DCP refers to his critics as QAnon-like

[Lem]

But a small and anonymous handful of my most fevered critics — think of QAnon, but without QAnon’s vivacious charm, lacking its kindness toward those with whom it disagrees, falling short of its intellectual rigor, and stripped of its optimistic idealism —

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... moses.html

Of course this is the person whose very first blog entry I ever saw online featured an actual photo of a lynching, which he said accurately described his hurt feelings. Or some such incredibly offensive nonsense.

On a related note, 5 days before the above entry, he posted the abstract of an article published in the Interpreter that included this:

"The Book of Mormon instructs us that the right way to interact is with love and respect, through examples of people respecting and reaching out to others, promises to all people, condemnation of unkindness and anti-Semitism, calls to all people to repent, and emphasizing the flaws of one’s own group and not those of others."

Peterson struggles to live in harmony with his religion's requirements, it seems.

In the QAnon blog entry, Peterson ends with this:

...Other suggestions as to possible reasons for the end of my Deseret News column will be welcomed. Remember, absolutely no connection with reality or actual fact is required. Let your creativity run wild!

No, creativity is not necessary, nor is a lack of reality. My opinion is that Peterson's ongoing plagiarism (yes, ongoing), and his inappropriate name-calling are not attributes Deseret News wants in their columnists. Just like the Maxwell Institute didn't want them in their editors and resident faculty members.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Or zombies.

https://cesletter.org/apologetics/a-zom ... tions.html

I had never before heard him speak and so I anxiously awaited to hear from him. However, I was not prepared for the venomous attack that came. He was so derisive of the author (I don't believe that he mentioned Jeremy by name), constantly being dismissive with verbal and facial inflections. In a supercilious tone, he mocked the author, 'It was worrisome reading.' He laughed and scoffed at the author as being amateurish in his approach. Another reference was made about followers of the 'CES Letter' being Zombies or Zombie-like.

The only issue that I recall he directly hit on was the Book of Abraham scroll. He said that the 'CES Letter' says that 'none of Joseph Smith's translations were correct'. Dan took issue with "none" because the crocodile on one the facsimiles was some kind of Egyptian God according to Joseph Smith. And somewhere in Egypt some archeologist has found the head of a croc on a human statue which might be a God-like creature. Therefore, the author of the CES Letter was wrong! Dan, of course, didn't bother to bring up the rest of Joseph Smith's faulty interpretations nor his Egyptian Alphabet.

Several times he complained that the 'Letter's' discussions were too short to adequately discuss the issues and then complained that he had to read all 90 'wearisome pages'.

In sum, I found Dan Peterson to be nothing more than a bully. Intelligent and articulate yes, but still a bully. Innuendo and facial inflections are not intellectual arguments. I lost any respect that I thought I would have for the man. I guess I now know what being an apologist really means.

[Dr Exiled]

Dr. P, I tell ya, just doesn't get any respect. Those pesky DN editors want original and interesting content:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2gw-asbBIM

[Kishkumen]

There is something a little bit odd in the continued mutual hatefest that exists between Dr. P and his critics. In my opinion it grows out of the feisty style of Christian polemics, which was always unapologetically nasty. Start with the writings of Paul, for example. Things only got worse thereafter. Christian anti-cult ministries are a mean-spirited continuation of the same, and Mopologetics mimicked that style. It is a sport of insult and othering that is ultimately extremely boring.

[Lem]

Well, the whole thing is odd. When I left the lds religion, I simply walked away. I never said a word about the religion for decades, except in the odd moment when someone would find out I was born Mormon, and express a morbid curiosity about the weirdness.

Sadly, the more I learned about my religion after I left, the weirder it looked. I cannot even fathom what would have happened if I had known while I was still in what I know now about this ridiculous cult. I think I would have imploded. It was bad enough to hear my mom tell the 19 year old me 'you'll regret not listening to the priesthood,' (i.e. MEN). If I had had a clue how bizarre what she really meant actually was I don't think I would have survived.

Just the polygamy stories of my ancestors that my family sends me now are disturbing enough to make me shudder. These stories are how I know I am one quarter Mexican because on one side my male ancestors left the country to keep their wives, while on the other side my male ancestor abandoned the older wife in favor of the new one who was younger than her stepson, my grandfather, at the time. Also, that one of my great-great-greats died shortly after giving birth to her sixth child, who then was raised by her husband's new wife, who he courted and married during a two week long vacation while his actual wife was 7 months into her last pregnancy. Even those still Mormon sadly conclude its most likely she died of despair and sadness. She was 38, her husband was 42, his new wife was 17.)

So when you refer bloodlessly to "Christian anti-cult ministries," and a "continued mutual hatefest" as the source of the mean spiritedness, I will have to disagree. Maybe it's as simple as "Mopologists mimick[ing] that style," but the hatred is based on straight up TBM Mormon original hate for those who leave. Bully for them if they learned the techniques from what you call previous ministries, but it is NOT mutual. I don't do the hating, I am just the hated.

You have enough distance, apparently, to call it a historical event which you define as "a mutual hate fest," but you may not realize how much of this 'hate' people are still currently trying to survive, and how disrespectful your comments feel in this thread.

I hated no one, and literally did not know I was hated until I lived it, as one who left the lds church. Maybe there is a historical 'hatefest' path which gives Peterson his ammunition for what he says, but when my family uses his words to actively abuse me, it's not appropriate to refer to it as "mutual." I am not part of any 'Christian anti-cult ministries.' If you didn't mean to refer to the OP with your 'critic' comment, then please remove your comment and start your own topic. I know I have no ability to compel that, just the ability to make a request that you comment on what you call the "ultimately extremely boring" elsewhere.

