Dr. Peterson doubting Spiritual Experiences?

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doubtingthomas
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Dr. Peterson doubting Spiritual Experiences?

Post by doubtingthomas »

Over the past few hours, I’ve had a brief and quite unsatisfying exchange with a fellow who showed up here from another message board, a place where my personal inadequacies, depravities, and buffooneries are a significant and perpetual theme. His major focus, so far as I can determine, was to challenge me about the inadequacy of personal spiritual experience as a basis for orienting one’s life. (There’s very possibly something autobiographical behind his challenge.) Evidently, though, he has now bowed out of the conversation. At least, he’s announced that he’s done so on his home board. He’s finished with me. And his announcement was accompanied by a couple of appropriately sneering expressions of personal contempt for me that, I’m sure, will win the approval of his audience there and gain enhanced “street cred” for him. I expect that I’m simply too illogical and disingenuous for his tastes. And he explicitly says that I’m too old for him to want to waste any more time on me. Alas! My ludicrously advanced age is yet another of my defects!

Reflecting on his assertions as to the impotence of personal spiritual experiences, though, is good for me. I find myself thinking, yet again and from a slightly different angle, about such individual religious experiences as those related in the Bible about Isaiah and Saul of Tarsus, and about St. Thomas Aquinas (see “Who is the ‘Angelic Doctor’ and what did he write?”), and about the Indian emperor Ashoka (see “Indian ruler sowed seeds of Buddhism”), and about St. Joan of Arc. And about Joseph Smith’s First Vision.
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... ience.html

Something tells me Dr. Peterson doesn't feel very confident about his own spiritual experiences. He won't admit it.
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Philo Sofee
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Re: Dr. Peterson doubting Spiritual Experiences?

Post by Philo Sofee »

I love how he automatically implies he is in the same category as these august spiritual persons from history... Notice how he is just showing off his vast intellectual prowess in order to impress his followers of his blog. Ohhhhh! He knows about SO MANY of the great spiritual leaders of other cultures and traditions in the past! Wow, what he says must be true, I think I will just believe him and now have to do all that reading, I just read Peterson! I mean, for how many decades has this been his presentation of implying he is ALWAYS with only the greatest of the greats of history? It's a clever rhetorical trick, quite ineffective I might add... and of course, he will deny this is his intention - yet another clever rhetorical trick he has learned.

The idea is obvious... see? I have read all this stuff about spirituality, therefore, it goes without saying - and I ain't about to say it anyway! - that I am also spiritual and on par with these ancient greats. But I won't talk about it, I'll just show how I am also an intellectual giant and have read vastly more than all anti-Mormon critics combined, so therefore none of their arguments are valid against mine... I mean the same old saw goes on and on, him and his imagined victories and wisdom. And after all that he continues letting Lou Midgley sh*t all over his blog, demonstrating there isn't an ounce of Wisdom in him.
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Gadianton
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Re: Dr. Peterson doubting Spiritual Experiences?

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I've skimmed through the last couple of threads where you engaged this individual, can you point to where you sneered personal contempt at him? It seemed to me your posting was typical DT posting, to the point, terse, and your interlocutor was the one belaboring the background drama and promoting his victim status. I didn't see where you said anything uncivil, but I didn't read everything.

I don't have a problem with spiritual experiences per se. Spiritual experiences can be just that, in context of spiritualist worldviews, but spiritual experiences within increasingly modernist worldviews become problematic. In Mormonism, a spiritual experience isn't just that, it's an epistemic event that validates a whole slew of rigid propositions about the world produced by a wealthy corporate entity. That isn't the case for the greater history of humanity's spiritual experiencing.

If DCP feels some fluff, that validates the Book of Mormon or the Church, which validates the teachings of the Church, which validates his all-in support of a right-wing Supreme Court bent on stripping away any freedom that isn't Bible based under a narrow interpretation of the Bible.
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Re: Dr. Peterson doubting Spiritual Experiences?

Post by drumdude »

Blaise Pascal had a beautiful experience.

Unfortunately it had nothing to do with Mormonism. It makes about as much sense for DCP to cite it in support of Mormonism as it would for a Scientologist to cite it in support of Scientology.

Daniel said he expects to be right about the “major things but not the details” when he dies. If there is a God, something common to all human religious experiences, that God will have nothing to do with some backwater 19th century con man’s inventions.
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Re: Dr. Peterson doubting Spiritual Experiences?

Post by doubtingthomas »

Gadianton wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 4:26 am
I've skimmed through the last couple of threads where you engaged this individual, can you point to where you sneered personal contempt at him? It seemed to me your posting was typical DT posting, to the point, terse, and your interlocutor was the one belaboring the background drama and promoting his victim status. I didn't see where you said anything uncivil, but I didn't read everything.
You are absolutely right. He got offended when I said that Jeffrey Meldrum is his friend.

I did say here (Discuss Mormonism) that he is like 80 years old and he won't change.

He really likes to play the victim.
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Re: Dr. Peterson doubting Spiritual Experiences?

Post by doubtingthomas »

Philo Sofee wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 4:23 am
But I won't talk about it, I'll just show how I am also an intellectual giant and have read vastly more than all anti-Mormon critics combined
Someone has to send him this video. Seriously.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/w9fSaZpBUn4

I bet O'Connor knows more than all the LDS apologists combined.
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Re: Dr. Peterson doubting Spiritual Experiences?

