Lies to cover up omissions don't engender trust.

Take Brigham Young's famous statement at Winter quarters regarding Enoch Lovejoy, a black elder in Massachusetts who is married to a white woman. In a meeting with 9 of the twelve apostles present he says that if the couple were within reach he would have them killed.

Later in a sermon he summarized it: "Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so."

FAIR claims: "Brigham Young's comments can be read as a condemnation of abuse and rape of helpless black women, and not necessarily as an overtly racist statement condemning interracial marriage in all times and places."

Yeah, right.

The funniest one to me was that there are no BOM population problems because richer countries have higher immigration rates. What?? Where in the BOM does it say anything about immigration?

I looked that one up. Ridiculous.

Mormon apologists have a tough job, one that really is hopeless except to attempt to keep those who want to stay deluded. I never read them anymore.

Everything they say is stupid.

Polyandry just plain stymies them. No real answers at all.

Having no answers for polyandry for 170 years tells me the "prophets, seers and revelators" have no answers for anything, even when they were given the "keys" to create any answers they needed from thin air.

Church leadership was given the tool of "revelation" with which they can guide the church out of any problematic past ideologies. If they were smart they could have created any damn institution of their choosing. If they were inspired they could have made something people would want to be a part of. The could have invented the most spiritually satisfying social club- service organization ever dreamed of. They had the opportunity to create something great.

But they didn't. The lack of imagination is truly stunning. But since all they have managed to do is preserve a capricious abusive organization I guess it's a "blessing" they lack the necessary inspiration to ensure TSCC's survival.

I don't know. They have bits and pieces showing how some of the first husbands knew about their wife's second marriage to Joseph Smith and never apparently did anything about it. So basically, if they were okay with supporting the prophet in this, you should be too. End of discussion.

Funny stuff.

Mormon Apologist = Decievers

It amuses me greatly when they throw around big words trying to appear to the outside world that what they are doing is the same as scholarly research.

I always think of toddlers playing dress-up wearing adult clothes - big hats, floppy shoes and having a big time acting like grownups.

I know exactly what you mean. But now that you put it that way, I have this hilarious image of a toddler wearing a magistrate wig saying "Innocent! Because the prosecution is a doodoohead!"

For me its what they do NOT say. They do this intentionally of course. So many of their arguments are contradicted by other pieces of evidence which they don't mention.

When you tie ALL the pieces of evidence together, their arugments don't stand up.

I like the one where instead of simply admitting that the Saints broke the law in regard to practicing polygamy, instead they were merely engaged in 'civil disobedience'.

Lying about polygamy is compared to hiding Jews from the Nazis? That one?

As a former apologist (NOT a former Mormon, I am just seriously inactive), I can say unequivocally, the PROBLEM with the assumption of apologists is that they BEGIN with the truth. Apologetics is about circling the wagons around the camp and defending the turf. It is not about learning, or discovering truth, or even analyzing new information. It is all about DEFENDING what one has, and that is simply, without question, THE TRUTH.

I was on the FAIR apologetics email list for decades, I KNOW how apologists think, and I argued with them at times about it. They can't help it, they have a specific task, and they dutifully carry it out.

As a researcher (and you CANNOT see this when you are on the inside, I swear this is the most shocking thing I have personally discovered for myself) you begin with the answer. Then you find anything and everything that simply supports your already arrived at answer. You truly for the most part, ignore anything of dissent apart from the conclusion you have already arrived at, and the carefully selected evidence you choose gets you to that conclusion as well. That is why in ANY organized religion, they all simply pick and choose which verse in the scripture is comfortable and then pretend like THAT is the whole context and whole Gospel. NO ONE SECT actually *believes* what the Bible says and means. It is always and forever self interpreted with self interest in mind, without exception, even when they deny that is what they are doing.

I was one of the VERY best in that regard. My zeal just blew my knowledge out of the water. I could put together research papers of 55 pages, with well over 400 sources cited in just 2-4 weeks. It was a snap. Read through gajillions of articles until you found something that had even a sort of similarity to what you have concluded and throw it in there. It looks mighty impressive to see a paper with 400 footnotes!!!

