Nary a week goes by without Peterson dancing on the grave of Christopher Hitchens

[IHAQ]

It seems Peterson has spent the decade since Hitchens’ death trying to demonise the man. Peterson seems a lot braver now that Hitchens cannot respond.

Sometimes, if you can believe it, people who hate religious faith actually go several days at a time without hearing really meaty news of serious outrages committed by theists in the name of God. It can be discouraging. But today isn’t going to be one of those days. Thanks to the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File©, I’m able to share not just one but several such horrors with you, horrors that should fill you with extremely gratifying righteous indignation:

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

I don’t understand Peterson's obsession in trying to sully the mans memory with such childish snark? Did they have a falling out whilst Hitchens was alive? Anyway, here is how Hitchens has been remembered by some very notable people…

Former British prime minister Tony Blair said, "Christopher Hitchens was a complete one-off, an amazing mixture of writer, journalist, polemicist and unique character. He was fearless in the pursuit of truth and any cause in which he believed. And there was no belief he held that he did not advocate with passion, commitment and brilliance. He was an extraordinary, compelling and colourful human being whom it was a privilege to know."[168][169]

Richard Dawkins said of Hitchens, "He was a polymath, a wit, immensely knowledgeable, and a valiant fighter against all tyrants, including imaginary supernatural ones."[169] Dawkins later described Hitchens as "probably the best orator I've ever heard", and called his death "an enormous loss".[170]

American theoretical physicist and cosmologist Lawrence Krauss said, "Christopher was a beacon of knowledge and light in a world that constantly threatens to extinguish both. He had the courage to accept the world for just what it is and not what he wanted it to be. That's the highest praise, I believe, one can give to any intellect. He understood that the universe doesn't care about our existence or welfare, and he epitomized the realization that our lives have meaning only to the extent that we give them meaning."[171][172]

Bill Maher paid tribute to Hitchens on his show Real Time with Bill Maher, saying, "We lost a hero of mine, a friend, and one of the great talk show guests of all time."[173]

Salman Rushdie and English comedian Stephen Fry paid tribute at the Christopher Hitchens Vanity Fair Memorial 2012.[174][175][176][177]

Three weeks before Hitchens's death, George Eaton of the New Statesman wrote, "He is determined to ensure that he is not remembered simply as a 'lefty who turned right' or as a contrarian and provocateur. Throughout his career, he has retained a commitment to the Enlightenment values of reason, secularism, and pluralism. His targets—Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger, God—are chosen not at random, but rather because they have offended one or more of these principles. The tragedy of Hitchens's illness is that it came at a time when he enjoyed a larger audience than ever. The great polemicist is certain to be remembered, but, as he was increasingly aware, perhaps not as he would like."[178] The Chronicle of Higher Education asked if Hitchens was the last public intellectual.[179]

In 2015, an annual prize of $50,000 was established in his honour by The Dennis and Victoria Ross Foundation for "an author or journalist whose work reflects a commitment to free expression and inquiry, a range and depth of intellect, and a willingness to pursue the truth without regard to personal or professional consequence".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christoph ... s_to_death
Who will write about Peterson after his demise, and what might they say?

