LDS Church Files Brief In Trans Supreme Court Case

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

Well no, you have not.

Yes I have. I've consistently said that everything that interacts with observable reality is, in principle, within the purview of science. The key is the interaction. I’ve been very consistent on this. 

On a few occasions I’ve tried to limit the conversation to discussing one specific example: what your church teaches about spirits. I did this because it is relevant, important, and directly addressed in detail in Sean Carroll’s book. (Carroll talks about “spirits” more generally than the specific LDS conception, but the LDS conception fits in the bullseye of what Carroll discusses, especially with the idea of “spirit matter”, something Carroll says must exist for a spirit to interface with a body). 

Let's take a giant step back and put this into perspective. 

This all started when somebody repeatedly posted on Sic Et Non that there is “no evidence at all to support the claims of theism.”  Peterson disagreed with this, of course, and said, "To say that there is no evidence at all, however, is merely hyperbolic rhetoric.  It’s not true.  There’s evidence for all kinds of things.  Very often, in fact, there’s contradictory evidence.  The daily “rising” and “setting” of the sun, for example, was long reasonably thought to be evidence for a geocentric cosmos." 

You summarized Peterson’s post on this topic, added some of your own thoughts, and asked others for thoughts.

I accepted your invitation to share my thoughts, and said, "The way I see it, there is no evidence "at all" for the Book of Mormon in the same way that there is no evidence "at all" for the earth being flat. In a sense there is a some evidence of a flat earth, just as there is some evidence of a geocentric universe. The problem with this is that a heliocentric solar system in an expanding universe has a lot more evidence. But it isn't just that there is more evidence for this other theory--it's that the other theory is part of an interconnected understanding of the universe across multiple disciplines. Given a comprehensive understanding of everything we know and why, the proposition of the earth being flat raises so many more problems than it answers, the evidence in favor of the earth being flat isn't really evidence at all."

The conversation followed as we would have expected, and I said, “[Apologists] have little pieces of evidence that they promote while there are entire libraries of contradictory evidence that they ignore and put 'on the shelf.'” To which you responded, "That is singularly and patently untrue.  Scholars have amassed substantial amounts of evidence in support of the claims of the Church.  These scholars have likewise regularly responded to contrary evidences (rather than, as you falsely put it, "ignore and put {them} 'on the shelf'”)."

I disagreed and as examples to illustrate my point, presented what quantum field theory implies about the plausibility of spirits and the supernatural in general. You responded by throwing all sorts of responses at the wall. Without understanding anything about this body of evidence, you declared "And no, there is nothing "utterly incompatible" in view.” And assured me that physics is "blinkered, finite, flawed, incomplete,” not even aware that serious physicists are claiming "The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known.” You claim this all has no bearing on your Church’s truth claims, and declared that his views are “blinkered” (unlike yours?). When I quoted Carroll as saying, "The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known” you responded by mocking him, "Wow.  And as a scientist, he has demonstrated that, has he?  It's an objective fact?  Not open for discussion or debate or disagreement?” I did my best to explain the reality of the state of science in these matters, and you accused me of exercising an “appeal to ridicule.” I quoted from one of America’s top scientists who thinks Carroll is correctly representing the science and you accused me of making an “appeal to authority.” 

And based on this array of “responses” to some subtle ideas you are completely disinterested in, you’ve declared yourself the victor and announced that I’ve "substantially exaggerated and mischaracterized" Carroll and/or science in general.

You’ve made it very clear that you don’t want to understand Carroll’s arguments. You see the world differently, and don’t see the need to understand how he sees the world, much less understand why he sees it that way. That is your prerogative. 

But the fact remains that according to a preeminent physicist, "The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known,” and that these completely known laws of physics provide formidable evidence against supernatural beliefs, including your own.

And the fact remains that serious LDS scholars who are qualified to opine on the details of these arguments choose not to do so.

And that is my point. 

You disagree with Carroll. That’s fine, but your opinions on this are completely irrelevant. You haven’t studied the physics. You haven’t even tried to understand this on a lay level. You haven’t even tried to understand my summaries of the arguments. Show me Latter-day Saints with PhDs in physics and are qualified to evaluate the implications of quantum field theory on whether “spirits” are plausible. Until then, my original point stands: there are entire libraries of contradictory evidence that apologists ignore and put 'on the shelf,’ and this is one little example.

[longview]

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

How does Effective Quantum Field Theory allow us to "know" that these events "did not happen"?

@Analytics would have to set up a super sophisticated laboratory that will delve deeper and deeper into more miniscule elements and quarks. And come up with more and more observations of the multidimensional nature of the universe. How many levels? How far does it "go down" ? How many dimensions? What kind of instruments are needed for discerning and even to manipulate such "FINER" matter?

D&C 131:7. There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes;

[smac97]

2 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Yes I have. I've consistently said that everything that interacts with observable reality is, in principle, within the purview of science. The key is the interaction. I’ve been very consistent on this. 

