Don't be an ass, Loran. Don went back to the church and believes in it. You should be welcoming him, not showing him the door.

If there's one thing I know about Don, his motivation in returning to the church was pure, and it is a testament to his character that he followed his spiritual beliefs.

I do remember him saying, however, long ago, that Islam needed a thorough reformation, something alone the lines of the Protestant Reformation.

A number of other conservative intellectuals would agree.

Yes. There really is no such thing as academic freedom, even here in the USA.

Please cease your sanctimonious bleating, John. Wipe the foam off the floor and ask Graham the same question I asked him. He's the one who has implied directly that Don still harbors doubts and reservations on certain key Church teachings, not me.

Had Kevin not brought it up, I wouldn't have thought of broaching the subject in this thread.

Droopy, the fact that Don has left the Church and then came back, and still disagrees with your attitude towards "apostates," is further evidence that you are simply out of touch. Don't presume that just because DOn came back, that he in any way agrees with you on this. He and other LDS folks like Bokovoy and Hauglid are among the few who actually "get it." No wonder you can't stand them.

They have more insight into what goes on in the mind of an apostate than you ever will. All you ever do is judge, and you do so based on what the Church tells you to think about us. As I told Don today, I truly wish the Church were true. But it isn't. It is really that simple. All this psychobabble about why people leave the Church is just crap Mormons say to make themselves feel better about the fact that others have taken an intellectual path and it led them out of the Church. The rest of you are hunkering down in your faith of what you want to be true, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. I don;t know the details of Don's apostasy, why he left, or why he returned. You can ask him if you like, though I doubt you will. The point is Don and others are in a better position to speak on the apostate's psyche, and they clearly disagree with you are your ilk.

According to you, we're all just a bunch of disgruntled people who are driven by hate. Nothing could be further from the truth, and those in the Church who actually take the time to get to know us, can testify to this. But that would require a Christian heart and desire to understand. Something which you, and the Church as a whole, sorely lacks.

No, he didn't. He said nothing about Don't doubts or reservations, because Don has not expressed any.



Except Kevin didn't bring up Don's personal feelings about the church. You did.

Outside of BYU there is.

No there isn't. The LDS pov can get you blacklisted from many graduate schools or tenure. Same goes for a conservative pov. Conservative speakers often can't give a speech at many universities without interruption or violence etc. The world of academia is no longer academic. Same goes for journalism.

I will say this, however. I understand from private communication with another member of the apologetic community that Don is part of a small group of LDS scholars who are convinced that the Book of Abraham was the product of Joseph Smith's imagination, and is best understood as 19th century religious literature similar in nature to the way in which Anthony Hutchinson perceives the Book of Mormon, as "inspired fiction," and that, although the BofA contains, in some sense, inspired teachings, it is not an authentic ancient document, and the original author was not Abraham.

I understand Hauglid is friendly to this point of view as well.

Will Schryver should avoid you like the plague, Loran. I don't know why he sends PMs to you. I thought he wanted to help his own reputation.

What "LDS POV" are you talking about? LDS scholars love to boast about how their scholarship is accepted at other institutions of higher learning. Yale loves the Mormon folks, hires Mormon professors and even hosts their Institute program. Brandeis and Claremont are a coupld of others that come to mind, but I cannot think of any schools outside the Evangelical seminary type, that does any "blacklisting" to Mormons.

Sounds like yet another myth created to support the imagined persecution of Mormons.

Conservative commentators appear at Universities on a weekly basis without protest or violence. Only the truly controversial ones, like Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter (who have no business speaking as authorities anyway) or Daniel Pipes, get a rise out of folks. But rarely in these cases is "violence" involved. In fact, Newt Gingrich actually taught one of my Political Science classes back in 1989. Not a single shot was fired.

Come to think of it, virtually every School in the State of Georgia is overwhelmingly Conservative. Neal Boortz actually spoke at Kennesaw State University and he had the freedom to bad-mouth public education. Seriously. His speech was broadcast on his radio show as he spoke to a large audience of students on campus, and he flat out told them that they were being indoctrinated by a liberal government institution. That same institution invited him to return in the future. He was met with a roaring applause before and after his lecture.

So you don't know what the hell you're talking about.

LOL!

What ever gave you that idea?

I don't think William cares much at all about his reputation, whatever that may be.

Whoa! He said this? Really?

If true, I think this is a very revealing thing for him to say since it shows he is willing to be disingenuous and/or deceitful by design. It makes you wonder if he does this kind of thing with more than just his public statements about Islam.

Heh. Well, maybe so. But still: Loran is trying to play it as if he's got some bonafide apologetic "source," even though he's already admitted to us that it's Schryver. Hardly authoritative.

With what, Don Bradley, the Church, or apostasy qua apostasy?


Agree with me on what? "Get it" about what?



Well, as I have never been an apostate, I would have to agree with you there.



Who is "us" Kevin? Should Don be understood as a "faithful" member, and fully committed to the teachings of the Church and following the Brethren since his return, or are there still strong reservations, on some core doctrines/conceptions, that would place him, in a sense, in an avant garde or idiosyncratic position as to doctrine and philosophy?



Seeing you venting your internal psychological conflicts and unresolved childhood developmental fixations is not what I'm interested in, Kevin.



This is what you said:



All I wanted was an elucidation of your meaning here. Is Don one of these who believes his problems with the Church are legitimate, and does he see places where the Church is not true (true here, but not there), or has he matured beyond this point?

That's all I was asking.



You are driven by hate, sour grapes, and a crippling narcissism, but I've never said anything about all those who leave the church as a group. Far from it. You're from the Philastus Hurlbut, Ed Decker, Sonja Johnson wing of the apostate demographic; you still know the church is true at some level, and that knowledge has "seared your conscience as with a hot iron," and left you with a kind of lingering madness in which you have nowhere to go but repentance or all out hostility toward the Church and everything it stands for and approves of, combined with an evangelical mission to convert others out of the church and to your own perspective.



Thanks for substantiating precisely my points above.

Yeah, in some places, like Hillsdale and a few other islands in the sea of intellectual conformity and philosophical repression that is the contemporary American university, but rare they are indeed.

While I'm not going to mention who it is, you being concerned about reputation is about as rich as ripe as it gets.

You don't have to mention who it is. I already know.

I think bc already spoke to this. You also apparently missed my statement above regarding his belief that Islam is in dire need of a thorough reformation.

Kevin didn't say Don had problems with the church. He said Don recognizes that we who have left have legitimate issues, even if he doesn't share our concerns. I would think it takes some maturity to recognize that people with whom you disagree might actually have legitimate reasons for their beliefs.

He implied that he and others with similar experience do.



This is the very same logic that creates "white Hispanics" for self justification purposes. If the Church's teachings and doctrines are legitimate, then how could apostates have legitimacy issues with that which is, by definition, legitimate?

If Don believes the entirety of official church doctrine to be legitimate, how could he believe, at the same time, that there are legitimate reasons to leave?



If I thought they were legitimate, then I wouldn't disagree with them, John.