MAD thread: Daniel Peterson Agrees That Church Presents...

[_Jersey Girl]

That's interesting. I wish Doug Melton didn't say "if you put a frog in boiling water" because the experiment claimed was not about ever doing that. And I wish a comparable recent experiment had been done of raising the water temp by .002 F./s as done in 1882 rather than 2 degree F./s. However, assuming it isn't true, it still is a conceptually useful parable, in that it helps to portray with few words the concept of human nature to be non appreciative of small gradual changes over time that if all those changes had been presented at once would be appreciated.

Yes, but would you want to be the frog? I agree that it is a useful "parable" as you call it.

[_moksha]

DCP: It seems to me far preferable that Latter-day Saints hear about potentially difficult issues from fellow believers who have accommodated the facts into their faith than that they be confronted by such issues at the hands of people who seek to use new information to surprise them, undermine their confidence in the church and its leaders, and destroy their religious beliefs.

I agree with this. It has seemed to me unfortunate, that one of the strongest weapons of the Tanner's website was its presentation of accurate material, that ran contrary to many legends that have been woven in its place. Unfortunately, there are accompanying this accurate material, unflattering characterizations and spins on sites critical to the LDS Church. Members would be more able to spot the characterizations and spins of this extra material if the accurate stuff was in their knowledge base to begin with, rather than their open vulnerabilities due to faith-promoting legends.

Embracing the truth need not destroy us, but rather lead to new realizations and becomings that will make us stronger.

[_guy sajer]

That's right Dan, nit pick at sentence structure and grammar, but ignore the content completely.

By the way, my comment was entirely focused on content, and had nothing to do with sentence structure, grammar, or even punctuation.

You missed the point by several thousand parsecs.

Well then your point was lost on me. I went back and reread what I wrote and couldn't see what you were talking about, so, knowing a bit about your online nature, quite reasonably assumed that you were indulging in one of your favored internet pasttimes of smugly trying to assert superiority by belittling opponents' spelling and grammar. (A tactic, by the way, that only succeeds in making you, and others who engage in it, appear appear petty ***holes. It impresses no one, except the person doing it.)

Care to try again?

I stand by my point; to wit, you may have traveled extensively and have seen the world, but you appear to have learned precious little in the process about the human condition, as judged by the content of the many, many posts you have accumulated, and by the narrow, dogmatic view of the world you cling to so tenaciously, and yes, beyond reason or decency.

(Guy Sajer, proud member of SomeSchmo Nation since August, 2006)

[_Daniel Peterson]

Well then your point was lost on me.

Obviously.

quite reasonably assumed that you were indulging in one of your favored internet pasttimes of smugly trying to assert superiority by belittling opponents' spelling and grammar. (A tactic, by the way, that only succeeds in making you, and others who engage in it, appear appear petty ***holes. It impresses no one, except the person doing it.)

This insinuation of yours is precisely as well-grounded in actual fact as many of the rest of the things you allege against me.

Care to try again?

Not particularly, no.

If you'll occasionally take a pause from your baseless self-congratulation, you'll have plenty of time to reflect on the matter. It would do you considerable good.

I stand by my point; to wit, you may have traveled extensively and have seen the world, but you appear to have learned precious little in the process about the human condition, as judged by the content of the many, many posts you have accumulated, and by the narrow, dogmatic view of the world you cling to so tenaciously, and yes, beyond reason or decency.

And here's my perception of your self-appointment as a judge: Your combination of arrogance and ignorance is breathtaking. You're an ideologue and a fool.

(We're being candid here, I take it.)

[_guy sajer]

You base your conclusion on a highly biased and shallow observations

While you, who don't know me, have literally no idea whatsoever about who I know, talk with, read, etc., and clearly misunderstand much of what you quote from me, base your conclusion on . . . nothing at all.

Ok, then clarify it again.

Look it up.

I've got better things to do with my time. Unlike you, I don't have hours per day to waste engaging in internet discussion/debate. My bosses are not quite so forgiving as yours.

Why don't you take a second from the dozens of other posts you'll make today, and MADD, and God knows where else you spend your time posting, and simply write a couple of qualifying sentences? I mean, geez, in a day spent for hours on internet discussion boards, surely you can spare the time.

Here's what I remember.

