Online Apologetics and "Collateral Damage"

[_Some Schmo]

I think DCP is a [sic] bastard.

Mega dittos!

As he invariably does, Some Schmo has gotten right to the heart of the matter and scored a devastating point against me and my ilk. He's a valuable asset here on MDB, and an ornament to the world of Mormon letters.

I plan to make every effort to incorporate his insights into my future work.

Oh... I wasn't aware you noticed. Why, thank you.

[_Trevor]

Up until now I have tried very diligently to give Dr. Peterson the benefit of the doubt. This latest turn in his rhetoric, I'm afraid, shows that my efforts at fairness have been in vain. I think it is fairly clear, or at least should be, that this new, syrupy approach of Peterson is nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt at deception. My guess is that he thinks the precise opposite of everything he is writing. Oh, I know he thinks this is clever and amusing, but all it does is strengthen my a priori conviction that he is the single evilest force in Mormon apologetics ever.

I understand that some of you may have been hoodwinked, and that now, stripped of your last hope, you've decided to give up your unfulfilled dreams of writing the great American novel and have decided instead to enroll in (gulp) law school, but my duty to the truth is clear. I have been raised up by fate and the mandate of heaven to this, and I cannot deny the call. My apologies.

[_Daniel Peterson]

Up until now I have tried very diligently to give Dr. Peterson the benefit of the doubt. This latest turn in his rhetoric, I'm afraid, shows that my efforts at fairness have been in vain. I think it is fairly clear, or at least should be, that this new, syrupy approach of Peterson is nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt at deception. My guess is that he thinks the precise opposite of everything he is writing. Oh, I know he thinks this is clever and amusing, but all it does is strengthen my a priori conviction that he is the single evilest force in Mormon apologetics ever.

First off, I should like to agree with Trevor. He's spot on.

That said, though, I would like to quote an old Bert Bacharach song:

Do you know the way to San Jose?
I’ve been away so long. I may go wrong and lose my way.
Do you know the way to San Jose?
I’m going back to find some peace of mind in San Jose.

L.A. is a great big freeway.
Put a hundred down and buy a car.
In a week, maybe two, they’ll make you a star.
Weeks turn into years. How quick they pass!
And all the stars that never were
Are parking cars and pumping gas.

Do you know the way to San Jose?
They’ve got a lot of space. There’ll be a place where I can stay.
I was born and raised in San Jose.
I’m going back to find some peace of mind in San Jose.

Fame and fortune is a magnet.
It can pull you far away from home.
With a dream in your heart you’re never alone.
Dreams turn into dust and blow away
And there you are without a friend.
You pack your car and ride away.

I’ve got lots of friends in San Jose.
Do you know the way to San Jose?
Can’t wait to get back to San Jose.

Granted, it has absolutely nothing to do with the topic. I'm just trying to shake harmony's criticism that I'm predictable. I also intend to begin denying positions that everyone (including myself) would expect me to affirm, and to affirm positions that any sane person (including, I hope, myself) would expect me to deny. I hope to earn the distinction of being unpredictable.

[_Trevor]

I hope to earn the distinction of being unpredictable.

How predictable.

Edit: I feel duty-bound to add that all good LDS people everywhere should now be angered and horrified that their leading apologist has now admitted publicly that his only reason for being here is to satisfy his insatiable ego. Not happy with capturing the attention and hatred of the entire cadre of "trained" and "experienced" critics, he now wants the rare prize of frustrating their expectations with his wacky unpredictable nature.

For shame.

[_The Nehor]

I hope to earn the distinction of being unpredictable.

How predictable.

Edit: I feel duty-bound to add that all good LDS people everywhere should now be angered and horrified that their leading apologist has now admitted publicly that his only reason for being here is to satisfy his insatiable ego. Not happy with capturing the attention and hatred of the entire cadre of "trained" and "experienced" critics, he now wants the rare prize of frustrating their expectations with his wacky unpredictable nature.

For shame.

As a good LDS person I am angered and horrified that MY leading apologist spends his days here only to attempt to satisfy his insatiable ego. I would think that he would also take the opportunity to laugh at many of the moronic things said on these boards. I also want him to be happy to be attended to and hated by the entire cadre of critics in addition to being wacky and unpredictable. I think he should also eliminate Scratch while Scratch is going through his garbage. Preferably while DCP is wearing a clown costume to increase wackiness.

