The thread about being a convincing apologist got me thinking about how many people I know who once considered themselves apologists and then "switched teams," like I did. Just the other day I got an email from someone who confessed to me that they knew me from years ago when we both posted on the FAIR board as "apologists." He said he's a closet apostate, but he's left the church spiritually and mentally.

So, my question to you is, Is anyone here brave enough to admit they once were involved in apologetics, either online or IRL?

For the record, from about 1995 to 2005, I posted in various places as "Johnny-cat." Back then I was a reasonable and fair fellow, but then in August of 2005 I became the most evil wolf in sheep's clothing you can imagine. Or so I'm told.

OGY. If they gave Olympic medals for being able to do mental acrobatics around all the illogical ideas in the church, I would be on a Wheaties box.

Thank you, it is hard to find a spandex gymnast uniform that works with garmies though.

BTW, you do realize I am a hetero-male, not that I don't mind being hit on.

You don't want him to smite you, do you?

Oh lord, my god.. I need you every hour.. deep inside me.. (cue South Park christian rock music)

Interesting! I would love to hear your story. Have you posted a bio? I have often times wondered how many apologists get tired of hearing their own BS and switch sides.

runtu Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The thread about being a convincing apologist got
> me thinking about how many people I know who once
> considered themselves apologists...

Of course -- but then, you knew that already.

Uncle Dale

Not really, but as a kid I used to hate science class since I felt "it was of the devil." No joke I would talk about how the dinosaurs were not real, and came from other worlds because the Earth was "created from other matter."

Glad I grew out of that, and grew out of the church.

our world IS made from "other matter" but it is matter that was once a star...not a planet with surviving fossils!! course me no apologist...other that aopologizing for my own blunders!

Yes, during the "Every member an apologist" sub-campaign of "Every member a missionary."

Ana

It was my trying to defend against ”unfounded” claims by a evangelical father friend of my son, about the book of Abraham being a fraud that got me researching it and realizing another huge problem for the church - this on the heels of the DNA issue. And then I was done mentally.

I was. I knew all the bad stuff and did the mental flips to try and understand it. Needless to say, I was very unhappy for a long time. Now I can say that the Emporer has no clothes. It is a tremendous relieve to (as someone on the board before said) TRUST MYSELF MORE THAN I TRUSTED THE CHURCH.

I was, yes. I even worked with a group of people to get an ex-Mormon for Jesus back into the Church. Now I'm out and he's still back in it. I'm mortified about that now.

During my first few years on the internet, I was a host in an LDS chatroom. MSN used to run a group of chatrooms and we were in the Religions division. I eventually became a group leader, training new hosts.

That's how I got my on-line name. I needed one which wasn't too fru-fru, so that I'd be taken seriously and not just get hit on or something. New people coming in thought I was a guy, so I was taken a little more seriously.

Anyway, I did have to deal with people coming in and asking questions about the LDS and sometimes defend the faith. I had a bunch of books near me, like "How to Answer Anti-Mormon Questions," which was a little pamphlet for quick reference and some other weightier books.

Now I realize that although I'd thought I knew all the deepest doctrines, I was completely unaware of the issues we know about today because of the internet, like the issues with the Book of Abraham, etc.

When I was asked about Blood Atonements, I simply said, "Oh, don't worry about that at all. It's completely symbolic." I'd never heard of Blood Atonements, so I thought they were talking about the pre-1990 Endowment ceremony.

Boy, I sure am a different person now! LOL

When I first saw this message board I was disappointed to see that even the born again Xtians pretending to be exmormons were online with a message board spreading their lies/deceits about the church. For so long I was of the opinion that there were a lot of people claiming to be exmormons but in reality they were people who just didn't know much about the church and who oftentimes were misguided born again Xtians just overzealously witnessing to Mormons but being completely closed-minded to hearing the truth. I knew the BoM pretty well, had a strong testimony of the First Vision (i.e. I had even felt a strong fuzzy-wuzzy feeling in the Sacred Grove itself), and had also felt the same fuzzy-wuzzy in the tabernacle when the choir/congregation sang "We Thank Thee O God for the Apologist" while an apologist named Spencer W. Kimball was standing with counselor Hinckley in front of their red chairs near the pulpit. Ooops he was a prophet and the song was about a prophet, not an apologist, and hence why I don't give a sh** what some apologist says because my testimony was based on the principle of continuing revelation through living prophets.