On a few occasions I’ve tried to limit the conversation to discussing one specific example: what your church teaches about spirits. I did this because it is relevant, important, and directly addressed in detail in Sean Carroll’s book. (Carroll talks about “spirits” more generally than the specific LDS conception, but the LDS conception fits in the bullseye of what Carroll discusses, especially with the idea of “spirit matter”, something Carroll says must exist for a spirit to interface with a body). 

Let's take a giant step back and put this into perspective. 

This all started when somebody repeatedly posted on Sic Et Non that there is “no evidence at all to support the claims of theism.”  Peterson disagreed with this, of course, and said, "To say that there is no evidence at all, however, is merely hyperbolic rhetoric.  It’s not true.  There’s evidence for all kinds of things.  Very often, in fact, there’s contradictory evidence.  The daily “rising” and “setting” of the sun, for example, was long reasonably thought to be evidence for a geocentric cosmos." 

You summarized Peterson’s post on this topic, added some of your own thoughts, and asked others for thoughts.

I accepted your invitation to share my thoughts, and said, "The way I see it, there is no evidence "at all" for the Book of Mormon in the same way that there is no evidence "at all" for the earth being flat. In a sense there is a some evidence of a flat earth, just as there is some evidence of a geocentric universe. The problem with this is that a heliocentric solar system in an expanding universe has a lot more evidence. But it isn't just that there is more evidence for this other theory--it's that the other theory is part of an interconnected understanding of the universe across multiple disciplines. Given a comprehensive understanding of everything we know and why, the proposition of the earth being flat raises so many more problems than it answers, the evidence in favor of the earth being flat isn't really evidence at all."

The conversation followed as we would have expected, and I said, “[Apologists] have little pieces of evidence that they promote while there are entire libraries of contradictory evidence that they ignore and put 'on the shelf.'” To which you responded, "That is singularly and patently untrue.  Scholars have amassed substantial amounts of evidence in support of the claims of the Church.  These scholars have likewise regularly responded to contrary evidences (rather than, as you falsely put it, "ignore and put {them} 'on the shelf'”)."

I disagreed and as examples to illustrate my point, presented what quantum field theory implies about the plausibility of spirits and the supernatural in general. You responded by throwing all sorts of responses at the wall. Without understanding anything about this body of evidence, you declared "And no, there is nothing "utterly incompatible" in view.” And assured me that physics is "blinkered, finite, flawed, incomplete,” not even aware that serious physicists are claiming "The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known.” You claim this all has no bearing on your Church’s truth claims, and declared that his views are “blinkered” (unlike yours?). When I quoted Carroll as saying, "The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known” you responded by mocking him, "Wow.  And as a scientist, he has demonstrated that, has he?  It's an objective fact?  Not open for discussion or debate or disagreement?” I did my best to explain the reality of the state of science in these matters, and you accused me of exercising an “appeal to ridicule.” I quoted from one of America’s top scientists who thinks Carroll is correctly representing the science and you accused me of making an “appeal to authority.” 

And based on this array of “responses” to some subtle ideas you are completely disinterested in, you’ve declared yourself the victor and announced that I’ve "substantially exaggerated and mischaracterized" Carroll and/or science in general.

You’ve made it very clear that you don’t want to understand Carroll’s arguments. You see the world differently, and don’t see the need to understand how he sees the world, much less understand why he sees it that way. That is your prerogative. 

But the fact remains that according to a preeminent physicist, "The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known,” and that these completely known laws of physics provide formidable evidence against supernatural beliefs, including your own.

And the fact remains that serious LDS scholars who are qualified to opine on the details of these arguments choose not to do so.

And that is my point. 

You disagree with Carroll. That’s fine, but your opinions on this are completely irrelevant. You haven’t studied the physics. You haven’t even tried to understand this on a lay level. You haven’t even tried to understand my summaries of the arguments. Show me Latter-day Saints with PhDs in physics and are qualified to evaluate the implications of quantum field theory on whether “spirits” are plausible. Until then, my original point stands: there are entire libraries of contradictory evidence that apologists ignore and put 'on the shelf,’ and this is one little example.

A protracted dodge.

I'm happy to be corrected on the point you raise above (that "The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known”), but not the next one ("these completely known laws of physics provide formidable evidence against supernatural beliefs, including your own").

 

As you claim, "everything that interacts with observable reality is, in principle, within the purview of science."  So I have asked you to demonstrate your claim by using "science" to prove or disprove the resurrection of Jesus Christ and/or the Road to Emmaus story.  Does Effective Quantum Field Theory disprove these claims? 

If yes, then all your song and dance about you invoking Carroll only has application to Latter-day Saint truth claims ("That is why I said I was criticizing narrow, 'specific LDS truth claims that require a causal interface between a spirit and the physical brain.'") doesn't really hold up, does it?

If no, then all your song and dance about "science" being able to "prove" or "disprove" religious truth claims doesn't really hold up, does it?

Again, by what testing / processes / methodologies does "science" propose to utilize to prove/disprove the foregoing matters?

Thanks,

-Smac

[Analytics]

48 minutes ago, smac97 said:

A protracted dodge.

On whose part? 

