How Do Near-Death Experiences Help the Mopologists?

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Dr Moore
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Re: How Do Near-Death Experiences Help the Mopologists?

Post by Dr Moore »

Wow. So talking about NDEs as a sacred manifestation is just like talking about visions or the temple or the second anointing? That sure puts things in a new light.
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Re: How Do Near-Death Experiences Help the Mopologists?

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You know, it occurs to me that there may be another layer to this. We all know that Midgley, DCP, and the other Mopologists harbor a secret resentment for the Brethren. They resent the apostles' authority, fame, and power. A blog wouldn't even be necessary if they were that high-ranking. *They* would be the ones forcing the peons to lick their boots--and it would be people with actual PhDs, and not losers like Ideeho and Philip Leaning. But that's not how things are, are they? And so there is this simmering resentment.

When viewed in this way, you can't help but see the repeated postings of the NDE items as a kind of effrontery. The Brethren, going clear back to Joseph Smith, have advised the Latter-day Saints to *not* do what DCP has been doing: he is directly contradicting, and arguably thumbing his nose, at the Brethren's teachings. I know that he likes to take risks and enjoys taking potshots at what he thinks are "sacred cows" or "third rails," and it's not that big of a stretch to imagine that he would occasionally lob a spitball at the General Authorities. Sure: it's going to be "buried" somewhat, and you might not catch it unless you know what you're looking for, but given the rather aggressive reaction to Julie Rowe's promotion of NDEs, it seems clear that DCP's behavior is very much testing the limits of the Brethren's patience.

Or, at least, that is one way of interpreting all of this.
"If, while hoping that everybody else will be honest and so forth, I can personally prosper through unethical and immoral acts without being detected and without risk, why should I not?." --Daniel Peterson, 6/4/14
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Re: How Do Near-Death Experiences Help the Mopologists?

Post by Doctor Scratch »

Dr Moore wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 3:48 am
Wow. So talking about NDEs as a sacred manifestation is just like talking about visions or the temple or the second anointing? That sure puts things in a new light.
The Church's guidelines on this topic seem very clear to me, Dr. Moore.
"If, while hoping that everybody else will be honest and so forth, I can personally prosper through unethical and immoral acts without being detected and without risk, why should I not?." --Daniel Peterson, 6/4/14
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Re: How Do Near-Death Experiences Help the Mopologists?

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That's a great point, Analytics: are NDEs correlated?
I assume Analytics point is THE point we're talking about here. The apologists are to Mormon NDE's as Gemli is to their NDE's. They don't buy any of it for an instant.

The one exception might be Hugh Nibley's NDEs, which DCP brings up now and again. He brought it up once in an Interpreter paper, it was vague, of course. DCP does like detail though, just read the latest SeN account where the subject watched her life on a big TV screen. Everything was there! Including all the parts she had forgotten about! The stupidity and cheesiness rivals Mormon NDE cheesiness. But for some reason, they just cringe and won't even entertain a Mormon NDE.

As for "correlated", not exactly sure what you mean, but, in a Hugh Nibley account DCP mentions that Nibley saw "the tunnel" before Dr. Moody had discovered that commonality. And so it may be that he fancies himself taking a scientific approach, where credibility is established by stacking up parallels to the reigning model.

He might actually be contradicting his entire theory of "Witnesses" here. Speculating about his method of operation a bit, how do you establish authenticity? Nibley saw the tunnel before he could have known about it. check. A Mormon sees the spirit world just as it's talked about in church. no check...couldn't they just be making up what they want to see? An atheist professor sees the devil and then heaven and converts to christianity. Check -- what he saw wasn't in his self-interest.

See how this is unfolding? He may have a whole scheme of NDE "witness credibility" that contradicts the theory of the faithful witness as presented in the Witnesses film.
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Re: How Do Near-Death Experiences Help the Mopologists?

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A novel by Connie Wills that I like is mainly about NDEs, to the point where significant sections of the plot occur during them. These episodes are interesting because instead of tunnels and lights the NDEs in the story are hallucinations about being on a sinking ship. That's exciting enough that one can generally ignore the suspicion that Wills was re-purposing notes for a historical novel about the Titanic. The mystery of why the heck people near death are having these seemingly historical hallucinations is part of the plot, which uses some poetic license for neuroscience but isn't just woo.

The issue of whether or not there actually is an afterlife is a Chekov's Gun that is ultimately fired in the book, but in a way that I think manages to be cleverly ambiguous rather than propagandistic. By my measurement it hits no more than about 0.2 C.S. Lewis units, which should be tolerable for most people I think. The main setting is modern-day realistic but the chapters recounting subjective experiences of unconscious characters seem to me to be in the "Once upon a time" genre where the invitation to suspend disbelief for the sake of the story doesn't feel like a con. And what else are you going to do to have an upbeat ending in a book about dying, without at least suggesting that maybe everyone lives happily ever after after all?

