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Has anyone had bad experiences with the good folks at MADB? I just joined yesterday and was involved in what I thought was an interesting discussion. Somewhere along the way I was accused of derailing the discussion. I tried to explain why I felt me comments applied directly to the topic, but I suddenly found myself banned from the site for a week. It was the least Christ-like most Nazi-like experience I have had recently, and it really irritated me. Why is it that so few people–especially Mormons–are capable of disagreeing in a civil discussion without being completely disagreeable. it is truly sad. Things have been, thankfully, very different and positive here. I guess that is the main reason I like this forum. Thanks so much. Shederlaomach, I don’t frequent that site, so I can’t say anything directly on point, but it is a site dedicated to apologetics. It doesn’t surprise me at all that they have strict participation rules and liberal banning practices. If they had to mess with nuanced decisions, I’m not sure they could remain apologetic in nature and tone. Understand, I have chosen to try to see the most charitable interpretation possible in every situation, so my response is a bit rose-colored by choice.
Hi Shederlaomach – I roam and post there ocassionaly. A good friend of mine just got banned forever yesterday from that site. It was on the thread about whether one would have joined the church if they knew some of the stuff now (on being decieved). Which thread where you on? Bridget
One other thing. You are correct that there are some very rude and insulting people on that board. That bothers me and I am surprised that lds people, who claim to have a testimomy and be followers of Christ, can be this way. I think alot of lds people cannot handle discussing things that challenge their faith too much becuase without the church and gospel their whole world would fall apart. They need borders and boundaries and black and white thinking to feel safe. It is much more difficult to live in grey areas and get personal inspiration as to what would be the most loving thing to do in each circumstance. I try not to shake other peoples faith too much as much of the church and gospel seem to be working for them. Unless I have something better to offer, I leave it alone. I left the church once for two years (read my intro on this board). I was raised to question and think things through because I want to base my life on truth and reality…if you don’t, your bubble will eventually burst anyway. I live by what I believe to be right and if I find out it was wrong later, I change. Bridget I’ve skimmed through that board a couple of times. Whenever I do, I realize right away it isn’t a community for me. It gives me a headache, or this achy kind of feeling in my soul. I remember working so hard to do those kind of intellectual gymnastics once upon a time, to frantically try to connect all the dots (because they must all connect perfectly, right?). Like you, I am way too into the grey and rainbow experience. I am not attached enough to anything I believe being “the truth.” So I never bothered to get involved or post over there. They seem to run a pretty good board though, for the purpose it exists. There is nothing wrong with what they do. Don’t take getting banned personally. They *should* police their community. They need to if they want any hope of keeping it functional. A ban just means you are probably not the right fit, no big deal. We haven’t had to deal with that much here, yet. It is still a cozy, small community. We have banned one person. I sent them a nice email explaining why. They were not fitting into the community, and were not complying with the rules of ettiquette. This stuff happens in the background on discussion boards. Most of the time, it goes un-noticed by the larger community. That is how it should happen.
Shederlaomach wrote:Has anyone had bad experiences with the good folks at MADB? I just joined yesterday and was involved in what I thought was an interesting discussion. Somewhere along the way I was accused of derailing the discussion. I tried to explain why I felt me comments applied directly to the topic, but I suddenly found myself banned from the site for a week. It was the least Christ-like most Nazi-like experience I have had recently, and it really pissed me off. Why is it that so few people–especially Mormons–are capable of disagreeing in a civil discussion without being completely disagreeable. it is truly sad. Things have been, thankfully, very different and positive here. I guess that is the main reason I like this forum. Thanks so much.
Only a few times. Mostly my experience there has been very good.
In the world of apologia it is very easy to slip into the “us vs. them” mentality. Indeed, without that polarization I doubt there would be a reason for the board to exist in the first place. I have participated there for many years, and I do so in order to learn more about my religion and stay abreast of recent developments in cultural trends, scholarship and all things “Mormon”. And sometimes just for entertainment.
😈 And occasionally I’ll toss in my 2½ cents. I try to keep it kind and respectful but I do mess up once in a while.