You stated (paraphrasing), that you "understand" why someone loses belief the Mormon Church, but you cannot think of a "justifiable" reason for them to do so.

Now, tell me what you meant, so that I don't misrepresent you anymore. Because, taking your statement as paraphrased above, and the context in which I read it, this tells me a great deal about you, and it lays bare the narrow perspectives under which your mind is laboring, and it marks you as someone who really understands quite little about people who aren't like you, who think differently than you.

You'll find them in, what's the word, oh yeah, peer-reviewed journals--you know, the things you've appear to have avoided like the plague.

I got another acceptance from Oxford University Press yesterday.[/quote]

OK, Dan, clarification time. Is this a book you're writing, editing, or contributing a chapter to? There's a huge difference.

Moreover, this is not a peer-reviewed journal, Dan. There is a difference in academics between publishing books, particularly as editor or as contributor to an anthology, and publishing peer-reviewed articles. There's a reason peer-reviewed articles are the "gold standard," something I suspect you’ve never taken the time to explain to all your sycophants over at MADD who think you’re the cat’s meow.

You want the mantle of "scholar," but you've never done what the rest of us in academics strive and work so hard to do to earn it. You want it on the cheap, and you haven't paid the price for it during a long and very undistinguished career.

Besides Dan, you've been at this how many years? Even if your Oxford publication is really all you claim it is, that's what, 2-3 valid publications in what has to be well over 20 years by now. Hardly impressive. Really good academics average 2-3 a year, mediocre ones 1 or so a year or every other year. You’ve averaged what, 1 every decade?

You can easily prove me wrong, and everyone else who doubts you and go out and publish something in a mainline, peer-reviewed journal. Take something from your Oxford book, rework it, and submit it. It’s done all the time. It's that easy.

Unlike your acolytes, I know how the academic world operates, and I am not so easily awed. I’ve seen your record (or what of it you allow the public to see), and it’s not one I’d aspire to after a couple of decades in the academy.

[_beastie]

Oh, for heaven's sake, Daniel. Guy's point was not that obtuse.

You are an academic, and traveling for academic reasons. It is highly unlikely that your visits have resulted in the justified ability to judge what members in other parts of the world are being told by their leaders or not.

Is that plain enough?

It's like our political leaders going on dog and pony shows in Iraq, and then coming back to declare all is well, all is well, I even went shopping on the streets! (omitting the fact that they were protected by soldiers and helicopters as they shopped)

In summary (not summarizing Guy, but rather my own observation)

1 - your dog and pony shows in other parts of the world are not adequate evidence of what native members are being taught by their leaders

2 - your own personal experience as an adult is irrelevant due to your known reputation for being an apologist who is going to be reading anti Mormon claims in order to refute them

3 - your memories of what you were taught as a child is irrelevant as well, due to the passage of so much time and the influence of confirmation bias

4 - my own experience directly contradicts your own, and so does the experience of people here

5 - literature from the church publications demonstrate that leaders try to convince members not to read anti Mormon literature (see the linked thread I provided earlier)

[_Daniel Peterson]

Simultaneously clueless and yet supremely confident in your capacity to judge.

How do you two manage it?

Fortunately for you, you're playing to an audience strongly disposed to sympathy for your silliness.

Zzzzzzzz.

Incidentally, Guy Sajer, your departure from academia is still causing shock waves around the world, and it's doubtful that global scholarship will ever recover. However, we stagger forward, disheartened but determined.

As a matter of fact, I don't agree that article publication in journals is "the gold standard." It's a standard, but there are others. (Are you seriously saying that articles are worth more than books? No, you must be joking.) In any event, whatever the "gold standard" may or may not be, I've been intensely focused for some years on founding, directing, and editing the dual-language Islamic Translation Series, Eastern Christian Texts series, and Medical Works of Moses Maimonides subseries, as well as the monolingual Library of the Christian East. After a slow and laborious start, the publications in those series continue to mount at an ever-increasing pace. If they ended up being my only contribution to scholarship, I would still feel satisfied at the end of my career, even if your Lordship sniffs at them. But they're not. And there's considerably more in the works.

[_beastie]

Simultaneously clueless and yet supremely confident in your capacity to judge.

