Monday, March 15, 2021

Jeremy's response to Daniel Peterson

Faithful Latter-day Saints (LDS)who seek answers to the CES Letter often refer to apologist sites such as FairMormon (now FairLDS). When we read the apologist arguments, we quickly realize they basically agree with most of Jeremy's assumptions. This is a problem because Jeremy's arguments, based on those assumptions, are more rational and factual than the logical and factual fallacies used by these apologists. 

Dan Peterson (aka Dan the Interpreter, because he runs the Interpreter Foundation) addressed the CES Letter at the 2014 FairMormon Conference.

Dan has a well-earned reputation for resorting to personal attacks and using logical fallacies. He represents the worst of LDS apologetics. His approach drives many faithful LDS to question their beliefs.

Jeremy responded to Dan at this link:

https://cesletter.org/apologetics/a-zombies-reflections-on-that-mormon-apologists-reflections.html

Jeremy explained Dan's typical approach here:

Despite having never met Peterson personally, I was surprised by the lack of respect and personal attacks hurled at me. Peterson seems to think that he and I are somehow opponents and that my letter to the CES Director was directed at him and therefore his attempts to respond to the letter are either somehow appropriate or a repudiation of my original letter.

He pointed out that while Dan purported to respond to the CES Letter, he "never got to the parts where I stated that I hoped the CES Director had "better answers than the ones given by FAIR and Neal A. Maxwell Institute (FARMS)" and that "FairMormon has done more to destroy my testimony than any anti-Mormon source ever could."

Dan's overall approach, like the approach taken by John Sorenson and the rest of the M2C citation cartel, is to overwhelm with volume. They think, apparently with justification, that many Latter-day Saints will accept their arguments if they write so much content that people infer there must be good answers in there somewhere.

The problem is, Dan's focus on volume at the expense of quality undermines legitimate responses that focus on the problems with Dan's underlying assumptions. No matter how many times Dan makes his personal attacks and asserts his logical fallacies, people see through that fog to the substance.

One last excerpt from Jeremy's response sums up the problem with Dan's form of apologetics.

Peterson thinks those who "haven't studied enough" need to read the volumes of unofficial and contradictory sources he references in his presentation. When you look at Peterson's presentation footnotes, for example, you will find that 4 out of 8 of these sources are authored by none other than Daniel C. Peterson himself. The remaining 4 of the 8 sources contain 3 references to Mormon apologists and Peterson's own apologetic Interpreter Foundation organization that he founded after he got fired from Neal A. Maxwell Institute in 2012. Biased and narcissistic much?

When Peterson says "they simply haven't studied enough," he is really saying, "they simply haven't studied enough of my and my buddies' unofficial opinions and theories." They simply haven't "cherry-picked enough."

Again, anyone who has read in its entirety Debunking FairMormon's Debunking (which Dan conveniently completely ignores in his presentation) knows that Peterson's claim that "the author spent too little time and effort looking at these questions," "jumped ship too soon," "there are answers, at least adequate," and that I "simply haven't studied enough" is absurd nonsense.



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