Do DCP and the Mopologists Understand Atheism?

[Doctor Scratch]

An interesting exchange has taken place over at "SeN", after DCP rather sanctimoniously posted a series of quotes from Abraham Lincoln:

Do interactions with gemli here, reflect the better angels of our nature?

I think, quite honestly, that I've shown remarkable patience with a person who continually demands evidence but who also continually refuses to even look at anything that's offered to him and refuses to read any article or book that's suggested to him.

Your disagreements with gemli are at a fundamental level. You both approach the experience of life from incompatible assumptions about the nature of reality itself. I don't see any possible way the two of you could come to agreement under any circumstance.

ETA:

As one reading this interactions it seems to always come down to each mocking the other about their their belief/unbelief in God.

I agree. The difference, I think, is that I understand gemli's worldview, while he doesn't understand mine and doesn't care to do so.

I found this striking. Having read DCP's remarks for many years, I've seen absolutely zero indication that he understands atheism in any meaningful way. Certainly, he's never experienced it or lived it, so that puts him in a very serious deficit in terms of understanding. It's like claiming that you know what the LDS worldview is like despite having never been a Mormon. (Do the Mopologists think that, e.g., Margaret Barker fully understands the LDS worldview?)

Instead, the Mopologists are more about "proving"/insisting that their worldview is superior to everyone else's. Their attitude is a far cry from anything resembling curiosity or tolerance. Even if Dr. Peterson has spent his career studying Islam, he still thinks that Mormonism is the better choice--the proof is in the pudding. And we've seen him and other Mopologists ridicule Calvinism, Evangelicalism, and various other faith traditions on multiple occasions. And what about the constant citing of statistics that are meant to prove that religion makes you "healthier" or "more sane" or whatever else? (Yes: I am ignoring that fact that what DCP is doing is a massive abuse of those statistics, and a typical case of Mopologetic subterfuge.) I've never seen any evidence whatsoever that the Mopologists have any interest in other faiths or worldview except as a means of comparison, with the ultimate goal being to prove that anything other than Mormonism is inferior. If I'm wrong about that, then let's see the evidence.

Ironically, in the "SeN" comments, DCP attempts to lay all of the "blame" at Gemli's feet:

TS: "As one reading this interactions it seems to always come down to each mocking the other about their their belief/unbelief in God."

Plainly, gemli thrives on it. He comes here voluntarily.

DCP permits Gemli to keep posting so that he (DCP) can continuously attack him, and show the Peanut Gallery that atheism is "stoooopid." And what to make of this last comment--that the mockery is okay, because Gemli "comes here voluntarily"? If mockery is proof that one understands another's worldview, then the best experts on Mormonism in the world can be found at RfM and the Ex-Mormon Reddit.

Perhaps most tellingly of all, Midgley suggests that Gemli should be banned altogether:

Is Tavares Standfield now suggesting that Professor Peterson should not allow gemli to opine on his blog? It is not something that Professor Peterson is inclined to do, despite the fact that gemli has recently become a bit more irrational and testy.

Right: of course he's not "inclined" to allow other worldviews any space on his blog's comments. And, again, the only reason he's doing so is so that he can engage in mockery, just as Tavares observed.

[Kishkumen]

No way that DCP really understands atheism. I’m not buying it. I am not surprised that he claims to understand it, but his claim has absolutely no credibility.

[drumdude]

DCP's obsession with the subtitle to Christopher Hitchens' book: God is Not Great proves that he doesn't engage in good faith with atheism. He would only have to search for a few seconds to find Christopher's explanation of the subtitle "how religion poisons everything:"

The subtitle of my book is "how religion poisons everything" and sometimes I get taken up on that. People think that I must have said it just to get an arresting subtitle. There's a sort of sales tactic or so forth, they said, "what do you mean really everything? Italian food? Tantric sex? Chess?"

And I say, as a matter of fact, yes I do mean everything. Because I think that the cult of faith and the instinct to worship and to prostrate ourselves to practice religion, and have it practiced upon us, is poisonous of everything. Because it attacks us in our deepest and most intimate and essential integrity.

It says to us, in effect, that we don't have free will. That we don't have the right to decide for ourselves on what is right. Or we can't tell a right action. People say to me, not realizing how insulting the question is, "how would you have morals if it wasn't for God? How would you know?" I pause here just to say, I think on the campus of a university named for Roger Williams it'll be readily intelligible why I think that's insulting.

One of the reasons I think so is this: If I'm hearing this from one of the practitioners of organized religion, I'm not going to grant them the assumption that they so readily make, in their own favor, that they already know by being Christian or Muslim or Jewish more about morality than I do.

