FAIRMormon conference kicks off with DCP’s Festschrift and lifetime achievement award

[drumdude]

noel: "I'd like to see PhysicsGuy and Dan engage in a youtube discussion. Or John Gee and Kara Cooney?"

Physics Guy is one of the small minority of the participants over at the Peterson Obsession Board who hold any intellectual interest for me. I don't think, however, that his knowledge or understanding of Latter-day Saint thinking is nearly as deep as he seems to imagine it to be -- if I'm not mistaken, he has never been a member of the Church -- and the overeager folks at the Obsession Board certainly don't demand much of him (since he's reliably dismissive of the Church), but he's bright and thoughtful.

I wouldn't really expect very much from a conversation between us, though. Not on the level that you want. And I don't have a very high opinion of face to face debates as a means of reaching the truth. Sometimes, yes. Very often, no.

"Why aren't you doing what Bart Ehrman does engaging in a youtube discussion with your critics.?"

Surely, noel, you're not suggesting that Everybody's WC (my "mini stalker") and my Malevolent Stalker and their half a dozen or so allies are on a level of substance or intellectual seriousness that is even remotely comparable to Bart Ehrman's critics. Are you? Professor Ehrman has substantive discussions with them; I can't even imagine having a substantive discussion with Everybody's WC. Is he capable? I have no idea. Is he interested? He's shown no sign of it. He enjoys invented gossip, personal insults, and memes. That's his world. It's not mine.

Anyway, though, it's fine if people choose to have YouTube debates. That's one way of doing things. But there are hundreds of ways of doing things, and there are only twenty-four hours in a day. Why must Bart Ehman's way be my way? Please explain that to me.

I love how DCP seems to think he's operating on such a high level that he no longer has to engage critics or even criticism in general. His tried and true method of getting to the truth is creating his own Potemkin journal, publishing works "peer reviewed" by his friends, and sitting back comfortably without worrying about any pushback.

He understood a long time ago that one-on-one debates were a quick way to prove how weak his arguments are. So he's walled himself off into his own tiny corner of obscurity.

Defender of the faith, indeed!

[Everybody Wang Chung]

"Why aren't you doing what Bart Ehrman does engaging in a youtube discussion with your critics.?"

Surely, noel, you're not suggesting that Everybody's WC (my "mini stalker") and my Malevolent Stalker and their half a dozen or so allies are on a level of substance or intellectual seriousness that is even remotely comparable to Bart Ehrman's critics. Are you? Professor Ehrman has substantive discussions with them; I can't even imagine having a substantive discussion with Everybody's WC. Is he capable? I have no idea. Is he interested? He's shown no sign of it. He enjoys invented gossip, personal insults, and memes. That's his world. It's not mine.

Surely, noel, you're not suggesting that DCP ("the Afore") and his small claque of crazies (about a half a dozen or so) are on a level of substance or intellectual seriousness that is even remotely comparable to Bart Ehrman's critics. Are you? Professor Ehrman has substantive discussions with them; I can't even imagine having a substantive discussion with the Afore. Is he capable? I have no idea. Is he interested? He's shown no sign of it. He enjoys plagiarizing, personal insults, and dishonesty. That's the Afore's world. It's not mine.

Folks, you just can't make this stuff up.

[Philo Sofee]

Did the Peterson Festschrift ever make it into print and is it available?

[Tom]

Did the Peterson Festschrift ever make it into print and is it available?

The festschrift is available online for free reading. Reader discretion is advised.

[Moksha]

Dr. Peterson received the FairMormon Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. Perhaps that explains his response this morning: "I did not expect this." I was certainly confused.

Posters on this board have been using their gift of prophecy and predicting this outcome for some time.

I imagine posters could also suggest a myriad of articles left out of his Festschrift.

[Physics Guy]

His commitment to scholarship and faithfulness is truly exemplary, and his remarkable ability to blend intellectual rigor with good humor and compassion has touched the lives of many.

Perhaps they can fix this? Peterson at least deserves decent grammar.