The relevance of that book to this thread for me is mainly that it has displaced from my memory whatever else I might ever have learned about NDEs, because it was so much more interesting. NDEs are appealing if people want to have evidence for an afterlife that kind of seems scientific, I guess, but the non-denominational vagueness of modern NDEs seems to go against the usual religious impulse to make the afterlife more convincing by giving it more vivid detail. Lights and tunnels are less exciting than sinking ships, duller than streets paved with gold.

So you're trading away a lot of interest for that precious feeling of scientific solidity, and that does seem to indicate a more painful hunger for belief than people of faith are supposed to be feeling. Seeing religious people get excited about tunnel-and-light tales feels a bit like catching the pastor leaving a strip club, somehow.
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Re: How Do Near-Death Experiences Help the Mopologists?

Post by Shulem »

I've studied NDEs for many years and have learned a lot by reading the testimonials of those who have shared their experiences on the Internet. There is a wide array of NDE content available out there and it seems much of it is pretty convoluted and and rather far-out but there is some really good material out there too.

The Church teaches that God and angels are in a hurry to get stuff done. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is NO HURRY! Time just doesn't exist there like it does here. There is no anxiety about getting people on this earth to shape up and repent. There is no rush to perform work for the dead! The whole Mormon religion is a crock of utter shi*t. It's designed to get the members in a tizzy and to pray, pay, and obey. NDEs I have gained the most from have taught me that Mormonism is just flat out wrong and leads people into pain and guilt.

Here is a link of PART II of NDEs that I've just now posted up in the celestial board. Several posts earlier I discuss the matter of TIME and how it relates to us on earth as well as in the hereafter. If you have an interest, feel free to click the link and peruse whatever you want. I think you'll find it worth your time, literally.

Near-Death Experiences
(Internet NDEs testimonials – Revised & Edited by Paul Osborne) PART II
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Re: How Do Near-Death Experiences Help the Mopologists?

Post by Doctor Scratch »

Gadianton wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 4:25 am
That's a great point, Analytics: are NDEs correlated?

As for "correlated", not exactly sure what you mean, but, in a Hugh Nibley account DCP mentions that Nibley saw "the tunnel" before Dr. Moody had discovered that commonality. And so it may be that he fancies himself taking a scientific approach, where credibility is established by stacking up parallels to the reigning model.
By "correlated," I mean much the same thing that you meant when you authored your legendary post about whether or not the apologists' tastes are Brethren-directed. You know, they may go out for the sautéed lamb chops, but the whole ruse goes up in smoke thanks to the extra-large cup of soda buzzing away at the side of the plate? No fine Bourdeaux here! What I'm saying is: if NDEs are allowed at all, they'd need to be "Brethren-sanctioned." Just as the Mopologists may not drink coffee or smoke fine cigars, they may not indulge in NDEs that go too far astray from the official narrative. So, "correlated," just like all the lessons plans for Sunday school were "correlated."
"If, while hoping that everybody else will be honest and so forth, I can personally prosper through unethical and immoral acts without being detected and without risk, why should I not?." --Daniel Peterson, 6/4/14
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Re: How Do Near-Death Experiences Help the Mopologists?

Post by DrStakhanovite »

Doctor Scratch wrote:
Thu Apr 08, 2021 4:04 am
So, I have to ask: How do the Mopologists benefit from NDEs? Is this little more than pandering to the lowest of the lowest common denominator of Chapel Mormons who turn up on the "Comments" section? I would dismiss this all as Gemli-bait, except that Dr. Peterson, Kiwi, and the others seem to genuinely believe that the NDEs are real, and that they are faith-promoting.
To be blunt, I think the focus on NDEs from Daniel is due to a lack of ability to produce original arguments premised on his own research and thinking.

Mopologists have a tough order to fill when it comes to mounting a robust defense of LDS scriptures and beliefs; the movement is relatively young with roots in American revivalist theology and folk religion. There is no deep well of intellectual tradition unique to Mormonism from which to draw. No Doctors of the Church like Thomas Aquinas to look to, and no revered sages like Saadia Gaon, or expert jurists like Hasan al-Basri. All they have is a poor man's version of Chesterton in B.H. Roberts and a scuffed up N.T. Wright in Hugh Nibley.

For amateur apologists (i.e. mere apologetics) this is an exciting state of affairs because they have an immense amount of room to be as creative and eclectic as they like. The fruit of their labors languish in obscurity, but this doesn’t really bother them because they are comfortable with the reality they are a minority and don’t care a whit about being ignored because they are having fun and feel a sense of accomplishment just from the activity. They don’t take themselves seriously and as a result they enjoy a fair amount of goodwill from non-LDS folks.

