KevinSim wrote:I guess I don't see why I should believe any of this. In my opinion the whole job of the missionary is to convince the investigator the way to find out if the LDS Church is true is to pray and ask God if the LDS Church is true.
The potential market for Mormonism is growing increasingly skeptical that praying to God to ask if the LDS Church is true is a valid way of ascertaining the truth. I can't prove that to you, but we're probably right about that.
If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of Google, who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not.
KevinSim wrote:Why is it that a 19-year-old is more able to persuade the investigator that than an 18-year-old is?
Because they're a year elder, I mean older. Seriously, a small part of this is the gravitas. Granted, not many 19-year olds possess it, but that isn't improved by going even younger.
And as to whether the "market" is "better educated about the problematic topics of Mormonism" or not, I'd like to know if any studies have been done to determine that.
I'd bet a lot of people aren't much better educated about Mormonism prior to meeting the missionaries than they were pre-Internet. However, you'd be very naïve to think that a lot of them don't go to Google as soon as the missionaries leave, if their interest was at all piqued.
KevinSim wrote:Someone at one point posted that the LDS Church pretty much had to ban its members from using Google in order to keep those members from reading about those "problematic topics"; in response I posted that, at least at FamilySearch where I worked, there was no such ban; engineers I worked with used Google all the time. And I'm unaware of any mass exodus from the Church among FamilySearch employees. Either those employees understood why membership in the Church made sense in spite of the "problematic topics," or the fact that they accessed Google on the job didn't mean they were automatically led to the posts regarding the "problematic topics."
I don't know who "someone" was, but the church didn't literally ban Google so much as continue talking about the inadvisability of looking at "anti-Mormon" stuff, including articles people have referenced here over the years warning people that if something they read made them feel uneasy, that meant it was Satan's handiwork and they should use that as a sign to stay away.
KevinSim wrote:The same goes for the population of the world at large. The Internet is a big place. The fact that criticism of the LDS Church exists on it does not mean that every non-member has read it.
Would you doubt that it's become a very common modus operandi for people in the Internet age, once their curiosity is piqued about something, to go Google it?
I'm curious what we'd hear if you and I knew some recent RMs, and asked them specifically for stories where someone appeared interested at first, but then became uninterested by the next visit because of stuff the "investigator" found after the missionaries left by actually investigating Mormonism on the internet. I've been out too long to know any recent RMs, but maybe you know some.
Mormonism ceased being a compelling topic for me when I finally came to terms with its transformation from a personality cult into a combination of a real estate company, a SuperPac, and Westboro Baptist Church. - Kishkumen