Under the Banner of Doddering Apologetics

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Doctor Scratch
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Re: Under the Banner of Doddering Apologetics

Post by Doctor Scratch »

I can’t help but wonder if Patheos is aware that he’s recycling old material this way. I mean, they’re *paying* him, aren’t they? I realize that his principal readership is probably totally oblivious to what he’s up to, but it’s not hard to imagine that Patheos would feel like he was ripping them off by doing this sort of thing.
"If, while hoping that everybody else will be honest and so forth, I can personally prosper through unethical and immoral acts without being detected and without risk, why should I not?." --Daniel Peterson, 6/4/14
drumdude
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Re: Under the Banner of Doddering Apologetics

Post by drumdude »

Patheos.com is the premier online destination to engage in the global dialogue about religion and spirituality, and to explore and experience the world's beliefs. Patheos is the website of choice for the millions of people looking for credible and balanced information about religion. Patheos brings together faith communities, academics, and the broader public into a single environment, and is the place where many people turn on a regular basis for insight, inspiration, and stimulating discussion.
DPs blog doesn’t fit into this mission statement much at all which is why he occasionally whinges about moving to another platform. While cashing the checks with his other hand…
Tom
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Re: Under the Banner of Doddering Apologetics

Post by Tom »

An earlier recounting of the story:
In Cairo some years ago, I spoke at length with a Muslim chemistry professor at the University of Cairo. He was astonished when he learned that I was a Christian. "Do you really," he asked, incredulously, "believe that God had a Son, and that he allowed that Son to be murdered in order to buy himself off?" After expressing some reservations about how he had expressed the doctrine of the atonement, I replied that, yes, I did believe precisely that. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "How can any intelligent person believe in such nonsense?" Well, the fact is that highly intelligent people have accepted Christianity. (Origen, Athanasius, Augustine, Aquinas, Pascal, and Kierkegaard are among those who come immediately to mind.) But it was thought-provoking to find that my most sacred beliefs seemed insanely ludicrous to a highly educated outsider. It was enlightening to find Christianity, for once, in the minority, and Christian assumptions questioned as less than self-evident. How many times have I heard people say things like, "How can any intelligent person believe in Islam?" or "How can any intelligent person be a Catholic?" Yet people like al-Ghazali and Iqbal and Ibn Khaldun have been Muslims, and the Catholic Church has claimed the loyalty of such people as Cardinal Newman and G. K. Chesterton and Jacques Maritain. Reflecting on this, and on my own experience as an Islamicist, I have come to formulate what might be termed Peterson's First Rule for the Study of Other Religions: If a substantial number of sane and intelligent people believe something that seems to you utterly without sense, the problem probably lies with you, for not grasping what it is about that belief that a lucid and reasonable person might find plausible and satisfying.
Daniel C. Peterson, “Chattanooga Cheapshot, or the Gall of Bitterness,” Review of Books on the Book of Mormon 5 (1993): 26-27, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/vie ... ontext=msr.
“But if you are told by your leader to do a thing, do it. None of your business whether it is right or wrong.” Heber C. Kimball, 8 Nov. 1857
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Doctor CamNC4Me
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Re: Under the Banner of Doddering Apologetics

Post by Doctor CamNC4Me »

It should be noted he also recycles the “Peterson’s First Rule for the Study of Other Religions” talk/article often enough that other people have picked it up and used it:

https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/con ... ns-stories
On a blog post in late May (2012) of this year, fellow FAIR conference speaker and BYU professor of Islamic studies Daniel Peterson, wrote about what he calls “Peterson’s First Rule for the Study of Other Religions”.
Here:

https://whytheldschurchistrue.com/peter ... orldviews/

Here:

https://www.christopherrandallnicholson.com/daoism.html
Professor Daniel C. Peterson has written, “If a substantial number of sane and intelligent people believe something that seems to you utterly without sense, the problem probably lies with you, for not grasping what it is about that belief that a lucid and reasonable person might find plausible and satisfying.”
And so on …

- Doc
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
drumdude
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Re: Under the Banner of Doddering Apologetics

Post by drumdude »

It's a really stupid rule. Intelligent and sane does not mean immune from confirmation bias and self-deception. Scientology is even more self-evidently a fraud than Mormonism and there are still intelligent sane people supporting it.

Mormonism, if DP hasn't noticed, is experiencing a brain drain. On the average, every year they are losing more intelligent people than they are gaining. This is a much better indication of the objective assessment of Mormonism's truth than finding a few token intellectuals propping it up as their source of income.
Dr Exiled
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Re: Under the Banner of Doddering Apologetics

Post by Dr Exiled »

DP:

I don't know why you continue when, obviously, you're mailing it in. Why recycle old posts and copy and paste like you always do? I don't think that many like the repetition. We'll understand if you bow out. You have to be tired with the constant travel to places you've been to over and over again. Don't you have grandchildren you want to get to know? Are you trying to mimic the GA travel schedule for some BS glory? You aren't one of them and never will be. Just face it. They didn't want you in their club and that is a good thing even though you don't get it.
Myth is misused by the powerful to subjugate the masses all too often.
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