Mopologists like Daniel do not get the luxury of having fun or being creative because they want to anchor their ‘Good Ship Apologetics’ in the waters of Higher Education. They become obsessed with status and care more about appearances than they do about substance. Thus mopologists become risk averse and are very reluctant to propose a new or unique thesis.

This hesitancy makes a certain amount of strategic sense. Original ideas or novel variations are not only hard to conceive, but the defense of them is daunting because the one who proposes them can only rely upon themselves to carry the burden of justification. This requires an immense amount of learning to pull off and has the possibility of backfiring and ruining one’s professional reputation; the intellectual history of Europe is riddled with scholars living and dying in poverty only to have their work become exalted and praised by the same institutions a few generations later. If you listen closely you can actually hear Daniel snorting in disgust from here and asking aloud, “what is the point then?”.

Everyone wants to be a scholar until it's time to do scholarly crap.
Gadianton wrote:
Thu Apr 08, 2021 5:18 am
So to tie it all up, the game changed from EVs to secular, and secular critics would be the target of basic propositions of belief. But that doesn't really explain it beyond Gemli, with notable apostates like Vogel or Metcalfe totally off radar. What really drives it is DCP's odd fascination with New-Age / occult subjects. Finally, you are correct that it's too general to really establish Mormonism but again a) the fight against atheists only require proof of the basics b) it's possible that DCP's afterlife beliefs have become more general over time.
I am of the opinion that Daniel and the rest of the Mopologists are utterly dependent on Evangelical apologetics. Think about all the issues Daniel touches on that are relevant to Mormon apologetics and just about every single example is a wholesale appropriation from the Evangelical apologetics industry with occasional use of non-Christian materials.

Consider Daniel’s emphasis on the Book of Mormon witnesses, it is totally modeled on the argumentative strategies used by other Christians to establish the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. The emphasis on the credibility of witnesses combined with the insistence that the miraculous is the only plausible explanation for what happened.

There is also Daniel’s abiding interest in Intelligent Design and criticism of the contemporary evolutionary synthesis, which is only kept alive in the English speaking world by Evangelicals and Fundamentalists waging their culture war.

Don’t forget to include his consistent use of C.S. Lewis and the Moral Argument.

How about his refutations of Logical Positivism which consist of nothing more than the identical platitudes used by Norman Geisler?

Criticisms of Nietzsche is Daniel trying to ape Ravi Zacharias’ popular talks. I guess we should be thankful that Daniel also didn’t copy Ravi’s predilection for sending dick pics and employing sex workers, but I digress.

The shift from Evangelical ministries to secular critics allowed Mopologists to pass the buck to their former opponents and effectively excuses Daniel and the other Mopologists from ever having to do any sort of mental heavy lifting and if they get painted into a corner all they need to do is disavow: “I was just merely posting snippets from a book I found interesting, I didn’t say I fully endorse soandso because I thought that was implicit, now if you’ll excuse me I got a plane to catch.”

NDEs are merely another example in a long list of examples of Daniel borrowing from others for his own apologetic purposes, which is to undermine secularism, naturalism, and materialism by throwing everything he can against the wall in the hopes that something sticks.

Daniel’s real skills are in administration and in fundraising, Mopologetics is a side hustle that is just a means to feed that voracious ego of his. I doubt Daniel has any meaningful beliefs about the afterlife because he isn’t a particularly religious person and having such beliefs would mean he’d have to practice some kind of discrimination and think through implications and that would drastically reduce the amount of material he can lift from other people.
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Re: How Do Near-Death Experiences Help the Mopologists?

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Physics Guy wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 8:14 am
A novel by Connie Wills that I like is mainly about NDEs, to the point where significant sections of the plot occur during them. These episodes are interesting because instead of tunnels and lights the NDEs in the story are hallucinations about being on a sinking ship. That's exciting enough that one can generally ignore the suspicion that Wills was re-purposing notes for a historical novel about the Titanic. The mystery of why the heck people near death are having these seemingly historical hallucinations is part of the plot, which uses some poetic license for neuroscience but isn't just woo.
I think you mean Connie Willis, right? Her book was called Passage. I first started following her work after reading FireWatch, a truly exceptional time travel short story. Also, the fact that one of her time travel books was titled "To Say Nothing of the Dog," in reference to the subtitle of Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, one of my very favorite books, endeared her to me forever. Her imagination is really something else, and her works, especially her short stories, are a true pleasure to read.
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Re: How Do Near-Death Experiences Help the Mopologists?

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Physics Guy wrote:
Fri Apr 09, 2021 8:14 am
A novel by Connie Wills that I like is mainly about NDEs,...
In Connie Willis' Doomsday Book, Dr. Peterson could have used a dowsing rod to search for a new time travel retrieval point, while using his knowledge of both COVID-19 and consecrated oil to escape the ravages of the Black Death.
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