I hardly spent 15 minutes on this message board in late 1999 before finding a few things that were annoying. Why would people badmouth the true church? OK so what if they got their feelings hurt because some Bishop was imperfect. And I was astounded when someone wrote that they thought the internet would destroy testimonies with all the information out there. If anything I knew the internet would help the church because it would serve as a tool to help clarify the lies of the anti-Mormons and help people get to know the millions of Mormons and what the church really is all about. However in order to overcome all the anti-Mormon lies it was going to be important to know how they're taking things out of context and deceiving people. And then it would be possible to put together a webpage much as Elder Marlin Jensen was envisioning where testimonies could be saved by getting people the truth.

And thus I became an apologist :) The trouble I ran into very early in my apologist hobby was that I became troubled over what my mom calls "silly issues". First it was the Kinderhook Plates as I had heard of them while reading the HoC volumes as a teenager. Hmmm I was a church history reading geek I guess as I had read Joseph Fielding Smith's Essentials in Church History book at least 4 times cover to cover and I had read all 7 volumnes of the HoC series cover to cover at least once. But then I saw this reference on the Kinderhook Plates in the Encyclopedia of Mormonism that troubled me where they claimed it was a hoax but in the HoC it says that Smith started to translate them and nothing about him discerning the obvious for any prophet to see - its a hoax - as that is one of the greatest attributes of living prophets in being able to lead/guide us and not let us be led astray.

Well I tried to put that issue on a shelf and was interested to see what lies were being spread by the anti(s) so I searched for a short easy-to-remember hotmail account (now defunct) and a RfM username that would match. Several options didn't work out but as I was presently then a bishopric counselor and I saw that bcouns was available on hotmail I grabbed it and became bcouns on RfM. At the time I was experiencing the typical difficulties that overworked TBM's experience, especially when busy 15-20 hours/week in a demanding church calling and having 2 preschoolers at the same time. I was worn-out and frankly not seeing blessings (except being worn-out constantly) from all my labors for Mormondom. Nevertheless I was a happy TBM with hope for exaltation. And I was hopeful despite my worn-out condition to help bring some of the RfM lurkers who might decide against baptism, staying, etc. due to all the lies being spread here.

I quickly came across some issues that troubled me. But I dared not really look at them. I decided to disengage and told everyone on RfM about a favorite scripture of mine on faith - LOL I can't remember for sure now if I got the chapter correct - Alma 32? Well I was surprised to see how the people on RfM knew what I was talking about as it was my experience that anti-Mormons really didn't know much about the church. In fact what was most surprising of all is that the RfMers really did know my culture. And I seriously wondered how they could reject the truth after all they had been taught and felt spiritually. Well I wasn't a very bold apologist here and in the meantime I laid low for a few months doing the Alma 32 thing. Then after April 2000 conference in following the dictates of what I thought was the Spirit I googled Kinderhook in order to put that issue to rest and to get myself back on the track to exposing the anti-Mormons' lies through good research and honest answers. Well on googling Kinderhook I quickly started digging deep into everything and quickly discovered with the Lamanite/DNA issue being the truckload of straw that broke the camel's back for me. That pretty much ended my apologetics career. Other than a few carefully-worded testimonies I made on RfM that the Kinderhook issue and any others could be overcome with the truth, humility, and prayer I really didn't get very farm in my apologetics career ;)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/04/2012 09:27AM by alex71ut.

This was fascinating since your timeline somewhat coincides with mine. I even vaguely recall the screenname bcouns - even though I didn't stumble onto RfM until spring of 2003.

Strange how similar our experiences can be for a lot of us exmos. We'll have plenty to reminisce over, as we spend eternity in outer darkness. Or the telestial. I never did understand for sure whether apostasy was an outer darkness offense.

Yah know, at one time I was a MORG defender, especially when the "born again" hoards in the Lethbridge area started attacking Mormonism for being non-Christian....but as I've gotten older, and with some of those preachers being exposed as philanderers or worse, I've come to the realization that no church is worth defending, because they all exist to create and enforce stupid rules, cause guilt and shame among their members, and NOT be about worshiping God.

I would say I was a Junior Apologist.

I was involved with a girl for over a year and when her parents found out I was a Mormon, they freaked. Her parents brought up all this stuff to the girl I was engaged to marry. But truly their arguments were stupid. They had us listen to a tape made by their church about Mormonism. It had very weak arguments like Joseph wasn't martyred, he shot back with a gun and killed 1-2 people - well so what, I'd shoot back too. They brought up the word 'adieu' in the BofM - not a big deal. Jesus and Satan were brothers - so what. Basics of polygamy - big deal, every member knows they practiced polygamy.

The only one that disturbed me a bit was the Adam God theory but my TBM sister explained it away as Brigham never said that - good enough for me at the time.

