Peterson Misleading Again

[_Yong Xi]

Probably for the same reason that most people retain the political party affiliation of their parents.

Which, incidentally, I didn't.

How does what you did relate to the discussion?

[_beastie]

It's unfortunate that church leaders didn't have Daniel around to tell them that a plausible geographic location for the Book of Mormon is a peripheral issue back when they were encouraging missionaries to show Ancient America Speaks.

Also unfortunate that God doesn't apparently understand that when one sends angelic messengers to instruct someone, people are going to believe those instructions were approved of by God.

[_Trevor]

The book is on my nightstand.

Well, perhaps you can read it instead of dismissing my recommendation and speculation as "pop-psychological" and undertaken in lieu of actual evidence and argument. My recommendation was offered to all, Daniel, and I think the book's observations apply equally well in lots of places--both at BYU and on this board. But you are free to engage in your pastime of attributing all kinds of bizarre and mad thoughts (see your ridiculous questions below) to your fellow discussants instead of taking the recommendation in the spirit it was offered--as a good read and something for both you and guy (and others) to consider. Maybe you can consider the irony of your own "pop-psychological" dribble (again, see below) at the same time.

Why do my opponents hold their ridiculously false opinions? What psycho-social defect bars those who don't agree with me from seeing things my way? What mental incapacity or biographical anomaly prevents others from holding my opinions?

"Why am I so brilliant?" "Why do I write such good books?" These are chapter titles from Nietzsche's writing . . . penned just before he was locked up for the rest of his life in an insane asylum.

[_Trevor]

Trevor and Guy Sajer are two of the intellectual leaders on this board.

It probably isn't going to get any better.

Don't be so hard on yourself, Daniel. ;-)

[_guy sajer]

It's called indoctrination, Dan.

In other words, you're opting for the functional equivalent of the "insane" option as your preferred explanation for why others with training in ancient studies at least equal to Trevor's (and far superior to yours) don't agree with your view of the Book of Mormon.

Got it.

Now how the hell did you get from indoctrination to 'insane?"

You'd be extremely disingenuous and intellectually dishonest to deny the role that indoctrination plays in religious belief. You are as susceptible e to it as anyone else, though you'd like to think otherwise.

As much as all of us like to think we're too smart, rational, educated, etc. to succumb to indoctrination, we are not. Culture, upbringing, family & social expectations, repetitive messages told time after time and year after year, etc. are all powerful--very powerful--factors in determining what we believe. Frequently, if not more often than otherwise, more powerful that education, intellect, rationality, etc.

And that all applies to others -- but not to you, because you've transcended all of those extrarational factors on this question.

I need hardly point out that you're engaging in a form of labor-saving ad hominem dismissal, not a real argument.

Ad hominem? More like post hoc ergo propter hoc, in your case.

I prefer to think of it as accurate empirical observation.

Do you deny the role that indoctrination plays in religious belief?

You believe what you believe, Dan, because you were born into it. Had you been born Jehova's Witness or Evangelical, odds are that you'd be on some discussion board pimping for those beliefs instead. You believe what you were born, conditioned, and indoctrinated to believe. At least demonstrate the intellectual honesty to admit the role that birth and indoctrination play in your belief.

My father was a non-practicing, non-religious, nominal Protestant until after I was an adult. My mother was a mostly non-practicing Jack-Mormon until after I became an adult. My extended family are either nominally Protestant non-church-attenders or inactive, entirely uninterested Mormons. I've never had a conversation on any religious subject with any of them. I grew up in California with virtually no Mormon friends.

Religious indoctrination occurs in a myriad of contexts, it doesn't require birth and upbringing necessarily, although the former certainly helps.

Your thesis rests on no real evidence. I don't get the feeling that you believe it needs any. Rather like your absurdly confident assertions about the narrowness of my worldview and my constricted intellectual sympathies. You know essentially nothing about what I read or how I really think. You've almost certainly never even met me, and wouldn't recognize me on the street. Yet, because you've read some message board posts, you imagine yourself capable of sweeping dismissive judgments.

I can't take such pretentious vacuity with any degree of seriousness.

Dan, I know about religious indoctrination. I lived it and am surrounded by it. I don't need to know the minutiae of your life to reach a reasonable conclusion that your beliefs stem in part from some form of religious indoctrination.

As for 'real evidence,' are you serious? I can point to million, upon millions of data points. Are you really that obtuse?

