Could this happen? Airing of grievances & simple apologies?

[_Dr Moore]

There’s a lot of hurt going around these parts. Would anyone be game for actually doing this?

(partial quote, regarding a request for a more encompassing series of apologies

DanielPeterson
...
I'm struck, "Dr. Moore," by your insistence -- certainly directed at me -- that a simple withdrawal of the allegation of "telling a baldfaced lie" is not enough for you to donate to charity, but rather that an apology is required, and by the apparent fact that only one "side" is being asked to apologize.

You have said, if I'm not mistaken, that this blog and Mr. Shades's message board are effectively equivalent in their hostility to and disdain for each other. I think that statement demonstrably and plainly false, but, for the sake of discussion, let's assume it to be true.

Why do you not seek an apology from anybody at Mr. Shades's board? Why have you not offered a balancing thousand dollars to, say, my Malevolent Stalker's favorite charity, or to the Mini-Stalker's? One or both of them could apologize for the terrible allegations they've made against me, for example.
...

Dr. Moore

Hi Dan,

In an effort to hear you better, let me try and restate your position. Because what I think I hear, here, is super encouraging.

Would you like to see something a bit more encompassing? Like a multiple party matrix of apologies? For all the years of hateful personal attacks?

What a wonderful idea!

I would be thrilled to help broker, to the degree such an event might be possible, a thoughtfully planned airing of personal grievances and a series of heartfelt apologies for whatever behaviors have crossed the line, so to speak.

Nothing would make me happier than to see the fervor elevates with a more civilized foundation.

It is painfully clear to me, after just a short time monitoring (and recently participating in) these apologetic debates that personal feelings and emotions run all the way to 11. All the time. What a shame. What a missed opportunity to develop empathy, find growth, and lift everyone up in spite of disagreements. Truly, I would love nothing more than to see it all ratchet down in the name of ratcheting up progress.

Are you on board with helping to facilitate and participate in such an event? I am certain we could identify a neutral online location, registration and validation process, and a means by which folks can safely identify specific offending behaviors, why it was offensive, and request an simple apology. And then, by mutual agreement, for everyone to freely and sincerely offer such apologies.

Fully acknowledging that such event would in no way lessen the potent disagreements or even heal all wounds. But it could symbolize a commitment to treat one another better. It would be a very nice start.

What do you propose? Like Samwise Gamgee, I stand ready to help with this worthy quest and don’t mean to leave you.

Regards,

Dr Moore

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

What do the denizens here have to apologize for?

Mr. Peterson's plagiarism? That's been documented extensively.

Mr. Peterson getting paid for apologetics? That's been documented extensively.

All you wanted was for him to apologize for calling you a baldfaced liar. All he has to say is, "I was wrong for calling you a baldfaced liar, and I apologize for that. Please donate to x-y-z charity."

That's it. It's that simple.

And he can't do it. He won't do it. He mustn't do it.

- Doc

[_Philo Sofee]

What do the denizens here have to apologize for?

Mr. Peterson's plagiarism? That's been documented extensively.

Mr. Peterson getting paid for apologetics? That's been documented extensively.

All you wanted was for him to apologize for calling you a baldfaced liar. All he has to say is, "I was wrong for calling you a baldfaced liar, and I apologize for that. Please donate to x-y-z charity."

That's it. It's that simple.

And he can't do it. He won't do it. He mustn't do it.

- Doc

Because in his mind (his ego) he is already God, and God doesn't make a mistake so there is nothing to apologize for. He has lost more and more respect, the more he refuses to do the simple obvious and get on with enlightening everyone. But he is stuck. It is pure ego he will not let go of. And that, unbeknownst to him is precisely what WILL keep him out of the Celestial Kingdom. He's going to retort to God "Repent? I have nothing to repent of! I defended you now GIVE ***ME*** my reward you fool!"

[_Doctor Scratch]

Such classic DCP here: Sure, he'll apologize, but only if he gets to score points against his enemies. LOL! Last I checked, the other side *did* apologize: Dr. Moore was the first person to extend an olive branch, and yet look what happened. That isn't good enough: Peterson won't return the favor, and instead insists that Moore come over here in order to try and extract an apology--on DCP's behalf, no less!--for these imaginary "terrible allegations."

