Sweltzer

Thank you for your feedback, Pam, it is much appreciated. I apologize if I offended or insulted you, that was not my intention. Incidentally, your response is somewhat of an example of a non-winsome reply that I was alluding to in my original post. Please be aware that I am approaching all this from a non-judging, but academic point of view. I have tried to be cordial in my remarks yet not water down the truth. As Timothy says in the Bible, "speak the truth in love". As to what hordak says, I totally agree with you; I'm not referring to things like "should you let your kids use iTunes" or things like that. I am specifically referring to clear/strict doctrinal issues. God knows we all can get worked up over things that aren't *specifically* addressed in whatever divine text you claim as truth. In all this I am not trying to demean, insult, or offend anyone. I am merely trying to communicate my experience, specifically my surprise at what I thought the online LDS community would be and what I truly experienced it as. Again, thanks for all feedback.

Full disclosure: I am not LDS or affiliated with any specific religion. I have been lurking here for a while as well as on other religious forums, trying to understand people's faith and why they believe what they believe. Please let me humbly comment on my experiences here. Please don't take this the wrong way; I'm just trying to provide some feedback as to how an outsider views this online community. Having monitored this forum(s) for some time now, I have been surprised by a few observations: 1) Many here seem to be, on average (based on my experience on reading posts on numerous forums), overly hostile, rude, un-trusting, and accusatory. Please don't think that this applies to everyone; many have been very nice and helpful but the percentage of those that haven't has surprised me. I thought it would be lower. 2) Many here seem to have a loose grasp on what they believe and why they believe it. Again, I'm not trying to be insulting but after seeing many theological discussions over basic doctrinal beliefs have such disparate responses, I can only conclude that many of the LDS lack basic doctrinal understanding of the Mormon faith and beliefs. Further, I see many talk about leaving the church for a time and then coming back years later. I would think that if you were a true believer then "leaving the faith" (I use this term loosely) would be ridiculous if you truly believed. Again, I seek only to understand, not to judge, please don't be offended. So I am left with the questions, why do Mormons seem (at least online) more prone to rudeness (is it an online only thing fueled by the anonymity of the Internet or something else) and why does their understand and commitment seem to be lax? Again, I am not speaking of all Mormons since many dedicate years to their mission and spend non-trivial amounts of time proselytizing those in their community. However, I must say that my expectations were quite different from reality once I started to monitor this forum. This post is not meant to upset but just to provide some feedback to the lds.net community. My surprise at the points noted above has caused me a lot of thought and I just want to share it so that you may possibly benefit from it. Any feedback is welcome.