HiJolly
I appreciate the comments from everyone. I am still really upset by the experience. Since some of you have asked, I think the thread on MADB was entitled something like “If the church weren’t true, wouldn’t the brethren know” or something like that. Since they have banned and blocked me, I really can’t check back to make sure. From the initial post, the thread starter said something like church leaders are not involved in the church for the benefits of lavish lifestyles and financial perks. To me, it seemed that the foundation for the thread was that the brethren show by their actions and commitment to the church that the church must be true, or surely someone would have made big money by spilling the beans about the church being a giant deception. That seemed to me to be a valid theory to test. After all, what is the point of a discussion forum if people are limited to only discussing one side of an argument–exclusively sharing faith-promoting stories and other comments that just reaffirm the idea that the church must be true because the brethren know it is true. Now, I personally, believe that the church
istrue, but I also have grave concerns about the way some things are being done in the church. I will try to recall what I said on MADB, but remember this is coming from memory. You are all free to visit the website and read it for yourselves. I cannot. There were several people posting on this thread. Dan Peterson was one of the participants. I actually knew and worked with Dan for several years. I genuinely love and respect Dan. I posted several thoughts and concerns about what I perceived as the way the brethren treat treat members. Often, in my experience, I think church leaders behave in a way that, in my opinion, infantilizes church members. For example, on the subject of these leaders as “special witnesses,” I speculated why church leaders in the early days of our church had experienced glorious visions of Jesus and had then spoken publicly of these experiences–like Joseph Smith’s First Vision. Now, suddenly, these experiences have become “too sacred to talk about.” And leaders often bear testimony in a way that never directly, clearly state that they have seen Christ, but it also leaves room to speculate that they have. I wondered (and still wonder) why a special witness would opt to equivocate. Why not state clearly one way or the other? I feel that it is less than honest to make statements that are intentionally unclear–especially when that creates confusion. I also pointed out how George P. Lee had expressed some ideas that the brethren disliked and had gotten him in trouble before his sexual problems were known. I also expressed my feelings that Paul H. Dunn and his years of lying for profit and popularity was very offensive to me and had hurt the credibility of church leaders, in general, as being the type of men who command absolute credibility for their honesty. I also found the way Dunn had been allowed to quietly fade from the scene (without ever really asking forgiveness for or even admitting to what he had done wrong) very disturbing. I gave a few examples of how GBH had puzzled me by both giving intentionally deceptive answers in interviews as well as providing examples where GBH had presented as fact certain statements that were demonstrably false as historical information. I might have mentioned the Hofmann affair and my disappointment with the way church leaders had failed to detect Hofmann as a fraud and had lied about their involvement with Hofmann and his forged documents. These things do bother me, and I really was asking for others who could explain it to me. I mentioned how this type of deception has been causing many to feel that the church is lying to them and cited how Jerrell Chesney, a former temple president, and other members, who had served loyally in many important callings and positions, were resigning from the church and felt that they had been systematically lied to and deceived by the church leaders.
I also expressed concern that these leaders also only tell of positive elements of the church’s progress through official sources and either deny or diminish any problems. I feel that the church is true, and I was taught that we are supposed to be strictly honest in our dealings with our fellow beings. I can’t see how deception makes the church look anything but false. In this day of readily-accessible Internet information, cover-ups invariably boomerang back very quickly and make the person who is being less than honest look doubly guilty and intentionally deceptive. To illustrate, I cited the example of the constant use of the numbers of convert baptisms as proof to show that the church is growing, and this growth, in turn, is used as proof that the church must be true. So many members have been told for years that the church is fulfilling the prophecy of Daniel, but, in the last couple of decades, that growth has stalled. I pointed out how there is rampant inactivity and growth has completely stagnated in North America. This brought some other people into the discussion, and some said I was wrong and that the church was growing well. One cited the ARIS survey and claimed several million Mormons had self-reported that they were members of the church, and this showed I was totally wrong and that the church was growing successfully in North America. I responded with other data and showed how the ARIS survey was not a self-reported survey from the data in the link he had posted. (In fact, I looked deeper into the ARIS survey and found that their data suggested that our church is just holding its own with neither significant growth or decline.) I provided links to Cumorah.com and other sources that showed clearly that the church’s net growth in America is about zero, and that, world wide, inactivity is around 2/3rds of the membership. I think that this shows that there are real problems that need to be dealt with honestly and effectively.