I mean shouldn't it be that those who practice organized religion should begin by making a few apologies for themselves on this score? How dare they say that "I'm on their turf" when we're talking about ethics and morality.

It isn't *I* who mandate things like the mutilation of the genitals of children, for example. Which is in all cases a religious commandment. It isn't *I* who asked for suicide and murder to be fused into one action in the name of God. The suicide-murder community is almost exclusively, not absolutely, but very nearly exclusively a god-fearing and faith-based one.

How dare the assumption be made that we can't talk about these things without a license from some kind of church.

Rather than engage with Christopher on the intellectual points of free agency and morality, DCP attacks the straw man and uses it as an opportunity to post every article about Mormon missionaries finding a lost cat as an example of religion not poisoning everything.

[Kishkumen]

On the one hand, I have all the sympathy in the world for a guy like Christopher Hitchens and his gripes about organized religion, but most of what he says in this regard is so facile and shallow that I find it hard to pay it much mind. The problem with these debates is that, though incredibly important and serious, they are conducted on a level that makes the whole exercise self-defeating.

[drumdude]

On the one hand, I have all the sympathy in the world for a guy like Christopher Hitchens and his gripes about organized religion, but most of what he says in this regard is so facile and shallow that I find it hard to pay it much mind. The problem with these debates is that, though incredibly important and serious, they are conducted on a level that makes the whole exercise self-defeating.

He is not the final voice on atheism, he was an early voice in popularizing atheism online. I can see why DCP would rather continue fighting him (fecklessly) than take on more nuanced modern arguments that have been made post-Hitchens.

[Philo Sofee]

No way that DCP really understands atheism. I’m not buying it. I am not surprised that he claims to understand it, but his claim has absolutely no credibility.

The same thing struck me forcibly when I mentioned Alan Watts, and Peterson immediately told how he had already read Watts. Well if he did (and I have my serious doubts), Watts obviously went entirely over Peterson's head and Peterson quickly moved on. There is nothing in what he writes or says that ever shows he even has an inkling of what Watts was about. But then again, it's like the Mopologist claim to have answers. That is all the depth they believe they have to achieve. When a doubter shows up in their wards and needs help, they are simply told oh that was answered already, as if that solves anything. Mopologists strike me as being image builders, not scholars. They have given the answers, they have already read those books, yes, Shakespeare we mastered by age 6, and so on. But any depth of grasping, understanding and living what they read? Not for even a phony little bit will you see them take that road. It appears to me that all they want is the impression that we have have read that, been there, done that, and eaten that, whilst conversing in any foreign language you would care to. Their ambition knows no bounds, for image. Make it look good, that is all that is needed. Incidentally that is the philosophical idea I deal with in my new video almost posted.

[Kishkumen]

Yeah, there is a lot of Mopologetic posturing for sure, Philo.

[Doctor Scratch]

Great comments here. To be honest, I doubt that Dr. Peterson understands Islam as a religious worldview, despite having studied it for decades. Sure: he “gets it” as an academic subject, but push come to shove? It’s dismissible in the same way that atheism is to him. Well, perhaps slightly less so, because at least it’s *a* religion, but there can be no doubt that he finds it inferior to Mormonism.

And I can guarantee you that the second an Islamic person shows up in the comments to challenge him, that person will be banned.

[Gadianton]

I think Gemli understands the apologist worldview pretty well. All the distractions about Thomas Aquinas etc., none of that has anything to do with Mormonism of their own view or anyone else's. Recall how they reject the 'nonsense' intellectualism of the new MI.

An analogy:

Suppose my favorite music is hip hop and I go around telling everyone it's the best. Suppose also that I just happened to have studied a lot of Stravinsky in college. So when people tell me hip hop is simplistic and predictable, I challenge them on a bunch of arcane music theory that doesn't have anything to do with it.

Why do this?

Well, the point isn't so much, in the analogy, that Stravinsky has anything to do with hip hop, but because I know a lot about Stravinsky, those critical aren't qualified to comment on my tastes in hip hop. One might say that my secret knowledge allows me to see something in the hip hop the others can't see, but we can block this suggestion easily.

Checkmate in one move, ready?

Added Upon. Added Upon lays the whole thing bare in easy-to-understand story tropes that surely Gemli is familiar with, so there is nothing deeper, the references to scholarly stuff is just a distraction like saying I make more money or can bowl a 300 anytime I want, so who are you to question me?

[dastardly stem]

DCP does not have a good grasp of an atheist view. I doubt he's paid much attention. He may have viewed a debate or two involving Hitchens and that seems to be about it. And on that he actually thinks there's some dogmatic religion called atheism.