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In the spirit of Nietzsche's perspectivism, I'd remark that the nature of the association is is entirely up to you to decide.huckelberry wrote: ↑Sat May 07, 2022 7:56 pmstating the obvious, the photo is a completely different Peterson. Reason? similarities, differences?.
I love that Dr. Stak just waltzes in, absolutely smokes DCP’s banal narcissism, and DCP is so butthurt he has to make a blog post about how ‘intelligent’ he and others are, and that “totes for realz gaiz i knoes a lots bout odder religionz an’ an’ an’ filosofeez an’ an’ even atheizms an’ Marxes an’ commiez n’ stuff!”Doctor Scratch wrote: ↑Mon May 09, 2022 9:58 pmYes: terrific analysis, Dr. Stak. It really is remarkable how stupid, boring, and repetitive "SeN" has become. Dr. Peterson claims that he slaved away all these years specifically so that he could travel, and yet even while on the road, he's still doing these lame blog entries and picking fights with Gemli. And I wonder if you saw his latest? I.e., where he talks about how magnanimous he is towards other belief systems? What a joke.
A joke we are familiar with, I just now glanced at that post and immediately recognized elements from Daniel's FAIR presentation Easier than Research, More Inflammatory than Truth from 2000:
Daniel C. Peterson wrote:Now, there’s another rule that I might mention to you, one I formulated some years ago. I can’t remember if I called it Peterson’s Rule. I know one person who’s called it Peterson’s Rule since it basically grew out of an experience I had in Cairo.
I remember going with a Muslim friend of mine to visit a chemistry professor at the University of Cairo. And this is a very educated man, obviously, holder of a doctorate, I think European educated, as I recall, and we got to talking about what I was doing there, that I was studying Islam, and so on, and he asked me, “Are you a Muslim?” and I said “No.” And he asked me the question that I always dread, “Why not?” which can get you into a very awkward position. Well, I tried to answer it positively and said, “I’m a Christian, I believe in the divinity of Christ and, therefore, I can’t be a Muslim.”
He said, “How can you possibly believe in that? Everybody knows that God doesn’t have a son. God can’t have a son. ‘He nether begets nor is he begotten’,” he quoted from the Koran. And then he said, “And let me tell you something else. Is this what you believe? Do you believe that God had a son and that to buy himself off because he wanted to destroy and damn everybody, he had to send his son down and make sure he was tortured to death so that he wouldn’t have to damn all of humanity?”
I said, “Well, that’s not quite the way we typically put it but that’s a relatively fair statement of the idea.”
He said, “Well that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Everybody knows that’s not true. It’s absolutely inconceivable.”
Well, what struck me about that was that religions often look silly to people outside. He said no intelligent person could possibly believe in a doctrine like that. Well, besides the fact that it was somewhat personally insulting, I thought, “But intelligent people have demonstrably believed in that doctrine, whether you think it’s right or wrong.” I mean, St. Augustine wasn’t stupid. Thomas Aquinas wasn’t stupid. Calvin wasn’t stupid. Kierkergaard wasn’t stupid. There are a lot of bright people who have accepted a doctrine much like this. So the principle that came to me on this was that if you are looking at a religious tradition that has a large number of adherents (I’ll grant there are some small ones that probably have no intellectual respectability at all that appeal to a few weirdos and so on; I could name some groups but I won’t), but if it’s a group of any size at all that’s lasted for any length of time at all, then there must be something in it that appeals to different people.
Daniel C. Peterson wrote:One day, during my studies in Egypt more than forty years ago, I spoke at length with a Muslim chemistry professor at the University of Cairo. He was astonished when he learned that, although was studying Arabic and Islam, I was still a Christian.
“Do you really,” he asked, incredulously, “believe that God had a Son, and that he allowed that Son to be murdered in order to buy himself off?”
After expressing some reservations about how he had expressed the doctrine of the atonement, I replied that, yes, I did believe something rather like that that.
“Oh!” he exclaimed. “How can any intelligent person believe in such nonsense?”
Well, the fact is that highly intelligent people have accepted Christianity. (Origen, Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, Kierkegaard, C. S. Lewis, Peter Kreeft, Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, N. T. Wright, and Nicholas Wolterstorff are among those who come immediately to mind.)
But it was thought-provoking to find that my most sacred beliefs seemed insanely ludicrous to a highly educated outsider. It was enlightening to find Christianity, for once, in the minority, and Christian assumptions questioned by another theist as less than self-evident.
How many times have I heard people say things like, “How can any intelligent person believe in Islam?” or “How can any intelligent person be a Catholic?” Yet people like al-Ghazali and Muhammad Iqbal and Ibn Khaldun have been Muslims, and the Catholic Church has claimed the loyalty of such thinkers as Thomas Aquinas and Cardinal Newman and G. K. Chesterton and Jacques Maritain and Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) and Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI).
Reflecting on this, and on my own decades of experience as an Islamicist, I long ago formulated what might be termed Peterson’s First Rule for the Study of Other Religions and Worldviews: If a substantial number of sane and intelligent people believe something that seems to you utterly without sense, and especially if they have done so over some considerable length of time, the problem probably lies with you, for not grasping what it is about that belief that a lucid, informed, and reasonable person might find plausible and satisfying.
Dr. Peterson could switch to a travel Vlog format and open an LDS-oriented Patreon page with the motto, "Proving Joseph right one country and gourmet meal at a time". Watching him launch into attacks on Gemli while lounging in a Japanese Onsen would be a hit back in Jell-O Belt.Doctor Scratch wrote: ↑Mon May 09, 2022 9:58 pmDr. Peterson claims that he slaved away all these years specifically so that he could travel,...
And before that in June, 2018:One day, during my studies in Egypt nearly forty years ago, I spoke at length with a Muslim chemistry professor at the University of Cairo. He was astonished when he learned that, although was studying Arabic and Islam, I was still a Christian.
“Do you really,” he asked, incredulously, “believe that God had a Son, and that he allowed that Son to be murdered in order to buy himself off?”
…Reflecting on this, and on my own experience as an Islamicist, I long ago formulated what might be termed Peterson’s First Rule for the Study of Other Religions and Worldviews…
Also in february 2020:One day, during my studies in Egypt thirty years ago, I spoke at length with a Muslim chemistry professor at the University of Cairo. He was astonished when he learned that I was a Christian.…
Reflecting on this, and on my own experience as an Islamicist, I long ago formulated what might be termed Peterson’s First Rule for the Study of Other Religions…
In the above blog entry, he noted he had previously published this story in 2007:Years ago, while a graduate student in Egypt, I was introduced by a friend to a chemistry professor at the University of Cairo. After a pleasant conversation, the professor asked what an American was doing in Egypt, studying Arabic and Islam. “Are you a Muslim?” he inquired. When he was told no…
He also admitted to this 2007 publication when he repeated the entry in October 2019:I published the little item below in the Provo Daily Herald way back in 2007:
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... -that.html
So between the 2000 start and the 2022 latest, at least 5 more “publications.” Peterson plagiarizes everyone, including himself.I wrote this column for the Provo Daily Herald newspaper back in 2007…
Years ago, while a graduate student in Egypt, I was introduced by a friend to a chemistry professor at the University of Cairo. After a pleasant conversation, the professor asked what an American was doing in Egypt, studying Arabic and Islam. “Are you a Muslim?” he inquired. When he was told no….
What makes you think that?Everybody Wang Chung wrote: ↑Tue May 10, 2022 4:53 amThanks Professor Stak. It’s obvious DCP never met with this professor. The whole story was fabricated.