It's all phony though. That isn't research. That doesn't lead us to anything realistic or actual. It leads us to the goal we already are determined to arrive at and it's quite frankly, simply wrong. But, and I stress this, unless you have actually been there you cannot fathom how this works, I cannot fathom it either, YOU DO NOT SEE YOURSELF DOING THIS!

Not one apologist in ANY area of religious research (take yer pick of whatever sect you wanna name) ever......EVER simply follows the evidence and lets it lead to the truth. Not in apologetics. In apologetics, the truth is already known and all research leads to that truth, or you are booted out. It's that simple..... and that silly.

This is WHY religion will not and actually simply cannot ever agree with each other. They are all correct..... in their own eyes, and all others are false, agains in their own eyes, and they can PROVE it!......well, at least within their own apologetic bias for their own views.

So be charitable and easy on the apologists.......they cannot help it. Weird as this sounds, it's like a person who has Alzheimer's. They truly cannot help it, their brain is not functioning correctly. They have never been taught how to think accurately, correctly, or critically. They simply don't have that training. Organized religion teaches you to believe, not to think. And the apologist actually is far better at simply putting together sources that also teach you to believe in what you are told, not to get you to think through it critically, carefully, and with the full context. That's just the way I see it. This comes after decades of experience...

Yes, exactly. Apologetics is based on pseudo-science, pseudo-history, pseudo-scholarship, where practitioners start with the "conclusion" and cherry pick "evidence" to confirm it. Real science, history and scholarship collect ALL the available evidence and form theories which best fit the evidence.

And even though I was never formally an apologist for Mormonism, I think I--and many of us--understand the apologist mindset. In hindsight we can see, as you say, that our "brain [was] not functioning correctly" and that we were taught "to believe, not to think." Our worlds were ruled by confirmation bias.

(I'm glad you we're able to see through the fog and discover how to think correctly. It's great to have you posting on the RfM board. Best of luck in your journey!)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/19/2013 04:11AM by Fetal Deity.

Great way of stating this. When I first started looking into issues to save my husband, I couldn't believe the stuff I read at FAIR. I couldn't believe they were serious. Anyone looking for truth about things, seriously looking for truth can spot the enormous errors in logic going on at FAIR. Worse than that, they actually acknowledge that problems in the church exist (such as Kinderhook and BOM population issues) that the church simply ignores. FAIR is one of the church's worst enemies, and the church leaders are too blind to see it.

Thanks for the insights backyardprofessor.

I see the same methods for everyone who has a "testimony"*of something.

It's not just religion. Have you read anything by White Supremacists or NWO conspiracists? It's the same tactics.


*A "knowledge" of something that isn't real or at the very least is not supported by the sum of the available evidence.

As a mormon apologist, you may not have been able to understand what you and the others were doing, but for us non-mormons, who have been exposed to this cult for decades, and whose families were sucked in by this gobbledygook in the 1960s, we have always understood these tactics. I thank God everyday I was following the civil rights movement, and reading everything I could get on the subject, when the mormon missionaires called on my family in 1966. I was only in my teens, but I could see through these racist morons almost as easily then as now.

BYP....

I like hearing what you have to say more now then ever :)

whatiswanted Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> BYP....
>
> I like hearing what you have to say more now then
> ever :)


+1

Yes but is it just bias confirmation? GRIN!

In my view, the most carefully crafted verse in the BoM is Moroni's promise. It sets the ground rules for "apologetic research" and discovering "truth." When this logical fallacy is accepted, engaged, or explored, it distorts cognition.

Hear hear!

We are not affiliated with the Mormon church.

Yes! Totally!!

Hate the acronym FAIR

It's a paid apologist group for a cult.

What's FAIR about that mission? Game on, sucka'

I read an article by self-appointed Mormon intellectual and apologist, Blake Ostler, years ago. He opined that Joseph did indeed write portions of the Book of Mormon himself and these portions were fiction, but that Joseph actually did translate other portions of the Book of Mormon by the gift and power of God. What??? So, Joseph really was a fraud, but God used him anyway to translate the true portions of the book. Absolutely insane.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/20/2013 07:35PM by Tonto Schwartz.

Are all the FAIR members in Utah or are they church wide. I'd love to mess up one of those morons if there are any in southern Alberta.....

Ron Burr



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2013 08:54AM by Lethbridge Reprobate.

FAIR really helped me to see the old white man behind the curtain...