Why I no longer trust DCP

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_Trevor
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Post by _Trevor »

dartagnan wrote:Trevor, all sarcasm aside, I think it is important to point out errors in Dan's scholarship because he is, like it or not, the main figure in LDS apologetics.


I guess the important question for you is whether it is really worth it. From my perspective it most definitely is not. But, hey, that's me.

It does somewhat trouble me to see a person of your obvious intelligence grind obsessively on the same topic all of the time. What's more, I kind of like you (not that this should matter to you), and it does mystify me why Peterson should continue to be such a concern for you.

If most LDS people I know never knew much about Nibley, then I am sure even fewer of them know anything about Peterson. Are these the people we are trying to dissuade from trusting him? All those folks who can't even be bothered to read the scriptures or the crap that passes as manuals these days?

What would really interest me is to see an article by Kevin Graham in Dialogue, Sunstone, The Journal of Mormon History, etc. Something on, oh, I don't know... the Book of Abraham maybe?

I can tell you that I don't give a tinker's damn about further dissecting why I don't get a whole lot out of Daniel Peterson's commentary and reviews. I am not telling you that you must agree with me. I am being a horrible, officious buttinski and telling you that I think your time is better spent in other pursuits.

Forgive the intrusion.
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_Trevor
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Post by _Trevor »

Mister Scratch wrote:I also tried to get DCP to engage in substantive discussion on this issue of "LDS academic embarrassment," but The Good Professor opted for ad hominems instead, which I found very telling.


This suddenly struck me as terribly bizarre. Kinda like someone writing me and asking to engage me in a discussion of my stupid belief system. I mean, would I really want to engage in a lengthy conversation that started with the premise that I was some kind of moron?

I can only imagine the can of worms I've opened up for myself here.
“I was hooked from the start,” Snoop Dogg said. “We talked about the purpose of life, played Mousetrap, and ate brownies. The kids thought it was off the hook, for real.”
_dartagnan
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Post by _dartagnan »

I guess the important question for you is whether it is really worth it. From my perspective it most definitely is not. But, hey, that's me.


Well, it isn't costing me any money. It hasn't taken much of my time. And many people have thanked me for educating them on this topic where Dan has provided politically correct fluff.

It does somewhat trouble me to see a person of your obvious intelligence grind obsessively on the same topic all of the time.


The "topic" is Islam, not Dan Peterson. Occasionally he and I will bangs heads over other issues, but for the most part it is about Islam. Since he is the only LDS spokesperson on the subject, it isn't coincidence that he and I have crossed paths.
After 9-11 I immersed myself in the study of things Islamic and after coming away with some carefully drawn out conclusions, I shared them on the forums and backed them up with documented scholarship. Dan Peterson was called in to "handle" me. Of course, he and I were friends at the time, which might explain why he felt it was necessary to use a pseudonym. He essentially called me a bigot, attacked me for demonstrating less than stellar intellectualism and spirituality. I blew it off at first until I was later informed that it was Dan.

He started this scuffle between the two of us.

And what exactly have I said that is so horrible? If my observations are valid, then I think that alone justifies making them. Aren't you for education on any given topic? If people have been led astray to believe X is true, and someone comes along with proof that X is false, don't you think it is worth mentioning it? The question should be, are my criticism valid? Thus far nobody has indicated that they are not.

I guess another issue is the Ritner email scandal. Dan likes to view this as nothing more than my efforts to smear his name, but the fact is Dan was the one who spent several years propagating this atrocious rumor about Ritner. All I did was email Ritner to confirm it. The fact that nobody seemed to get Ritner's viewpoint on the situation, after so many years of blindly accepting the FARMS version, didn't bode well with me. My only crime was, again, researching the subject to verify the claim. I had absolutely NO IDEA that Ritner would say what he said. I thought that maybe he would give a slightly different rendition of what happened, but I never thought he would come right out and accuse Dan of libel. In any event, to say the least, I was immediately attacked for "obsessing" over Dan Peterson.

What's more, I kind of like you (not that this should matter to you), and it does mystify me why Peterson should continue to be such a concern for you.


