subversiveasset

This is where I also agreed. It creates a kind of false dichotomy.

If I could try to clear things up (I'm the one who write at Irresistible (Dis)Grace, btw)...here's my interpretation on things...I am not Dr. Shades, so it could be incorrect, but here's how I viewed it. I think that chapel Mormons and internet Mormons both represent people who are faithful. So I don't think that the distinction is that one group has more of a testimony and the other has less. I specifically do not think Seanette's definitions are what Dr. Shades was going for: ^This, I think, is a different between something like what people will say is the difference between a "TBM" or an "NOM"...or an "orthodox member" and a "liberal member." (not referring to politics). So, what do I think about chapel and internet? I think that it has to do with what marshac and bytebear have said. Depending on where you are and where you visit, you will experience more adversity, trial, and tribulation in certain areas of church gospel and history. The internet, in principal, is an easy place to find challenging issues, whereas your friends (or even not-so-friendly people) at home or at work may not have that kind of knowledge. So, I think that the so-called "internet Mormons" are those people who get exposed to people who bring up complaints about tricky parts of the gospel, or about history, about policy, etc., and then the internet Mormons figure a way to make it work with faith. This leads to "internet Mormons" developing subtly different ideas about the details than "chapel Mormons" who might not even have to think about this. For example...is the flood global? I was raised to believe that it was. That's what everyone said in church and in sunday school. Only after coming to the Internet did I see apologists such as FAIR, FARMS, or others suggesting that instead, the flood was maybe a local thing. Was the Hill Cumorah in New York or was it in Central America or were there multiple Hill Cumorahs? It seemed rather standard to me that it was in New York, but again, only after coming to the internet did I hear other things. And these weren't from anti-s and nonbelievers. Rather, these were from faithful members who were just trying to make sense of things, in light of knowledge about history, about distances, what has been revealed through scripture, and etc.