liz3564 wrote:I would like to see this proof as well. This hardly sounds like the kind of language DCP would use. And I happen to know that DCP considers Ron Priddis a friend, so this type of allegation is very disturbing.
Guys, I think it is fairly clear that this is the subtext of Peterson's dreadful excretion entitled, "Text and Context," wherein he approvingly cites the anti-Semite crackpot E. Michael Jones' theory that disbelieving is a function of one's choice to live a an immoral lifestyle. It is a theory that is so thoroughly risible and disgusting that Peterson's on-the-record approbation for it does him no credit whatsoever.
Daniel Peterson wrote:But let's not waste time on such silly name-calling. What of the logic of argumentation? The uneven but fascinating book Degenerate Moderns: Modernity as Rationalized Sexual Misbehavior, by E. Michael Jones, will serve as an example of the logically legitimate use of ad hominem analysis.42 With learning and passion, Jones shows repeatedly how certain influential theories, writings, and works of art—among them several that substantially define the cultural environment in which we now live—grew organically from the often warped and immoral lives of those who produced them. This should hardly come as a surprise. No less a figure than the great William James had already argued in his essay "The Will to Believe" against the myth that anyone—even anyone affiliated with Signature Books—chooses his attitude toward issues of cosmic or life-orientational significance on the basis of pure, abstract reason alone. But Jones goes further. With great plausibility, he reads Margaret Mead's now discredited account of an idyllic Samoan paradise of guiltless free love as an implicit defense of her own marital infidelities. He shows that Sigmund Freud's theories are intimately related to the first psychoanalyst's own sexual urges and sexual sins. Pablo Picasso's paintings image the artist's checkered sexual career. Even Alfred Kinsey's studies of human sexuality, purportedly based on hard statistical data but now known to be far wide of the mark, seem to have been distorted to a great extent by Kinsey's own (possibly homosexual, certainly odd) personality. "Far from being two mutually exclusive compartments hermetically sealed off from each other, the intellectual life turns out to be a function of the moral life of the thinker."43
And, through it all, on the part of the intellectuals discussed, there runs a solid thread of hostility toward religion—and toward its moral demands. Sometimes this hostility took the shape of formal critique: "Freud, we are told with a tendentiousness that suffuses [Peter] Gay's entire biography, 'sharply differentiat[ed] the scientific style of thought from the Illusion-ridden style of religious thinking'. . . 'Science,' Gay tells us, 'is an organized effort to get beyond childishness. Science disdains the pathetic effort of the believer to realize fantasies through pious waiting and ritual performances, through sending up petitions and burning heretics.' "44 Jones sees the period of secularization following the French Revolution as crucial. "The intellectual," he says, "is a peculiarly modern invention, whose rise is predicated upon the demise of the Church as a guide to life."45 In the weakest chapter of his book (weak because too heavily colored by his own seemingly Counterreformation Catholicism), Jones briefly discusses the career of Martin Luther. While his analysis here is not wholly convincing, the model he proposes is abundantly documented in his book as a whole: "Throughout the second decade of the sixteenth century, Luther became involved in a spiritual downward spiral in which, as is the case with an embodied spirit, spiritual laxity led to sensuality, which in turn led to intellectual rebellion against the discipline of the Church, which led to further sensual decline and further rage against the Church that upheld the standards he soon felt no longer capable of keeping."46
Daniel Peterson wrote:In the brilliant third chapter of Degenerate Moderns, entitled "Homosexual as Subversive," E. Michael Jones demonstrates the crucial and explanatory role of personal lifestyle not only in the traitorous career of Sir Anthony Blunt, but in the theories of John Maynard Keynes, the biographical writings of Lytton Strachey, and the novels of E. M. Forster. "Modernity was the exoteric version of Bloomsbury biography; it was a radically homosexual vision of the world and therefore of its very nature subversive; treason was its logical outcome. . . . The Bloomsberries' public writings—Keynes' economic theories, Strachey's best-selling Eminent Victorians, etc.—were the sodomitical vision for public consumption."55 Reflecting upon the development of the characters in Forster's long-suppressed book, Maurice, Jones notes that, "In the world of this novel it's hard to tell whether declining religious faith fosters homosexuality or whether homosexuality kills faith. At any rate Forster sees a connection. . . . As their involvement in sodomy increases, so also does their opposition to Christianity."56 That denial of the truths one can know about God should lead to sodomy is in some sense a mystery," concludes Jones. "However, it is a mystery that can be fairly well documented, from Paul's epistle to the Romans to any objective view of modern British history."57 In any event, it seems clear that immorality (not merely of the homosexual variety) and intellectual apostasy are, and always have been, frequent (though not invariable) companions. (Joseph Smith's famous announcement of a link between adultery and sign-seeking is apropos here.)58 Sodom and Cumorah are apparently not compatible.
He applies this fig leaf to cover his shame:
Daniel Peterson wrote:It must be clearly understood that I am not charging any particular individual, at Signature or anywhere else, with sexual immorality. I have used rather dramatic examples in order to make the case that writers are reflected in what they write.
You can take him at his word, or you can choose not to.
Given a number of incidents over the years, I think it is more likely than not that some of Peterson's views and conclusions about certain writers are influenced by a prejudice against homosexuals, which he narrowly avoids explicit expressions of.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
DCP implies that everyone who rejects Mormonism does so because they are homosexual. The man is mental-- as if I didn't know that before.