Comment by freedomben
3 years ago
lol, why would I slander myself? If avoiding cognitive dissonance is my goal, it would be far easier to just accept uncritically any dumb thing against the church than to have to defend the truth.
This is the type of black and white response that I find so common with ex-mormons. If somebody pushes back on disinformation (even easily disproved like the above thing about keeping caffeine teachings secret), the superstitious thinking kicks in and excuses fly (like "they must be a secret apologist" which I heard recently). It's every bit as ridiculous as the believers are when they dismiss inconvenient facts like Zelph the White Lamanite[1][2] because it goes against their preferred narrative. It's superstitious thinking.
Edit: Hah! I couldn't have asked for a better real-time example to demonstrate my point: https://mormonr.org/qnas/3yUz5/zelph_the_lamanite
Citing two prominent Mormon apologist foundations certainly doesn’t help your point that you’re not acting as closeted Mormon apologist. And when you use a misunderstanding of a non-Mormon about secrecy and caffeine as an example of ex-Mormon lies, you are certainly showing your bias towards those who leave the church.
The exmormon community is extremely thorough and factual when it comes to talking about the church, because it is to their benefit. More people have left the church after unsuccessfully trying to refute The CES Letter than have ever left due to smear campaigns and slander. The truth is to the rational thinker’s benefit, which is why the church spends so much time and money hiding it and whitewashing it.
> Citing two prominent Mormon apologist foundations
Um, I think you're confusing MormonThink and MormonR for "FAIR" or the "BoM Foundation". They're two "middle-way" sources that try to balance the knife's edge of giving just enough of the negative-yet-factual information that faith is still possible, as opposed to something like the CES Letter which is a compendium of pretty much every negative-yet-factual piece of information that, in total, make faith in the organization pretty much impossible for the average member who reads it. But they're definitely not apologetic sites, they're just more of a "shallow water" approach than a "throw you in the deep end of the pool" approach.
Exactly, thank you. Most members consider MormonThink to be anti-Mormon, and IMHO they do tilt that way but they try to be balanced. MormonThink is definitely not a bunch of Mormon apologists. Go look at the actual apologist sites like FAIR and see how many "refutations of MormonThink" they have. Hint: it's a lot.
Mormonr is IMHO very fair, just on the other side fence. They're a faithful group, but they are committed to truth and scholarship and they're willing to say, "yeah that embarrassing thing does seem to be true" when it seems to be true.
> Citing two prominent Mormon apologist foundations certainly doesn’t help your point that you’re not acting as closeted Mormon apologist.
For someone so committed to "truth", "rational thinking," and being "extremely thorough and factual" you've sure gotten a lot wrong in just this message. Mormonthink is far from a prominent apologist foundation. Most Mormons consider them anti. You should probably look at the site before jumping to such a confirmation-bias driven conclusion.
Point out the lie when you see a lie, but this sort of blanket statement is inappropriate and reflects your own biases.