Post by Marcus »

Philo Sofee wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 4:23 am
doubtingthomas wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 4:06 am


https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... ience.html

Something tells me Dr. Peterson doesn't feel very confident about his own spiritual experiences. He won't admit it.
I love how he automatically implies he is in the same category as these august spiritual persons from history... Notice how he is just showing off his vast intellectual prowess in order to impress his followers of his blog. Ohhhhh! He knows about SO MANY of the great spiritual leaders of other cultures and traditions in the past! Wow, what he says must be true, I think I will just believe him and now have to do all that reading, I just read Peterson! I mean, for how many decades has this been his presentation of implying he is ALWAYS with only the greatest of the greats of history? It's a clever rhetorical trick, quite ineffective I might add... and of course, he will deny this is his intention - yet another clever rhetorical trick he has learned....
he even tried that trick when he got caught plagiarizing. He had a list of "great" authors who had been caught "inadvertently" plagiarizing... just like he was. :roll:
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Re: Dr. Peterson doubting Spiritual Experiences?

Post by Kishkumen »

drumdude wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 4:34 am
Blaise Pascal had a beautiful experience.

Unfortunately it had nothing to do with Mormonism. It makes about as much sense for DCP to cite it in support of Mormonism as it would for a Scientologist to cite it in support of Scientology.

Daniel said he expects to be right about the “major things but not the details” when he dies. If there is a God, something common to all human religious experiences, that God will have nothing to do with some backwater 19th century con man’s inventions.
It does make some sense according to Mormon theology as re-affirmed by some modern LDS leaders. The idea is that all truth revealed, be it in one culture or another, comes ultimately from the inspiration of God. That is why DCP feels comfortable citing these disparate examples.

I find it odd, frankly, that you reserve special bile for Joseph Smith. That “backwater 19th century con man” did have some good ideas and espouse some noble sentiments. That phenomenon was sufficient to launch a religion with global reach. Rejecting that is one thing—just like rejecting any meaning-making system you don’t care for—but this is exactly the kind of unreasoned hatred that sparks Mopologetics. This is exactly what has guys like Midgley frothing at the mouth.

And it just looks overboard and goofy.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
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Re: Dr. Peterson doubting Spiritual Experiences?

Post by Philo Sofee »

Kishkumen wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 10:51 am
drumdude wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 4:34 am
Blaise Pascal had a beautiful experience.

Unfortunately it had nothing to do with Mormonism. It makes about as much sense for DCP to cite it in support of Mormonism as it would for a Scientologist to cite it in support of Scientology.

Daniel said he expects to be right about the “major things but not the details” when he dies. If there is a God, something common to all human religious experiences, that God will have nothing to do with some backwater 19th century con man’s inventions.
It does make some sense according to Mormon theology as re-affirmed by some modern LDS leaders. The idea is that all truth revealed, be it in one culture or another, comes ultimately from the inspiration of God. That is why DCP feels comfortable citing these disparate examples.

I find it odd, frankly, that you reserve special bile for Joseph Smith. That “backwater 19th century con man” did have some good ideas and espouse some noble sentiments. That phenomenon was sufficient to launch a religion with global reach. Rejecting that is one thing—just like rejecting any meaning-making system you don’t care for—but this is exactly the kind of unreasoned hatred that sparks Mopologetics. This is exactly what has guys like Midgley frothing at the mouth.

And it just looks overboard and goofy.
Yes, and like we have. both talked about (together), Joseph Smith very well did tap into some of the themes of the ancient mysteries, and not just some of the fringe views either... It is problematic when we see Smith taking such a literal historical view of it which I have most come out against, not Joseph Smith's ideas per se. I am reading in Algis Uzdavinys' research and find it overwhelmingly parallel to some of Smith's theology. I suspect I will find more when my book Method Infinite arrives (hopefully today) dealing with Free Masonry and the endowment.

I will confess, sometimes Smith appears like such a complete dunderhead, and other times he is exalting my spirit to the highest celestial regions of desire. He is an enigma, which is what makes looking into him so dadgum fascinating! One major hurdle which I simply see no point in trying to get over is the modern Mormon interpretations of the Prophet. I simply see so much of their view as missing the mark concerning him.

This is why Dr. Peterson takes so much flack around here. He simply takes the all Modern Mormon view of Smith and mocks anyone else who comes out with differing conclusions/research/evidence than what he interprets in lock step with the church'a interpretation of Smith and the scriptures he imagines is true. And he knows it, and glories in it, weirdly enough. But I do believe at least both you and I have different takes on it and they are exactly as grand and exalting and exciting as anything Mormonism has interpreted. But then we get stomped on for even caring to simply discuss this. "NO! If it isn't interpreted correctly (as we Brethren teach) then it is wrong, the Holy Ghost will leave you to the wiles of Satan, and you shall apostatize." It is that spirit of thinking which I can no longer stomach. There is precious little actual friendly discussion and bantering and learning anymore, just read, believe, and follow the church approved materials, and we all know that means it continues to stay in the 5th grade level of spirituality, rather than advancing to collegiate level spirituality and exaltation.

I think what sent me over the edge out of apologetics is when they seemed to believe they simply have to confirm absolutely everything Joseph Smith said as a literal historical occurring event. That, to me, seems too extremely one sided, and lop sided. It is as worthless as going extreme the other direction of imagining that everything he taught, said, and believed was only to be considered as spiritual. Neither view actually works, and sure, when the are pushed Smith takes the brunt of the criticism. I have given him a fair share of that myself.

But I am moving more in a direction of exploring his overall spiritual views and the themes which appear to me to be all consuming for humans throughout the concourses of time. Joseph Smith does, to me at least, appear to have tapped into a source of thought (reality?) which has been known and believed by many other cultures throughout the millenia. It's what makes the mysteries so enjoyable to look into.
Last edited by Philo Sofee on Wed Aug 03, 2022 1:02 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Dr. Peterson doubting Spiritual Experiences?

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Kishkumen wrote:
Wed Aug 03, 2022 10:51 am
That “backwater 19th century con man” did have some good ideas and espouse some noble sentiments.
Can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit?
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