A lot of times when there is a story in the press, shedding light on some weird Mormon practice, we see a lot of TBMs rushing to defend the church. Often links to comments are posted here on RfM, and you can read through the scathing comments by non-LDS along with the often illogical defenses of the Mormons who feel the need to "straighten out" the masses. But does it help or hurt? Because if I had never heard of Mormonism, reading these comments by Mormons wailing about persecution or condemning the "persecutors", I would think it makes the church members sound like religious wackos.

Some of the points are presented logically - in those cases I'd tend to want to believe the Mormons (if I didn't know Mormons). Because I'd figure they knew more about their church than the detractors. But so many of the "defenses" are emotionally driven, illogical rants that I think they would do as much to put people off the church as the original articles. How do you think non-LDS see these comments by Mormons?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/15/2012 12:10PM by CA girl.

view that sort of rush-to-defend as a version of "wacky cult" behavior.

But then these are the descendants of people who burned witches and Quakers at the stake, so at least in a few cases they may be dealing with their own past misdemeanors in a collective guilt sort of way.

Mormons can seem like nice normal people (particularly when aided by a TV campaign). But that illusion usually gets shattered when they try to make their case to the non-infected world. So rant on, brother and sisters. Let your freak flag fly.

fundamentalist women, in their prairie dresses, together as wives, telling everybody how they are happy in their lives? From the outside, people deduce that they really don't know about what life could be/should be on the outside.

So when mormons post their rebuttals, people hear them like we hear the fundy women. "Sheltered" and "oblivious" come to mind. Testimony bearing works among the sheeple, but anybody with any critical thinking skills can see right through it.

So, I frequently think that the rebuttals are just as damaging to the church's reputation as the original accusations.

I read a few of the comments on the business week article about how the mormons make money. Naturally they jump quickly to vigorously defend the church and call it slandering yadda yadda. Well let me ask you TBM's something, when the church doesn't open up their books and let people see where the money is going or how it's being used, what do you expect is going to happen. People are demanding to know, so non-believers aren't going to sit by and passively let the church do whatever it's going to do. There is naturally going to be some investigations, skilled journalism, with that, there may even be some speculation. If you don't like it, write your GA a letter and tell them to disclose everything so that speculation and investigations can stop. Someone needs to fill the void. And it's not going to be their own beloved leaders. The other thing that pisses me off is TSCC claims it's to prevent people of taking advantage of the church if they knew their holdings and level of wealth. Well too late, we get it, the church is rich, we know that. What we want is some transparency. TBM's believe it's God's mandate to keep the books private. And that's exactly what the GA's want them to believe.