Here is Hitchens’ Bibliography…

Books[edit]
Sole author[edit]
1984 Cyprus. Quartet. Revised editions as Hostage to History: Cyprus from the Ottomans to Kissinger, 1989 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) and 1997 (Verso). ISBN 978-0-704-32436-7
1987 Imperial Spoils: The Curious Case of the Elgin Marbles. Chatto and Windus (UK)/Hill and Wang (US, 1988) / 1997 UK Verso edition as The Elgin Marbles: Should They Be Returned to Greece? (with essays by Robert Browning and Graham Binns). Reissued and updated 2008 as The Parthenon Marbles: The Case for Reunification, Verso. ISBN 978-0-809-04189-3
1990 Blood, Class, and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Reissued 2004, with a new introduction, as Blood, Class and Empire: The Enduring Anglo-American Relationship, Nation Books, ISBN 1-56025-592-7
1999 No One Left to Lie To: The Triangulations of William Jefferson Clinton. Verso. Reissued as No One Left to Lie To: The Values of the Worst Family in 2000. ISBN 978-1-859-84736-7
2001 The Trial of Henry Kissinger. Verso. ISBN 1-85984-631-9
2001 Letters to a Young Contrarian. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-03033-5
2002 Why Orwell Matters, Basic Books (US)/UK edition as Orwell's Victory, Allen Lane/Penguin Press. ISBN 0-465-03050-5
2005 Thomas Jefferson: Author of America. Eminent Lives/Atlas Books/HarperCollins Publishers, ISBN 0-06-059896-4
2006 Thomas Paine's "Rights of Man": A Biography. Books That Shook the World/Atlantic Books, ISBN 1-84354-513-6
2007 God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Twelve/Hachette Book Group USA/Warner Books, ISBN 0-446-57980-7 / Published in the UK as God Is Not Great: The Case Against Religion. Atlantic Books, ISBN 978-1-84354-586-6
2010 Hitch-22 Some Confessions and Contradictions: A Memoir . Hachette Book Group. ISBN 978-0-446-54033-9 (published by Allen and Unwin in Australia in May 2010 with the shorter title: Hitch-22. A Memoir.) ISBN 978-1-74175-962-4
2012 Mortality. Atlantic. ISBN 978-1-4555-0275-2
Pamphlets[edit]
1971 Karl Marx and The Paris Commune. Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd. ISBN 0283484829
1990 The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish. Chatto & Windus, 1990.
1995 The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice. Verso.
2003 A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq. Plume Books. Originally released as Regime Change (Penguin).
2011 The Enemy. Amazon Digital Services.
Essays[edit]
External video
video icon Booknotes interview with Hitchens on For the Sake of Argument, October 17, 1993, C-SPAN
1988 Prepared for the Worst: Selected Essays and Minority Reports. Hill and Wang (US)/Chatto and Windus (UK).
1993 For the Sake of Argument: Essays and Minority Reports. Verso, ISBN 0-86091-435-6
2000 Unacknowledged Legislation: Writers in the Public Sphere. Verso
2004 Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays. Thunder's Mouth, Nation Books, ISBN 1-56025-580-3
2011 Arguably: Essays by Christopher Hitchens. Twelve. UK edition as Arguably: Selected Prose. Atlantic.
2015 And Yet... Essays, Simon & Schuster.
2016 Talks on Atheism: Collected Speeches by Christopher Hitchens, Amazon Media, ISBN 978-1-944541-60-6
2021 A Hitch in Time: Writings from the London Review of Books, Atlantic Books, ISBN 978-1-838956-00-4
Collaborations[edit]
1976 Callaghan, The Road to Number Ten (with Peter Kellner). Cassell, ISBN 0-304-29768-2
1988 Blaming the Victims: Spurious Scholarship and the Palestinian Question (contributor; co-editor with Edward Said). Verso, ISBN 0-86091-887-4. Reissued, 2001.
1994 When Borders Bleed: The Struggle of the Kurds (with Ed Kashi). Pantheon Books.
1994 International Territory: The United Nations, 1945-1995 (with Adam Bartos). Verso.
2000 Vanity Fair's Hollywood, Graydon Carter and David Friend (editors). Viking Studio.
2019 The Four Horsemen: The Discussion that Sparked an Atheist Revolution, (with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Stephen Fry). Bantam Press.
Co-author or co-editor[edit]
2002 Left Hooks, Right Crosses: A Decade of Political Writing (co-editor, with Christopher Caldwell).
2007 The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Non-Believer. Perseus Publishing. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6 (editor)
2008 Is Christianity Good for the World? – A Debate (co-author, with Douglas Wilson). Canon Press, ISBN 1-59128-053-2.
2008 Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq and the Left (co-author, with other contributions edited by Simon Cottee and Thomas Cushman ). New York University Press.
2010 The Best American Essays 2010 (co-editor with Robert Atwan). Mariner Books.
2011 Hitchens vs. Blair: Be it Resolved, Religion is a Force of Good in the World (co-author with Tony Blair). House of Anansi Press.
Contributor[edit]
