking about how they were called to give a talk, how they didn't know what to talk about, how they prepared a talk, and now they felt the promptings to talk about some other talk. Gas bags!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/26/2011 09:24AM by Jesus Smith.

This gem from Ash is so disingenuous I wish I could find him on a street corner and stuff a print out of it down his throat.

"Your post speaks of “solid, reliable, testable scientific data,” that supports your current religious views of Mormonism. At the risk of sounding rude, I seriously doubt that you could produce such data. Before you begin writing a list please keep in mind, that a large number of educated Latter-day Saints are fully aware of every single LDS-critical argument. I, myself, have studied them for many decades. There is absolutely no intellectual data that automatically compels an intelligent person to reject the Book of Mormon. "

Translation: We are smart, you sheeple are not. Trust us. Trust that we are smart enough to hold an answer you won't understand or even find.

There's no data that compels an intelligent person to reject the BoM? That leaves us with the conclusion that those intelligent persons (ash not included) are liars or deluded (ash included).

Ash: "In short, all the “scientific data” that is used to discredit the Church has an equally “solid, reliable,” and “testable” refutation (and, generally, vice-versa for pro-LDS claims)."

We're waiting and waiting, after your decades of study, Ashie, for this equally solid, reliable, testable (Really?) refutation. If it is "Have faith" (as it's been in 90% of your articles) then you are a big FAIL.

Ash: " the primary reason that such people feel they were conned is because they never really engaged “study and faith” in their gospel lives."

Typical projection of a narcissist--we're not the problem, you are. Ash is a blow-hard egomaniac.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/26/2011 09:35AM by Jesus Smith.

I could see Peterson saying that, but Ash is too young. He also says that every single issue has been discussed in Mormon-related publications, as if merely discussing them should be enough to assuage any concerns someone might have.

He also claims these issues aren't hidden from the general membership. Church manuals are so dumbed down and stripped of controversial material that his assertion is laughable. The Brigham Young manual of a few years ago didn't make a single mention of him being a polygamist, for example. It doesn't matter if the issue is discussed in a Mormon-related apologetic publication. The fact is that the vast majority of Mormons aren't going to read such a publication, and they will only be exposed to the information from objective non-Mormon sources. So, while it's true that there are Mormon-related sources somewhere that talk about the issue, Mormons are unlikely to read them and Ash knows this, the Church knows this, and Ash's statement is very misleading.

"...that a large number of educated Latter-day Saints are fully aware of every single LDS-critical argument. I, myself, have studied them for many decades. There is absolutely no intellectual data that automatically compels an intelligent person to reject the Book of Mormon."


I also like how he introduces himself

"I’m not one to publish frequently on blogs or message boards. Quite frankly, life is too short, I have too many irons in the fire, and I have precious little time to work on projects that I feel are more worthwhile than arguing with others."

then proceeds to waste a lot of precious time responding to the blog.

...professional prick. What do you expect, as a paid apologist? That he would be openminded and reasonable? Uh uh. Not in the job description.

He's a hack and a whore, like so many lying fake intellectuals paraded around by the church, like Neal Maxwell, Truman Madsen and Hugh Nibley.

I don’t have time for blogs and arguing- what a complete lie. How did Ash find some obscure British guy’s blog about leaving the church? Well, he was wasting his so-called precious time reading RFM or Postmo because both sites have been discussing it for days, or he was wasting his time randomly searching through blogs. Either way Ash wastes a lot of time reading “anti-Mormon” material. What a liar.

There should be a warning somewhere that Ash can harmful to a person's mental health.

This article is a good one to replace anything that Ash has written.

http://www.jimmoyers.com/Religion/Psychological_Issues.html

First identified by the Nibster's daughter Martha where the victim, faced with the perceived Hobson's choice of rejecting the LDS Faith or reconciling the ireconcilable, opts to go crazy instead...

The constellation of psychological symptoms and behaviors serve to ward off new information, and the "sermons given as monologues" are merely a distorted attempt at "cemetary whistling."

Ash and the other apologists go all postmodernist when they attempt to redefine "evidence" as a total cultural construct that just shows the biases of those seeking evidence.

