Difference between revisions of "Template:MormonThink"

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'''MormonThink.com'''
 
'''MormonThink.com'''
  
*'''[[Criticism of Mormonism/Websites/MormonThink]]'''—The web site MormonThink.com claims to be operated by active members of the Church with an interest in objectively presenting the "truth" about Mormonism. In reality, only the webmaster retains his membership, and he admits that he does so in order to retain credibility so he can more easily influence other members to accept his claims. The remaining website contributors are ex-Mormons who frequently post on anti-Mormon message boards. The webmaster is, by his own admission, pretending to be semi-active in order to destroy members' and missionaries' testimonies from within the social structure of the Church. The site pretends to be "balanced" by presenting information and links to apologetic sites, however, the conclusions reached by the site consistently reflect negatively on the Church's truth claims. The site also recently contained a large amount of Temple content, which, according to the webmaster, was removed because it was discouraging the still-active spouses of those maintaining the website from reading the rest of its material.
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*'''[[Criticism of Mormonism/Websites/MormonThink]]'''—The website mormonthink.com is designed to lead Church members into questioning their beliefs in a non-threatening manner by claiming to be "objective" and "balanced." The site claims to be run by active members of the Church. In reality, however, they are "active" only in the sense that some of them still occasionally attend Church—they do not accept the Church's truth claims, and they have no interest in strengthening belief. Instead, the site portrays Church leaders as liars, Joseph Smith as a fraud and con-man, and the Church as "an oppressive empire building corporation." The site includes links to FAIR as a way of demonstrating their claimed "balance." Each page on MormonThink.com typically includes quotes from Church sources, large amounts of block text copied from websites critical of the Church, a few references to LDS apolgetics that are followed by mocking refutations by critics, an "Ending summary by critics," and an "Our Thoughts" section, which generally agrees with the critics. The bottom of each page contains links to critical sites, believers sites and to some sites which they consider neutral. MormonThink has had a series of managing editors, all of whom retained membership in the Church during their tenure while simultaneously mocking the Church's truth claims in online ex-Mormon forums. The transfer of the editorial position appears to be triggered by the resignation from the Church of the previous editor. The founding editor, who remains anonymous, resigned in 2012 in order to avoid discipline after the Church apparently identified him.

Latest revision as of 08:57, 28 February 2013

Critical Websites

MormonThink.com

  • Criticism of Mormonism/Websites/MormonThink—The website mormonthink.com is designed to lead Church members into questioning their beliefs in a non-threatening manner by claiming to be "objective" and "balanced." The site claims to be run by active members of the Church. In reality, however, they are "active" only in the sense that some of them still occasionally attend Church—they do not accept the Church's truth claims, and they have no interest in strengthening belief. Instead, the site portrays Church leaders as liars, Joseph Smith as a fraud and con-man, and the Church as "an oppressive empire building corporation." The site includes links to FAIR as a way of demonstrating their claimed "balance." Each page on MormonThink.com typically includes quotes from Church sources, large amounts of block text copied from websites critical of the Church, a few references to LDS apolgetics that are followed by mocking refutations by critics, an "Ending summary by critics," and an "Our Thoughts" section, which generally agrees with the critics. The bottom of each page contains links to critical sites, believers sites and to some sites which they consider neutral. MormonThink has had a series of managing editors, all of whom retained membership in the Church during their tenure while simultaneously mocking the Church's truth claims in online ex-Mormon forums. The transfer of the editorial position appears to be triggered by the resignation from the Church of the previous editor. The founding editor, who remains anonymous, resigned in 2012 in order to avoid discipline after the Church apparently identified him.