I hope he takes you up on your offer, Dr. Moore, if only to see him laying out the specifics of the "terrible allegations." What do you want to bet that, in every case, he's either been wildly distorting what was said, or he's blown some minor criticism way out of proportion?

And this is just priceless:

Nobody would like to see you give $1000 (or even, as I understand you've offered, $11,000) to a favorite charity of mine more than I would, and I still haven't given up hope that you might yet do so. But I won't compromise my integrity to earn such a donation for some worthy cause. I won't turn prostitute for your money.

Apologizing = "prostitution"? Is this really how warped these people have become? He'll happily accept more than $20,000 in order to oversee and edit "hit pieces" for the FARMS Review. But $10,000 to a charity just by saying, "I'm sorry"? Nope: won't do it.

[_Gadianton]

All you wanted was for him to apologize for calling you a baldfaced liar.

Right, at that point Dr. Moore had no affiliation with this site, and may never had if the banning misunderstanding hadn't occurred.

It was just a guy representing himself, who very possibly registered for this site as the obvious option to start the dialogue on what happened with the banning. When Dr. Moore apologized for being hasty, he did so without regard for whatever may have happened between him and others connected to the party in the past.

Apologizing = "prostitution"?

If that's the case, then what on earth are we supposed to think about repentance in general? If we apologize and seek forgiveness, then our reward in the eternities is greater, is it not? In fact, don't the apologists themselves tell us that morality doesn't exist if there isn't an afterlife with punishments and rewards?

[_Doctor Scratch]

Apologizing = "prostitution"?

If that's the case, then what on earth are we supposed to think about repentance in general? If we apologize and seek forgiveness, then our reward in the eternities is greater, is it not? In fact, don't the apologists themselves tell us that morality doesn't exist if there isn't an afterlife with punishments and rewards?

An excellent point. By this logic, all those tens of thousands of ex-Mormons are actually far more principled than DCP and the Mopologists, since the ex-Mormons refuse to "prostitute" themselves just in order to get into the Celestial Kingdom. Sure: the LDS Church misses out on all those charitable donations of 10%, but, hey: dignity and integrity don't come cheap.

[_Doctor Scratch]

Peterson writes:

"Dr. Moore":
Sorry. I've been dealing with a number of pressing items that happen to coincide, also, with the annual fall meetings connected with the new BYU academic year.
"Dr. Moore": "Would you like to see something a bit more encompassing? Like a multiple party matrix of apologies? For all the years of hateful personal attacks?"
Not particularly, no. I would simply be happy to see the personal attacks STOP.

"Dr. Moore": "I would be thrilled to help broker, to the degree such an event might be possible, a thoughtfully planned airing of personal grievances and a series of heartfelt apologies for whatever behaviors have crossed the line, so to speak."

I have essentially zero interest in dredging up and rehearsing (and then contending about) roughly a decade and a half of grievances and personal attacks. I have less than no confidence that anything good would come of such a venture.

Consider, as a simple example, the matter of the $20,000 per year that I'm supposed to have earned as chairman of the FARMS board and/or as editor of the "FARMS Review." (My Malevolent Stalker brought it up again in response to your suggestion that people on his board might consider joining in the apologies that you asked of us here.) I denied that claim when it was first made. It's flatly false. And, if I remember correctly, there was at least one accountant -- theologically on the Stalker's side as well as a fellow member of his board -- who warned him even then that he was misreading the tax documents that he had obtained in order to make his accusation against me. It didn't faze the Stalker at all. He's repeated the false claim multiple times since then, and it's one of the pillars (all of them equally bogus) on which he builds his larger accusation of dishonesty against me. Revisiting that subject would accomplish nothing -- and it's only one of scores if not hundreds of such issues. (As I say, this has been going on for about fifteen years.)

It's your money, of course, and I won't tell you how to spend it. But, rather than seeking apologies with it, I think it might be more effectively used to reward (or subsidize?) good future behavior. If you were to offer $1000 to the favorite charities of my Malevolent Stalker and of, say, the Mini-Stalker in exchange for solemn promises from them to refrain from criticizing my character, etc., for a period of six months, I wonder how they would respond. Surely there must be other interesting topics out there. I can promise you that, if the personal attacks from their message board were to cease, I would have little difficulty at all in never mentioning it. If you want to ratchet the hostility down, that would serve excellently well to do it.

