So we return to the question with which we began this survey: are anti-Mormons Christian? The answer: of course not. They were never even in the hunt. Their clerical collars and pious platitudes are simply a smokescreen to hide the ugly reality that anti-Mormonism is one of the clear manifestations of the darkest side of human nature; the side that made possible the death camps and burning crosses, the massacre of the Hutus and the wholesale slaughter of the Native Americans. Just as vicious and repressive dictatorships like to give themselves grandiose and liberal-sounding titles like “The People’s Democratic Socialist Republic of Such-and-such”, so these nasty religious haters appropriate the label of “Christian” in order to claim for themselves a specious respectability that their deeds and attitudes do not merit.
Being a critic of Mormonism is akin to running a death camp...
“When we are confronted with evidence that challenges our deeply held beliefs we are more likely to reframe the evidence than we are to alter our beliefs. We simply invent new reasons, new justifications, new explanations. Sometimes we ignore the evidence altogether.” (Mathew Syed 'Black Box Thinking')
I just saw this site today that picks at the Mormon Stories essays. I wonder if Tapir Dan is the “brains” behind that, with the emphasis on the bee thing. https://www.mormonstoriesessays.com/
Apologists: shining a blazing spotlight on the blades of grass missed by the mower on the neighbor’s lawn... from inside the overgrown, snake and bug-infested jungle of their own.
Grudunza wrote:I just saw this site today that picks at the Mormon Stories essays. I wonder if Tapir Dan is the “brains” behind that, with the emphasis on the bee thing. https://www.mormonstoriesessays.com/
Apologists: shining a blazing spotlight on the blades of grass missed by the mower on the neighbor’s lawn... from inside the overgrown, snake and bug-infested jungle of their own.
OMG! I can't believe an apologist actually wrote this:
"So even if the Jaredites did manage to bring honeybees to the New World (which the Book of Mormon never actually explicitly claims happened), there is abundant archaeological and zoological evidence for their domestication and use in pre-Columbian North America." https://www.mormonstoriesessays.com/201 ... of-mormon/
There is absolutely no evidence, archaeological, zoological or of any kind for the domestication of and use of any Old World bees in the New World during any pre-Columbian time.
Exiled wrote:I think his second reference to a logical fallacy was directed at my comments regarding putting out into the ether the "some leave because of mental illness" meme. Well Dr. P, a review of the article shows that no research was cited regarding the proposition that some who struggle with the church might also be suffering from mental illness. The authors just ramble on regarding how members need to be mindful of the possibility. No evidence was given that it is even happening. It was just thrown out there as a possibility, for some reason. Of course it was done in hushed tones, so no problem.
If it wasn't done to give the membership another false reason for why people leave the church, then what was the reason?
Maybe Dr. Peterson is academically similar to Dr. Lenore Walker, the psychologist behind the Superbowl Hoax of 1993. Don't need data or studies, just wanting something to be the case is all the evidence that's needed. Faith, man, faith!
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge." Isaac Asimov
Exiled wrote:I think his second reference to a logical fallacy was directed at my comments regarding putting out into the ether the "some leave because of mental illness" meme. Well Dr. P, a review of the article shows that no research was cited regarding the proposition that some who struggle with the church might also be suffering from mental illness. The authors just ramble on regarding how members need to be mindful of the possibility. No evidence was given that it is even happening. It was just thrown out there as a possibility, for some reason. Of course it was done in hushed tones, so no problem.
If it wasn't done to give the membership another false reason for why people leave the church, then what was the reason?
Maybe Dr. Peterson is academically similar to Dr. Lenore Walker, the psychologist behind the Superbowl Hoax of 1993. Don't need data or studies, just wanting something to be the case is all the evidence that's needed. Faith, man, faith!
Yes, faith that the member will perhaps consider a "mental illness" excuse when someone close to them sees the light and leaves.
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen
I have a question wrote:I'm yet to see where he accepts that bees in the Book of Mormon is equally evidence that Joseph wrote (at least parts of) it himself using his own imagination and existential surroundings.
Joseph Smith could not have guessed that some old world ancient civilization cultivated (is that the word?) bees. How would he have known? Another bullseye!
On a related note, has anyone ever looked into whether there were rivers in ancient America? The Book of Mormon mentions them. Why aren't the apologists all over that?