[Tom]

To see the list of essays contained in DCP's festschrift, click on:

Steadfast in Defense of Faith: Essays in Honor of Daniel C. Peterson

The festschrift is available online for free reading. Reader discretion is advised.

I would highlight Shirley Ricks’ essay, titled “Reflections on the Genesis and Evolution of the FARMS Review under the Editorship of Daniel C. Peterson (1989–2011).” The essay makes no mention of the “Metcalfe is Butthead” acrostic. I am not making this up. The essay is one of the biggest whitewashes in the history of Mopologetics.

I hope that a Cassius scholar can one day publish a complete history of the journal that covers the acrostic story in detail. For now, one can listen to Brent Metcalfe relate the story here.

Bumping my own comment to bring Ricks’ essay to the attention of Kish, Doctor Scratch, and Gadianton.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

Bumping my own comment to bring Ricks’ essay to the attention of Kish, Doctor Scratch, and Gadianton.

I also hope that someone will comment on Rick's essay. It's completely bonkers.

For at least the first ten years of its publication, the FARMS Review was poorly bound or glued. Whatever process was used resulted in the copies falling apart and pages falling out at the slightest hint of opening the book too wide. Perhaps we sought the least-expensive alternative for having the books printed and bound, but in the long run we didn’t do ourselves any favors.

The later FARMS Review copies were the exact same poor quality. There was no difference in quality. They've all fallen apart. I guess you get what you pay for.

HUMOR IN THE FARMS REVIEW
We must acknowledge that we editors enjoyed moments of humor as we worked on the Review. Daniel was in particularly fine form as he reviewed Loftes Tryk’s The Best Kept Secrets in the Book of Mormon. In the previous year, Daniel had reviewed a polemic by Peter Bartley, but he couldn’t help exclaiming how much worse the Tryk volume was. He called his friends to share particularly funny passages and wondered if the author could really believe what he had written. Daniel even speculated that Tryk had persuaded the “humorless ranks of the anti-Mormons” to publish a side-splitting satire of themselves. His conclusion, however, was “that the book appears to be—well, after a manner of speaking—serious.” Titles and phrases over the years that elicit chuckles include “Playing with Half a Decker,”25 “Korihor’s back, and this time he’s got a printing press,”26 and “Shades of Darkness.” We recall the time when the renowned scholar Davis Bitton offered in 2001 to review something he had written for Dialogue in 1966. As “a historian of greater maturity and wisdom,” Bitton wished “to recognize the inadequacy of young Bitton’s history.” Not everyone is humble enough to acknowledge that one’s opinions may have changed and developed over time. One editor called Daniel and insisted that there was a mistake on since Bitton’s name occupied the place of both the reviewer and the one being reviewed. “But that, of course, was the joke.”

Are any of these examples humorous? I've never understood Mopologetic humor. It's anything but humorous.

[drumdude]

That's the kind of humor I would expect from a stuffy, wood-paneled room filled with a mid-Atlantic, White-Anglo-Saxton-Protestant clique of obscure college professors, clinging to their milquetoast jokes as the last bastion of any hope of real authentic personality.

Basically DCP's wet dream.

[Tom]

Bumping my own comment to bring Ricks’ essay to the attention of Kish, Doctor Scratch, and Gadianton.

I also hope that someone will comment on Rick's essay. It's completely bonkers.

For at least the first ten years of its publication, the FARMS Review was poorly bound or glued. Whatever process was used resulted in the copies falling apart and pages falling out at the slightest hint of opening the book too wide. Perhaps we sought the least-expensive alternative for having the books printed and bound, but in the long run we didn’t do ourselves any favors.

The later FARMS Review copies were the exact same poor quality. There was no difference in quality. They've all fallen apart. I guess you get what you pay for.

Amen. My copy of issue 6/1 (1994)—which features the slightly altered “Metcalfe is Butthead” acrostic—quickly fell apart after I ordered it. I have dozens of loose pages stuffed into the book. It’s sad, really.