First: he is misremembering the conversation about his compensation for serving as Chair of FARMS. He *was* paid more than $20,000 (I believe the figure was something like $20,800--you can hunt it down, if you like, on GuideStar: it was from either the 1998 or 1997 fiscal year). He writes: "And, if I remember correctly, there was at least one accountant -- theologically on the Stalker's side as well as a fellow member of his board -- who warned him even then that he was misreading the tax documents that he had obtained in order to make his accusation against me." The "accountant" was Jason Bourne, and what Bourne said was that Peterson's normal salary might have been "bought out" by FARMS. There is nobody, except for DCP himself, who believes that DCP *was not* paid that dollar amount for his service to FARMS. The only real question at this point is whether it was paid to him as part of his normal salary or on top of his normal salary. He claims not to remember and says that he can't understand basic tax documents, so that's where we've been on this particular matter for however many years. His repeated claim that he never got that dollar amount *is* a "baldfaced lie." The truth of the matter is right there in the tax documents. (At one point, if memory serves, DCP actually tried to claim that FARMS had a shady accountant--one who had since been fired--who bungled the handing of the docs! LOL!!)

In any case, it's interesting to see him asking you to pay "hush money" to people on this board: "Pay them to shut up!" Hey: if he were to stop blogging for six months, what would happen? What if he did not make any personal attacks on Jonathan Neville and the Heartlanders for six months? (I know, I know: "They attacked *ME* first!" Did they, though?) What if he refrained from negative talk about the Maxwell Institute? I doubt he could go six months in that vein. Or what if he were to ban Louis Midgley from his blog? Is that worth $10,000?

[_Dr Exiled]

From an outside perspective of someone who hasn't been a part of the back and forth over the years, I think the problem lies with having to defend or self-appointing oneself to defend Mormonism, a religion with patently false claims. Our apologist brothers over at sic et non must have faced a lot of ridicule from the outside world for being out front defending the indefensible over the years. When they attend academic conferences that Smoot always seems to be attending, my guess is that there is an underlying, unspoken attitude among the majority of non-mormon attendees of disbelief, e.g., how can someone as smart as DCP or Dr. Midgely believe in this patent nonsense. That must wear thin. Then there is the unspoken ridicule that goes on in the outside academic community against BYU. The PAC 10 was calling a few years back and BYU was denied entrance because BYU is what it is and was an institution that supported spiritual segregation in not allowing those of african decent to have special, Mormon invented magic powers for a while. The justifications for this are total nonsense and yet the apologists are forced to contort themselves to justify it in some way, without admitting it was never inspired at all. I think years of this have made Dr. Midgely into the cranky person he is, always on the attack. So, perhaps having them shut it down for a period of time would do them some good, everyone some good. My guess is that they would find that the world and the so-called enemies they believe exist would stand down as well, because it's really like the crazy uncle at Thanksgiving who proposes and continues to propose his crazy theories. At first, you are polite and listen, but after a while, you have to start pushing back a little because he is so adamant in his craziness and adamant in trying to convince you and those listening around that if you don't push back on crazy, you get labeled as believing crazy.

[_fetchface]

I've never really understood the focus on DCP here or anywhere.

In my view, the defensive snarky attitude that he and those like him hold is a very effective deconversion tool (they truly are doing Satan's work more effectively than Satan himself). I was appalled during my disaffection process by the strident, unempathetic attitude of the mopologists and it really prompted me to run for the door. However, why discuss him so much in particular? I've never understood it, with the exception of the detailed discussions on his bizarre defenses of plagiarism.

I have seen a couple of over-the-top attacks on DCP here over the years but really, he is a snarky, unempathetic ass all the time, so who is he to demand an apology? I don't see much difference between what he gives and what he receives.

[_Dr Moore]

To a relative newcomer, it’s obvious.

Totally hear you on the unempathetic snarkiness doing more to de convert than bolster faith in the faith.

Ex Mormons have good reasons for being bitter. That was true in Joseph Smith’s day, it was true for Grant Palmer, and it’s true today too. Sometimes that bitterness leaks out into the public.

Doesn’t excuse, in any way or at any time, a self described Latter-day Saint adopting the same tone with critics.

Would anyone have been converted to Christianity if Jesus, in the garden, rather than healing the guard, had issued a snarky condemnation. “Yeah it figures Judas, bet you and your new friends in the toxic swamp really get off telling demonstrably false lies about me! Here, have another ear to bend to your lies!”