There is a certain sympathy I’m able to muster when confronted with the vapid hot takes. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, those thirsty Brighamites stationed in Salt Lake City, is perhaps one of the most boring and two dimensional churches I’ve ever studied. I can imagine that most people affiliated with the religion are simply content starved and hungrily consume any popular culture that makes mention of them out of necessity.
While I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a Sophie’s choice, the prospect of having to choose between John Gee’s Saving Faith or Adam Miller’s Letters to a Young Morman is more than enough to have anyone running to watch Andrew Garfield and Rory Culkin. That kind of spiritual poverty can be a real handicap and the soft glow of serialized drama streamed into your comfortable home provides people with so much more than a sacrament meeting conducted with the same decorum you’d get at a realtor's office.
Enter the venerable Daniel C. Peterson, the proprietor of the cyclic Sic et Non where the forest of neurons that is his mind is preserved by the judicious use of the same dozen or so threadbare tropes. The strategy, if I’m divining it correctly, is to consistently reuse argumentative tropes in lieu of original content to project the illusion that the task of contemplative thought is being done.
I’m not sure why Daniel shirks the epistemic duties of his academic calling, the man is more industrious than most. When given to flights of fancy I like to think of Daniel as General Ripper from Dr. Strangelove, taciturn and grim in explaining why he must guard his vital essence from a conspiracy of stalkers trying to bait him into embarrassing himself.
Regardless of his motive, here is the trope about to come under examination:
By my reckoning, Daniel posed the same line of questioning when Murder Among the Mormons debuted on Netflix:Daniel C. Peterson wrote:To take it back to Under the Banner of Heaven and the Lafferty murders, on what Nietzschean basis can you condemn the Laffertys? On what basis, even, can you, if you’re a follower of Nietzsche, condemn alleged Latter-day Saint misogyny, patriarchy, obscurantism, and fanaticism?
Daniel C. Peterson wrote: Obviously, I’m not claiming — and would never claim — that all atheists are murderers or even that they condone murder. Such an accusation would not only be offensive and unjust to very many decent people but manifestly absurd and demonstrably false. I know and respect a number of agnostics and atheists, and I can’t imagine any of them committing homicide. But I can understand Hofmann’s reasoning, such as it is, and I find it very difficult to imagine on what basis a thorough-going atheistic naturalist could possibly argue that Hofmann was “wrong.” What would it even mean to claim that he was wrong?
One can even go back to 2005 and find Daniel whistling that tune :
Of course answers to this query date back to antiquity and the sheer volume of material published by English speaking philosophers in the 20th century alone on this topic could keep one profitably reading for decades.Daniel C. Peterson wrote:On the basis of what moral principles do secularizing critics pronounce the church wanting? How were those principles chosen, and why should anybody else defer to them? Even if one were to grant the factual claims on which they stake their moral judgments, it is not at all clear that those moral judgments are capable of bearing any objectively real weight.
Daniel really isn’t concerned about intellectual history or even the contemporary scene regarding moral philosophy, so one shouldn’t expect him to actually engage with it. The questions are merely rhetorical devices, they don’t represent real curiosity and they are most certainly not an invitation for conversation.
This isn’t even the first time Daniel has used Nietzsche and his book The Antichrist to this effect. When 2020 was winding down we were treated to the usual meditations:
Daniel C. Peterson wrote:Many who deny an objective or divine foundation to morality nonetheless assume that evolutionary processes lead naturally, sociobiologically, to something broadly resembling a traditional Judeo-Christian ethic of mutual help, human rights, and cooperation. Thus, the religious underpinnings that some have thought necessary to morality can be safely dispensed with, as we climb inexorably onto the sunny uplands of naturalistic reason.
Which eventually leads Daniel to introducing Nietzsche:
Daniel even uses the same textual examples! Here is the 2020 citation (underline mine):Daniel C. Peterson wrote:Herewith, a sampler of quotations from Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist: A Criticism of Christianity [1888], translated by Anthony M. Ludovici (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2006), italics and punctuation in the original:
And here is Daniel’s citation in 2022 (underline mine):Nietzsche wrote: What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and power itself in man. What is bad? — All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? The feeling that power is increasing, — that resistance has been overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue but efficiency [German Tüchtigkeit, “capability,” “competence” – DCP] (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtù, free from all moralic acid). The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our humanity. And they ought even to be helped to perish.
What is more harmful than any vice? — Practical sympathy with all the botched and weak — Christianity.
Daniel’s slight editorial changes to his formulaic content probably represents the culmination of his growth as a thinker and as a writer. To wit here is Daniel in 2020 (underline mine):Nietzsche wrote:What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the Will to Power, and power itself in man. What is bad? — All that proceeds from weakness. What is happiness? — The feeling that power is increasing — that resistance has been overcome.
Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency [not quite the right translation, in my view, of Tüchtigkeit, but it will serve] (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtù, free from all moralic acid). The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our humanity. And they ought even to be helped to perish.
What is more harmful than any vice? — Practical sympathy with all the botched and the weak — Christianity.
Here is the same sentiment in 2022 (underline mine):Daniel C. Peterson wrote:Nietzsche became very popular among certain thinkers of the German National Socialist movement, but pointing that out may be rather unfair to him. It’s not at all clear that he would have favored Nazism, which arose after his death. Still, it’s not difficult to see why they found him appealing.
In 2020 Daniel wasn’t sure if Nietzsche would have approved of Nazis, but when we get to 2022 he seems confident that Nietzsche would find them “repulsive” and “contemptible”. What changed? What new information was Daniel confronted with that prompted this shift in thinking? That would be an interesting blog post to read from Daniel.Daniel C. Peterson wrote:Although I think that Nietzsche would have found Nazism and the Nazis repulsive and contemptible, it’s not difficult to see why they were attracted to at least some of what he said.
We won’t get it though, because I doubt Daniel is even aware of these differences in his repetition. Daniel is very much a product of the Church he defends, the shallow and unimaginative nature of Mormon apologetics owes its existence to the carefully cultured environment fostered by the Salt Lake Brethren.
More thoughts to follow.