48 minutes ago, smac97 said:

I'm happy to be corrected on the point you raise above (that "The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known”), but not the next one ("these completely known laws of physics provide formidable evidence against supernatural beliefs, including your own").

You can believe whatever you want, happily or otherwise. 

48 minutes ago, smac97 said:

As you claim, "everything that interacts with observable reality is, in principle, within the purview of science."  So I have asked you to demonstrate your claim by using "science" to prove or disprove the resurrection of Jesus Christ and/or the Road to Emmaus story.  Does Effective Quantum Field Theory disprove these claims? 

Quantum field theory offers formidable evidence against the plausibility of such claims. 

48 minutes ago, smac97 said:

If yes, then all your song and dance about you invoking Carroll only has application to Latter-day Saint truth claims ("That is why I said I was criticizing narrow, 'specific LDS truth claims that require a causal interface between a spirit and the physical brain.'") doesn't really hold up, does it?

I have never thought, much less argued, that “Carroll only has application to Latter-day Saint truth claims.”  I have no idea how you got that into your head. Regardless, I’m not going to play the part of this straw man you want to fight.

48 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Again, by what testing / processes / methodologies does "science" propose to utilize to prove/disprove the foregoing matters?

If you want to understand how physics shows that such things are implausible, please read The Big Picture by Sean Carroll. 
 

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, longview said:

@Analytics would have to set up a super sophisticated laboratory that will delve deeper and deeper into more miniscule elements and quarks. And come up with more and more observations of the multidimensional nature of the universe. How many levels? How far does it "go down" ? How many dimensions? What kind of instruments are needed for discerning and even to manipulate such "FINER" matter?

D&C 131:7. There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes;

I understand how you might think this, but your reasoning is flawed. If you’d like to understand why, please read The Big Picture.

[Calm]

4 hours ago, smac97 said:

You mouth purported differentiations

If you are not trying to be insulting, you might consider other word choices…you use assert elsewhere, why not stick with that?

[Analytics]

25 minutes ago, Calm said:

If you are not trying to be insulting, you might consider other word choices…you use assert elsewhere, why not stick with that?

Personally, I’d prefer a quote of me saying or implying what he is accusing me of saying or implying.

[Calm]

56 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Personally, I’d prefer a quote of me saying or implying what he is accusing me of saying or implying.

I can often see how Smac interprets the way he does and sometimes it does seem to me the most reasonable interpretation, but other times not.  Plus I typically see your ‘that’s not what I said’ as reasonable because you don’t attach the same meanings as I might, so I see it as always good to support interpretations by presenting the actual quote with enough additional material for context and then explaining how you got there so the other can point out where one goes wrong.  

People who say something are the authority for what they meant, imo, even if they don’t express it in a way that’s clear to me.

[smac97]

3 hours ago, Calm said:

If you are not trying to be insulting, you might consider other word choices…you use assert elsewhere, why not stick with that?

Done.  

Thanks,

-Smac

[smac97]

3 hours ago, Analytics said:

Personally, I’d prefer a quote of me saying or implying what he is accusing me of saying or implying.

"That is why I said I was criticizing narrow, 'specific LDS truth claims that require a causal interface between a spirit and the physical brain.'"

"On a few occasions I’ve tried to limit the conversation to discussing one specific example: what your church teaches about spirits. I did this because it is relevant, important, and directly addressed in detail in Sean Carroll’s book."

I said:

Quote

If yes, then all your song and dance about you invoking Carroll only has application to Latter-day Saint truth claims ("That is why I said I was criticizing narrow, 'specific LDS truth claims that require a causal interface between a spirit and the physical brain.'") doesn't really hold up, does it?

I retract this and apologize.  It's not that Carroll's reasoning only applies to Latter-day Saint truth claims.  Rather, you are choosing to invoke Carroll in a "narrow" and "limit{ed}" way so as to focus on the Church's teachings supposedly being "flatly disproven" by "science."

Meanwhile, I hope you can eventually lay out the "scientific" methodology for how "science" will "prove" that the Church's miraculous truth claims are "impossible and hence did not happen," that miraculous events in The Book of Mormon "did not happen," that "spirits don't exist," that "physics that shows basic truth claims of Mormonism, such as the existence of spirits and revelation, are flatly disproven," and so on.

In my view, "science" by design cannot test non-empirical or non-falsifiable claims. A God and spirits that do not produce repeatable, detectable violations of physics are simply outside its jurisdiction. Science operates, or should operate, under methodological/empirical naturalism, and hence it has epistemic limits.

I sure would like to see you explain how "science" could empirically disprove the historical reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ approximately 2,000 years ago, or His appearance on the Road to Emmaus.  Or the story of an angel appearing to stop Laman and Lemuel from beating Nephi.  Or Christ's visit to the Nephites in 3 Nephi.  These events all "interact{ed} with observable reality," and so are - according to you - "within the purview of science," susceptible to empirical falsification using "scientific" methodologies.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited February 19 by smac97

[Analytics]

5 hours ago, smac97 said:

I retract this and apologize.  It's not that Carroll's reasoning only applies to Latter-day Saint truth claims.  Rather, you are choosing to invoke Carroll in a "narrow" and "limit{ed}" way so as to focus on the Church's teachings supposedly being "flatly disproven" by "science."