He isn't. You have to appreciate that I am a recently deconverted apologist. I have been shunned from the LDS side and my credibility and motives are always being questioned. Dan's was instrumental in seeing me permanently marginalized from the FAIR crowd. In private emails he would indicate that he and I agreed more than it might see, but he would never say this on the forums. He couldn't afford to. He had to play the PC game and attack me for being a bigot, simply because I said Islam is the most intoelrant religion on the planet. Incidentally, he had a debate with Robert Spencer who authored, "Muhammad, the Founder of the World's most Intolerant Religion." Yet he never once criticized Spencer for its title. In fact, he practically agreed with every single thing Spencer had to say. It boggles the mind.

Anyway, I am sick and tired of people saying I left apologetics simply because I didn't get the attention I wanted, or because Dan and Gee merely disagreed with me, or whatever else they can think of. I want to explicate exactly why I no longer find FARMS trustworthy, and I cannot do that without including names like McGregor, Hauglid, Gee, Hamblin and Peterson. My passion isn't them. My passion is the truth.

If most LDS people I know never knew much about Nibley, then I am sure even fewer of them know anything about Peterson. Are these the people we are trying to dissuade from trusting him?


If I am right and Dan is not properly educating his audiences, then shouldn't we try to dissuade everyone from trusting him? I expect people will make up their own minds. All I am doing is providing the real meat of the matter. The clear examples where Dan Peterson says X when the fact is Y.

What would really interest me is to see an article by Kevin Graham in Dialogue, Sunstone, The Journal of Mormon History, etc. Something on, oh, I don't know... the Book of Abraham maybe?


If I ever get around to it. There are a number of subjects I would like to write about, including the acceptance of the Book of Mormon as a bunch of ahistorical, inspired stories. I think this was the subject you appreciated most when you and I first started chatting a couple of years ago.

I can tell you that I don't give a tinker's damn about further dissecting why I don't get a whole lot out of Daniel Peterson's commentary and reviews. I am not telling you that you must agree with me. I am being a horrible, officious buttinski and telling you that I think your time is better spent in other pursuits.


I understand, but I am not sure you appreciate the difference here. I am not merely saying I don't get much from Dan. I am saying that Dan literally teaches falsehoods on the subject of his expertise. If I am right, then why wouldn't this be worth sharing?
“All knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it...Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality." - Albert Einstein
_solomarineris
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Post by _solomarineris »

Trevor wrote:
Mister Scratch wrote:I also tried to get DCP to engage in substantive discussion on this issue of "LDS academic embarrassment," but The Good Professor opted for ad hominems instead, which I found very telling.


This suddenly struck me as terribly bizarre. Kinda like someone writing me and asking to engage me in a discussion of my stupid belief system. I mean, would I really want to engage in a lengthy conversation that started with the premise that I was some kind of moron?
I can only imagine the can of worms I've opened up for myself here.


Trevor,
(hypothetitally speaking)
That person, (whomever HE is) has the right to ridicule your belief, faith, and what you stand for. Because you are
the ambassador/missionary of your faith. When you espouse; (again this is I don't even know if you are a Mormon)

polygamy as eternal principle DC132
Baptism for dead
An irrational temple ceremony, open only for select few, which will go to heaven by
remembering a name and some secret tokens & handshakes.
God being a man
And hundreds of other bizzare concepts that average Joe never heard of.

Now, I am not saying what Mormons believe is right or wrong but they are simply bizzare,
So, if you do not want to be ridiculed for this beliefs, you are out of luck. There will be always somebody
out there to pick on you.

PS;
I will not ridicule you, because whomever ridicules you, (especially traditional fundies)
their faith is no less bizzare than Mormons.
_beastie
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Post by _beastie »

Trevor,

Dan tends to flame this sort of thing, as well - he is very interested in what critics have to say about him and tends to interact quite a bit on that topic, but he then doesn't want to debate the actual topic that critics are focusing on. (well, when there is a topic rather than just discussing Dan's personal traits, which some on RFM and a few here do as well) Dan wants to convey that critics like Kevin aren't worth his time, but he can't quite stay away from them, which keeps the whole thing going.
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.

Penn & Teller

http://www.mormonmesoamerica.com
_Trevor
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Post by _Trevor »

solomarineris wrote:Now, I am not saying what Mormons believe is right or wrong but they are simply bizzare,
So, if you do not want to be ridiculed for this beliefs, you are out of luck. There will be always somebody
out there to pick on you.


I agree with you that LDS beliefs are unusual, like the beliefs of almost every religion out there, but I don't think this obligates Mormons to converse seriously about them with people who approach them rudely.