Then, one guy stated how the church leaders were humble men who lived modestly. He cited Monson’s modest home and another apostle who pumped his own gas as evidence of their humility. I pointed out that those two leaders that he had cited belonged to what I considered the old group of church leaders and that the new leaders were men who had been very successful professionally before being called as apostles, and these new apostles were financially successful and used to the kind of lifestyle that comes from being successful. The same guy used Nelson and Oaks as examples that I was wrong, and that Nelson had been an apostle for 23 years. My how time flies. I stated that Nelson and Oaks were what I thought of as the new school of leaders–lawyers, businessmen, administrators, doctors, high-level educators, etc.–all professionals who were successful and wealthy. I also noted that these guys travel in limos and ride on private jets when they are on church business. Gone are the days of traveling without purse or scrip. Some guy insisted that GBH modestly requested to stay in a simple hotel room and ride in a Toyota at the dedication of the Houston Temple. I said I had personally seen GBH ride in limos and posted a link to a photo of GBH getting ready to climb into a black Lexus that the observer had been told was bullet proof. One guy said that photos could be doctored and disputed my “evidence.” Another guy said he had worked for the BYU Police and knew the “prophet mobiles” were big, black, bullet-proof limos. At about that point an officious little turd named “Chronos,” a moderator appeared and stated something like, “stop derailing,” and he threatened to ban anyone who argued with his godlike authority. It was addressed to no one, so I asked Chronos who he was talking to, as I couldn’t see that I was “derailing.” I got no response from Chronos, but another person posted a comment and said I was derailing. I asked him why–in a discussion about whether or not the brethren knew the church was true, and the thread-starting statement said that they didn’t benefit from economic perks and “lavish lifestyles”–comments about the impact of these leaders staying in 1st class hotels, riding in limos, and flying around in private jets were proof of derailing. I said that I felt my comments certainly were germane to the conversation. I posted my comment and, as soon as my most recent response was posted and became visible on the forum, saw that Chronos had posted a comment blaming me as the person who was “derailing.” Now, as Chronos (or anyone who posts on MADB) knows is that there is a weird lag time between posts. I mean, you can write a response and post it and find that other posts written after yours can appear as if they were posted before your posting. I wrote a polite reply to Chronos, but when I tried to post it, I found I had been banned for a week–no warning, no discussion, no appeal. Needless to say, I was upset. It was my first–and probably last–day on that forum.
I find the experience unfortunate. After all, I was interested in the topic. My postings were polite–no profanity, no hostility, nothing I could see as being out of line with the rules. I stated many times that I was a believer and was wanting to gain knowledge of things I had seen that concerned me. I supported my statements with examples and links to give additional support. It seems clear to me that they just didn’t like what I had to say or want to discuss my comments, and they didn’t. It is the easiest thing in the world to take the high moral ground by claiming that anyone you disagree with is “derailing” the argument. It is a much harder thing to explain why you think a person is “derailing” or even form rational responses to what has been written. It is easier to shut a person down by ending the argument by suspending someone than to explain your reasons for your actions.
Sadly, this is what I often see in church. People have their beliefs–religious, economic, political–but they are incapable of having a civil discussion with anyone who doesn’t completely accept their worldview. If someone says something they don’t like and/or can’t answer, they simply get angry and shut down the conversation. How can anyone learn from that approach to education and dialogue? I really can’t see the value of a discussion site where a person gets banned for the kind of things I had done. Maybe my “netiquette” is flawed, but I really wanted to engage in dialogue. I would really like some new insight into the concerns I raised. Since I was new, if I had made a mistake, it would have been nice to have had things explained to me in a kind way–rather than being subjected to a heavy-handed smack-down. This Chronos, in my view, behaved like a totalitarian dictator. I’ve always loved D&C 121 and found that only Nazis and others who misuse power need to fear free, honest, and open discussion. Unrighteous dominion is the norm for those who can’t reason. There are so many scriptures where God says that his desire is to reason with us, as one man with another. That is the only way we can learn. Tedious turds and power mad tyrants are the only ones who are incapable of rational discussion. I’m afraid that Chronos really falls into that category. Anyway, the whole experience left a very bad taste in my mouth.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I think people see what they believe, not believe what they see. I think this topic is a great example of that. Sheder, I’m sorry for your experience. Maybe you can figure out a new approach that will work at MADB. Personally, I can’t bear to read or participate at MADB because it hurts me too much to see what they are all doing to themselves and to each other. And it reminds me of how I might have participated online 15 years ago.