I marched over to her parents with my 21 points of the true church, the Missionary Pal and all sorts of 'good evidence' on the side of the one, true church.

But in the end, her parents and pastor eventually won and convinced her it was some kind of cult. Then I started to become an apologist of sorts. I fought that much harder then for the LDS church, wanting to dismiss those anti-Mormon lies and try to prove the church true and wanted to be able to defend as best I could in the future. In the end I found out so much damaging stuff that I eventually stopped believing it myself.

I was tracting as a mish the very moment in 1978 that the ambiguously titled 'revelation on the priesthood' was announced on the media. I heard about it from a contact actually first.

We had a person in the area who always gave us hell about it before the announcement (would find us and heckle us on the street), and one time she saw us at the grocery store and said "looks like the church changing its ways. I wonder if will now try to revise its history"

That, and later in the early 90's when the temple ceremony changed big time.

I just felt the deceit. There is lots more to it but these are two of the ones I remember best. I suppose that the church leadership thinks that eventually people will forget about it as generations change but none of my children nor their children will.

I think the only ones that it won't affect will be the newer converts who can be given the denial message, but now things so watered down its going to be a revolving door with their association with the church anyways. I heard some time ago that the average stint of a new convert was 7 years in the 60's and had shrunk to 4 years in the 90's.

At the temple here, what used to be full on a thursday evening, I saw 10 cars last week (and there's no remodelling etc. going on). Looks like I'm not alone in my thinking.

As Spongebob said, I think that I too was a junior apologist. It's embarrassing to think about, really. I can only imagine how stupid I sounded years ago.

When I was about 13 years old, I used to get on the state-run BBS that was started under one of Leavitt's technology initiatives. (To you young folks here, a BBS is sort of like this message board except really, really slow.) They offered a 1-800 number that at first, they were dumb enough to leave on a virtually-unlimited use. I suppose when the first month's phone bill came in, someone probably lost their job or got a very sharp lecture and they shrank the time limit to 13 minutes or something.

Anyhoo, I would get on there and argue about the legitimacy of homosexuality with folks 3- or 4-times my age. Imagine the irony of me, our great, flamboyant apatheist arguing that gay sex was unnatural. I would pull out a couple of cliches about the topic tied to biblical references, and once they'd whipped the tar out of me I'd sign off in disgust. My mother used to discourage me from arguing (I would always insist I was "debating") online, that whole avoiding contention thing.

Beyond that, I loved to defend how mormons were christians ("Of course we're christian, it says JESUS CHRIST right in the name, doesn't it???") I was an excellent parrot for whatever few apologist lines were available. Since we didn't have the intertubes just yet, I didn't really get into it - if it had been, I probably would have dove into FAIR and FARMs type groups like crazy.

I literally was a parrot - when I ran my own BBS for awhile, I even had a "Clinton Countdown" timer on it, to show how much longer we had left til the end of his dictatorship. The problem was that I really knew very little about the Clinton presidency, good or bad - I think I really put it on there to seek approval. All of that tripe was really to seek approval and eternal brownie points.

Right on up to about 11 or 12 years ago - I was basically forcing the girlfriend of a friend of mine to watch the church-produced "Prodigal Son" movie, imagining through my tear-filled speech to her afterward that she'd somehow see the light and realize how wrong it was to be unmarried and living with him, despite all of my sinful past even before then. I doubt it was even six months later that I was inviting her and my friend to come to the Rocky Horror Picture Show halloween showing - with my boyfriend. While my wife had to work.

I was somewhat offended with her indignant rebuking of me, but later I finally realized she had good reason to be judgemental of me.

I have multiple, mortifying stories of trying to convert non-mormon and jack-mormon friends in jr. high and high school - even though I remember hiding in the curtains of the stage during aaronic priesthood meetings because I loathed being there and getting taunted by fellow brethren.. I was convinced that this was the only true way to salvation, and it would just be so awesome if I could bring someone else into the fold. Because it just brought me soooo much happiness.

I literally, physically cringe when I think back to those days. I really try to block out the memories, so I don't die of embarrassment.

Yes, I was an apologist. I still am.

Once I realized what I had done, I apologized to my parents and siblings for leaving them out of my temple marriage. They kind of accepted.

I apologized again after my parents and siblings were excluded from our son’s temple marriage. They kind of accepted.

I tried to apologize to my nevermo friends with gay children for the church’s participation and by extension, my participation in CA Prop 8. They kind of accepted.

Over the last few years, after I began to learn the bogus underpinnings and racist, sexist, homophobe teachings of the church, I have had to do a lot of apologizing to my nevermo family and friends for my blind support and participation.