Correct. Specifically, I’ve been trying to stay focused on the proposition that we have “spirits” made out of “spirit matter", because this hypothesis isn’t a one-off event that only happens on rare, non-repeatable occasions. Rather, this “spirit matter” hypothesis entails something that happens continuously in every living human in an extremely well-studied organ of our bodies. This is within the purview of science.

5 hours ago, smac97 said:

Meanwhile, I hope you can eventually lay out the "scientific" methodology for how "science" will "prove" that the Church's miraculous truth claims are "impossible and hence did not happen,"

A few points.

First, this conversation began with the premise that “evidence” is something real. If one wants to evoke philosophy and the supernatural, one can wave their hand and cause evidence to disappear, as does  the young-earth creationist who says that the dinosaurs all died in the flood.

So I assume we’re working under the general framework that we won't wave our hands and appeal to divine intervention (or demonic intervention) to wave away evidence that is inconvenient for this or that belief.

Second, I hope you acknowledge that above I said, "when I use the word prove, I’m writing in what Steven Pinker calls classic style: ordinary language that relies on reasonable reader charity rather than endless hedging. In that register, prove means “meets an extremely high evidential burden—something like beyond a reasonable doubt—given what we currently know.” It does not mean metaphysical certainty or logical impossibility."

I hope you are trying to understand my point and not be an “offender for a word” and claim the Lloyd Christmas defense (so you admit you were exaggerating and there really is a chance I’m right!)

Third, this all began when I correctly pointed out that there are libraries of material that constitute formidable evidence that your religious beliefs aren’t really true, and that apologists ignore this evidence. I brought up Sean Carroll’s arguments against the plausibility of “spirits" as one example from this library. You are free to scoff at my summaries of his arguments, but when you do so, you sound just as scientifically literate as the young-earth creationist who dismisses the fossil record by glibly declaring that the devil put the bones there to confuse us. 

At any given time I’m more likely to be be reading a Lee Child or Michael Connelly novel than a book about science, but I’ve happened to read the following books about science and coincidentally noticed that they approach the plausibility of there being “a ghost in the machine” from different scientific disciplines, and all come to the conclusion that no, given the evidence that really isn’t plausible. While Sean Carroll using quantum field theory to show that even physics shows that the plausibility of “spirit matter” being real is vanishingly unlikely, the same conclusion has been independently reached in neuroscience and neuroanatomy, neurology, neuropsychology (including split-brain and lesion studies), cognitive science, computational neuroscience, psychiatry, psychopharmacology, anesthesiology, endocrinology and neuromodulation research, developmental psychology, behavioral genetics, evolutionary biology, and molecular/cellular biology.

There being a ghost in the machine is a very intuitive belief; nobody gets confused about the premise of Freaky Friday. But when you carefully study physics and the brain, you realize this just isn’t plausible.

If you want to understand this, here are books that I’ve happened to read that make the point from different angles:

• The Big Picture by Sean Carroll
• The Consciousness Instinct by Michael Gazzaniga
• How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker
• Who’s in Charge by Michael Gazzaniga
• Life on the Edge by Johnjoe McFadden et. al. 

Those are just the books I’ve happened to read. There are dozens more that I could list that corroborate the point. This isn’t anti-religion apologetics stuff. It is mainstream science stuff. The Gazzaniga books are fascinating in terms of what we know about the brain, consciousness, and sense of self from split-brain research. And none of these books even address some of the obvious questions about why, if there is a ghost in the machine, does the ghost lose its ability to see if our physical eyes go blind, or why the ghost in the machine goes dark and doesn’t have an OBE when we have anesthesia for a surgery. 

If you want to understand my position, take a deep dive into science without compartmentalizing your brain. 

[Analytics]

15 hours ago, smac97 said:

...that "spirits don't exist,”...

I thought I’d recruit ChatGPT 5.2 Pro to help me articulate my position. The following deliberately looks outside of Sean Carroll’s esoteric arguments from physics that arrive at the same conclusion from a totally different angle. 

Prompt
Please choose 4 examples of evidence that physical "spirits" that interface with the body are not real. Part of this theory expands to the theory that the proper way to interpret NDEs is that they are the process of a stressed-out brain that may be dying and not an account of the spirit literally leaving the body at death. Don't choose Sean Carroll's arguments from physics. Do choose Michael Gazzaniga's as one of the four. Make your selection based on how independent, intuitive, genuinely strong, and interesting the arguments are.

For each argument, write a short paragraph that explains to a lay audience why this is formidable evidence that there isn't a "ghost in the machine" that interfaces with the spirit brain.

Finally, write a conclusion paragraph that briefly mentions other areas of science that corroborate with this, and the implication of how this multi-faceted, interlaced body of evidence all points to a consistent, well-defined theory that naturalism is true and that naturalism precludes the possibility of a physical "spirit" inhabiting our bodies. Be sure to emphasize that "naturalism" doesn't preclude a spirits in principle--there being no spirits is a result of the science, not a premise.

