This is for encouragement, ideas, and support for people going through a faith transition no matter where you hope to end up. This is also the place to laugh, cry, and love together.
Make sure to book early for the FairMormon (yes, it's still named in Satan's honor) conference.
From their e-mailer:
You get three days of inspiring presentations from some of the best apologetic minds around – scholarship and thoughtful answers that can help you be "ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you."
We can pretty much guarantee you’ll leave with at least one inspiring, life-changing, unparalleled moment of your own.
I get tingles just thinking about it.
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain
Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."
We can pretty much guarantee you’ll leave with at least one inspiring, life-changing, unparalleled moment of your own.
Leaving with your own copy of Hugh Nibley's hit single Dress Like a Reformed Egyptian, or your own MLM distributorship of the amazing Scroll-Lengthener Pump would make this conference totally worth the admission price!
Good faith does not require evidence, but it also does not turn a blind eye to that evidence. Otherwise, it becomes misplaced faith.
-- Moksha
I plan to attend Sunstone this year and I'm keeping this quiet from most of my family. Because I don't want them to also insist that I balance this out with drinking from the apologist fire hose at the FairMormon conference.
Ha! It kills me how they think having a conference makes them seem all scholarly and academic. What a pitiful little group of wanna-be scholars. Including you, Mr. Smartest Apologist in the Universe DCP. How fun that they all get to dress up and play like they are academics. At least at Sunstone the conclusions aren’t all predetermined by religious orthodoxy.
"The truth is elegantly simple. The lie needs complex apologia. 4 simple words: Joe made it up. It answers everything with the perfect simplicity of Occam's Razor. Every convoluted excuse withers." - Some guy on Reddit called disposazelph
The relationship between FairMormon and the institutional LDS church is both interesting and complicated. Some of the issues that FairMormon explains really need the gravitas of an apostle explaining these things during general conference. Plural marriage, for example, surely has some important doctrine behind it and I assumed that doctrine was the point of General Conference.
I have a family member who is as much of an apologist as anyone attending the FairMormon conference. In a long, extended discussion he eventually asserted that apostles and prophets are simply not going to testify about plural marriage in conference. It is our individual responsibility to come to a testimony about plural marriage and its status and we should not expect a firm doctrinal pronouncement in a modern general conference.
I would congratulate him for straddling this amazing divide. As a result I have no interest in straddling so many more similar divides during a FairMormon conference.
Big Wig speakers announced for the FairVictoryForSatan Conference. Check out Elder Calister's quote. I think this is more and more the direction apologetics is heading: ignore pesky facts, stick to what you already "know" is true.
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain
Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."
Hagoth wrote: ↑Wed May 15, 2019 12:30 pm
Big Wig speakers announced for the FairVictoryForSatan Conference. Check out Elder Calister's quote. I think this is more and more the direction apologetics is heading: ignore pesky facts, stick to what you already "know" is true.
Oh man that makes my blood boil - it's the Corbridge "ignore the secondary questions" move where you just tell people to stop looking because it doesn't matter anyway.
Not to be rude, but you are completely full of crap former Elder Tad Callister. Whether Joseph was just a horny charlatan is absolutely “central to my salvation”. Knowing whether or not the Book of Mormon is a record of real events is absolutely “central to my salvation”. The Restoration is by no means an “absolute certainty”. And as for losing faith in “things I do know” “because of a few things I don’t know”, let me tell you what I do know:
The God I worship wouldn’t call a sexual predator to be his Prophet. He doesn’t look kindly on that kind of behavior.
The Book of Abraham without a doubt exposes Joseph Smith’s claims to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics as a fraud.
There isn’t a single shred of archeological evidence that the massive, heavily populated Nephite nation ever existed.
Your prophets and apostles today aren’t anything like the ones in the scriptures and aren’t worthy to even be called that.
Your Church’s treatment of blacks and women and LGBT individuals and children and members in general is a total and complete dumpster fire.
Your Church spins and deflects and obfuscates and lies because it knows it can’t answer the hard questions.
You are being less than honest in how you address all of these things and you know it.
I know these things more surely than I ever knew anything that made me think the Church was true. And you make me sick, former Elder Callister.
"The truth is elegantly simple. The lie needs complex apologia. 4 simple words: Joe made it up. It answers everything with the perfect simplicity of Occam's Razor. Every convoluted excuse withers." - Some guy on Reddit called disposazelph
That's a false theory--"these things are not central to salvation"--the historical facts speak directly to whether or not Joseph made this whole thing up. If there was no godly or angelic visitation and if there were no books to translate from, then there is no "truth" around his gospel of salvation. Makes me nuts.
What do you do if the truth is readily available and it doesn't align with your teachings? Two options: 1) change your teachings to align with the facts, or 2) shame your followers for encountering undesirable facts.
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain
Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."
Corsair wrote: ↑Mon Apr 29, 2019 10:38 am
I would congratulate him for straddling this amazing divide. As a result I have no interest in straddling so many more similar divides during a FairMormon conference.
Yes, leave the groin injuries to those who are stuck with a foot on either side of the ever-widening chasm. I'll continue to keep my groin un-sprained, thank you very much!
“The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” -Mark Twain
Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." The Buddha: "Be your own light."
Ha! It kills me how they think having a conference makes them seem all scholarly and academic. What a pitiful little group of wanna-be scholars. Including you, Mr. Smartest Apologist in the Universe DCP. How fun that they all get to dress up and play like they are academics. At least at Sunstone the conclusions aren’t all predetermined by religious orthodoxy.
I have found that in conversing with FairMormon and other apologists, they only pretend to be academic and professional as long as they feel in control of the narrative. As long as they can make fluffy, faith-promoting truth claims and the listener agrees with them, that is fine. But, if they are questioned for very long by a listener, or if the listener persists in asking specific questions for which they don't have an answer, then they become very defensive and use shaming tactics, along with ad hominems. It's not true for all apologists, but it's true for most of them, especially if they're conversing with a woman. They'll drop the gloves as if they're at a hockey game and just start verbally slugging it out. For people pretending to be objective "academics", they can get pretty thin-skinned, at least on line. I'm wondering if this happens person-to-person at their conferences. - Wndr.
