I hadn't noticed how much they've updated their site until now. They've taken each Critic's Comment section from Mormon Think and answered with their own.

http://en.fairmormon.org/Website_reviews/MormonThink

Someone over at FAIR is really putting a lot of time into this.

Lots of attacks aimed at the contributors of MT and their motivations.

I don't see anything regarding the content.

Don't take away ad hominem! It's all they have!!!

Well, lots of time was put into Mormon Think aswell, to be fair.

Haha, they picked the worst quotes and used that to prove that MormonThink is lying about being balanced. I think they need to go back to the dictionary and review what the word "balanced" means, because they obviously have no clue.

PERVERT Joseph Smith got to rape vulnerable teen age girls in the name of MORmONISM. Modern MORmONS get to rape the language in the name of MORmONISM.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2012 01:00PM by lucky.

As far as I can tell Brother David Twede (a member of the LDS church and editor of MT) hasn't ever claimed to be God's official spokesman on earth. Thus it's possible for Twede to alter the content on MT without facing the same scrutiny that a living prophet of the unchanging God would face for changing doctrines. When FAIR does reviews to find errors or weak arguments in critical literature then they're doing MT a favor in helping them improve their website.

The biggest problem that FAIR faces is that they DO NOT HAVE THE AUTHORITY AND MANTLE OF A LIVING PROPHET and thus anything they say has no real power or meaning.

I commend FAIR for their efforts, but they are meaningless to me as I do not believe in the concept of "Prophets": men, and only men, always, to whom which the Lord has supposedly chosen to speak directly to.

I say poo-poo on that, living or dead.

MormonThink was largely obscure until FAIR came along. First they mentioned it in one of their FAIR conferences and MT hits doubled. They then made it the only website 'worthy of a FAIR review' (they did John Dehlin's also but took it off when he complained) - hits went way up after that also.

Then they got into a war with us about the translation process and MT hits continued to go up as readers tuned in.

Then they upped the stakes and started outing the MT contributors that they could find and reporting them to the church. Well, hits exploded after MT hit the media. I saw it on dozens of media outlets, on ABC News, etc. Reporters wrote and called constantly. We now have a large list of media contacts ready at our disposal whenever FAIR wants to publicize MT again.

Hits topped about 3 Million last month and have stayed at a consistant double what they were just two months ago - thanks to FAIR. They are pacing at a steady 70,000 hits per day now.

We've had literally hundreds and hundreds of emails sent to us since the story prompted by Scott Gordon of FAIR hit the presses. Many of those emails were from people that just found out about MormonThink for the first time after reading about all the hub-bub on the Internet. These people were not happy that the church kept so much of its disturbing history from them and they thanked us for providing all this information in one, easy-to-find place.

We've got many offers to help improve the site by Internet developers. Also many active, but questioning members, want to join the team.

Donations are at an all-time high so now we can fund more projects to help the site.

And all of this is due to you FAIR. Thank you so much for not ignoring us. We couldn't afford any better publicity than you give us. Please keep it up.

sincerely
The MormonThink Staff



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2012 02:12PM by mormonthinker.

Haha! Awesome!

John Lynch and Scott Gordon from FAIR are some of the best recruiters for people leaving the church.

Their nutjob antics make it crystal clear to rational people that the LDS church is not a good organization

I guess now I can feel somewhat proud I'm related to Scott Gordon hahaha

I never could get him to tell me whether or not wood floats.

Is it really that difficult a question to answer?

Thanks B for that summary of how FAIR has helped.

As for their defaming me and other editors by name with lies, does anyone know an exmo California attorney that will help straighten the record?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2012 02:24PM by David Twede.

His family members have been hostile to him. perhaps he was outed by them from the same household?
see http://ow.ly/ephv6

They're saying you outed yourself using the name starlight012 and then made a new account with your real name but using the same IP address??? http://en.fairmormon.org/Criticism_of_Mormonism/Websites/MormonThink/Media_efforts_by_MormonThink_editor_David_Twede/The_%22starlight012%22_affair

I cannot get into specifics because of personal/family concerns, but they do not know the situation and they don't care who it hurts to make unfounded claims. Their approach is to hurt the messenger rather than defend their own message.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2012 02:40PM by David Twede.