Keep the entire post written in a conversational style using prose. 600 words max.

Response
Thought for 8m 59s>

Here are four lines of evidence—chosen for being pretty independent of one another, intuitive once you see them, and hard to square with a literal “ghost in the machine” that interfaces with a physical spirit body.

**1) Gazzaniga’s split-brain work: one skull, two semi-independent minds.**
In some patients with severe epilepsy, surgeons have cut the corpus callosum, the main bridge between the hemispheres. Afterward, the two halves of the brain can behave like partially separate agents: one hand can select an object the person can’t verbally name; one hemisphere can follow an instruction the other seems unaware of. Gazzaniga also emphasized the “interpreter” role of the left hemisphere—our tendency to generate a coherent story about “why I did that” even when the real cause is hidden from conscious access. If there were a single, unified spirit self steering the body through one interface, you’d expect the unity of agency and awareness to remain intact even when brain wiring is cut. Instead, the unity fractures in exactly the way the neural wiring predicts.

**2) Focal brain injury and disease: specific parts break, specific parts of “you” disappear.**
Strokes, tumors, traumatic injuries, and neurodegenerative diseases don’t just make people generally “less conscious.” They can selectively remove a capacity that feels deeply personal: speech (aphasia), forming new memories (hippocampal damage), recognizing faces (prosopagnosia), inhibiting impulses and maintaining personality stability (frontal lobe damage), or even the sense that one side of space exists (hemispatial neglect). What makes this formidable is the *specificity*: damage a particular circuit and you lose a particular mental function, while many other aspects of the self remain. A spirit-body theory that stores “a significant chunk” of memories, agency, and identity has to explain why physical damage to tissue reliably deletes or distorts those very things in fine-grained, repeatable ways. The simplest explanation is the obvious one: those functions are implemented in the brain.

**3) Anesthesia and psychoactive drugs: chemistry turns consciousness down and back up on schedule.**
General anesthesia can reliably switch off conscious experience, and when the drugs wear off, consciousness returns—often within minutes—without needing to “reconnect” anything metaphysical. The same is true, in a graded way, for sedatives, stimulants, antidepressants, psychedelics, and antipsychotics: tweak neurotransmitter systems and you predictably tweak attention, mood, perception, self-modeling, and thought. If a physical spirit system is the main seat of consciousness and agency, it’s puzzling that tiny molecules binding to receptors in the brain can so consistently reshape the contents and clarity of the mind. This isn’t a vague correlation; it’s causal control with dose–response curves and repeatable mechanisms.

**4) Near-death experiences and out-of-body experiences: the brain can manufacture “leaving the body” when stressed or perturbed.**
NDEs are often vivid and meaningful, but many of their core features line up with what stressed brains do: low oxygen, high carbon dioxide, sleep-like (REM) intrusions, seizure-like activity, and powerful neurochemistry can all produce bright lights, tunnels, life-review feelings, and the sense of presence. Importantly, “out-of-body” sensations can also be induced without dying—by disturbing the brain’s body-mapping systems (e.g., through experimental illusions that shift where you feel located, and in some cases direct stimulation in relevant regions). That matters because it offers a grounded alternative: you don’t need a spirit literally exiting the body to get the *experience* of departure; you need a brain whose self-location and self-model are temporarily destabilized.

Taken together, these aren’t four versions of the same argument—they’re four different windows on the same picture. And they’re reinforced by many other areas: cognitive neuroscience, neurology, neuropsychology, psychiatry, psychopharmacology, anesthesiology, brain stimulation research, developmental psychology, behavioral genetics, and computational modeling of perception and decision-making. The upshot is a convergent, interlaced theory in which mental life is what brains do. That conclusion isn’t smuggled in as a premise: methodological naturalism is just the commitment to follow testable causes wherever they lead. If a physical “spirit” interfacing with the body were part of the causal story, it would earn its place by improving predictions and surviving cross-checks. What we find instead is that the brain-centered story keeps winning—cleanly, mechanistically, and across many independent lines of evidence.
 

[Analytics]

On 2/16/2026 at 1:50 PM, smac97 said:

...spirits that do not produce repeatable, detectable violations of physics are simply outside its jurisdiction.

In my prior post, the AI prompt was engineered to articulate my position, and was biased towards my position being true. I decided to engineer a new prompt that was neutral and evaluated the evidence.

Prompt:
Definition 1: Hypothesized "spirit" and "spiritual forces" refer to any hypothetical particle or force that has the following properties:

a- They are not defined by or are not constrained by the standard model of physics

b- They are strong enough and last long enough to interact with the electrons, quarks, and fields of our body with enough energy or vigor to trigger something that has an effect on physical system, such as triggering or affecting a thought in the physical brain

Definition 2: The "spirit hypothesis" is that a spirit or spiritual forces exist and play a role in who we are as human beings.

Definition 3: The "no spirit hypothesis" is the positive hypothesis that "spirit" and "spiritual forces" do not exist.