They of course do this because they have no evidence of the existence of Nephites and Lamanites. If they did, they would shout it from the rooftops, and and all the postmodernism would be tossed out the window so fast it would make your head spin.

He's a human fog machine. His goal is to generate fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). He would dearly like a more noble goal, but given the material he's got to work with, this is the best he can do.

Sucks to be him. Sisyphus had a better gig.

Ash reminds me too well of a few of my TBM nephews. I've had way too many emails premised like Ash's, insincerely declaring there is too little time to argue with people who leave the chruch blah blah blah and then go on for several paragraphs with nothing but big words wrapped in hot air backed by their feelings.

I like Bishop Steve a lot. Unlike Ash he is sincere. I like this, for example:



---------------------
In the end I realised that I would rather accept the uncomfortable truth than a comforting fantasy, despite my feelings.

I realised that sometimes it is better to do what is right even though it feels wrong, than follow the good feelings from the ‘spirit’ which can actually deceive me about the truthfulness of something.

President Hinckley had experience of feelings not being a good indicator of truth with the Salamander letters during the Hoffman affair when even the First Presidency was deceived by their feelings.

And many millions of members felt the spirit bearing witness of truth when Elder Paul H Dunn shared his war stories in General Conference which were later discovered to be fictitious. He was conveniently retired, becoming an emeritus G.A.
---------------------



Ash will keep doing what he's doing because that is how he makes his living. Ex-Bishop Steve, on the other hand, will go on and actually live his life. I wish him and his well.

While I was leaving, caught in cog-diss, I wrote this in a journal:

The apparent efforts of LDS leaders by withholding and denying historical truth have had the result of destroying personal integrity for those of us that have been ensnared. When I lived trapped within the church, I knew things that I dare not openly speak about, even with those closest to me, for fear of losing that which the church teaches is forever. As such, I felt obligated to keep to myself questions and waning allegiance in worthiness interviews if I wanted to baptize and ordain my children. I dissembled to my tween boys when they questioned an aspect of church history or doctrine, because the truth would place them in the same pressure cooker I had been in. I hid my true feelings from my wife because she was comforted by the image of a prophet praising, temple going husband.

I did these because telling the truth was more painful than the comforting propaganda that is repeated as mantras in church meetings. And I learned to do this over the years by listening and observing church leadership & apologists. I’ve seen leaders & scholars that cover the truth through denial or silence in order to preserve simplistic faith—faith founded on incorrect information. The leaders, with access to historical archives not permitted to general membership, must know this, and still they remain silent. I wonder if they hide the truth for the same reason that I did—because people prefer comforting fibs over disturbing facts. So, until I opened the exit door, I was trapped because of that promulgated culture that I also allowed to develop in my own home. In keeping the peace, I was reduced to using the same tactics LDS leaders use at the expense of personal integrity.

Thanks for this, Jesus Smith. Your journal entry reminded me of many things while I was trapped in cog-dis.

One thing, though, I wouldn't dare write my true feelings and thoughts in my journal, always thinking of it as a record of my testimony for my great-grand kids etc. Paradoxically, my personal journal was the last place to think of as private.

Like you I dared not speak out loud my true thoughts and feelings. But I did think and feel them. Often while driving. Once I reached my destination I would set all the confusion aside with a little mantra: "just because it isn't plausible doesn't mean it isn't possible." The "it" refers to a myriad of problems I found in "the church". Doubts swept aside, I put on my smile and played the role of young Mormon husband and father, cheerful, upbeat, clean and upright. Nobody could have known the painful perplexity I was just experiencing.

Like you I worried a lot about being worthy to baptize my children. It was always noticed if the father wasn't the one baptizing his own children. I didn't want to be in that position.

Like you I learned to hide what was true about me and learned to project an outward semblance of conformity.

But in the end, like you, I couldn't help but opt for personal integrity. I realized and accepted what ex-Bishop Steve on the blog entry realized and accepted:

"I realised that sometimes it is better to do what is right even though it feels wrong, than follow the good feelings from the ‘spirit’ which can actually deceive me about the truthfulness of something."

There's the crux of my cog-dis: if what I'm thinking about "the church" is right why does it feel so wrong? "Satan did it" works very well when we are children but at some point we had to man-up and become adult. So glad I did.