What came first, the apostate who attacked the church or the church leader who attacked the apostate?
You’re trying to sum this up in a specific instance whereas I think the post is directing our attention to the overall established rule in Mormonism that every Mormon is already very aware of. Mormons, long before they ever consider apostasy, are given the “inspired” version of what causes it. The idea behind it, I think, is to control the membership’s inactivity. The Church has to control its own membership from straying and they do this by instilling a sense of guilt whenever they dare think critically or doubt certain facets of the faith. They have already been conditioned to believe this process is nothing more than Satanic spirits overcoming your mind and you must therefore repent and pray and ask for forgiveness. If you don’t, then you’re a spiritually weak person and the Church is better off without you.
Given the social paradigm of religion that Juliann outlined for us, people are inclined to believe what the social group believes because they need to belong to something. The last thing anyone wants to be is an outcast. She tried arguing that so many ex-Mormons leave the faith because it is just an expected trend among humans who want to find acceptance in another group, but most ex-Mormons go against the social expectations by not joining other "groups." Most of them suffer the fate of social outcasts, often being rejected by close friends and family. That some would seek out ex-Mormon organizations afterwards, is understandable since we are all social creatures, but initially ex-Mormons generally operate under a sense of intellectual duty, social rewards be damned.
The Church and its apologists have done everything possible to convince the membership that there is no legitimate intellectual reason to leave the faith. I have copies of past discussions from FAIR that talk about this exact point. I was amazed at the number of Mormons who insisted apostasy comes from sin, perod. They didn't even consider the possibility that a legitimate reason could be given for leaving the faith. No matter what problems, no matter what evidence went against a certain Church claim, apostasy was always the fault of the apostate. The Church received a free pass at every turn, and could never be guilty of anything because the gospel is true, therefore only the people are imperfect. Even Daniel Peterson jumped in this discussion, encouraging the participating LDS to continue this illogical line of thought. Aside from the problems with the Book of Abraham apologetic, this aspect of Mormonsim is perhaps the most troubling for me, and I understand now why so many people think it is a cult. It has less to do with the temple and religious rites considered "weird" by orthodox Christians. I suspect it has more to do with the success it has had in instilling a monolithic mindset in the membership.
Beastie asked where the cycle of negativity between ex-Morons and Mormons begins. You seem to think the first instance of apostasy is what began the entire cycle (do we even know what the first instance was?). But to merely leave the Church is not to create an eternal cycle of negativity “between ex-Mormons and Mormons.” People can fall into apostasy without becoming avid critics, yet the Church has already judged them as spiritually deficient. It takes the offensive against them befor3e and after their apostasy. Read the RFM board and you can surely see that much of the hate and resentment by ex-Mormons is grounded in the mistreatment they have claimed to have received from the Church membership. Almost all of them have some story of injustice done to them. But then again, the Church has figured a way around this problem too because it teaches its members that ex-Mormons become something less than human. They are the devil’s pawns now, so since Satan is the father of lies, so too must these apostates be lying.
Great post beastie