The Nehor

Ensure it? No. You can often guide hallucinations down a desired track if you communicate things to the person. I am not suggesting this is the most likely explanation for the witnesses. I was mostly joking. Mostly.

Viable secular explanation for witnesses seeing the plates: Hallucinogenics. Maybe the same stuff some critics suggest Joseph Smith put in the wine for the Kirtland meeting.

There would be some who would think it doesn’t prove it correct. Just that the plates exist. if they could be translated it would be proof that it was written but no necessarily that it was true. Facts actually matter to a lot of people. And no, confronted with that level of evidence I would put a lot of my doubts aside. I only started seriously doubting when I hit a snag that made me doubt the experiences that gave me a spiritual conviction and realized that similar accounts of religious conviction being granted come to people of any faith that expects those kinds of experiences so I went digging for more objective evidence and found it flimsy for Christianity in general and not much better for my own faith. I am still looking for something to convince me. And no, I don’t believe I can choose to believe anyways. That is not how rationality works. That is why I said it is often projection. And we have basically no evidence for the 36 hours of continuous daylight that was somehow localized to one part of the world. Reminds me of this:

This is how a lot of failed messiahs are rationalized. They are going to come back later and finish it. There wasn’t much of an argument needed to reject Jesus as the messiah. There were expectations that the messiah was expected to accomplish in his lifetime. Jesus did not accomplish them. Therefore failed messiah. There was no tradition of the messiah dying and coming back to life and then millenia later to return and finish off the prophecies. Those weren’t prooftexts. They were mostly verses that had no messianic implications that Christians decided had to mean Jesus. This is easy to do. Islam has its own version where bits of the Hebrew Bible foretell the coming of Mohammed. No, Joseph Smith doesn’t match those either unless you take the expected accomplishments and generalize them to the point that the original authors wouldn’t recognize them. Those aren’t the core roles. The core roles were rebuilding the Jerusalem temple and wage a literal war to defend Israel and die during that war in battle. Literally the land of Israel, not a vague concept of Israel that the early LDS claimed. Not a spiritual war, a literal one.

Messiah ben Joseph was one of four expected messianic figures. The problem with this take on it is Joseph Smith didn’t fulfill the prophesied role of Messiah ben Joseph. This messiah was supposed to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem which didn’t happen. He is supposed to wage war with the enemies of Israel and die in battle. Not a metaphorical spiritual battle. Die fighting in an actual battle in an actual war. You also have the question of which Messiah ben Joseph was Joseph Smith supposed to be. The one in the Talmud? The one that is (sort of) in the Book of Zechariah? The one that is Metatron? The one from Luranic Kabbalah where Messiah ben Joseph was a shared soul that was once incarnated as Cain, the killer of Abel? The one that was destined to kill the anti-Messiah that would be born of a virgin and a devil? What is the connection supposed to be? Joseph Smith doesn’t neatly fit into any of these versions. There seems to be an idea that these are all corruptions and they originally had a true prophecy which would have matched up but was corrupted but that is just pushing the prophecy back to something that was lost so there is no evidence for it at all. It is mythmaking. Same way Jesus didn’t fulfill the role of Messiah ben David. Hence why Jesus had to return to finish his work. The other two Messiahs are Elijah and the Righteous Priest. Who is the Righteous Priest?

And the persecution narrative about how everyone will gladly deceive and lie to people in the face of evidence. I suspect this is mostly projection.

Yep.

Gotta love the embedded idea that “civilization” had to come from somewhere and isn’t just something humans do. And of course “western civilization” as something special and unique was at the core of scientific racism.

Tinplate is mostly iron with a thin coating of tin over it to prevent rust. It wouldn’t be particularly expensive as metals go. Tin was pretty cheap in the 19th century. I have no idea how common tinplate roofing in particular was in that area in that time period. Not having domestic tin mining was the norm in the world at that time. Tin deposits are relatively rare. In the Bronze Age it was a highly sought after commodity and was one of the reasons long distance trading took place since it made copper much more durable (bronze is mostly copper with some tin alloyed in).

I mean the obvious reason it was never finished is that the evidence to support it didn’t work out.

The Book of Mormon is fake. So is the Bible. God created the world on April 19th, 1867. Everything before that was implanted memories created with the humans that were created on that date and God created a world whose history validated a lot of the history. Prove me wrong!

But were they asked about it? As far as I know we don’t have independent accounts of the witnesses describing the experience beyond affirming that what they said was true. I used to find the fact that some of the 8 witnesses left the Church but stood by their testimony to be evidence that it had to be real as they at that point would have no reason to continue to affirm their statement. Then I learned that they belonged to other “Mormon” churches that didn’t go to Utah and it makes a lot more sense. I don’t entirely trust the Stephen Burnett letter but it casts some shade on the 8 witnesses if it is an accurate account of what Martin Harris said and Martin was telling the truth. Dubious chain of evidence but it is not out of the realm of possibility.

Yep. In addition there are misreadings of the Septuagint that lead to some weird episodes where prophecy was supposed to be being fulfilled where the words of Zechariah suggested a person would ride on a donkey and a colt at the same time somehow which Matthew says happened. In the Hebrew it is poetry and it is talking about the same animal twice. If Matthew wrote it in Hebrew or Aramaic originally it is much more likely he would have used a Hebrew language version of the Hebrew bible and not made that error. The biggest evidence (to me anyways) that Matthew didn’t write the Gospel of Matthew is that the Gospel of Mark records Jesus calling Matthew to follow him. The Gospel of Matthew just copies that part verbatim. No switch to the first person. No addendum sharing more of how Matthew felt about being called. I find it incredibly unlikely that someone wouldn’t editorialize or add details if you were there for the actual events especially when it is literally about a life changing moment in your own life.