I think validation and exploration are important. You are welcome to be here for both those. I don’t think you will get those or be really encouraged to listen, ponder, and learn the right things at MADB. What do you think?
Sorry, man. That stinks. I’ve really liked this board since I found it because the only agenda is acknowledging our common heritage in our own way. An apologetic board is going to be inherently hostile to anything like what you said simply because it doesn’t further the purpose of the site. The people there are going to have two options: deny what you say by whatever means is available or shut you out, because finding a nuanced understanding isn’t an option. Their board is based on the premise that there isn’t a nuanced understanding. That’s a legitimate position, but it’s one that’s very hard to discuss with its adherents without ruffling feathers. I am no expert on any other faith’s apologetics. My personal, broad-brush opinion of most Mormon apologetics is that they are created by the faithful for the faithful. I mean their target audience is NOT people with questions and criticisms, but instead people that already agree. That crowd wants to know there is an answer. It doesn’t really matter what that answer is, or even if it really solves a doubter’s concern. It makes them happy to see answers. People with serious questions and doubts just muck it all up 😆 . It just is what it is. I’m sure it stung getting booted, but the surface appearance of an apologetics group is not the real purpose. Your valid concerns, with valid facts mess things us. Try not to take it personally. It’s hard. I know.I just ran into this the other day when I was chatting with an old teenage friend of mine. He is a happy, mainstream LDS, nice guy. He found out that my wife, who he also knew way back then, had left the Church. It kind of shocked him. Anyway, while I was explaining the situation and how I have dealt with it, he made the comment “well it makes me feel good to know that some ‘intellectuals’ decide to stay in the Church.” He also seemed to get uncomfortable at one point, and quickly cut off the conversation. You all know how careful and delicate I am about the controversies. The whole point of my little story is this: He just wanted to know that *someone* who sounded like they knew something had answers. He did *NOT* want to know the problems or arguments. He explicitly said that, followed by saying “he already had enough problems with the little devil guy whispering to him from one shoulder.” That was fine. I didn’t go into any details. He knows what is best for him. Apologetics are for that kind of person, not for me, not for you.
Gabe P wrote:That’s a legitimate position….
Thanks for being a good example to me, Gabe. It’s a legitimate position. It’s a legitimate position. It’s a melimante position. It’s a leguminate flumition. It’s a manabitate fruition. It’s a lemenopate poquirstion. I just have to keep saying that.
Valoel wrote:Apologetics are for that kind of person, not for me, not for you.
Wow, Valoel! Great, wise, fatherly advice. It really helps to see how you have thought through the reasons. That makes it easier to love. I guess where there is vision the people prosper. Thanks for that vision.
I forgot to add, feel free to bring up your concerns here in separate threads. I got the general idea from your long paragraph above. It would be better to keep this thread on-topic and about MADB and apologetics in general. Freel free to start threads on the individual concerns you wanted to talk about at MADB. We don’t mind that here, and you won’t get banned for asking challenging, sincere questions. Thank you all for your comments. I guess I am coming at spiritual matters from an unusual perspective. I am descended from good polygamist stock. Great-grandpa had five wives–three of them were sisters and a heckuva lot younger than he was. I was born and raised in Provo. My dad was a professor at BYU. Most of the people in my ward were either professionals or on the faculty at BYU. I got to know intimately the finest minds in the church. I don’t want to drop names, but it was a heady way to grow up. I really felt that these people had a good grasp of what it meant to be a distinct individuals and yet have both tremendous freedom of thought and action. It was a great childhood. I’ve felt that a stable Mormon life is like a stool with three legs–social, intellectual, and spiritual. My early life had all three legs in abundance. The good times came to a screeching halt when I went on my mission. I had a Nazi for a mission president. I am not kidding. My MP was a Nazi collaborator in WWII. He came to the USA after the war and became a millionaire by selling stuff to the church. He was also not terribly bright. He was also a liar and devoid of spiritual abilities. Yes, I didn’t like him much. When he was very old, he was called to be an MP, and he drew heavily on his training with the Nazis to run his mission. I experienced a lot of the same stuff as John Dehlin has described on his mission.