[Gadianton]

I'm happy for him to run with his comparison but he and Kiwi need to get some more material going and flesh it out. Let me see if I can help them. To begin with, there have been failed prophecies for both groups. For instance, one group breached the capital to stop an election certification, convinced that the sitting president would declare martial law and spend weeks executing prominent political rivals, while showing video evidence that they are right about everything and their opponents wrong.

The other group had a sometimes member predict that a blog production would fail (possibly by a certain year?). When the project continued posting material for years after, our person of interest declared this the singular defining failure of the other group. Judging by how many times a year our person of interest trumpets the supposed failed prophecy from over a decade ago, this prophecy would be the equivalent to the "great awakening" of QAnon.

One can see the striking connection. Well, some might argue for straining, but I urge skeptics to judge based on the internal logic of our person of interest. He and his cohorts are famous for believing things such as, the Book of Mormon is a dead hit for Mesoamerica with greater mathematical certainty than any mathematical certainty proposed for any other thing by anyone ever, in any publication. So yes, in a world where hitting the side of a bus with a snowball from six inches away is considered a bullseye with odds against it trillions to one, the connection makes sense.

I do believe a gentle reminder is in order for our person of interest, and his friends Kiwi and Midgley. All of QAnons beliefs ultimately come from Christian beliefs about the last days and from right-wing Christian alternative history -- conspiracies beginning with finance bankers in England that set up the leftist political powers of the present day in a grand conspiracy that's working toward the New World Order. These are all things that he and Kiwi probably believe. They just haven't locked down all the details like Q has.

And yes, Mormons are dead certain that one day, their enemies will be judged and sent to hell while their evil deeds are broadcast for all the inhabitants of the world to behold. It may be Jesus rather than a certain recent president running the executions, but it's the exact same storyline. In fact, Q's beliefs are probably quite a bit more probable than Mormon predictions. The main difference is that QAnon have much greater faith in their beliefs, and are convinced that their time is now, and their personal action is required, while Mormon apologists see the end times as far enough off that there's nothing for them to do about it. However, whichever Mormons really are born at "the time", they will essentially be acting the same way that QAnon acts, and 'all-in' on on a mysterious set of propositions that "Babylon" scorns them for believing. The real difference will end up being: for one group, the crazy stuff actually happened and for the other it didn't.

[Lem]

...One can see the striking connection. Well, some might argue for straining, but I urge skeptics to judge based on the internal logic of our person of interest. He and his cohorts are famous for believing things such as, the Book of Mormon is a dead hit for Mesoamerica with greater mathematical certainty than any mathematical certainty proposed for any other thing by anyone ever, in any publication...

You are being too modest on their behalf.

We find that the likelihood that the Book of Mormon is fictional is about 1.03 x 10–111, less than one in a thousand, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion, billion.

Just how small a number is this? No easily grasped comparisons are possible. The mass of the smallest known particle, the neutrino, is about 10–36 kg, while the mass of the observable universe is about 1052 kg. Thus the ratio of the mass of the neutrino to the mass of the entire universe is approximately 10–88. This ratio, the mass of the neutrino to the mass of the universe, is still one hundred thousand, billion, billion times greater than the odds that the Book of Mormon is a work of fiction.

I'm going to go out on a limb, and say no one in the history of statistical analysis has ever calculated a more ridiculous probability than what was found within the pages of this playground-peer-reviewed article in the Interpreter.

[IHAQ]

He's not had a good run recently; canned from the Deseret News, lost Interpreter donors, a family fall out, a reprimand from Patheos about hit rates/article frequency, a request for another $200,000 dollars to make Witnesses work...all of which he has voluntarily shared with the world.

[Moksha]

In sum, I found Dan Peterson to be nothing more than a bully. Intelligent and articulate yes, but still a bully.

This strong defense of the Church has brought Dr. Peterson fame and has accorded him travel and other benefits (wearing the satin robe and hood of the Intellectual Order of Sacred and Secret Danites - which was named after him), far beyond other professors at BYU. Even though he has been the lightning rod for Mormon apologetics, he has received many blessings, including the award of 32nd Degree Mopolonetics. Nothing higher than that folks, south of the Salt Lake County line.

[dastardly stem]

But a small and anonymous handful of my most fevered critics — think of QAnon, but without QAnon’s vivacious charm, lacking its kindness toward those with whom it disagrees, falling short of its intellectual rigor, and stripped of its optimistic idealism — want to see in the end of my Deseret News columns the heavy hand of karmic justice falling upon me. The Church, they say, is embarrassed and repulsed by my mendacity, depravity, and sheer viciousness. And, so, I’m being suppressed. (I’m also, it’s been suggested, being forced into early retirement from Brigham Young University, effective this coming 1 July. After all, who ever heard of anybody retiring, in order to pursue other interests, at the young age of 68?). How much longer will it be, they ask, before the hammer of the General Authorities’ wrath falls upon the Interpreter Foundation?

All I can say is I'm relieved he doesn't consider me somewhere in the mix of his most fevered critics. I figured, despite any reasons he has shared, which I don't know that I've seen, that his articles get about 1/8th the clicking as the next lowest of pieces in the Desnews world. They likely put it more kindly to him. And as I said, even though he's been busted on plagiarism and has offered foolish arguments and ideas at times, I still would say it's too bad. At least with his piece there's some level of acknowledgement concerning some of the matters he discussed. Best to him in this fateful time.

Shoot...no wonder he doesn't consider me among his most fevered...I'm far too kind. Besides my interest in matters he finds central is quite low, so there's that.