My cousin is uber TBM and lives in the midwest. We rarely speak because the whole family's uber-TBMishness is too much to bear in more than small doses. This includes his parents and many siblings.

Anyway, i sent him a link to MormonEssays and asked if he had seen the essays. I pointed out the race essay and how it seemed the church had disavowed its own scriptures. I referenced 2 Nephi 5:21, Alma 3:7, Moses ch 7, and Abraham ch 1.

He said he had read the essays and Rough Stone Rolling and was only troubled by JS having married other mens wives. His response was long and a fine piece of anti-logic.

The comments that most tweaked my illogic radar were his statements on race. He said that maybe god gave Lamanites a dark skin because of sin.

I said he could no longer claim that because the church had disavowed that doctrine, er, theory.

A little later in the email exchange, he said that maybe God cursed Cain with a dark skinned skin. After all, who was he to judge God's ways.

I reminded him that had been disavowed.

His response? He told me I had misread the essay that it only referred to the present not the past. He quoted the sentence that says, "Today, the church disavows the theories advanced in the past..." In the past god cursed people with dark skin but not today.

I said he needed to reread it and if he still didnt get it he could ask the people that wrote it what they meant and that they would say im right. After all, the intent of the essay is to disavow racism as a doctrine and it even says past and present.

He said he stands by his comment.

I mean, seriously Cuz? You cant be that stupid. You have a PhD fer Odin's sake. I didnt say this last part to him but thought. Odin forgive me for i have sinned.

Its for TBM responses like this that i chose the name blankstare

What you have is a lifelong TBM. Nothing is going to crack that nut.

Good luck though.

Either he has reading comprehension problems, or the LDS part of his brain won't allow the normal part of his brain to accept the fact the church has admitted it was full of sh!t about race -- or anything.

I always laugh at the mental gymnastics that mormons perform in order to justify mormonism.

Yes and this is only the tip of the iceberg. The rest of his comments related to polygamy, the flood, god telling Joshua to kill whole towns, etc.

The logical fallacies were plenty. I responded to them and he dropped those thoughts, but just wouldnt let go of this gem.

You'll have to talk about something that's actually important to him. Something that matters in his everyday life. Something the church is plain wrong about that is making his life worse.

Find that and you have a chance. Otherwise I don't think you'll have any luck.

So his argument is that God was racist, but now he isn't? To argue that it was once a curse (and not a racist policy) but is now not a curse, means that everyone should be born with white skin.

Ask him what the cutoff date is for those that were born with a dark skin because they were cursed. The date that essay was published? The date blacks were given the priesthood? Those born before that date were cursed, and those born after aren't??? What is the exact cut off date of his belief of "past" and "today".

Great questions. I wanted to ask him things like you suggest, it was evident he wanted out of the conversation so i dropped it. Pointless to argue with someone who reads "past and present" but only sees "present" and goes off on a completely insane line of unreason.

The thing I learned is that he clearly holds on to these racist doctrines. How many more Mormons still use the racist explanations despite the church's clear statements to knock that shit off?

If you gathered a thousand Mormons in a room today and asked them about the curse doctrine, how many would still talk like my cousin? And the church's moderator of the event would be rapping his gavel saying, "Must I remind you, Jim Bob, that we have disavowed this kind of talk? So stop spreading anti-Mormon views"

Not only that, but it was not a curse but something to protect Cain from being done in by other people.

What other people? I dunno!

So here is a great question to ask them.... If the mark of Cain, son of Adam, deals will the blackness of the skin, and this happened before the flood because God destroyed the earth because of their wickedness, and only Noah's seed was the only to survive... How did Cain's seed regenerate?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2014 11:57AM by scmormon.

Putting on my TBM unthinking cap now. Hmmm. Aha. I know.

We cant know God's ways. Theyre mysterious. But perhaps, Brother, God preserved Cain through the flood so that there would be a representative of Satan on earth to spread hatred and foment wars. And besides, if Cain's kids werent there, then everyone wiuld be white and delightsome and there would be no ugly people for the good folk to not be attracted too.

Do you see the beauty in Gods plan? Praise Zeus.

What? You say that the evil people were supposed to all be wiped out? Damn u r stupid. Didnt you watch the movie Noah? It claerly had the evil dude getting on the ark. So stopping disrupting class and scarin' away the spirit of the Lard.

Note: the above snarky comments were meant as if they had been spoken by an apologist or gospel doctrine teacher.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2014 12:45PM by blankstare.

I think the book of Abraham states that the curse of blackness was carried through Ham's wife.

So its the womans fault. They always cause the problem. First its an apple, then its a dark skin.

I was looking at wilkipedia that stated something about the curse of Cain, so got to digging and found out in Genesis the curse given was by Noah not God. So found this page

http://creation.com/one-blood-chapter-6-are-black-people-the-result-of-a-curse-on-ham

Cognitive dissonance displays itself in very very strange ways.

yup. Ham's wife.

Apologist reasoning seems to work like this:
The church is not currently racist, therefore it never was racist.

By this reasoning, none of us are apostates:
We are not now Mormons, therefore we never were.

Impeccable logic. Er. Wait. U r trying to cornfuse me. ;)

Hey Cuz! Here's your sign!

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

Love your name. Good question. Using my cousin's logic, it would depend on when you quit believing. If before 1978, you are either Lamanite or Aftican. If after 1978, You can keep your same race.

But dont think of it as God being fickle. Its just, well, what happens in cousin land. It just is.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2014 07:28PM by blankstare.

Reading comprehension, he failed it.

No worry. Its cool.

Thank you father.