Jacinda taking cues from the Interpreter

 New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern:

"We will continue to be your single source of truth… Unless you hear it from us it is not the truth"

Dan's still at it. "Tough luck." Sigh.

Recently I expressed some hope that Dan and the other "Interpreters" might be moving toward a different mode of apologetics that accommodates a variety of faithful Latter-day Saint interpretations. Maybe, I hoped, he would even begin to support and corroborate the teachings of the prophets instead of repudiating them.

Apparently that's not the case. Sigh.

A few days ago, Dan did a fireside at which he rehashed a bunch of his decades-old apologetics, including his M2C theory. 

Dan the Interpreter spelled out his approach to these topics: "I used to say, 'I'm the one with the mic and you're not, so tough luck.'" 

He says he "used to say" this. Except he's still saying it. 

After all, that's the message of the Interpreter Foundation: "tough luck" if you don't agree with our interpretations. And don't forget, we're taking donations, too.

Sad.

_____

In the clip below, Dan discusses M2C. It's incredible that he is still teaching people that Joseph Smith was an ignorant speculator who learned about the Book of Mormon from a popular travel book. 

Watch the clip below and see for yourself. 

https://youtu.be/rodeGihInBA?t=2854

BTW, apparently it's fine to discuss Book of Mormon geography in Church buildings so long as you promote M2C.

Dan jokes that the geography isn't essential to salvation, which everyone knows. It's a typical straw-man argument. M2C is problematic not because it jeopardizes anyone's salvation, but because its premise--that Joseph and Oliver misled everyone about the Hill Cumorah--undermines the credibility and reliability of Joseph and Oliver. 

Joseph and Oliver were the only two witnesses to the restoration of the Priesthood, the only two witnesses to the restoration of temple blessings, and the only two who were authorized to translate the plates. They were the principal witnesses of the actual translation, and they both testified repeatedly that Joseph translated the record with the Urim and Thummim that came with the plates.

When Dan and the other M2C/SITH "interpreters" teach that Joseph and Oliver were wrong about Cumorah and the translation, they cast doubt on everything Joseph and Oliver said.

Dan related his belief that "Joseph was delighted when he read a book called incidents of travel in central america chiapas and yukatan written by John Lloyd Stevens which was published about a decade after one appeared and he discovered that there were cities in central America were fortified with ditches and walls and palisades logs and houses and cities of cement this is exactly what the Book of Mormon had described and he was delighted to see it it's an area by the way where we know there was writing and that isn't true in all areas of the of the uh ancient mesoamerican or even pre-pre-columbian-american world. I won't go into that but we do know there was writing and we do know there are writing systems that use timekeeping systems one of them is really interesting."

Rarely do we see so much spin and misinformation packed into a single presentation.

Of course, Dan doesn't tell his audience what Joseph, Oliver, their contemporaries and successors said about the New York Cumorah because Dan advocates for M2C.

Just like Dan doesn't tell his audience what Joseph and Oliver said about the translation because he advocates for SITH.

_____

People who follow Dan and the other "Interpreters" instead of doing their own studying and thinking might believe what Dan says. But even the critics know that Dan's approach directly repudiates what Joseph and Oliver taught. 

[Notice how the critic in this case goes on to point out how the Heartland approach is at least consistent with what Joseph taught. Unfortunately, he digresses into his objection about millions of people dying at Cumorah, a common misreading of the Book of Mormon that M2Cers also claim.]

_____

A far more effective apologetic approach would inform people about the scriptures, the teachings of the prophets, and the actual historical sources, and then offer multiple working hypotheses--including some that corroborate those teachings instead of repudiating them the way Dan does.

 

Dan's (former?) form of apologetics

This is one of several posts I never published, but maybe it will be helpful for some readers to review Dan's style of apologetics in the hope that he will announce a meaningful course correction.

In other words, I hope this post is relegated to the dustbin of history because Dan renounces his past and become open to multiple faithful working hypotheses.

_____

Someone sent me Dan's scholarly comments on the Carthage movie, including this gem: "I'm hoping that this repulsive piece of speculative historical revisionism will soon fade into the obscurity that I believe it abundantly deserves, and I'm very reluctant to give it even the slightest degree of publicity." 

He's not just reluctant; he's very reluctant. 

Which apparently means he has to tell all his followers about it.

But Dan's characterization looks like a Freudian slip, because it applies to the M2C and SITH theories he's been promoting for decades.

_____

Recently, a two-part podcast by RFM (a former LDS apologist turned critic, who is hoping to leave his law practice to work full time as a critical podcaster) discussed Dan's history advocating for M2C.

Below the transcript from one caller who related his experience with Dan. 

