Posted by:
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Date: June 22, 2012 05:51PM
Tal Bachman on Daniel Peterson; be sure to read the last paragraph:
http://www.salamandersociety.com/apologetics/060315.html10/11/2004 - by Tal Bachman
"Does Daniel C. Peterson ever lie in bed at night wondering if he's being taken advantage of by The Brethren?"
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I stayed up late night after night, trying to understand how on earth the apologists' non-sequiturs could actually be valid conclusions, how the distorted arguments weren't distorted, how the personal attacks were relevant, how the selective quotations from those they were arguing with didn't raise more questions about FARMS than about the very piece they were trying to refute, etc. I began to think I must be too dumb to understand how any of the stuff really made sense, or maybe that Satan himself was blinding me to the convincing arguments of the whole FARMS gang.
I later came to suspect that that was not the case, and that the actual reason I kept noticing such upsetting features in apologetic discourse, was because they were actually there (this is long before I ever discovered this board, or had any contact with anyone that had gone through a similar experience). This really disturbed me. I wondered why the church, which I was certain was everything I had ever imagined, could support such low, sophistic, stuff.
I even came to wonder eventually if perhaps all the double-talk and "sleights of thought" were deliberate. Some readers may remember that I even satirized DCP on here last month.
But after my interaction with Daniel Peterson, I am not sure that the rhetorical legerdemain and illogic is deliberate. I really think he has no idea how bad the stuff is - and why would he, really, when it's not eliciting criticism from the GA's? When he's surrounded with fellow believers that keep telling him and all the others, how great it all is? How long till the best of us begin to believe our own press? Are guys on the BYU payroll that realize how bad it is, actually going to pipe up? Of course not. (This is why anonymous peer review - EVEN if it was amongst other members in good standing - would do them good).
I think he sincerely believes that the contradictions are not contradictions, that the non sequitirs are perfectly valid, that the contorted stretches of illogic are stunningly simple rebuttals to "anti-Mormon cliches", etc. I don't think he has any idea that for many Mormons, FARMS apologetic material is what actually starts them on the road to piecing together that the church we have all had so much faith in, in fact, is not, and even more, can not possibly be, what it claims.
But whether he is or not, what we do know is: he has bet it all on the church. He is up late at night typing what he no doubt thinks are superb rebuttals to skeptics on the FAIR board, or editing the FARMS material, or preparing talks and essays, etc. This thing is his entire life (as well it should be, if the church is all it claims).
And this is why the specter of DCP kind of being used appears in the backs of our minds...How long would he last, if the church for one nanosecond thought he wasn't useful anymore? Does anyone at headquarters care that Dan Peterson and his whole crew are a laughingstock, that their material is literally beneath the dignity of criticism for those outside (and I think a growing number inside) the insular, parochial world of Mormondom? Does anyone at HQ care that DCP gets all the stick when he takes a bold stand, while the GA's (with a couple of exceptions) keep their mouths shut? Would anyone at HQ think twice about leaving Dan Peterson there holding the bag, once they decide that the position he's been defending just isn't working anymore, and so change it?
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