Philosophical framework: We are *methodological empiricists*. While we give no special deference to truth claims because they are religious, we also don't hesitate to follow the evidence wherever it leads, including if it leads towards the support of a religious or philosophical position other than naturalism.

With that background, what is the current evidentiary state of the "spirit hypothesis" and the "no spirit hypothesis"? When answering this question, please look at the implications of all available evidence from all fields of study, including the experiments that support the core theory, neuroscience, and NDE studies.

Colloquially, how strong are these results? Is it going too far to say in casual conversation that we are "confident" or "know" or have "proven" anything with regards to these two hypotheses? My point here is to avoid casual readers from interpreting carefully couched language as meaning the evidence is weaker than it really is.

600 words max.

Chat GPT 5.2 Pro
Thought for 12m 26s>

Given Definition 1, a “spirit/spiritual force” would have to be new physics (outside the Standard Model) that still couples to ordinary matter strongly enough to perturb neural activity (change firing/synapses/networks) and thereby affect thoughts. That predicts an additional matter‑coupled interaction with repeatable physical effects.

**Physics / “core theory”**
The Standard Model has passed stringent precision tests and global fits; overall consistency leaves limited room for extra, unscreened interactions that couple appreciably to ordinary particles. ([Particle Data Group][1])
Dedicated “fifth‑force” and equivalence‑principle searches likewise keep coming up null. For example, the MICROSCOPE satellite tested the Weak Equivalence Principle and found no violation down to ~10^-15 in the Eötvös parameter, strongly constraining many new-force models that couple to bulk matter. ([arXiv][2]) Precision orbit-tracking studies (e.g., asteroid dynamics) also bound long‑range Yukawa‑type forces. ([Nature][3])
Colloquially: physics doesn’t “prove” there is no new interaction anywhere, but it **strongly disfavors** any broad, matter‑coupled “spirit force” strong enough to be doing noticeable causal work in brains while leaving no trace in precision tests.

**Neuroscience**
Here the evidence is extremely strong that mental capacities depend on brain states. Lesion research shows that damage to specific circuits can selectively alter memory, language, emotion, personality, impulse control, and conscious access—evidence that those substrates are necessary for those functions. ([PMC][4])
Interventions tighten causality further: direct electrical stimulation can evoke or modulate perceptions and memory-related experiences, and modern reviews summarize systematic stimulation effects on human memory. ([PubMed][5]) General anesthesia reliably removes (and restores) consciousness by altering large‑scale brain dynamics and network connectivity. ([ScienceDirect][6])
This doesn’t logically exclude a “spirit” that merely correlates with brain activity, but it undercuts versions where spirit is the primary driver and the brain is secondary. Any interacting spirit influence would have to track neurophysiology extremely closely.

**NDE evidence**
Prospective cardiac‑arrest studies find that a nontrivial minority of survivors report NDEs/recalled experiences of death; a 2024 scoping review reports incidence ranging roughly from ~6% to ~39% across prospective studies. ([PMC][7]) AWARE‑II reported that among interviewed survivors, 11/28 described memories/perceptions suggestive of consciousness, spanning categories from dream‑like to “transcendent.” ([PubMed][8])
But Definition 1 requires **verified** mentation/perception when the brain is unable to support it. Current NDE research is limited by low survival, uncertain timing (resuscitation vs recovery), and ICU confounds. NDE‑like episodes can also occur in syncope, with measurable EEG/network differences reported in people who had NDE‑like fainting experiences—supporting “disconnected consciousness” generated by a compromised but functioning brain. ([ScienceDirect][9])

**Other claimed anomalies**
Some parapsychology meta-analyses report small statistical deviations in “anomalous perception” paradigms (e.g., Ganzfeld), but the field remains disputed and has not produced a consensus‑grade demonstration of a new force/particle interacting with the brain. ([PMC][10])

**Bottom line**

* Spirit hypothesis (as defined): currently weak empirical support; no robust, independently replicated evidence of non‑Standard‑Model forces causally influencing brains.

*No-spirit hypothesis (as defined): strongly supported as a practical inference, because we (i) have powerful constraints on additional matter‑coupled forces and (ii) can already explain and manipulate mental states via brain mechanisms.

**Everyday language**
“Proven” is too strong for both. But it is fair in casual conversation to say you’re confident that brain function is necessary for ordinary human thought and that there is presently no compelling empirical evidence for a detectable, matter‑coupled “spirit force” doing causal work in the brain.

