Taken from the homepage of MormonThink.com
Deseret News article:
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765561793/New-MormonVoices-website-is-positive-LDS-voice.htmlA Deseret News Article by FAIR claims they want to correct the inaccuracies of Mormonism that are appearing in articles which are becoming more prevalent on the web. MormonThink supports this idea but we have different ideas of what this means.
The LDS organization FAIR (Foundation for Apologetic Information & Research) is making an organized effort to ensure that faith-promoting comments about the LDS church will drown out all other comments that are critical of the LDS church, regardless of whether or not they are true.
The article written by Mormon apologist Daniel Peterson, discusses his strategy of keeping people from learning the real hidden truths of Mormonism by trying to dominate the comment sections of Internet articles that discuss Mormonism. He claims they only want to correct misinformation. We at MormonThink totally agree with correcting misinformation and support a similar strategy by the MoreTruthFoundation started last year.
We agree that if someone says that Mormons don’t believe in Christ or are not Christian, we should correct that. Of course Mormons are Christian, although we have beliefs not shared by most other Christian churches such as the belief in the Book of Mormon as scripture.
HOWEVER, the problem is that FAIR wants to sugarcoat the answers and still keep the disturbing details of the church secret from the public. For example, go to their website called MormonVoices mentioned in the article. They discuss some of the issues so you can use information from their one-sided, incomplete, carefully-scripted commentary on selected issues that only support the church, even if they don’t really tell the true, complete story.
For example, look at their section on race. They do accurately provide recent statements that the modern Mormon church denounces racism. However, they don’t really address the concerns of those commenters that want to know why the blacks were denied the priesthood and the opportunity to have black families sealed in the LDS temples all the way up till 1978. Why on earth couldn’t a righteous black family be sealed to each other until 1978? Their site doesn’t even address that question, nor attempt to answer it.
The Mormonvoices site also totally disavows the belief that the ‘skin of blackness’ was a curse. They actually suggest the mark of Cain could have been a ‘tattoo’. This is total nonsense as shown by the Book of Mormon scriptures themselves:
2 Nephi 5: 21
And he had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people, the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them.'
And then when the Lamanites repented their cursed black skin became white again:
3 Nephi 2:15
And their curse was taken from them, and their skin became white like unto the Nephites."
So how could a tattoo be the curse? This is sheer nonsense because FAIR doesn’t want nonmembers to know the details of how the Book of Mormon teaches that God cursed people with black skin when they were bad and made their skin white again when they were good.
The current LDS children’s book continues to promote this notion of equating dark-skin with a curse caused by wickedness:
“Laman and Lemuel’s followers called themselves Lamanites. They became a dark-skinned people. God cursed them because of their wickedness.”
How many other christian churches currently teach these racial attitudes to the children in their congregations?
And of course they don’t mention any of the racist quotes made by prophets and apostles of the church that equate dark skin with the curse:
John Taylor, President of the Church
"And after the flood we are told that the curse that had been pronounced upon Cain was continued through Ham's wife, as he had married a wife of that seed. And why did it pass through the flood? because it was necessary that the devil should have a representation upon the earth as well as God;..." Journal of Discourses, Vol. 22, page 304
President Brigham Young
"If the White man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain (those with dark skin), the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so."
Apostle Mark E. Peterson
"If that Negro is faithful all his days, he can and will enter the Celestial Kingdom. He will go there as a servant, but he will get celestial glory.“ sermon to BYU students, 1954
To see the real, full story on Blacks & the Priesthood.
http://www.mormonthink.com/blackweb.htmOf course FAIR would have you believe that the church leaders never said any of these things and many, many more. And every other issue they advise members on such as polygamy, Book of Mormon historicity, Book of Abraham, etc. has the same lack of detail which is what they want to promote to the world in an effort to keep the disturbing truths of Mormonism from nonmembers and members.
Another point to make is that FAIR is not endorsed by the LDS church, and everything they say is merely the opinions of average every day members that the church won’t officially support. So why isn’t the church providing answers to these questions that are popping up all over the Internet? Why won’t they officially endorse FAIR’s answers as correct? They won’t stand behind FAIR, however they will hide behind them. It appears they want FAIR to defend the church because if it backfires, they can always say “they weren’t officially speaking for the church”.
We at MormonThink support the MoreTruthFoundation’s plan to spread the real, non-sugarcoated facts about the church. We do not want any critics to ever lie on these comments boards or to make the church’s history seem worse than it is, but we encourage everyone to not be shy in telling the real truth about the church and answering in detail the questions commenters really have about the church and its past. Since the church and FAIR won't tell the people what they really want to know about the church, it's up to us to speak the absolute truth. More information can be found at How To Help.
http://www.moretruthfoundation.com/howtohelp.htmlAgain we will state that FAIR will only give a one-sided argument of the church. They never link to any critic’s site so you can’t see the full arguments that the critics make, which are much, much stronger than what FAIR purports them to be. FAIR only wants you to look at their point of view. However, MormonThink has over 300 links to FAIR, FARMS and LDS.org, etc so anyone can see exactly what the pro-side of any argument is in their own words as well as links to the best critics' sites so you can see those arguments also. Only by reading each side, from their own sites, can everyone get a complete viewpoint on every issue so then they can decide for themselves what makes the most sense.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/23/2012 03:30PM by SpongeBob SquareGarments.