Dan's defenders will object to me citing an "anti-Mormon" podcast, but the experience related by this caller is not uncommon. Active members of the Church have related similar experiences to me. They stay in the Church despite Dan because they reject Dan's mode of apologetics and the SITH/M2C narrative he promotes.

I'm hoping that Dan will change his mode of apologetics, but if he doesn't, I hope more Latter-day Saints recognize that Dan doesn't represent the Church.

I hope more Latter-day Saints reject Dan's form of apologetics instead of rejecting the Church. 

_____

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4tYNWFkO6o&t=5928s

1:38:48

 we'll go to a caller who has a personal story about

1:38:55

dan peterson caller you're on mormonism live with rfm and bill reel uh what's your experience with the taper dan and

1:39:02

keep it clean okay okay sure sure yeah yeah and you're really quiet if you can talk a little louder my

1:39:09

friend okay can you hear me yeah i can hear you but

1:39:14

barely all right

1:39:20

any better yeah yeah what's your experience with dan peterson okay

1:39:25

um when i was i hadn't all the way left to church yet but

1:39:31

everything was just really really weighing heavily on me somehow i came across uh one of dan's um

1:39:38

blog posts you know articles or whatever and i didn't realize that it was his like personal blog i just started with

1:39:45

some article that he had written that somebody had posted somewhere and and it just got me kind of incensed um

1:39:51

and i wrote a comment in the comment section 

1:40:03

what made you incensed about dan peterson's article um

1:40:09

i i i this will make sense to you when i say this but i don't remember the content of

1:40:14

the article but it was the condescending uh nature of just the

1:40:21

i mean he's a polemicist you know like and and uh it just i realized that

1:40:28

in the past i would have like accepted that like oh he's on the lord's side he's he's

1:40:33

fighting for the church and yeah there's these nasty people out there but once you start to like see the other side of

1:40:39

the equation and you become the person on the other side and you realize you're not a bad person you're just following

1:40:45

the truth right then you become the target of that um

1:40:50

that rhetoric and it's disgusting it feels icky and i addressed some comment

1:40:55

like dan like i like this is terrible the way that you talk about people and

1:41:01

um like i can't take this anymore or something like that and uh he and louis

1:41:06

midley ganged up and they turned into this whole thing on there where i was going through this

1:41:12

experience where i had commented because i was hurting right and and i get it like

1:41:19

you know but still uh the feeling of these people who are defending the church being so nasty and

1:41:26

vile and condescending like i'm the idiot here i'm the i'm the dummy you know and

1:41:32

i used to look up to him and think oh well at least we have somebody who's really smart on our side

1:41:39

and he uses big words and he seems very intelligent and everything but when you actually look at

1:41:45

like the the arguments that are made and the defenses that are given it's just nonsense it's utter nonsense and i feel

1:41:51

like my my my son's like 13 years old could poke through half of this stuff just on

1:41:57

reading and saying well that's not a good way to argue a point or you know what i mean like and that feeling

1:42:04

of being um excoriated by these guys and having my orthodoxy called into question and all of a sudden lou midgley gets on

1:42:11

and says oh i'll just look this guy up and he's not legitimate he's not really a member of the church and it was so

1:42:17

icky that that was like it for me like there's just no no way no i can't be

1:42:22

part of this anymore and i was like it gave me that push that i needed you know because you're you're worried

1:42:28

about well i don't want to hurt people's feelings what about my family and what about all this and that incident right

1:42:33

there was like definitely gave me the push that i needed like you know what screw you do yeah because i was already

1:42:39

there but like you know that was it for me and i hear what you're saying

1:42:47

i've had the same experience and trodden the same path it wasn't the reason i exited or anything but definitely uh

1:42:54

viewing daniel peterson uh in one way before seeing him

1:42:59

uh react to me personally like he did the critics of the church when i'm just trying to ask a question and get some

1:43:05

information or clarification and absolutely louis midgley you got attacked by the midge daniel c

1:43:11

peterson's crummy little toady yeah by the way you now know

1:43:16

what the city in daniel said in the christmas card boom chakalaka he got it did you get that one bill this is the

1:43:22

second time i've used it i can barely hear him okay but okay so anyway it was

1:43:27

actually me so the deal is this you found out what the c and daniel c peterson stands for which is

1:43:34

condescending yeah daniel condescending peterson i've

1:43:39

had the same experience with him and midgley both um just any time and myself or other

1:43:47

people pushing back at the uh what i thought was demonstrably

1:43:53

absurd narratives that some of the apologists would give on these issues and any time they got resistance they

1:43:58

really resorted to mean-spiritedness and personal attacks and ad hominem

1:44:05

yeah thank you so much for the call 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoTsWIbTy2M&t=4451s