Daniel Peterson and the Genetic Fallacy

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Daniel Peterson
Daniel Peterson
Here we go... AGAIN!  The Jews got duped by the philosophers, and gave up polytheism for believing monotheism, and gave up believing that God was an exalted man (possibly sinful prior to His exaltation) located in only one place for the view that God was a bodiless spirit being who created the material universe, and everything else outside His own being.  Praise be to the unrepentant adulterer and sexual predator, peep stone gazer, Lieutenant General of his own militia, and candidate for the presidency of the United States, Joseph Smith for restoring the truth!

Daniel Peterson, as well as all other Mormons, needs to study on what a genetic fallacy is: some idea must be false due to its unseemly origins.  As a result, those of us who learned 2+2=4 from a witch must now question that belief!  So if the genetic fallacy is used to reject Philo, the same may be used to reject Smith.

Notice that Peterson’s argument doesn’t justify Mormonism at all, even if his argument wasn’t a fallacy. All the cults attack the Bible via this genetic fallacy.  They all claim the philosophers screwed up the minds of the religious intellectuals, who in turn screwed up the minds of the masses.  Now what to believe?  Each cult argues on the basis of their own screwed up leaders’ interpretation.  In Mormonism, the ultimate authority is not their own leaders.  The ultimate authority turns out to be one’s own feelings—the witness of the Spirit.  “God told me so… end of story!”

Here's what another, seemingly influenced by Philo as well, said concerning the supposed corrupting of God’s truth in ancient times, "What did the early Christians believe? Did they believe that God really has a material palace in the sky and that He received His Son in a decorated state chair placed a little to the right of His own?--or did they not? The answer is that the alternative we are offering them was probably never present to their minds at all. As soon as it was present, we know quite well which side of the fence they came down. As soon as the issue of Anthropomorphism was explicitly before the Church in, I think, the second century, Anthropomorphism was condemned. The Church knew the answer (that God has no body and therefore couldn't sit in a chair) as soon as it knew the question (C. S. Lewis, "Is Theology Poetry?," The Weight of Glory [San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2001], 131-2).

Perhaps Peterson ought to consider if there were not in fact merely decent philosophical reasons for the rejection of Anthropomorphism, but biblical reasons as well.

R. M. Sivulka
President, Courageous Christians United
August 23, 2012


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