Yes, this was my point. I'm glad you finally got it. You are clueless in regards to what the members in the various parts of the world you visited are being taught, and yet supremely confident in your capacity to judge it.

Now I'm remembering why I found discussions with you rarely worth the time. You so rarely actually address the meat of any issue.

[_dartagnan]

Juliann made this remarkable statement in that thread:

I will forever think anyone who relies on a short lessons from untrained amatuers as their sole source of information to not be blameless if they go on a witchhunt.

Those "untrained amateurs" are LDS missionaries. I wonder what my bishop would say if, when going on splits with the missionaries, I tell the investigator that he or she has no business listening to only what these untrained amateurs are saying, and then recommend that they engage in a thorough independent study of Mormonism before making his or her decision.

Ha! NOBODY would join!

These kinds of ridiculous comments by the talking heads at FAIR just goes to show how out of touch they are with contemporary Mormonism. I find Dan's remark equally astonishing because we all know from personal experience that the LDS faith does not encourage critical study of the Church. For him to sit there and say he hasn't had any experience with this is just baffling. Maybe it is because he has never approached his bishop with it as a concern. In any event, literature that critically analyzes truth claims of the Church is immediately branded anti-Mormon, and if you think the Church doesn't care if you read it, then take a copy of the "Mormon Murders" to Church next week and see what happens. You'll notice people start murmuring behind your back, others will ignore you, and you'll probably be called in for a meeting with the Bishop. The literature itself is considered evil.

Juliann makes her comment above as a means to foist blame onto the person who gets baptized without doing all the necessary studying. OF course they are only to blame if they end up leaving the faith and become critics. If they remain faithful, then it is OK to join the Church in ignorance. She doesn't think there is anything wrong with baptizing African Americans while neglecting to inform them of the priesthood ban (Kevin Barney rightly called this missionary malpractice). And she doesn't even acknowledge the fact that the Church doesn't encourage or recommend independent study which she says these investigators should do.

I mean for crying out loud the Church's policy is to send a couple of zealous teenagers to your home and it makes it mandatory for them to commit you to baptism during the second (of six) discussion. You're not even supposed to make it half way through the scheduled lessons before making the commitment to baptism.

This in and of itself proves the Church is emotion based. Missionaries are constantly asking you how you feel because that is how they are told conversion happens. They are constantly asking you to pray so they can have another opportunity to ask you how you felt about it.

I have often related my expeirences with this phenomenon in the church, but perhaps the most telling was when I went to Utah to attend the 2001 FAIR conference. I carried with me a couple of dozen copies of JP Holding's "The Mormon Defenders." This was perhaps the least ant-Mormon of all books considered anti-Mormon. Nowhere does he say Mormons are not Christians and are hellbound. In fact, he criticizes Evangelicals who would make that judgment. Several apologists had requested a copy and JP offered them to me at half price. Everyone from FAIR knew I was bringing these books. I handed Dan about a half dozen copies so he could distribute them at FARMS.

Anyway, I was staying with a popular published apologist from FAIR. His wife had a hard time accepting me into their home with those books. He had to talk to her on the side to convince her that it was alright. The mere presence of such literature is frightening to some members. Also, when I was passing the books out at the conference, one FAIR board member, Lance Starr, got pissed off because I offered him a copy. I politely walked up to him and asked if he had requested a copy. He didn't make eye contact and in a strong voice said "No I did NOT," and then immediately walked off.

When I was investigating the Church, the Mormon family who took me in immediately ignored me the day they found out my grandmother had mailed me a John Ankerberg transcript. I'm not kidding either. They were my best friends for about a year and when the oldest daughter saw me reading the transcript - she immediately started crying. This was during lunch in high school. She ran home and told her family and they all ignored the hell out of me until about a week later, when I convinced them I had not been convinced by it.

Anyway, I am surprised with Dan's comment because I have visited Utah on three occassions, and I have had an experience with this each time, yet he has lived there perhaps for most of his life and he says he never noticed it.

[_beastie]

Anyway, I am surprised with Dan's comment because I have visited Utah on three occassions, and I have had an experience with this each time, yet he has lived there perhaps for most of his life and he says he never noticed it.

Well, maybe Dan is one of the (many) Mormon men who "listen" at church by leaning forward, putting their heads in their hands, face down, and closing their eyes....in order to better focus, no doubt.

;)