The general scholarly consensus is that Matthew was not written in Hebrew or Aramaic first. Eusebius quotes Papias as saying that Matthew wrote a “sayings” of Jesus in Hebrew but Eusebius also didn’t trust Papias much. It is also unlikely that the writer of Matthew was Matthew the apostle/disciple. The names ascribed to be the writers of the gospels came later.

The standard position of Newcomb’s problem is the predictor has nearly perfect accuracy, not 100% accuracy. If the predictor is 100% accurate the situation changes.

The human being hunts are mostly old legends and beliefs in weird movies and TV shows. I haven’t seen anything credible backing this up.

But if the predictor knows what you will do then doing the opposite is the better choice as your choice somehow semi-retroactively changes the predictor’s decision. That is why the problem is so vague. Unless you define how this predictor is operating and how it is reaching conclusions the problem is too vague to be answered.

No. Just no. The idea that this is a topic with weak mehodological controls is silly. Biblical scholarship is one of the most contested fields. It is also weird because a large number of the scholars in it are contractually obligated to defend certain views as part of their job. The idea that the critics of traditional readings are just running around blindly hacking things apart borders on conspiracy theorizing.

Newcomb’s paradox is not actually a paradox. Also the whole problem hinges on how the predictor is able to predict the actions of the participant. It is such a poorly defined problem that it lines people up yelling about how the other side is wrong because the premises are so vague.

Because He is bad at the whole God thing? Because he likes the suffering? The only way to find happiness is through torment, suffering, and child sacrifice? With no guarantee that will end at death or at any point. This is a horrible universe. Also God disciplines like a violent and abusive parent. ”I only hurt you because I love you.” According to the prophets God loves to humiliate and degrade his bride in order to perfect her for him. That is really really messed up. If we just learn to behave right and do everything perfectly God will one day stop hurting us. Will He though?

The word you are looking for is slave. Zoram was a slave. I completely disagree. If we can’t analyze the Book of Mormon and the choices the people in it made then Mormon and Moroni really screwed up with their admonitions about the plates. ”Learn to be wiser than us but don’t even think that we could have made other choices. There is a too big a time gap. Don’t even try!” It wasn’t a moral quandary according to the text. God gave Nephi a cheat sheet and told him which option to take. He told Nephi to violate the letter of the law and probably the spirit of the law too. That is a very good question. So we will never understand and we just have to trust God no matter how irrational and insane his plans and thoughts are. The secret to becoming like God is descending into insanity. God is kind of like Cthulhu I suppose. The more you understand reality the more you know humanity has no moral judgement at all and what we view as good is evil and what we see as evil and predatory is actually good. Yeah, I don’t buy the whole God is so far above us that we cannot hope to understand his plans. The scriptures are chock full of prophets explaining God’s plans and they don’t share Machiavellian schemes designed to bring about hidden purposes. They are usually pretty banal and straightforward.

Laban was a violent jerk. Probably a power tripping little tinpot dictator too. I don’t think step 5 is a fair take though. A bunch of kids wander in and tell you that God wants you to give them the prized plates. They are probably a prestige thing. Based on the estimated dates of the composition of the Torah they would probably be a pretty new thing. Possibly a prestige piece he custom ordered. Yeah, I wouldn’t consider it God telling me to give something if a kid (son of a local criminal) showed up bearing testimony that they needed my prize item.

No, I’m saying that people that concoct the narrative that Laban was a criminal mastermind and serial killer are writing fanfic. That is not in the text. As crazy as some of the statutes in the Torah are murder is generally frowned on. Now the Hebrew Bible as a whole gets weird about it when the victim isn’t an Israelite of course. Yes. For example if we found out that Laban was a fascist then Nephi would have been morally justified in punching him a few times and killing him…..meh, I’ll allow it. I am not trusting Grok’s summary so I skimmed it. I think the article relies way too much on thinking that 1st Nephi uses technical language to exonerate Nephi. If it was the original text it might be persuasive but in translation that is a stretch. I have doubts about some of the readings of the Torah. I have read quite a bit from biblical scholars and don’t think many of them would agree with this take on the Law. Also most biblical scholars agree that the Torah wasn’t law in the sense of being the rules as they were enforce on the ground. It is religious writing, not a law text. I suspect the two were similar but not identical. Seems like an ad hoc justification piece. It is apologetic. It is not looking at everything in order to discover connections and get at some underlying reality. It is an exercise in justifying Nephi on moral grounds because Nephi’s character must be protected. I also found it ironic that Welch argues that this episode was included to show Nephi was following the Law and was thus the legitimate inheritor of the plates and family leadership despite the Torah having strict laws against passing over elder sons for leadership because you prefer the younger ones. Then again the three patriarchs ALL did this so it is a confusing mess.

Based on “trust me bro”. So…..all I have to do to kill someone is make up some fan fiction about the person first.

That is not in the text. God could have just had Laban break his neck in the fall. Yeah, that is not what happened. The Jews weren’t mass enslaved. To end their perpetual revolts Babylon deported a large portion of the population to Babylon itself including most of the elites. They weren’t enslaved. They owned land. They prospered. They had their own leadership. Babylon remained the major center of Jewish life for about a thousand years. While some longed for a return to their homeland many did not. It is easy to see why. Jerusalem was a hick town compared to Babylon. Only a minority of the people went home when they were allowed to. Yet somehow these people were all the devil’s servants who deserved mass genocide and mass enslavement for some reason which they didn’t actually get. They needed to suffer even though historically they just didn’t suffer that much. The Bible (and lots of other ancient records) love to play up how cities and populations were “utterly destroyed” when they just weren’t. It was propaganda. Your ideas of wrong are mostly made up delusions and fantasizing about how evil some people are and I am not convinced you know much about virtue either.