One of the terrible experiences I had on my mission. was when I met with a 70, who was in charge of our area. I had had grave concerns about many of my MP’s programs. I mean the mission was run like an Amway distributorship. Everything was about pushing the product really hard. Numbers were all that mattered. Everything one did as a missionary was assigned a numerical value. For example, one got X number of points for a contact, more for a discussion, and lots for a baptism. The missionary partnership with the most points each month got their picture of the cover of the mission newsletter, and copies were sent to the mishies home bishop, stake president, and parents. The winning mishies got to have a nice meal at a fancy restaurant with the MP and some other perks. It became a bizarre experience. I remember how we would be out street contacting, and if you said hello to someone, it was counted as a contact. If the person returned your greeting, it was a discussion. There was even a dog-eared copy of the Book of Mormon that a missionary would hand to passersby. There was also a garbage can a few feet away, and the person would invariably drop the ratty BOM in the trash, where the mishies would recover it–but they chalked up another placement of the BOM. More points! It was an awful, soul-sucking, spirit-quenching experience. I couldn’t understand why something as sacred as the Gospel had been reduced to this petty, stupid competition. And, of course, obedience was everything. We were told that unless you obeyed every rule, Jesus wouldn’t love you or bless you with success. And, like a good Pharisee, my MP instituted a bumper crop of extra rules. Most of these extra rules were mind-numbingly stupid, but the missionaries obeyed them all–at least the letter of the law. For example, since missionary diets were notoriously bad because we didn’t have enough money to buy decent, healthy food, my MP made a rule that you must eat something green each day. In typical missionary fashion, this rule was obeyed to the letter. We had bottles of green food coloring, so we had green spaghetti, green potatoes, green french fries, etc. The sad thing was the way these otherwise intelligent mishies were so beaten down and forced to surrender their free agency to the whims of a tyrant. I am still grateful that I refused to participate in all the bull. My fellow mishies did, and many of them have paid a heavy price emotionally in the years since. I grew to love all but one of my companions and still keep in touch with all but one. Sadly, as of this present day, 2/3rds of my former missionary companions have become completely inactive in the church.
Anyway, I had prayed and studied these stupid ways my MP was running the mission extensively in my mind. I had felt powerful spiritual promptings that told me clearly that my MP was wrong. Some months later, we were visited by the area GA. I thought that this was my chance to right a terrible wrong when I was asked to meet individually with this GA. I thought the GA would be desirous to know why my MP had run the church in that area into the ditch, why baptisms had dropped, why nearly 10% of the members had quit the church, and why morale in the mission was so low. I met in a face-to-face meeting with this GA and told him what was going on. I noticed that something felt wrong very quickly and that this GA really didn’t want to talk to me. After a few minutes of a one-sided conversation where he appeared very bored and distracted as I tried to explain my deep concerns about the way my mission was being run to him, he looked at his watch and just ended our talk. He said, “Just do what your MP tells you to do.” And that ended the meeting. I was, and still am, sad that this GA was so devoid of discernment and inspiration. Of course, this 70 is now one of the 12.