2005 Religion, Culture, and International Conflict: A Conversation, Michael Cromartie (editor). Rowman & Littlefield.
2005 A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq, Thomas Cushman (editor). University of California Press, ISBN 0-520-24555-5
2011 The Quotable Hitchens: From Alcohol to Zionism, Windsor Mann (editor). Da Capo Press.
Book introductions, forewords and prefaces[edit]
1971 Karl Marx and the Paris Commune, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (authors). Introduction. Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd.
1990 The False Prophet: Rabbi Meir Kahane - From FBI Informant to Knesset Member, Robert I. Friedman (author). Foreword. Faber and Faber.
1992 Money for Old Rope, Charles Glass (author). Introduction. Picador.
1992 The Greek Socialist Experiment - Papandreou's Greece 1981-1989, Theodore C. Kariotis (editor). Introduction. Pella.
1994 When the Borders Bleed: The Struggle of the Kurds, Ed Kashi (author). Introduction. Pantheon.
1996 Peace And Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine in the Middle East Peace Process, Edward Said (author). Preface. Vintage.
1996 American Notes, Charles Dickens (author). Introduction. Modern Library.
1997 In Our Time: The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion, Clement Leibovitz and Alvin Finkel (authors). Foreword to Paperback Edition. Monthly Review Press.
1997 Open Secrets: Israeli Foreign and Nuclear Policies' ', Israel Shahak (author), Pluto Press, London, . Foreword to paperback edition.
1999 A Handbook on Hanging, Charles Duff (author). Introduction. New York Review of Books.
2000 Scoop, Evelyn Waugh (author). Introduction. Penguin Classics Edition.
2000 Safe Area Goražde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995, Joe Sacco (author). Foreword. Fantagraphics Books.
2000 1968: War & Democracy, Eugene J. McCarthy (author). Foreword. Lone Oak Press.
2000 Vanity Fair's Hollywood, Graydon Carter and David Friend (editors). Introduction. Viking Studio.
2001 Kosovo: Background to a War, Stephen Schwartz (author). Foreword. Anthem Press.
2001 The Mating Season, P. G. Wodehouse (author). Introduction. Penguin Classics Edition.
2001 Orwell in Spain, George Orwell (author), Peter Davison (editor). Introduction. Penguin Classics Edition
2002 Machinery of Death: The Reality of America's Death Penalty Regime, David R. Dow and Mark Dow (editors). Foreword. Routledge.
2002 From Russia, With Love, Dr. No, and Goldfinger, Ian Fleming (author). Introduction. Penguin Classics Edition.
2003 Animal Farm and 1984, George Orwell (author). Introduction. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
2003 The Adventures of Augie March, Saul Bellow (author). Introduction. Penguin Group.
2004 Orient Express, Graham Greene (author). Introduction. Penguin Classics Edition.
2004 Hons and Rebels, Jessica Mitford (author). Introduction. New York Review of Books.
2004 Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (author). Foreword. HarperCollins.
2004 Choice: The Best of Reason, Nick Gillespie (editor). Foreword. BenBella Books.
2005 House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende (author). Introduction. Everyman's Library.
2007 Our Man in Havana, Graham Greene (author). Introduction. Penguin Classics Edition.
2007 Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia, Rebecca West (author). Introduction. Penguin Classics Edition.
2008 Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis, Kingsley Amis (author). Introduction. Bloomsbury USA.
2008 God: The Failed Hypothesis- How Science Shows that God Does Not Exist, Victor J. Stenger (author). Foreword to Paperback Edition. New York: Prometheus Books.
2008 Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (author). Introduction to Paperback Edition. Simon and Schuster.
2009 First in Peace: How George Washington Set the Course for America, Conor Cruise O'Brien (author). Introduction. Da Capo Press.
2009 Ancient Gonzo Wisdom: Interviews with Hunter S. Thompson, Anita Thompson (editor). Introduction to Paperback Edition. Da Capo Press.
2009 Certitude: A Profusely Illustrated Guide to Blockheads and Bullheads, Past and Present, Adam Begley (author), Edward Sorel (Illustrator). Introduction. Crown Archetype.
2010 The Three Hostages, John Buchan (author). Introduction. Polygon.
2010 Against Religion: The Atheist Writings of H.P. Lovecraft, H.P. Lovecraft (author), S. T. Joshi (editor). Foreword. Sporting Gentlemen.
2010 The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969, Christopher Isherwood (author). Foreword. Harper.
2010 Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud (author). Introduction. Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
2012 Diaries, George Orwell (author). Introduction. Liverlight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christoph ... bliography

