Dr. Peterson's FAIR Conference Talk

[Guest]

In January of 2018, Peterson again said he 'recognized' his anonymous emailer's characteristic style:
...
The problem is, I don't see anything similar between the style of the email above and the two I quoted in my previous post.

Are you sure there isn't any archaic syntax you missed?

I'm sure a statistical comparison to a control set of psuedo-archaic hate mail would indicate that a 21st century author could not possibly have written those insults! My money's on somebody like George Carlin chairing that particular ghost committee.

[_Blixa]

Midgley acts like he is still butt hurt that the Tanners were allowed to be alive in Salt Lake City and publish the historic truth while his church snowballed and black balled anyone who who taught that truth in lieu of the church's lies about their own history. What a clown he is. There is no Christ like love in that human/chimp. He so turns me totally off, I ought to focus on him rather than his cohort Dr. Peterson. He needs to be taken down a few notches. His arrogance is a stench upon the land. Too bad he doesn't blog.

It's true that Woody has suffered from Angry Old Man Syndrome for decades now, but perhaps we should engage in Christian charity and remember a time when he was targeted as a liberal subversive by Ernest L. Wilkinson. Would it not be a kinder thing to encourage him to remember his better self than to belittle his present falling off?

And what did chimps ever do to you?

[_Philo Sofee]

A chimp threw some poo at me once. What a day that was!

[_Kishkumen]

Dr. Peterson now seems to be saying that Everybody Wang Chung is the author of the offensive emails

I don't doubt it.

Nice to see you, Nevo!

[_Everybody Wang Chung]

A chimp threw some poo at me once. What a day that was!

Metaphorically, was the chimp DCP and the poo Mopologetics?

Or maybe I have that backwards. DCP was the poo and the chimp was Mopologetics?

[_Johannes]

If I were a stranger to this board looking in for the first time and noticing the number of DCP related threads down the front page alone, I would be under the immediate impression that this guy must be important.

Yes, I've been struck by this too. It's an interesting example of someone outside the church hierarchy becoming more famous or notorious than those within in - and he's not the only one.

If you want to get people talking here, who do you start a thread about? Jesus Christ? No way. Joseph Smith or Brigham Young? No. Russell Nelson? No. You start one about DCP or John Dehlin.

[_Symmachus]

Yes, I've been struck by this too. It's an interesting example of someone outside the church hierarchy becoming more famous or notorious than those within in - and he's not the only one.

If you want to get people talking here, who do you start a thread about? Jesus Christ? No way. Joseph Smith or Brigham Young? No. Russell Nelson? No. You start one about DCP or John Dehlin.

With respect to my learned frater, the Reverend Canon Johannes, I don't think it should be that striking. There are many differences, we can be sure, between Jesus Christ and Daniel C. Peterson, the most of relevant of which for this board is that the Son of God, though reigning in glory at the right hand of the Father, hath not a blog whose main focus are the thoughts that Daniel C. Peterson attributes to himself. Same goes for the others.

In short, this an internet forum, and since both Dehlin and Peterson's main field of operation is the internet, it should be no surprise that they get a lot of attention in places similarly situated. They are by the far the most prominent individual online voices in Mormonism, and nothing in their actions suggest they want it otherwise. Dehlin at least has enough awareness to realize (or admit) this fact, and thus doesn't whine about the negative attention: if notoriety is the currency you aim to acquire, one must accept that it is is a two-sided coin.

I understand why people get tired of all the Peterson threads. I don't read many myself. But what is more tiring to me is the suggestion that Daniel Peterson is somehow a special object of fascination and for some random reason. That is how Peterson likes to portray it. But who are Peterson's competitors? What traditional FARMSians exist out there with very active blogs that post several times a day? Looking at Sic et Non—and I still can't believe he would coopt that hefty title for the musings I will generously call "lightweight"—most of what he posts doesn't get attention here. It's his pro-traditionalist Mormon apologia. That is what gets attention here, and the fact that Peterson is the most prominent online practitioner of that stuff depends on his being largely the only one.

Despite his many claims to the contrary, there is nothing special about Daniel Peterson.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Excellent post, Prof. Symmachus. It's true as you say: Dr. Peterson craves fame and attention (in a way that, frankly, seems rather conflicted), and you are also right that he has pretty much no competition. How did that happen, I wonder? John Gee and Bill Hamblin used to maintain blogs. But I think you're correct that currently, there's no other game in town. (Maybe Smoot or Rappleye count on some level?) Back in the era of classic FARMS, these guys used to band together in order to conduct assaults on critics (think of the multiple hit pieces on, e.g., Grant Palmer, or perhaps that special issue of the Review that was devoted to attacking that Metcalf book). Nowadays, though, DCP seems like an island.