Toward the end of my mission, I received a call from the elder serving as the financial secretary. I still don’t know why he called me, but our MP had taken some of the money that had been donated by the local members to build a temple in the area and used those sacred funds on something that had absolutely nothing related to the church at all. Remember, my MP was a millionaire, and the local members were, as a group, not overly wealthy. In many cases, it was a real sacrifice for them to give money to build the temple. My MP’s misuse of these funds bothered the financial secretary so much that he felt the need to tell someone, and, for reasons I will never know, he called me. It upset me too. I still can’t understand why my MP felt entitled to take the hard-earned money offered by these faithful for something as sacred as building a temple–especially when he was so very old and wealthy. I mean, did he think he could take it with him? I have no clue as to my MP’s method of rationalization. I ruminated on the situation for several days, and it made me more and more frustrated. Ultimately, I felt that I needed to talk with my MP about the situation to see if he could explain his actions in a way I could understand what his motives were. I hoped that somehow I had either been given misinformation or that my MP had some justification for what he had done. When I met with my MP and related my concerns, he got very silent. He refused to explain what he had done with me. He didn’t deny that he had taken the money. He just refused to discuss the matter with me, and then he told me to get out of his office. As I was walking out of his office, the entire office staff was watching the situation with great intensity. My MP hauled off and kicked me right in the butt with all his might. His face went purple, and he shouted, “Elder XXXXXXXX, you are the worst elder in the entire mission.” I never met with the guy again on my mission. He didn’t go to the airport to see me off at the end of my mission. I did see him after my mission once at a reunion, and he blew my mind by offering me a job working for him in a new MLM scam he was starting. It was the only time I was ever openly rude to him, but I just started laughing at his proposal. There was no way in Hell that I would ever work under that guy again.
I’m afraid that I have had too many bad experiences with unrighteous dominion and poor leadership in our church for me to ever return to being the kind of Mormon who can just accept without question anything that comes from the leaders. I will gladly and gratefully accept good leadership and instruction, but I have to have spiritual confirmation before I can accept anything that goes against my common sense or better judgment. I recently read Greg Prince’s book on David O. McKay and found it the most inspiring (and paradoxically the most depressing) book I have read in recent memory. I am deeply concerned that the kind of independent thinking and tolerance the McKay’s era represented has been replaced by Correlation and conformity. I decided some time ago that I am not leaving this church. I have had too many profound spiritual experiences to ever just chuck the whole thing. It is a baby and bathwater thing for me. But I am sorely tired of these know-nothings who want to run the church through totalitarian principles.
So, I believe that there is a place for apologists, but I think that they should be totally honest in their approach. Too often they are not. There are many things that cannot be explained easily. Still, I have over 4000 books–most of them are church books. I’ve read extensively about the church and its history. Obviously, some things like BOM geography, or how we got the Book of Abraham, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, or the matter of blacks and the priesthood are, among many other things, concepts that there are no easy answers for. Still, I have had too many wonderful experiences–both spiritual and intellectual with the church’s teachings and scriptures to want to be able to honestly reject its claims to be the restored church of Christ. In my experience, I have found, in most cases, answers to my most crucial questions. I think it is a major mistake for the church to be unwilling to deal honestly with either its history or its doctrine. As one of my teachers said, “You shouldn’t attempt to teach the truth with a lie.” I think the church’s doctrines and history can withstand the most intense scrutiny that can be applied to it. I feel it is a major mistake to try to avoid such honest inquiry. I think the infantilization of the church’s members could prove to be a fatal error in judgment. It irritates me that many leaders in this church feel that members’ testimonies are so fragile that if they are presented with honest truths about the church, that members will lose their testimonies. To me, it is like overprotective parents trying to shield their child from the fact that Santa Claus is not real–when that child is a senior in high school. Some months ago I was teaching the high priests in my ward. I was talking to one of the high priests about how little I liked the manual we are using, as it only teaches basics and little substance. This guy, a high priest said that he felt that he still needed the milk before meat, and that he wasn’t ready for the meat. I asked him when he, as a 60-year-old man and lifelong member of the church, would feel that he might be ready for some meat. He just shrugged. The sad thing is that this same guy openly brags about the fact that he loves to immerse himself in various conspiracy theories–and he claims to believe in these odd, illogical conspiracies. He has also gotten involved with this herbal beverage called Reliv, and he keeps trying to tell everyone in the church that Reliv will do more for their cancers, tumors, and other serious medical conditions than conventional medicine. I think the church needs to grow up and expect their members to grow up. I think that we will be experiencing a great winnowing, and those who can’t stand on their own light are going to face some really hard times. Those who feel that the answer to any tough gospel question is to bear their testimony would do well to supplant that testimony with some real, hard-earned knowledge.
I am glad I can wander a little off the topic here without getting banned–maybe it has something about how all truth can be circumscribed into one great whole.
All I can say is that I’m really sorry. I hope you can find peace. I’m sure the Lord honors your two year sacrifice for principles which you believed to be right.
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