Prof. Peterson's "RfM Archive"

[_Mister Scratch]

The recent business with DCP, coupled with his article, "Apologetics by the Numbers" have left me wondering quite a bit about this supposed "archive" which he claims to maintain of old postings from RfM. It seems to me that many people---TBMs in particular---accept it as the God's honest truth that this "archive" is totally kosher and on the up-and-up. I question the integrity of this "archive," though, especially in lieu of a lot of recent happenings. DCP has shown, after all, that he is not infallible when it comes to scholarly integrity, as evidenced by the citation gaffes in "Apologetics by the Numbers" and "The Witchcraft Paradigm." Reading over the notes in these two essays, it is very clear that he has no problem manipulating data and information in order to suit his apologetic agenda. Further, DCP was a party to the "mislaying" of the so-called "2nd Michael Watson Letter." (I personally think that he and Prof. Hamblin should retract their claim about this letter. They should either produce the evidence, or retract the argument, otherwise all we have is their word, which, increasingly, doesn't seem to be worth very much.)

All that said, I think it is high time someone demand to see this "archive." I would like to know, How well kept is it? How accurate is it? Is DCP taking things out of context, or contorting them ala his recent essays? What, I wonder, would it take to convince him to share the contents of this "archive"? Further, what excuses might he make in order to avoid having to produce the evidence? Will he be forthright? Or will he hem and haw? Will this be another "2nd Watson Letter", which he conveniently is unable to show anyone?

[_Jersey Girl]

Scratch,

All I can say is that if Daniel is using RFM posts older than about 10 days, he's using non-verifiable quotes. Enough said.

Jersey Girl

[_Bond...James Bond]

[_Mister Scratch]

Scratch,

All I can say is that if Daniel is using RFM posts older than about 10 days, he's using non-verifiable quotes. Enough said.

Jersey Girl

Yes, it's clear that he has got a Word file or something like that which contains the quotes. Of course they are non-verifiable, but I, for one, would nonetheless be interested in seeing this Word file, or whatever it is.

[_asbestosman]

Ha! I know that photo is a fake. The Bob McCue archive would have to be so large that it couldn't possibly fit on one continent let alone one building--even if it were rewritten in Reformed Egyptian.

[_Bond...James Bond]

Ha! I know that photo is a fake. The Bob McCue archive would have to be so large that it couldn't possibly fit on one continent let alone one building--even if it were rewritten in Reformed Egyptian.

That bookcase contains the condensed versions of his 3 shortest papers. The rest of BM's stuff is stored on a 12 100 GB portable harddrives :)

[_moksha]

The Bob McCue archive would have to be so large that it couldn't possibly fit on one continent let alone one building--even if it were rewritten in Reformed Egyptian.

Have you tried examining the Reformed Egyptian with a blue light laser? If so you would discover where the information of the missing plates is located.

[_Runtu]

Ha! I know that photo is a fake. The Bob McCue archive would have to be so large that it couldn't possibly fit on one continent let alone one building--even if it were rewritten in Reformed Egyptian.

I thought this was a photo of the immense library of resources Joseph Smith used to create so many verifiable hits in his Book of Mormon. ;-)

[_Mister Scratch]

Okay, a bit more to discuss. (I know many are getting sick of this subject, so hopefully this will be the last "major" post for this go-round.) Here is DCP's response to my accusations/speculations in the OP of this thread (I will chop up to include my remarks):

"Mister Scratch" are now claiming that I maintain some sort of grand "archive" of materials from RfM (very possibly doctored and falsified by me) and are demanding access to it for inspection so that I can be held accountable. This is, as is typical with them, hyperbole and jaundiced illusion. I’ve saved maybe fifteen or twenty particularly amusing and very brief quotations. That’s it. I occasionally use them as signatures on e-mails to friends who might find them entertaining.

(emphasis mine)

It's important to take note of what he's saying. He continues below:

Here are three typical samples:

"The man is a barracuda! . . . He is a mean spirited person of the highest order. I have no sympathy for this poor excuse for a human being at all! Blech!!!" (Lucyfer, on the RFM board, 26 December 2006, regarding Daniel Peterson)

In the terms of academia, DCP is the equivalent of "trailer trash". (Matt, RFM, 15 June 2006)

Peterson is an idiot and a hack. . . . The man is not really a man he's a snake. (brian-the-christ [RfM, 10 January 2006])

Here's the longest:

This man has the biggest persecution complex I have ever seen. He can't write anything without mentioning his detractors. He is pathetically insecure. His writings are all self-serving and do nothing to illuminate the so-called "subject". His ONLY purpose for EVER writing ANYTHING is to assuage his own fragile ego.
Peterson without an enemy is like natural gas without the stinky additive to warn people of its presence. He's invisible, colorless, tasteless and heavier (waaaaaay heavier) than air. The only way anyone even knows he's around is because of the "stink" that he makes sure surrounds him at all times because he knows he's nothing without it!
Put THAT in your tagline mr. Peterson
("Undetectable Odor," on the so-called "Recovery" board, 30 January 2007)

