consiglieri wrote: ↑Fri Jun 15, 2018 8:32 am
As to any apologist responses, here is the half-baked response Daniel Peterson wrote in his blog at Sic et Non.
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A bit more on the variant accounts of the First Vision
In the meantime, I plead innocent to the charge of being a deliberate liar. (Why do certain types of critics immediately resort, quite commonly from the safe retreat of anonymity, to the harshest possible construal of such disagreements?) I’m pretty confident that nobody out there will actually be able to prove me a liar, since, simply, I’m not a liar and I wasn’t lying. And surely there are other options. Maybe I’m just stupid, for example, or incompetent, or ignorant, or blind.
Moreover, I point out (a) that the article in question is less than 740 words long and that (b) it was never intended as my last word on the topic nor as an exhaustive treatment of the issues that have been raised with regard to the First Vision.
In other words, I stand by it.
Is there more to be said? Yes. Of course. And, sooner or later, I’m likely to say it. There are only so many things that can be covered, though, in individual instantiations of a column that invariably runs between 736 and 739 words.
This is such an absolute insult to anyone who takes themselves seriously as a "so-called scholar."
Bottom line is that no matter how many words you have, if you deliberately lie... you've lied. Lies of omissions are lies. Surely Peterson knows the "honesty" chapter of the Gospel Doctrines manual, right? "Lying is intentionally deceiving others" or "We can also intentionally deceive others by a gesture or a look, by silence, or by telling only part of the truth." Take your pick - he is a liar and there is absolutely no way around it.
These types of arrogant responses are just the most angering ones from LDS apologists, because they *know* they are full of it but don't care because they are hitting the audience they want. Deseret News published that douchebag's article because it is aimed to get anyone who has wondered why Joseph Smith somehow forgot that God was there in the first account could be honest and not a lying adulterer who made it up as he went along so he could bang other men's wives while they said "Thanks for the salvation, I hope my wife was as good for you as she was for me. Great is the God who decided that I should give up my wife to you for our salvation."
It's like someone posted on the initial articles comments - it's like if I told people about the time I met Barack Obama and then 6 years later in retelling the story mentioned that not only was Obama there, but Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Michael Jordan were also there to tell me I was the chosen one. There's no way in hell anyone is buying it, but because they exploit God people will buy into it.
Anyway... this article is to silence anyone with doubts to keep them from looking further. It is exactly why my wife won't look any deeper into history because she reads this trash on FAIR and assumes I am taking things out of context. They know it's a lie or a deflection or spinning or whatever else you want to call it, but at the end of the day to them the ends justify the means.
Just as Joseph Smith claimed that affairs were OK because God commanded him to do it, the apologists claim that omitting important details is not a big deal because God wants members to be faithful, tithing paying members.
It's articles like these (and responses like this one from Peterson) that motivate me to do everything I can to pry as many people from this abomination of a cult as I can. I absolutely hate people who know better but still try to keep others in on the con because they think they know better than you do. The same people that mock the "so-called scholars" for bringing up the dirty history of mormonism are the same ones that completely make up the rules of being a scholar as they go along.