[_Daniel Peterson]

The first "historicizing" index to note here is that
Foucault is Derrida's near-contemporary, whereas
Bataille (1897-1962), five years dead by the time
Derrida writes his essay, had long been in eclipse as a
relic of a bygone era, a footnote to surrealism, a
minor figure of the %entre deux guerres%. In Harold
Bloom's account of the "anxiety of influence," the
anxiety is about the past; Bloom ignores, and in places
actually rules out, the anxiety generated by
contemporaries. But Derrida's most "anxious" responses
are to contemporaries: Foucault, as we've seen; Lacan
(whose construction of "system" Derrida challenges in
Lacan's axiom that "a letter always arrives at its
destination"; Derrida's quarrel with this *seems* to
maintain the possibility of transit "beyond" or
"outside" the system, but the "dead letter office" of
_La Carte postale_ closes that aperture); Levinas
(whose construction of the "other" as by definition
"beyond" the closure of "our" paradigms, and
incorporable within them only through a "violence of
the concept," poses the "beyond" or the "outside" not
as a vain projection, but as a sacred mystery that is,
alas, inaccessible--another way of putting the
"outside" beyond reach).

[_Trevor]

As a good LDS person I am angered and horrified that MY leading apologist spends his days here only to attempt to satisfy his insatiable ego. I would think that he would also take the opportunity to laugh at many of the moronic things said on these boards. I also want him to be happy to be attended to and hated by the entire cadre of critics in addition to being wacky and unpredictable. I think he should also eliminate Scratch while Scratch is going through his garbage. Preferably while DCP is wearing a clown costume to increase wackiness.

There you have it, folks. Straight from the mouth of good LDS folk like Nehor. He would like Dr. Peterson to take pleasure in the laughter that comes from observing the moronic antics of critics, but instead he is robbed of that joy by Peterson's grim determination to be the single topic of conversation on this board--literally grabbing our attention by the ears with his wacky unpredictability.

In fact, Nehor, he is so wacky and unpredictable--yea far more so than you had imagined--that instead of wearing a clown costume and offing Scratch, as Scratch has surely imagined already, Dr. Peterson is considering offering a job to Scratch in collecting eerie and spooky dossiers on his colleagues. Why not harness the research resources of the critics' greatest intelligence gatherer for his own purposes? Scratch can even wear a clown costume while he helps Daniel destroy his colleagues and fulfill his wildest fantasy of being the only Mormon apologist alive. Who could have predicted that?

I know I didn't.

[_Trevor]

The first "historicizing" index...

Well, you might think so, but Foucault pointed the way toward poststructuralism's critique of rationalism. His Madness and Civilization (1961; Folie et déraison) reflected the influence of the philosopher Martin Heidegger, who shifted attention away from the post-Enlightenment philosophic concern with rational knowledge and focused instead on fundamental metaphysical issues that he felt withstood rationalization. A similar influence came from philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose recently translated work was critical of the idea that one could know the world clearly through reason. Nietzsche noted that knowledge reduces the complexity of the world to false identities. His influence is evident in the work of the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, especially in his Nietzsche and Philosophy (1961). Deleuze, in his work in the 1960s such as The Logic of Sense (1969), tries to expose the irrational and alogical elements of human knowledge.

What these thinkers share is a sense, derived from Saussure, that the identities of knowledge arise from and are made possible by differential relations between terms that have no identities of their own apart from those relations. Reason, insomuch as it operates through clear distinctions that demarcate separate identities (of categories, of things), cannot, by definition "know" or grasp this realm of difference. Difference makes knowledge possible, yet it is ungraspable using only the categories of knowledge. Difference by definition does not lend itself to identity, but knowledge consists of identification.

Take that Peterson!!! (Trevor kicks back with a smug, self-satisfied grin. He takes a deep swig of an icy cold diet coke.)

[_Daniel Peterson]

Saussure be damned. Read about it all in Moi, Pierre Rivière, ayant égorgé ma mère, ma soeur et mon frère (Gallimard, 1973).

L'eglise c'est moi!

[_Trevor]

Saussure be damned. Read about it all in Moi, Pierre Rivière, ayant égorgé ma mère, ma soeur et mon frère (Gallimard, 1973).

L'eglise c'est moi!

You unreconstructed Peircean Semioticist! End the solipsistocracy of Peterson before it's too late!

Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité