DonBradley wrote:...95% of what he writes online and much of what he writes in his introductions to the FARMS Review appears to be rhetorical play. I would suggest either ignoring him altogether or engaging him on his own ground and taking, and giving, one's lashes with good humor.
Don
I repeat: be ye therefore kind to one another. Be thou humble. Love thy neighbor.
Living the gospel isn't difficult. It just requires a few basics of human interaction: kindness to others, loving your neighbor, humility. Daniel, and his humor, fails on all of those.
He loses the opportunity to live as if life is huge joke once he takes on the role of chief apologist for the LDS church. If he wants to lay that aside, then he can do whatever he wants. But if he's representing the church, or putting himself out to the public as representing the church, then he doesn't get to be unscathed when his humor is out of line with his position.
I'm not saying that the matters under discussion, or debate, aren't serious--they are. And DCP recognizes this. But he tends to approach debate over them with a kind of light-hearted rhetorical style.
I'm also not saying, by the way, that he shouldn't be prepared to take rhetorical counterpunches. He who lives by his wits dies by his wits--or something like that.
I'm just trying to distill what I've gathered from my experience with him. His apparent digs against "critics" of Mormonism aren't motivated by hostility. They're part of getting the rhetorical upper hand in a contest, a contest where the stakes are quite serious to him but his style is tailored to having fun and being funny to his (LDS) readers.
So, one way to deal with his rhetorical style is to recognize the light-hearted (if not necessarily polite) motivations behind it, and not take it too seriously. DCP's light-hearted pungency would seem to call for a response in kind, rather than godawful seriousness and expletive-ridden rebuttals. DCP's critics have a tendency to take him far more seriously than he takes himself.
The Nehor wrote:I disagree with the rationale. All Saints should represent well at all times, public and private. I don't think DCP is under a higher obligation than a shut-in LDS member.
He is the chief apologist of the church. The least he could do is live his religion.
1: I did not think the Church had a chief apologist.
2: If you decide he does not live his religion simply based on some of what he posts on a message board I think you are sorely mistaken. My guess is in real life he lived his religion pretty well and in fact what I have seen of him as an apologist he lives it well there as also.
The Nehor wrote:I disagree with the rationale. All Saints should represent well at all times, public and private. I don't think DCP is under a higher obligation than a shut-in LDS member.
He is the chief apologist of the church. The least he could do is live his religion.
1: I did not think the Church had a chief apologist.
2: If you decide he does not live his religion simply based on some of what he posts on a message board I think you are sorely mistaken. My guess is in real life he lived his religion pretty well and in fact what I have seen of him as an apologist he lives it well there as also.
DonBradley wrote:I think the biggest mistake one can make with DCP is to take his debating mode too seriously. To repeat: It's a game. While he certainly can engage in scholarly discourse, without the snide humor, 95% of what he writes online and much of what he writes in his introductions to the FARMS Review appears to be rhetorical play. I would suggest either ignoring him altogether or engaging him on his own ground and taking, and giving, one's lashes with good humor.
Don
Hi, Don. Great to see you over here!
First of all, a good many of us here cannot "engage him on his own ground," since the MADmoderating team, which is so protective of him, has banned us from participating on that forum. (Some of us have even had our IPs blocked, in an effort to prevent us from even reading the posts.) In other words, he is quite literally "hiding" over there. Are you really not aware of this?
Second, I don't think he views it as a "game." Maybe he thinks that it is a game most of the time, but his fairly recent disclosure that the sought legal counsel with the intention of suing myself and others, rather belies his claims about it all being "a game." Further, even in his jokey recent intro to FARMS Review, he concluded by bearing his testimony, and explaining that he views his apologetic activities as God-sanctioned.
I think people react to him because he's a dumbass that many people seem to view as an intellectual, so the paradox is hard (for many) to reconcile.
The only reason I ever interacted with him was because it's always fun to act condescending toward people who like to act condescending toward... well, everyone (I often called him Danny-boy). It was actually too easy, but given his status on FAIR, it was pretty fun.
And he kept coming back for more. How could I resist?
God belief is for people who don't want to live life on the universe's terms.
I don’t pay too much attention to him, but here are my thoughts which admittedly aren’t worth much.
It seems to me that with DCP, there is a very thin line between being a questioning believer and being an apostate, and he shows a lot of empathy towards one group and a lot of disregard towards the other. Sometimes people will ask him for a life preserver, but he’ll perceive that they have already crossed the line and will throw an anvil instead.
He is obstinate about only engaging in battles that he can win. That can be frustrating because it gives the impression that he won’t address the big picture and won’t deal with the most troubling concerns one can have with the faith. You get the feeling that beneath the surface he understands your valid point, but he won’t even acknowledge it, much less concede it.
He’d be a great dodge ball player.
It’s relatively easy to agree that only Homo sapiens can speak about things that don’t really exist, and believe six impossible things before breakfast. You could never convince a monkey to give you a banana by promising him limitless bananas after death in monkey heaven.
For any of you who have or had a spouse who you feel is irrational most of the time, draw a parallel to the apologetic situation. From a Mormon perspective, all anti-Mormonism is completely irrational and the best the industry has to offer barely meets the standard of minimal coherency. So consider anti-Mormons as the irrational spouse. How many have made headway with an irrational spouse by giving sarcastic, point-by-point refutations to the things they say?
At this point, it might be said that DCP is a bad pick for the star Center. But the situation adds dimensions and complexity when rogue apologetics becomes institutionalized. All human institutions have one thing in common, they either grow or shrink. Like any other institution then, apologetics surrounding FAIR/FARMS naturally wishes for increased membership and interest in what they do. And while it isn't a conscious effort I don't think, to survive, the institution naturally selects leaders and key players who know how to stir up a hornet's nest, because apologists are locked into a symbiotic relationship with anti-Mormons. It's to the benefit of both to needle each other, more anti-Mormonism means more books and speakers are needed for the next FAIR conference. It also means more resources for anti-Mormons to make their websites grow.
DCP, Julliann, Pahoran, and the other stars aren't in their positions because of or in spite of anything to do with living their religion, which is largely irrelevant, but because they are part of a de facto market solution that satisfies demand for conflict, sensationalism, and argument. Their institution insures the growth of anti-Mormonism.
The church will have to ultimately decide if funding or turning a blind eye to a side army is in or out of harmony with their decision to maximize the church's growth through slick PR.
As editor of The FARMS Review, DCP is the most visible and prominent FARMS writer. So, yes, he comes to symbolize, and epitomize, FARMS as a whole.
However, I think there are deeper, more specific reasons for his service as a human lightning rod.
First, he is a very effective rhetorician. While Dr. Peterson is certainly capable of, and does, academic scholarship, he is often, online and among friends such as readers of the FARMS Review, not in academic mode, but in more of a light-hearted debate mode. He positively excels at this. He can win conisderable rhetorical ground without appealing to evidence at all, by virtue of his razor sharp wit. This delights and entertains most of his fellow believers, but maddens many critics. Critics want their arguments taken seriously and weighed on their merits. But DCP often doesn't grant them this. He tends to not spend his time on Internet boards discussing detailed evidence or the logical structure of arguments. Rather, he whimsically plays with his discussion "opponents," and, as the superior rhetorician, usually makes their position look foolish or laughable (at least to those who share his basic belief premises).
Second, while Dr. Peterson intends his humorous responses to be "piquant"--pleasingly pungent or provocative, they often come across to critics as noxiously and malevolently pungent and provocative. In face-to-face discussion, everything about Daniel Peterson communicates amiability and emotional lightness. But shorn of these nonverbals, his jokes come across to many who don't know him, and are the butt of said jokes, as personally dismissive, angry, and even bellicose.
I've not made a secret of my personal distaste for rhetoric that is so easily misunderstood, and therefore inadvertantly inflammatory. But I disdain the tendency to defame Professor Peterson and mock him in the most crass of ways. While I, personally, would prefer to see Dr. Peterson tone down and clarify some of his writing, I think it is very misguided to attack him as though he were Mephistopheles. At best, he's a mischievous imp. ;)
Dr. Peterson's critics take his rhetoric far more seriously than he does. A useful metaphor for understanding his piquant humor was provided by his own self-description. Daniel Peterson has, if I remember right, acknowledged having grown up as a frequent class clown. While he was no doubt a high-performing student, he was also a cut-up. And he still is. While an erudite scholar in his own right, he frequently plays the class clown to those who would act as his critical "teachers."
The stakes are now higher than in class, and more intense feelings are involved--so, to repeat, I'd prefer that he use greater circumspection in his writing. But I think those who take him with such godawful seriousness are badly misguided. This guy isn't Josef Goebbels, folks. He's Hugh Nibley meets Fletch.