[1]: https://pdg.lbl.gov/2024/reviews/rpp2024-rev-standard-model.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com "rpp2024-rev-standard-model.pdf - PDG"
[2]: https://arxiv.org/abs/2209.15487?utm_source=chatgpt.com "MICROSCOPE mission: final results of the test of the Equivalence Principle"
[3]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42005-024-01779-3?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Constraints on fifth forces and ultralight dark matter from ..."
[4]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6712987/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Lesion studies in contemporary neuroscience - PMC"
[5]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36408731/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Direct electrical brain stimulation of human memory"
[6]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0896627324001569?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Review Anesthesia and the neurobiology of consciousness"
[7]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11133272/ "
            Near-death experiences after cardiac arrest: a scoping review - PMC
        "
[8]: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37423492/ "AWAreness during REsuscitation - II: A multi-center study of consciousness and awareness in cardiac arrest - PubMed"
[9]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811924002568?utm_source=chatgpt.com "EEG signature of near-death-like experiences during ..."
[10]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11134153/?utm_source=chatgpt.com "Anomalous perception in a Ganzfeld condition - A meta ... - PMC"

Follow-up Prompt
In the everyday language part, did you mean to say "you're *confident* that there aren't "spirit matter particles" influencing (and being influenced by) the brain?

ChatGPT 5.2 Auto
Yes — in everyday language, it’s reasonable to say you’re **confident there aren’t undiscovered “spirit matter” particles interacting with the brain in the way you defined**.

That confidence doesn’t mean absolute logical certainty. It means that given (1) tight experimental constraints on new matter-coupled forces and (2) the detailed causal mapping between brain states and mental states, the evidence strongly favors the view that no such particles are influencing (or being influenced by) neural activity.

“Confident” fits. “Proven” overstates it.
 

 

Edited February 19 by Analytics

[smac97]

Roger,

I have appreciated the back-and-forth discussion we've had on this topic over the past while. Given that we have circled around Sean Carroll's ideas in The Big Picture and their supposed application to disproving Latter-day Saint truth claims, I thought it might be helpful to step back and summarize where we stand. I am aiming for clarity and fairness, focusing on the core issues without rehashing every detail. If I have mischaracterized your position, feel free to correct me.  (Grok provided some input as to tone, as I am trying to do better in that regard.)

1. Your Core Argument: Science Disproves LDS "Supernatural" ("Miraculous") Claims You have argued that Carroll's framework—rooted in Effective Quantum Field Theory (EQFT) and what he calls the "Core Theory" of physics—provides "positive evidence" that certain forms of matter, energy, or forces (like non-physical spirits or divine interventions) "do not exist." You apply this specifically to Latter-day Saint claims, such as:

• The existence of spirits that interact with physical bodies (e.g., via a "causal interface" with the brain).
• Miracles in LDS scripture (e.g., Book of Mormon events) that would require violations of known physics.
• Revelation or spiritual experiences that imply influences on or interactions with the physical world.

You emphasize "interactions with observable reality" as the key criterion. In your view, if something "supernatural" (or "miraculous") purportedly affects the physical world (e.g., spirits influencing thoughts/decisions), then that something is within science's purview, and is therefore falsifiable. Drawing on Carroll's book, you argue that modern physics describes brain/body processes so comprehensively that there's "no wiggle room" for undetected non-material interventions (which, if I am accurately describing things, is incongruent with Latter-day Saint thought, which postulates that spirit is not immaterial/non-material). Thus, claims implying such interventions (like mind-body dualism) are "impossible" and "did not happen," based on the absence of experimental evidence for them. You have clarified that this is not about proving a negative in absolute terms, but rather about colloquial "proof"—high-confidence conclusions from overwhelming evidence, akin to knowing a one-in-a-million chance won't pan out. You distinguish Latter-day Saint claims as "narrow and specific" (e.g., requiring spirit-brain interfaces) from more abstract religious ideas that don't demand physical interactions.

2. My Counterarguments: Science's Limits and Epistemic Boundaries I have pushed back by arguing that science, by design, operates under methodological naturalism—it excels at empirical, repeatable, falsifiable phenomena but cannot address non-empirical or historical one-off events outside its wheelhouse. A few key points:

• Non-Falsifiability of Many Religious Claims: Claims like God's existence, spirits, or revelation do not, in my view, necessarily produce "repeatable, detectable violations of physics." If a spirit interacts subtly (e.g., influencing thoughts without measurable energy transfers), such an event would not be testable via EQFT or experiments. Carroll himself acknowledges this in places, noting science deals with "how the world works" but not ultimate "why" questions or unfalsifiable metaphysics.
• Historical Events Are Untestable: I have repeatedly asked how science could empirically disprove specific miracles which occurred in the past and outside of any sort of scientific/empirical observation, such as Christ's resurrection (a belief shared by billions of people, not just Latter-day Saints) or the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24—physical interactions like walking, talking, vanishing). These "interact with observable reality" but occurred millennia ago. No lab can recreate or falsify them; history relies on testimony, not replicable experiments. You have not yet provided a scientific methodology for testing or disproving such historical events, which highlights the practical epistemic limits of applying EQFT/Core Theory to particularized miraculous claims about events not empirically/scientifically observed or tested.
• Inconsistencies in Application: If Carroll's ideas disprove miraculous events accepted as such by Latter-day Saints, they should equally debunk biblical ones accepted broadly in Christianity (e.g., resurrection, walking on water). But you have generally focused on LDS-specific claims while not addressing the application of Carroll's framework to these comparable biblical events. This feels selective—either "science" disproves all supernatural/miraculous interactions, or its "purview" is narrower than you claim.
• Philosophy vs. Science: Carroll's book blends physics with philosophy (e.g., poetic naturalism). His "disproof" of souls relies on assumptions like physicalism, not pure empirical data. Science shows consistency with known laws but doesn't "prove" non-existence of undetected forces (e.g., dark matter was once "undiscovered"). Claims of "impossibility" overreach into metaphysics, where science defers to philosophy/theology.