And I stand by my conclusion about the narrowness of your world view. I repeat, you've left the equivalent of at least a book length dissertation about your beliefs. There is a substantial body of evidence to reach that conclusion. It's not just posts, Dan (though those provide a good window to your mind), it's also numerous articles and records of email correspondence. You're an open book Dan. Not an intellectually unfathomable enigma.

You don't take any counter-argument that challenges your world view seriously. Why should you take this one seriously?

I know, because I was once indoctrinated just like you. I broke programming, you have not.

That's a very heroic myth, and I would imagine that it's quite gratifying to you.[/quote]

No, Dan, it's the truth. The Book of Mormon is a very heroic myth.

It doesn't gratify me to find you, or anyone, in the throes of religious delusion.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Well, perhaps you can read it instead of dismissing my recommendation and speculation as "pop-psychological" and undertaken in lieu of actual evidence and argument.

Reading Smolin and being unimpressed with your comments don't seem to me to be mutually incompatible.

Maybe you can consider the irony of your own "pop-psychological" dribble (again, see below) at the same time.

I've offered precisely none.

That and nothing else is exactly my point.

Unlike you and Guy Sajer, I haven't suggested that you folks hold the views you do or find implausible the things you find implausible because of indoctrination, mental defect, tribal affiliation, emotional attachment, sin, upbringing, psychological incapacity, or any other extra-intellectual factor. I've paid you the respect, rather, of speaking of worldviews, presuppositions, and the like. Something which you evidently cannot bring yourself to reciprocate.

I really do suspect that it's never going to get any better here.

And then there are the lesser lights. Sigh . . .

[_Daniel Peterson]

I don't need to know the minutiae of your life to reach a reasonable conclusion that your beliefs stem in part from some form of religious indoctrination.

You don't need to know much of anything at all. Your conclusion follows inescapably from your assumptions. It's logically rigorous, in its way.

You don't take any counter-argument that challenges your world view seriously.

You don't have the faintest real idea about my intellectual life.

Anybody who seriously thinks that he or she can draw broad conclusions about the nature of the inner thinking of a person he or she doesn't even know from posts on a message board is, frankly, a fool.

You compensate for the paucity of your actual knowledge in this case by the absurd overconfidence of your conclusions. You're certainly in no position, on that score, to fault religious believers.

And I daresay that my intellectual horizons are at least as broad as yours. What a self-congratulatory buffoon you are. It still amazes me.

[_beastie]

From the article I linked on motivated reasoning:

The motivated reasoning phenomena under review fall into two major categories: those in which the
motive is to arrive at an accurate conclusion, whatever it may be, and those in which the motive is to
arrive at a particular, directional conclusion.

This is the entire problem with Book of Mormon apologetics. Defenders of the faith are not approaching the text in order to evaluate the reasonableness of the claim that it's an ancient document. Defenders of the faith are approaching the text with the a priori conclusion that the Book of Mormon is an ancient text. Information searches and evaluations all take place under that pre-existing bias. This is the textbook definition of motivated reasoning.

It's not that critics are more intelligent, or more educated, or more articulate than believers. It's that we approached the question of the Book of Mormon from a different angle. Most of us were believers, had been raised believers, or had intense conversionary experiences, but, for whatever reason, were able to let aside the a priori conclusion and evaluate the text without stacking the deck in advance. This is why John Clark has had no success in getting his peers to accept the Book of Mormon as a historical text. From the Q/A portion of his BYU devotional:

And, no, I can't convince any of my archeology colleagues that the evidence proves the BoMor is true. They have
read it, but they just read it like they're reading an archeology book, and that's not going to go anywhere.

It's not going to go anywhere because the motivated reasoning is absent.

[_beastie]

And by the way, Daniel, someone who is so opposed to superiority complexes ought to make at least a minimal effort to not practically ooze with one.

[Guest]

Mr. Peterson is an idiot. All he does is come here and crap talk. He never offers anything of substance, passively insults all the "lesser lights", gets his little thrill from the argument that he's not allowed to do in real life with anyone with whom he associates, and then stomps off when it gets to be a little too much.

If he were actually interested in debate he would stick to the Celestial forum, and do his best to frame his ideology in a respectful manner. But no, he comes here and participates in the Schryverian circle jerk, and unfortunately is the last one to fire off his pathos. His little sycophants read his barbs and run around in circles on the other board telling him how amazing he is, and how completely 'x-y-z' people here are.

Don't expect anything better from him. Don't expect anything better from Mormons, period. And certainly don't expect anything better from Mormonism, ever. It's just the way it is.