I also have at least one specimen from the board where "Mister Scratch" monitor and deride this board and those who post here:

Daniel Peterson, "a lowballing trashtalker who deals in smear tactics" ("Mister Scratch," on the Dr. Shades board)

I find it intriguing that he claims that there are "only" fifteen to twenty. A bit later in the MADthread, the poster called "Jaybear" asks him to post them all, since there aren't very many. He neatly sidestepped the request. I, for one, am still waiting. Especially in light of the fact that he includes quite a number of quotations from MBs in his "The Witchcraft Paradigm," and "Apologetics by the Numbers." I think the number is well in excess of "fifteen or twenty."

Anyhow, he continues:

“Mister Scratch” have apparently also claimed that I vowed in private e-mails to them that I would seek to publicly embarrass them. I don’t remember saying or thinking any such thing. Moreover, I’ve still got all of the e-mails that I sent to “Mister Scratch,” and there’s no such threat in any of them. Once again, this is pure hostile fantasy.

There are a couple of things to address here. I saved all the emails, too. It turns out that another apparent entry from the "archive" was included as a sig line in one of the emails:

IMHO [Peterson] has sociopathic/borderline psychopathic tendencies. Guys like him give me the willies because they don't have any ethical/moral compass to guide what they do in life. He has no boundaries on who is fair game in his nasty attacks against everyone who might disagree with him. Objective reasoning does NOT exist in his world.

--”Rebel Scholar”
(RFM Board, 26 September 2005)

This (already quoted above) is another one of the sig lines (he evidently thought it would be a good idea to include these in the emails, for whatever reason):

Peterson is an idiot and a hack. . . . The man is not really a man he's a snake.

-brian-the-christ (RfM, 10 January 2006)

I know that there were at least two other occasions when he used my posts (in addition to the one quoted above) in his sig lines. Surely there are others either here or on RfM who have seen him use other material. My point is that this "archive" goes well beyond "fifteen or twenty," and once again, I call him out on it. Let us see the material.

The second point to address is this bit about him "seeking to publicly embarrass" me. You can judge for yourself whether this was his intention. The thread on which I was banned dealt with peer review at FROB, a subject which DCP has revealed himself to be extremely sensitive about. In my email correspondence with the Good Professor, I repeatedly asked him why he had posted the totally off-topic "douche bag" quotation in the first place. Over the course of six or seven emails, I finally got him to say why:

Basically, this will clear up a lot: Why did you post the material in the first place? Did you really have good, clean, ethical intentions, or were you looking to discredit me? This is the million dollar question: Why did you post the material?

Because I thought — and, increasingly, think once again — that you wrote it, and that you should be held to account for it. I believe that people who write such things should be embarrassed at having written them.

However, he apparently doesn't think that he should be "embarrassed" at having engaged in smear tactics!

Here is some more of the email:

As I say, you seem to be determined to believe me a liar.

I don't really want to make the assumption that you are a liar. It's possible that you made a careless and presumptuous mistake. Let's get this straight: I don't think ill of you, Prof. Peterson. As best I can tell, you are a decent, reasonable, intelligent guy. But that doesn't make you infallible, or resistant to the temptation of occasionally taking a cheap shot. Finally, it is bothersome to me that you're apparently so willing to jump to conclusions, for the sole reason, it would seem, to discredit and smear somebody you "disagree with."

(take note of the bolded part, Ray.)

Your eagerness to accuse me of a “smear” and to insinuate that I’m a liar (repeatedly, over my protests) and to accuse me of a history of lack of integrity belies your claim that you don’t think ill of me.

Unless you can supply some good, well-meaning reason as to why you posted the offending material in the first place, then I really have no choice but to assume that you meant to cause me harm, and to smear my rep.

That’s nonsense and a logical non sequitur. I’ve explained why it was reasonable to assume, in the absence of any reason at all to believe the contrary, [note his use of argumentum ad ignoratiam here] that you, “Mr. Scratch” who posts negative things about the Church on the “Recovery” board, were the “Mr. Scratch” who posts negative things about the Church on the “Recovery” board who also posted a strikingly insulting item about me on the “Recovery” board.

Anyway, based on something you said in your previous note, I wonder why you’re claiming to be so upset:

Scratch: “RE: your complaints about R. Tomasi, I really don't understand what the big deal is, or why you've reacted so ferociously. Honestly, it was just a little gossip, no? Why get all bent out of shape over it?”

Peterson: “Because it’s not true, and because it makes me look unethical.”

Scratch: “Big deal.”

