Mopologetics and Converting “Great Men”
Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2022 3:06 am
I wound up reading an entry of “SeN” today, mainly due to Consig linking to the post where DCP seems to support a practice whereby sex offenders are left alone provided that they confess to their bishop.
Bad as that is, the bulk of Dr. Peterson’s post was a reminiscence about his time as a youth in Scotland, where he spent time amongst a bunch of luminaries, including several Nobel laureates. He wound up scoring such a trip via his essay-writing skills, as he explains:
At the end of the day, I think that’s why I find DCP’s name-dropping so obnoxious. It’s not that he seems pathetic because wants to show that he hangs out with “important” people. It’s that he’s all “gaga” over these famous people while simultaneously seeming to know that they would think he was ridiculous if they knew what he was truly all about. If these Econ Nobel laureates are truly so bright, then why haven’t they joined the Church? How/why are they any better than the Brethren? And why, at the end of the day, does DCP never try to convert any of them?
I think we all know the answer.
Bad as that is, the bulk of Dr. Peterson’s post was a reminiscence about his time as a youth in Scotland, where he spent time amongst a bunch of luminaries, including several Nobel laureates. He wound up scoring such a trip via his essay-writing skills, as he explains:
Great! Right? Except that DCP tells stories like this quite a bit: here he is, hobnobbing with some luminary, and yet… something seems “off.” What I realized in reading this is that Mormonism is 100% absent from these anecdotes. He *never* mentions the Church. Remember: this is someone who was tasked in his patriarchal blessing to defend and support the Gospel, and yet whenever he’s around some of the most influential people on planet earth, suddenly the Church seems…I dunno, like a “backwater” embarrassment? Seriously, why didn’t he bear his testimony to Milton Friedman, or give a Book of Mormon to John Chamberlain, who no doubt would have admired the ancient Nephites’ system of currency? What, one wonders, would von Hayek have thought about young Peterson’s literal belief in Jaredite barges? DCP’s story is all about how exciting it was for him to hang out with some of the “best and brightest” in the world and yet I’m struck by how his commitment to the Church seems to completely vanish. I mean, if these Nobel laureates are so smart, why would they wise up to what all the PhDs at MST have realized?I immediately decided to seek the prize and, curiously, I was always serenely confident that I would win it. I simply knew that I would. One of the principal approach paths to LAX passed far above my parents’ house in California and, as I sat out in their backyard writing my essay over the 1975 summer break, every plane that passed overhead reminded me of my upcoming trip to Great Britain.
Winning the essay contest — and I did, in fact, win it –allowed me to mingle socially with such figures as Friedrich von Hayek, who had won the first-ever Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974, as well as with Milton Friedman, who would win the 1976 prize just a few months later. I met future laureates like James Buchanan (1986) and Ronald Coase (1991), and spent a long afternoon exploring the superb used bookshops of St. Andrews with George Stigler, who would win the 1982 prize. One afternoon, I walked around the Royal and Ancient with the journalist and business historian John. Chamberlain, whom I greatly admired.
At the end of the day, I think that’s why I find DCP’s name-dropping so obnoxious. It’s not that he seems pathetic because wants to show that he hangs out with “important” people. It’s that he’s all “gaga” over these famous people while simultaneously seeming to know that they would think he was ridiculous if they knew what he was truly all about. If these Econ Nobel laureates are truly so bright, then why haven’t they joined the Church? How/why are they any better than the Brethren? And why, at the end of the day, does DCP never try to convert any of them?
I think we all know the answer.