"Dear, sir (moron), you have an obligation to defend your idiotic beliefs to me. If you refuse, this just proves how idiotic those beliefs really are."

Frankly, I won't blame people who do not respond to that approach.
“I was hooked from the start,” Snoop Dogg said. “We talked about the purpose of life, played Mousetrap, and ate brownies. The kids thought it was off the hook, for real.”
_Trevor
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Post by _Trevor »

beastie wrote:Dan tends to flame this sort of thing, as well - he is very interested in what critics have to say about him and tends to interact quite a bit on that topic, but he then doesn't want to debate the actual topic that critics are focusing on. (well, when there is a topic rather than just discussing Dan's personal traits, which some on RFM and a few here do as well) Dan wants to convey that critics like Kevin aren't worth his time, but he can't quite stay away from them, which keeps the whole thing going.


Well, it could be that I am in a different place right now. For me the best response to people like Dan is to ignore them. Robert Price, the Jesus Seminar scholar, wrote up this wonderful little piece in Dialogue in which he defended his approach to the Book of Mormon as a 19th century text. When faced with apologists who acted as though all of their arguments had to be answered before one could study the text as Price does, he rejected the idea entirely. And, he was right. It really isn't necessary to engage apologetics in discussing Mormonism as a scholar or an interested party. Apologists don't have any special corner on the subject that entitles them to dictate how Mormonism is to be studied and by whom.

People who engage apologists give them exactly what they want. They want you to argue with them so that they can bog the discussion down ad infinitum. They do not believe in productive discussion. They purposely frustrate it. It is their stock and trade. Should we expect anything else from them? I don't think so. Should we be surprised when their apologetic behavior spills over into their other work? Hardly. I think we can feel a little sorry for them on this account (not that they want that), but to think that we can change apologetics from being what it is is more than a little naïve. The problem we often have is that we did not understand what it was. We took the search for truth seriously. It is the mistake Michael Quinn made. It is the mistake Kevin Graham made.
Last edited by Guest on Sat Dec 22, 2007 4:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
“I was hooked from the start,” Snoop Dogg said. “We talked about the purpose of life, played Mousetrap, and ate brownies. The kids thought it was off the hook, for real.”
_beastie
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Post by _beastie »

You bring up very good points, Trevor. But another thing to consider is that for every poster (apologist or critic) there are ten silent readers who are looking for legitimate information which will help them form opinions on matters. Most people don't have the time to really study specific topics that are discussed, and some really do require a certain amount of background knowledge in order to be able to evaluate claims. So when I point out the problems of apologia in regards to, in specific, the setting of the Book of Mormon in Mesoamerica, I'm trying to provide information that lurkers may not possess about Mesoamerica that will enable them to evaluate how reasonable the apologists' claims really are.

I don't care if people believe or don't believe. I do care if people who deliberately seek legitimate information about certain issues are given faulty information (like Clark stating that the warfare in the Book of Mormon matches ancient Mesoamerica, for just one example).
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.

Penn & Teller

http://www.mormonmesoamerica.com
_Trevor
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Post by _Trevor »

accidental repost
“I was hooked from the start,” Snoop Dogg said. “We talked about the purpose of life, played Mousetrap, and ate brownies. The kids thought it was off the hook, for real.”
_Jason Bourne
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Post by _Jason Bourne »

Trevor wrote:
Mister Scratch wrote:I also tried to get DCP to engage in substantive discussion on this issue of "LDS academic embarrassment," but The Good Professor opted for ad hominems instead, which I found very telling.


This suddenly struck me as terribly bizarre. Kinda like someone writing me and asking to engage me in a discussion of my stupid belief system. I mean, would I really want to engage in a lengthy conversation that started with the premise that I was some kind of moron?

I can only imagine the can of worms I've opened up for myself here.


Trevor

I think you make valid points, especially in regards to Scratch's obsessiveness with Peterson. Scratch seems over the top is his ranging for anything he can use to destroy Peterson (and others).

However, i think KG has a point on the Islam issue. I do wish the good professor would respond to this. If Dr. Peterson is not accurate in the field he is an expert in it does raise an eyebrow at least for those who read his new book on its founder and also those who are interested in what he has to say in apologetics. I have always enjoyed Dr. Peterson's articles and his defense of the faith when he is not being sarcastic with his antagonists. So yea I am a bit curious.
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