By way of comparison, here is Peterson's…

Publications[edit]
Peterson, Daniel C. (1995), Abraham Divided: An LDS Perspective on the Middle East, Aspen Book, ISBN 978-1562362249.
Peterson, Daniel C. (1998), The Last Days: A Comprehensive Survey of Prophetic and Doctrinal Statements by Latter-Day Prophets and Apostles, Aspen Books, ISBN 978-1562360627.
——; Ricks, Stephen D. (1998), Offenders for a Word: How Anti-Mormons Play Word Games to Attack the Latter-Day Saints, Foundation for Ancient Research & Mormon Studies, ISBN 0-934893-35-7.
Parry, Donald W.; Peterson, Daniel C.; Welch, John W., eds. (2002). Echoes and Evidences of the Book of Mormon. Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. ISBN 978-0934893725.
Peterson, Daniel C. (2007), Muhammad, Prophet of God, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Walmart. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, ISBN 978-0-8028-0754-0.[12]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_C. ... blications

[Philo Sofee]

Perhaps in constantly naming a world famous valuable man such as Hitchins, Peterson imagines that helps maintain his own relevance.
It is sort of interesting that he doesn't attack Michael Shermer who is every bit as vocal as Hitchins was. He even debated him. How come Peterson isn't taking on a genuinely live living skeptic and serious devastator of his own religion? Someone needs to ask Peterson this most important question in order to help him get his focus back. Hitchins is old news, nowadays the Shermer's and Radio Free Mormons are the ones Peterson needs to be taking on. Peterson needs to start showing up on Mormonism Live! and trouncing the silly living critics again. I am just positive Bill Reel and Radio Free Mormon would be more than happy, and bend over backwards to get a series of Daniel C. Peterson appearances on their show in order to refute their claims and defend his most honoured, beloved, important religion.

[Father Francis]

Perhaps in constantly naming a world famous valuable man such as Hitchins, Peterson imagines that helps maintain his own relevance.
It is sort of interesting that he doesn't attack Michael Shermer who is every bit as vocal as Hitchins was. He even debated him. How come Peterson isn't taking on a genuinely live living skeptic and serious devastator of his own religion? Someone needs to ask Peterson this most important question in order to help him get his focus back. Hitchins is old news, nowadays the Shermer's and Radio Free Mormons are the ones Peterson needs to be taking on. Peterson needs to start showing up on Mormonism Live! and trouncing the silly living critics again. I am just positive Bill Reel and Radio Free Mormon would be more than happy, and bend over backwards to get a series of Daniel C. Peterson appearances on their show in order to refute their claims and defend his most honoured, beloved, important religion.

I'd pay money to see DCP and John Gee take on Shulem live. Honestly, I don't get how either of them earned post graduate degrees...

[Bought Yahoo]

So when someone dies, like Freud, C.S. Lewis, Karl Marx, Einstein, all discussion about them and their theories is now forbidden somehow?

[Dr Exiled]

So when someone dies, like Freud, C.S. Lewis, Karl Marx, Einstein, all discussion about them and their theories is now forbidden somehow?

Of course there isn't a problem dealing with the ideas of scholars who have passed on. However, I think DCP didn't like how Hitchens was particularly dismissive of Mormonism and Mormonism's questionable claims. He's probably still hurt by it and it shows over and over again. Also, Hitchens was lost to us at an early age due to cancer, hint, hint, there's a lesson there for DCP to show to his fellow cheerleaders.

[huckelberry]

So when someone dies, like Freud, C.S. Lewis, Karl Marx, Einstein, all discussion about them and their theories is now forbidden somehow?

but this person has written introductions to a long list of books.

[Bought Yahoo]

So when someone dies, like Freud, C.S. Lewis, Karl Marx, Einstein, all discussion about them and their theories is now forbidden somehow?

Of course there isn't a problem dealing with the ideas of scholars who have passed on. However, I think DCP didn't like how Hitchens was particularly dismissive of Mormonism and Mormonism's questionable claims. He's probably still hurt by it and it shows over and over again. Also, Hitchens was lost to us at an early age due to cancer, hint, hint, there's a lesson there for DCP to show to his fellow cheerleaders.

I don't see your argument. When someone dies, it is easier to deal with their positions and why not. I don't see any reason why Dr. Peterson should give Hitchens a break due to "an early age due to cancer, hint, hint." I've never heard of a doctrine where you stop criticizing a notable academic person merely because he died young.

Rather, I see the obsession with Dr. Peterson on this board as absurd and obsessive. I don't agree with Dr. Peterson on a few different topics, but I don't see a need to continue on and on about it. I otherwise see him as the next Nibley, and that is how he will be forever seen. Greater than Nibley in some cases.

[Bought Yahoo]

So when someone dies, like Freud, C.S. Lewis, Karl Marx, Einstein, all discussion about them and their theories is now forbidden somehow?

but this person has written introductions to a long list of books.