If you don’t think I should regard it as a “big deal” that a false charge has been made against me that is potentially damaging to my reputation, why should I believe that your indignation about what you claim to regard as a reputation-damaging false charge against you is at all genuine? Increasingly, this seems to me to be play-acting. I’m not sure what game you might be playing, but I really don’t like being played.

(Even if I had actually posted---which, as I've said repeatedly, I didn't---the stuff of RfM, why post it, other than to smear/discredit?)

If someone writes something discreditable, I don’t mind it if he is discredited to some extent for having written it. [unless it is DCP who is being discredited, of course] I said nothing about you except to quote from what, it seemed (and, increasingly, seems), you had written. All you had to do was to vigorously (a) deny your authorship of the passage in question and (b) flatly disavow and denounce the sentiments expressed in it.

This next bit is a classic in the annals of DCP arrogance and smugness:

I notice, incidentally, that you have not done (b). Since you’ve now demanded that I “prove” my integrity against your alleged doubts, it seems only fair to ask that you appear on the “Mormon Discussions” board to denounce the statement that that The Alleged Other “Mr. Scratch” made about me, and that you do the same thing on the FAIR boards. (Since, evidently, you can no longer post on the FAIR boards, of course, you could send such a statement to me, and I would post it there.) Perhaps if you were to do something of that sort, vigorously and forthrightly, it would go some considerable distance toward fixing your supposed “reputation” on the FAIR board and would soften the feelings of the moderators toward you.

(emphasis added)

The email ends thusly:

The "honest mistake" excuse won't fly either, because why not send me a PM? A "careless" or "haphazard" or "presumptuous" or "naïve" mistake is far more accurate, in my opinion.

I see absolutely nothing either presumptuous or naïve in assuming, barring evidence otherwise, that X is X. [I do. It's called argumentum ad ignoratium]

I think we’ve been around and around this matter quite enough.

If you want to demonstrate your sincerity to me, post a statement on the “Mormon Discussions” board publicly denying your authorship of the passage I quoted and clearly denouncing the language and the sentiments contained in it. Send me a similar statement, and I will post it on the FAIR boards and, once it has been posted, will ask the FAIR moderators to lift your suspension.

Otherwise, I would prefer that you not contact me again. I’m busy, and I just put my youngest son into the MTC today. Dealing with your unreasonable personal hostility is not the way I care to spend the rest of the day, nor any day in the near future.

-dcp

(emphasis added, to show how much DCP believes that he has sway over the FAIR/MAD mods. And to demonstrate his arrogance.)

A bit later, a "little birdy" told me that DCP himself had actually been guilty of what he'd accused me of doing! One of the moderators on ZLMB had found that the exact same BYU IP address that DCP used was guilty of posting "nasty things." Here is the material:

Well, well, well. Lookee at what I found, in an old archived post on ZLMB:

I must say that her understanding of the facts of the case is quite different from mine. Apparently she knows things -- or imagines that she knows them -- that I was never told. Lucky Jennyjo. For example, I never heard about the mysterious other person who was supposedly using the same IP number that I was using in order to post nasty things. My alleged offense, as it was explained to me, was simply that I seemed to be using two different identities. Which, of course, I wasn't.

Finally, I wonder if Jennyjo actually kept count of the number of times I made my incessant, lengthy, and apparently quite dishonest complaints about the lovely Webguy. (Apparently, it was my ritual practice to discourse at nauseating length about the story at the opening of every thread where it could possibly be pretended to be relevant.) If my whining was fairly constant over the course of about ten months it must have amounted to hundreds of instances. I recall perhaps four or five brief mentions of the case. At other times, when I complained about der Webführer's [note this cute little insult. How odd that DCP seems to claim that he does not engage in "offensive name-calling"] management of the Iron Curtain Board, it was on the basis of his general treatment of Latter-day Saint participants.

Jennyjo, dear heart, you have very little idea of what you're talking about. It would be best, under such circumstances, to maintain silence. Just a suggestion. Why did you feel the need to launch into your misguided little attack, by the way?

The reason Jennyjo (whom DCP condescendingly refers to as "dear heart") launched into her "misguided little attack" was apparently due to actual evidence (such as an IP address), rather than circumstantial assumptions. He advises her to "maintain silence," but clearly this is advice he does not follow himself.

[_Yoda]

Wow!

I am confused about something, though, Scratch.

You actually DID post on Mormon Discussions that the person who slandered DCP on RfM was NOT you. Right?

That's what this whole mess has been about, anyway.

What amazes me is that you posting that wasn't enough to satisfy him. He wanted you to email something separate to him that he could post on FAIR/MAD.

He also has the gall to say that he doesn't have any influence with the Mods, and then throws in the bit about the Mods "softening their hearts" toward you if you do as he asks.

Unbelievable!