Today RFM tells you his early history as an apologist for the faith. How even as a Young man he was intimately aware of the “Anti-Mormon” material and even taught a 12 week course on Mormon Apologetics…….. Really cool surprise in this episode. He recorded those 12 weeks of conversation on cassette tape……. Now Where are those cassettes and what happened to them. Your about to find out!!!!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
Oh, God, Makers! That book kept me IN the LDS “Faith.” I don’t know which lies more, that author or the Mormon church? OK, the church lies more, as ridiculous and Decker is. Decker does have more truths than lies in his book, but his whoppers and pis-poor presentation solidify members in the church and make them assume that all other solid LDS-Truth lit is not legit.
Church leaders ARE basically like King Noah, his wicked priests and the Zoramites. The church isn’t quite like Korihor, but Is more like … Korihor on steroids, preaching against the teachings of Christ in His name. Korihor didn’t bully, threaten, abuse and force your agency, liberty or salvation. He did center on Jesus’ core teaching, “Seek, and truth will set you free!”
I don’t see any Leaders struck dumb and set forth begging for their lying and testifying against the teachings of Christ, let alone trodden over by horses. So, the Leaders are much more like Satan and his plan after all, bullying and threatening to “Burn you at the Stake” (center) to “Lovingly” force your salvation.
It was pretty well known at the time that the Tanners had a running feud with Ed Decker because the anti-Mormon antics of Decker gave the scholarly Tanners a black eye!
With a little more perspective, I can understand where the Tanners were coming from.
From the Mormon Apologetic view, however, Ed Decker was wonderful to have in our sights, because firing at him was much easier and more effective than dealing with the Tanners’ scholarship.
Ed Decker was a walking straw man!
I hope you didn’t destroy them. I’m pretty sure those tapes are worth good money nowadays.
Phew, I thought you had destroyed your material.
That’s some pretty solid presentations. I would have loved being part of the institute class.
I would have sucked it all up, very much in the same way I do with these podcasts.
I wonder if you are interested in plugging a counter to your own apologetic’s? Although I do think they present some very solid reasoning even though it presumes certain false premises.
Perhaps the church won’t be interested in attacking one of it’s very own defenders of the faith.
Me think the church would very much like the old RFM back please.
A lot of people have suggested I give my thoughts now to the arguments I raised then.
I may do that sometime.
I do feel strongly, however, that the lectures should be presented as originally given; as an aid to those who have questions and may be struggling with their testimony, and want to stay in the church.
I give some precatory anecdotes, but none of those are meant to detract from the faithful presentation of these lectures.
I want the twelve lectures to ultimately be available to those who doubt; without their having to wade through contradictory and conflicting latter-day commentary by yours truly.
At some point in the future, however, I certainly may be open to doing a separate podcast series in which I address the arguments I make here.
Loved this! And in my opinion, the members of the class you taught had no sense of humor whatsoever..
I like to think they smiled more than they laughed.
I’m thinking of a quote by Rooster Cogburn with regards to Maddie Ross in the original “True Grit” (1969, John Wayne, best western ever). “she reminds me of me”. well RFM, you remind me of me when I was a young cocky missionary in the deep South. More than a stone’s throw from Texas albeit. We used to look up the local ministers in the phone book and then track them out just so we could testify and dust our feet off against them. I was so naive that I didn’t even realize the times that I had been chewed up and spit out. Life was so much easier before the internet.
“Baby sister, I was born game, and I mean to go out that way.”
This is amazing, I would really like to see you set up a point by point argument with yourself, do a quick analysis of the old “believer you” points made (I heard some good straw-man arguments in there) v. the new wisdom or learnings or progress you have made since that time? Very interesting.
Bill followed the ARP program.
https://addictionrecovery.churchofjesuschrist.org/?lang=eng
Just like everyone else!!
Just kidding, but joking aside I do believe that it helps achieve that.
I’ll let Bill answer that question.
Please delete this comment, I meant to plug it in another window/thread. My bad.
RFM…no doubt about it: you were TBM through and through!
Have you done a pod-cast on how your shelf broke? Considering how strongly you were in defensive mode during this current cast (teaching defensive techniques), I would find your transition story fascinating.
I have not done a podcast about that, rob4hope. But I have thought an awful lot about it.
My disaffection was such a slow process; and so many strands were going on at the same time; that it is hard for me to pinpoint any specific event as being determinative.
Instead there seem to be a lot of different turning points along the way; some occurring in one phase of my Mormonism; another occurring in a different phase.
So what I am trying to do over the course of time is talk about my different phases of Mormonism, and hopefully hit some of those turning points along the way.
I have already given a good whack at my apologetic phase. (Technically this is ongoing what with my publication of my Institute lectures on Mormon apologetics.)
After that I am going to have to talk about my spiritual experiences, which were numerous, and for me, at least, undeniable.
Then I need to talk about my delving into ancient extra-Biblical texts. Then I need to talk about my original research in the Book of Mormon, Bible and Church History. (Here I am hampered somewhat because a lot of this is published and being too specific would be a smoking gun on my IRL identity, though even that secret may be coming to a close; we will see.)
Then we need to deal with my studies of Shakespeare and other great literature, which actually did play a significant part in my coming to modify my understanding of what constitutes scripture.
It really ends up being a big subject; and one that tends to be a bit overwhelming every time I think about it, which I have for years now.
Which is why I think eating the elephant one bite at a time is probably the best way to proceed.
I second the thoughts of rob4hope RFM. I would love to hear your personal story – when and if you’re ready to share it.
I’ve really enjoyed your podcasts, they have helped me immensely when my own shelf came crashing down
I am glad they have been of some help to you, Jerry.
It is a terrible thing to go through a faith crisis alone.
Take my word for it!
;^)