And so what? We should totally ignore HItchens today because of the power of his argument? I see lots of flaws in his argument.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

This particular article by Hitchens on Mormonism seems to have really gotten under the apologists’ mottled skins:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/200 ... igion.html

Mormonism: A Racket Becomes a Religion

BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

APRIL 27, 2007

If the followers of the prophet Muhammad hoped to put an end to any future “revelations” after the immaculate conception of the Koran, they reckoned without the founder of what is now one of the world’s fastest-growing faiths. And they did not foresee (how could they, mammals as they were?) that the prophet of this ridiculous cult would model himself on theirs. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—hereafter known as the Mormons—was founded by a gifted opportunist who, despite couching his text in openly plagiarized Christian terms, announced that “I shall be to this generation a new Muhammad” and adopted as his fighting slogan the words, which he thought he had learned from Islam, “Either the Al-Koran or the sword.” He was too ignorant to know that if you use the word al you do not need another definite article, but then he did resemble Muhammad in being able only to make a borrowing out of other people’s bibles.

In March 1826 a court in Bainbridge, New York, convicted a twenty-one-year-old man of being “a disorderly person and an impostor.” That ought to have been all we ever heard of Joseph Smith, who at trial admitted to defrauding citizens by organizing mad gold-digging expeditions and also to claiming to possess dark or “necromantic” powers. However, within four years he was back in the local newspapers (all of which one may still read) as the discoverer of the “Book of Mormon.” He had two huge local advantages which most mountebanks and charlatans do not possess. First, he was operating in the same hectically pious district that gave us the Shakers and several other self-proclaimed American prophets. So notorious did this local tendency become that the region became known as the “Burned-Over District,” in honor of the way in which it had surrendered to one religious craze after another. Second, he was operating in an area which, unlike large tracts of the newly opening North America, did possess the signs of an ancient history.

A vanished and vanquished Indian civilization had bequeathed a considerable number of burial mounds, which when randomly and amateurishly desecrated were found to contain not merely bones but also quite advanced artifacts of stone, copper, and beaten silver. There were eight of these sites within twelve miles of the underperforming farm which the Smith family called home. There were two equally stupid schools or factions who took a fascinated interest in such matters: the first were the gold-diggers and treasure-diviners who brought their magic sticks and crystals and stuffed toads to bear in the search for lucre, and the second those who hoped to find the resting place of a lost tribe of Israel. Smith’s cleverness was to be a member of both groups, and to unite cupidity with half-baked anthropology.

The actual story of the imposture is almost embarrassing to read, and almost embarrassingly easy to uncover. (It has been best told by Dr. Fawn Brodie, whose 1945 book No Man Knows My History was a good-faith attempt by a professional historian to put the kindest possible interpretation on the relevant “events.”) In brief, Joseph Smith announced that he had been visited (three times, as is customary) by an angel named Moroni. The said angel informed him of a book, “written upon gold plates,” which explained the origins of those living on the North American continent as well as the truths of the gospel. There were, further, two magic stones, set in the twin breastplates Urim and Thummim of the Old Testament, that would enable Smith himself to translate the aforesaid book. After many wrestlings, he brought this buried apparatus home with him on September 21, 1827, about eighteen months after his conviction for fraud. He then set about producing a translation.

The resulting “books” turned out to be a record set down by ancient prophets, beginning with Nephi, son of Lephi, who had fled Jerusalem in approximately 600 BC and come to America. Many battles, curses, and afflictions accompanied their subsequent wanderings and those of their numerous progeny. How did the books turn out to be this way? Smith refused to show the golden plates to anybody, claiming that for other eyes to view them would mean death. But he encountered a problem that will be familiar to students of Islam. He was extremely glib and fluent as a debater and story-weaver, as many accounts attest. But he was illiterate, at least in the sense that while he could read a little, he could not write. A scribe was therefore necessary to take his inspired dictation. This scribe was at first his wife Emma and then, when more hands were necessary, a luckless neighbor named Martin Harris. Hearing Smith cite the words of Isaiah 29, verses 11–12, concerning the repeated injunction to “Read,” Harris mortgaged his farm to help in the task and moved in with the Smiths. He sat on one side of a blanket hung across the kitchen, and Smith sat on the other with his translation stones, intoning through the blanket. As if to make this an even happier scene, Harris was warned that if he tried to glimpse the plates, or look at the prophet, he would be struck dead.

