Hell no. There is no reason to meet with him. Remember the advice that you should never meet with the police without your attorney? This is because they are professionals. They're used to manipulating and trapping people. The same thing for a lot of the church leadership.
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In the early 1990s there was a cult in Japan which used poison gas to kill and hurt people in the Tokyo subway system. The leaders of the cult were quite intelligent and had gone to the best universities. Being smart doesn't make one wise.
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I just don't have the same energy to engage in pointless debates with people who aren't interested in a real discussion, let alone people who aren't upfront about their intentions. If you really are interested in finding out about the subject, Mormon Think has a decent article on it.
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One of the advantages of living overseas. I don't know who the Duggars are.
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If you get suckered into an argument like that, you'll never win. The apologists throw out so much garbage that it will take forever to combat them, and they never respond to real points. They never answer the arguments which you bring. Go through Mormon Think and the other websites which are linked there, and see how well your friend can respond. I doubt that he will give honest answers.
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Traditionally, many members went through an inactive period in the late teens and their twenties, but returned in the mid 20s and thirties as they settled down. Not many older members left. With the Internet, even if there weren't an increase of disaffected members, less and less would be returning. There simply is too much information available online as well as ex-Mormon communities. From
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I didn't go through the math in detail, but basically you can use the national birth rate and multiply by the number of members. As the numbers of reported members are far too high, and include people who do not consider themselves Mormon any longer or are dead and not reported, I used the number of estimated active members, then multiplied it by an additional number to account for semi-activ
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For the second year in a row, the number of reported members in UK has actually decline. cumorah.com reports the following: 2012 188,462 2013 186,768 -0.9% (-1,694 members) 2014 186,193 -0.3% (- 675 members) cumorah.com estimates an activity rate of 18%, which would give about 34,000 active members. Looking at the UK birth rate, applying a fudge factor to the number of active members
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All these articles miss something very important. The rate of increase of Young men going on a mission is not as much as the sister missionaries. At one year after the change, there were something like 11,000 additional sisters and only 10,000 additional elders. This should not have been the case, because they should have had over 21,000 additional elders. Pre-surge the breakdown was:
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Anyone waiting for everyone to quit is going to be sorely disappointed. However, the high point as a percentage of the world population has peaked, and it will be slowly going down.
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Ruth Ginsburg (Supreme Court justice) recently had this to say: The 81-year-old justice discussed the public’s increasing acceptance of gays against the backdrop of resistance by Alabama officials to a federal court order that took effect Monday and made it the 37th gay-marriage state. With the high court set to rule on the issue by June, she said it “would not take a large adjustment”
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Loud Laffter Wrote: > > If God does not exist, then everything is allowed. Which is exactly what they said when blacks were allowed to *gasp* marry whites. Or were they going to kill all of us, I donno, I keep getting you religious nuts mixed up.
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Looking at the steps which the Salt Lake School Board took to shut down LGBT clubs by banning all clubs; a while back, Tal Bachman wrote a long post which spawned a number of other threads, about why marriage no longer seems to make sense. This type of comment was never seen before SSM was approved, and it saddens me.
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I'm an atheist, but if they want to go into the heart of fire and try to convert Mormons, have at. We can't make choices for everyone else. Tell them to talk to other ex-Mormon Christians. There are tons of you-tube videos with testimonies from those type of people. Find out what motivated them. Many Mormons go straight to no religion, so they would be fighting an uphill battle, but hey, wh
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The problem which Oaks and his ilk have not foreseen is the ammunition they just provided to doubting members with TBM families. The worse the things they say, the more reasonable us apostates sound.
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She says that Mormons are awesome because they don't hold a grudge about what happened before they got here. My comments probably won't get posted, but at least she'll get to read them. This is what I said. You are aware that the temple ceremony used to contain an oath of vengeance against the nation? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oath_of_vengeance So, while it may seem to be awesome t
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Interesting. I'm playing around with the numbers and I'll report back.
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Lately, there have been some attempts at reaching out to other charities, but often the idea is to maximize PR or converts while minimizing the amount of cash spent. Mormonism simply doesn't have a tradition of providing for poor or needy outside of their own. I would only accept checks and refuse any other sort of help.
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Several interesting points in the Mormonism's changing theology. Growing up hearing the First Vision story countless times, seeing all the pictures of it everywhere and then teaching it so many times on your mission, as well as all the other lessons on the godhood, you never consider how radical the concept is. Let's do a thought experiment. Let's say that at age 14, Heavenly Mother came do
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Brain chemistry. If we can accept the phenomenon of deja vu as something that just happens within the brain, what is privileged about a transcendental experience? If mental illness, sleep deprivation, stress, alcohol and certain other drugs can cause a dysfunction in the chemical reactions within the brain, which result in hallucination, why would the assumption be that some god or gods a
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While more satisfying, I don't think this is as effective. It's easier to delete the truth from antagonistic sources.
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Great essay. I loved it. I always give a fuck to much so it's nice to remember that.
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One last comment. I usually talk about my kids and how much I love being a father. With sister missionaries, I ask them about challenges about being a sister and them tell them I can't bring up my daughter like that. You can actually watch their face simply failing to comprehend that here is someone who loves his kids and thinks Mormonism is bad. But, I think it gives them something to th
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The senior companion was not processing my comments. He was waiting for a chance to invite me to church. The junior companion was in shell shock. I love that TSCC put the essays on their web site, as I was able to cite it as a source. It can't be anti Mormon. My basic approach to talking to missionaries is to assume the best about them. They are good kids. You remember all the sales tec
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I was zipping back home on by scooter tonight and saw the elders trying to talk to people on the streets. They were on bicycles and would go after anyone who moved. I turned around and pulled up beside them and asked how they were doing. We shook hands, they introduced themselves as Elder Smith and Elder Brown. (Forgot their actual names.) Elder Smith is from Spanish Fork, and Elder Brown i
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Nicely done. I know that TSCC is trying to inoculate members with these essays, but by being less than forthcoming, it's still going to turn around and bite them in the ass.
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It's John W. Taylor, son of John Taylor the president. He was in the 12 and was ex'ed for refusal to give up polygamy.
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Yes, but the rules are much easier. "Tithing" is only 3.14% and the only food which is forbidden is cake. Maria Antoinette is seen as the Anti-Christ.
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According to ABC news, a court ruling brings SSM to Florida. Because some county clerks doesn't want to perform gay marriages, they will now stop offering courthouse weddings for everyone. "While awaiting Hinkle's clarification, a handful of Florida county clerks said they would stop offering courthouse wedding ceremonies, partly to avoid performing those ceremonies for same-sex couple
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That's not what it looked like. Sounds like an apologist.
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