Reading their comments about MT made my head hurt.. Their comments and "defenses" reminded me of a teenage girl's facebook page.

According to web traffic monitoring tool Alexa, MormonThink currently has a three-month daily reach of 6.9 per million internet users. FairMormon has a three-month daily reach of 2.6 per million. That means MormonThink has two and a half times the traffic of FairMormon now, and if you look at the details yourself in my links below, you can clearly see how MormonThink's traffic has increased over the past few months:

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/mormonthink.com#
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/fairmormon.org#

The internet gurus out there will also notice the difference in the number of sites linking in. FairMormon has an unusually high quantity of sites linking in, which indicates a concerted push towards search engine optimization. However, despite this disproportionality, both sites still have the same Google page rank of 4.

For the non-internet-gurus, this means that FairMormon is trying very hard to make itself visible on the web, and MormonThink is just letting things happen.

kimball Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> According to web traffic monitoring tool Alexa,
> MormonThink currently has a three-month daily
> reach of 6.9 per million internet users.
> FairMormon has a three-month daily reach of 2.6
> per million. That means MormonThink has two and a
> half times the traffic of FairMormon now, and if
> you look at the details yourself in my links
> below, you can clearly see how MormonThink's
> traffic has increased over the past few months:
>
> http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/mormonthink.com#
> http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/fairmormon.org#

VERY COOL. Thanks for sharing. FAIR has a budget of some 14k I read several years ago vs our meager funds. They also have all sorts of resources and rich MOs helping them. I would think they would be way higher popularity-wise than MT but they are much smaller. And MT links to FAIR like crazy and they won't even put one actual link to MT on their site. But the Internet is too big to control and people will ultimately find the truth.

Super Dooper!

Who would have thought that fair would be so willing to help.
I guess they're just trying to live their religion. Just trying to help the poor, the needy, the truth seekers. That' so nice of them. I'm sure they will appreciate your thank-you note. So few people bother to write them these days.

Keep up the good work. You provide a very valuable service to so many.

In the Harry Potter series, didn't we read that Voldemort's actions of selecting Harry as his enemy ended up making Harry stronger and more able to defeat Voldemort?

The actions of FAIR have had the unintended effect of helping MT's cause. Certainly MT's legitimacy and fame has increased. As if there's this cosmic karma power transfer when hostility is focused from one person or group to another.

I love it. There is something Potter-esque about this whole situation, at times.

The Mormon church is so used to bullying people into silence, it didn't occur to them that there could be a backlash.

Bullying has always worked for them. They bully people into silence.

The number of inactives and ex mormons has reached heights that out number members. Our voices are being heard just because of our sheer numbers, AND the internet. The church has no control over those two things. They are frantically looking for a way to shut down any dissenting voices while continuing their bully routine.

FAIR and FARMS articles were the best confirmation that what I had read about the church, it's founders and it's history was true.

Wherever I had read them, whether mormon, exmormon, anti mormon, authors Sandra Tanner, Grant Palmer, Arza Evans or BH Roberts and many others, FAIR and FARMS were great for confirming it all true.

Their 'apologetic' responses/articles helped me realise I was being deceived all along by a cult and it's recruits.

Then I would always notice the disclaimer 'We Don't speak for the church'.

Just as Heavenly Father doesn't protect missionaries, he apparently doesn't protect his true church's PR environment by providing any inspiration (read: common sense).

A first year Public Relations college student would not make the PR mistakes TSCC makes. I relish the thought that those in the PR department must be holding their heads in their hands over the entire MormonThink affair.

Just like the science fiction standby plot, they blew up the site of the virus with a nuclear bomb and spread the virus over the entire world.

Say goodbye to the isolation, Mo's, it was the only thing keeping you going. You are like the deer mouse--put them back in the general population and their speshul-ness just disappears.

Anagrammy

In the south in the 80's there were several folks baptized because of "anti-mormon" literature into my ward. I recall the church leaders thanking the anti authors for doing missionary work. Seems FAIR is returning the favor.