Mrs. Harris was having none of this, and was already furious with the fecklessness of her husband. She stole the first hundred and sixteen pages and challenged Smith to reproduce them, as presumably—given his power of revelation—he could. (Determined women like this appear far too seldom in the history of religion.) After a very bad few weeks, the ingenious Smith countered with another revelation. He could not replicate the original, which might be in the devil’s hands by now and open to a “Satanic verses” interpretation. But the all-foreseeing Lord had meanwhile furnished some smaller plates, indeed the very plates of Nephi, which told a fairly similar tale. With infinite labor, the translation was resumed, with new scriveners behind the blanket as occasion demanded, and when it was completed all the original golden plates were transported to heaven, where apparently they remain to this day.

Mormon partisans sometimes say, as do Muslims, that this cannot have been fraudulent because the work of deception would have been too much for one poor and illiterate man. They have on their side two useful points: if Muhammad was ever convicted in public of fraud and attempted necromancy we have no record of the fact, and Arabic is a language that is somewhat opaque even to the fairly fluent outsider. However, we know the Koran to be made up in part of earlier books and stories, and in the case of Smith it is likewise a simple if tedious task to discover that twenty-five thousand words of the Book of Mormon are taken directly from the Old Testament. These words can mainly be found in the chapters of Isaiah available in Ethan Smith’s View of the Hebrews: The Ten Tribes of Israel in America. This then popular work by a pious loony, claiming that the American Indians originated in the Middle East, seems to have started the other Smith on his gold-digging in the first place. A further two thousand words of the Book of Mormon are taken from the New Testament. Of the three hundred and fifty “names” in the book, more than one hundred come straight from the Bible and a hundred more are as near stolen as makes no difference. (The great Mark Twain famously referred to it as “chloroform in print,” but I accuse him of hitting too soft a target, since the book does actually contain “The Book of Ether.”) The words “and it came to pass” can be found at least two thousand times, which does admittedly have a soporific effect. Quite recent scholarship has exposed every single other Mormon “document” as at best a scrawny compromise and at worst a pitiful fake, as Dr. Brodie was obliged to notice when she reissued and updated her remarkable book in 1973.


Like Muhammad, Smith could produce divine revelations at short notice and often simply to suit himself (especially, and like Muhammad, when he wanted a new girl and wished to take her as another wife). As a result, he overreached himself and came to a violent end, having meanwhile excommunicated almost all the poor men who had been his first disciples and who had been browbeaten into taking his dictation. Still, this story raises some very absorbing questions, concerning what happens when a plain racket turns into a serious religion before our eyes.

It must be said for the “Latter-day Saints” (these conceited words were added to Smith’s original “Church of Jesus Christ” in 1833) that they have squarely faced one of the great difficulties of revealed religion. This is the problem of what to do about those who were born before the exclusive “revelation,” or who died without ever having the opportunity to share in its wonders. Christians used to resolve this problem by saying that Jesus descended into hell after his crucifixion, where it is thought that he saved or converted the dead. There is indeed a fine passage in Dante’s Inferno where he comes to rescue the spirits of great men like Aristotle, who had presumably been boiling away for centuries until he got around to them. (In another less ecumenical scene from the same book, the Prophet Muhammad is found being disemboweled in revolting detail.) The Mormons have improved on this rather backdated solution with something very literal-minded. They have assembled a gigantic genealogical database at a huge repository in Utah, and are busy filling it with the names of all people whose births, marriages, and deaths have been tabulated since records began. This is very useful if you want to look up your own family tree, and as long as you do not object to having your ancestors becoming Mormons. Every week, at special ceremonies in Mormon temples, the congregations meet and are given a certain quota of names of the departed to “pray in” to their church. This retrospective baptism of the dead seems harmless enough to me, but the American Jewish Committee became incensed when it was discovered that the Mormons had acquired the records of the Nazi “final solution,” and were industriously baptizing what for once could truly be called a “lost tribe”: the murdered Jews of Europe. For all its touching inefficacy, this exercise seemed in poor taste. I sympathize with the American Jewish Committee, but I nonetheless think that the followers of Mr. Smith should be congratulated for hitting upon even the most simpleminded technological solution to a problem that has defied solution ever since man first invented religion.

The above article is linked by various mopologists as the raison d'etre, I suppose, for their butthurt. Anyway. If you don’t have the attention span of a Trump-supporting gnat, I highly recommend reading the article. It’s *chef’s kiss*.

- Doc

[Moksha]

I don’t understand Peterson's obsession in trying to sully the man's memory with such childish snark?

The philosophical underpinning of his own blog is dismantled a couple of times each week by Gemli, so perhaps it is compensation.