As for the other material on this thread: it's worth pointing out that Dr. Peterson emailed Kishkumen for a reason, and no, that "reason" was not to simply share the emails he (i.e., DCP) is allegedly receiving, and it was really only *partially* about trying to garner sympathy from the Reverend. The real reason he brought up the emails was a diversionary tactic. Once the issue of him theoretically bilking the FAIR Conference attendees out of money came up (due to his talk being so bad), he hit the "detonate" button. There are few things that send Dr. Peterson more deeply into a tailspin that speculations about how much money he is paid to do apologetics, or whether he is cheating foolish Chapel Mormons out of their hard-earned widow's mites. But it needs to be said that, if this transcript is even remotely accurate, then the FAIR Conference folks deserve at least a partial refund of their money, because that "keynote" address was complete garbage.

Meanwhile, just today or the other day, on "Sic et Non," Raymond Takashi Swenson (a commentator who doesn't quite seem real to me, but that's another matter) was saying that the German-speaking tour guide in the Middle East (per one of DCP's blog entries) was ripping off the people he was leading, because he was reciting inaccurate information. Wow--can you imagine? Has there ever been an instance where the Mopologists were dispensing information that was misleading or inaccurate (such as the 2nd Watson Letter)? And how much money/donations did they collect on the basis of such behavior?

[_Symmachus]

I hope you can forgive my ignorance here, my dear Doctor Scratch, but what is the 2nd Watson Letter? I've seen this referenced a few times, and while I usually prefer to do my own research, on this one neither Google nor the search function on this site are particularly helpful, and I'm afraid I haven't much time to divert from my work on Nephite linguistics: a three volume project, perhaps more, although, to be honest, I haven't completed any of it, since, much to my critic's delight (I have only one) it consists largely, though not completely, of some notes in manuscript form—really more of a computer file—and the only thing I've been able to give my attention to, since I'm so busy meeting important people in the field and traveling—I'm posting this from the surprisingly crisp shores of an Alpine lake in Switzerland, where I may or may not have served a mission—is comma usage, n-dash deployment, and excessive, if occasionally obsessive, but always pointless hypotactic sentences, with an unhealthy dash of multisyllabic adverbs and, even, exuberantly indulgent self-promotion.

Hamblin disappeared from the blogging scene, as far as I know, after the Jenkins Affair. What a pity. As for John Gee, Forn Spǫll Fira is not very active, certainly not in Mormon apologetics, and its quality is reflected in the blog title itself: it's misspelled (as is a recent blog post on the "Odessey") and mistranslated. A minor philological quibble not worthy of comment, really, except that I do find the misspelling (or perhaps I should write "mispelling") ironic for two reasons: 1) the old FARMSians pride themselves on their mastery of languages, which is one of the main ways that they establish their authority, and 2) Gee in particular portrays himself as a rigorous scholar and writes in that condescending style of people who would never make such sloppy, stupid mistakes. But of course it turns out, as usual, that sloppy, stupid mistakes are an apologetic specialty.

The Old Norse should be "Forn Spjǫll Fira," and it means not "The Ancient Tale of Man" but "Ancient tales of men." It is from the first stanza of the Vǫluspá from the poetic Edda, wherein a female seer addressing Odin recounts the creation of the world and (in one manuscript) its end in the violent cataclysms of Ragnarǫk. When I first saw Gee's blog, I wondered about the title: was this going to be a blog devoted to a new apologetic theory involving the pre-Christian religion of Iceland (perhaps a lost tribe of Israel)? Would "ancient document Mormon scholar" and ethnic Scandinavian Erik Einarson finally get some long-deserved recognition from the employed ancient Mormon document scholars? The only answer to these expansive possibilities was a shrinking disappointment. Its brief posts are mostly links to news stories or other blogposts covering news from antiquity. I guess "Forn Spjǫll Fira" is just supposed to be a way of saying "news about ancient humans." Since the cleverness was bungled, I have to assume we're not supposed to read anything more into it. Of course, why should John Gee know Old Norse at all? It's not his area. But then I have to wonder how any "critic" bold enough to misspell his/her blog with, say, incorrect hieroglyphs would fare at the hands of apologists. Volenti non fit iniuria.

As for Smoot, perhaps I should pay more attention to it. He's more substantive than Peterson—not that he's any more correct in his views—but that means responding to his posts requires a lot more work.

By the way, are you supposed to be the fabled "Malevolent Stalker" or is that the emailer? Stalking is a crime in many states, and if he felt himself the victim of a stalker, he should contact the police. If it doesn't quite rise to that, it's probably not really stalking, and of course if he were ever to attach and publicize a name to this "Malevolent Stalker," whom he claims has been stalking him for years, surely that would be libelous if it weren't true.

[_Lemmie]

I'm afraid I haven't much time to divert from my work on Nephite linguistics: a three volume project, perhaps more, although, to be honest, I haven't completed any of it, since, much to my critic's delight (I have only one) it consists largely, though not completely, of some notes in manuscript form—really more of a computer file—and the only thing I've been able to give my attention to, since I'm so busy meeting important people in the field and traveling—I'm posting this from the surprisingly crisp shores of an Alpine lake in Switzerland, where I may or may not have served a mission—is comma usage, n-dash deployment, and excessive, if occasionally obsessive, but always pointless hypotactic sentences, with an unhealthy dash of multisyllabic adverbs and, even, exuberantly indulgent self-promotion.

I feel like I've seen this somewhere before.....