3. Where We Agree (or Mostly Agree)

• Science is powerful for observable, interactive phenomena. If a claim predicts measurable effects, it can be tested and potentially debunked—as you've noted.
• Language matters: "Proof" is contextual. Philosophically, nothing is absolute. Colloquially, high-confidence conclusions are fine. (As an attorney, presenting claims of "proof" or "proving/disproving" is a potent thing, as I deal with evidentiary quanta—preponderance, clear and convincing, beyond reasonable doubt—and probabilities—more likely, less likely, etc. Claims of scientific "proof," in contrast, would seem more akin to mathematics—that is, reasonable minds cannot disagree about the outcome.)
• Interactions are key: Purely non-interactive entities (e.g., Sagan's garage dragon) are unfalsifiable and thus outside science.

4. Unresolved Questions and My Bottom Line Despite our exchanges, key challenges remain unanswered:

• How would EQFT/Core Theory empirically falsify historical, non-repeatable events like the resurrection (or the Road to Emmaus, or the First Vision, etc.)?
• If Carroll's framework applies to Latter-day Saint claims, why not equally to other miraculous claims? Does this mean science "disproves" them too?
• If spirits/God operate without violating detectable physics (e.g., subtle influences indistinguishable from natural processes), aren't they outside science's epistemic reach?
• How can Carroll or you make sweeping pronouncements about the existence or non-existence of "God" and "spirits" when you have not even defined these terms?

In the end, I see your position as conflating science's strengths with overreach. Science excels at the "how" of the natural world but can't adjudicate the "why" or supernatural/miraculous claims that do not necessarily leave empirical and detectable fingerprints.

In my view, Latter-day Saint truth claims (and indeed, pretty much all historical truth claims of espoused by the religions of the world) as to miraculous beings/events (God, spirits, revelation) are faith-based, tested through personal experience, and are not empirically testable or falsifiable via scientific inquiry/testing. Carroll's work is fascinating physics, but applying it to "disprove" religion ventures into philosophy—where it is one voice among many.

Thanks,

-Smac

[cujo22]

6 hours ago, Analytics said:

I thought I’d recruit ChatGPT 5.2 Pro to help me articulate my position. The following deliberately looks outside of Sean Carroll’s esoteric arguments from physics that arrive at the same conclusion from a totally different angle. 

...

 

I was excited to read your explanation cuz the science is so interesting, but I think ChatGPT didn't do it justice, or maybe I just need to read those books. From the ChatGPT summary, the religious argument seems to be... If spirits exist, then we should be able to do stuff to the brain or other parts of the body (eyes was mentioned somewhere) and it wouldn't have any impact. Is that the argument that is proven false with this science? That if spirits exist then we wouldn't need eyes to see? Perhaps some people do believe that argument. ?? Not me. I don't see how any of this has any bearing on whether spirits exist. 

 

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

Roger,

I have appreciated the back-and-forth discussion we've had on this topic over the past while. Given that we have circled around Sean Carroll's ideas in The Big Picture and their supposed application to disproving Latter-day Saint truth claims, I thought it might be helpful to step back and summarize where we stand. I am aiming for clarity and fairness, focusing on the core issues without rehashing every detail. If I have mischaracterized your position, feel free to correct me.  (Grok provided some input as to tone, as I am trying to do better in that regard.)

1. Your Core Argument: Science Disproves LDS "Supernatural" ("Miraculous") Claims You have argued that Carroll's framework—rooted in Effective Quantum Field Theory (EQFT) and what he calls the "Core Theory" of physics—provides "positive evidence" that certain forms of matter, energy, or forces (like non-physical spirits or divine interventions) "do not exist." You apply this specifically to Latter-day Saint claims, such as:

• The existence of spirits that interact with physical bodies (e.g., via a "causal interface" with the brain).
• Miracles in LDS scripture (e.g., Book of Mormon events) that would require violations of known physics.
• Revelation or spiritual experiences that imply influences on or interactions with the physical world.

You emphasize "interactions with observable reality" as the key criterion. In your view, if something "supernatural" (or "miraculous") purportedly affects the physical world (e.g., spirits influencing thoughts/decisions), then that something is within science's purview, and is therefore falsifiable. Drawing on Carroll's book, you argue that modern physics describes brain/body processes so comprehensively that there's "no wiggle room" for undetected non-material interventions (which, if I am accurately describing things, is incongruent with Latter-day Saint thought, which postulates that spirit is not immaterial/non-material). Thus, claims implying such interventions (like mind-body dualism) are "impossible" and "did not happen," based on the absence of experimental evidence for them. You have clarified that this is not about proving a negative in absolute terms, but rather about colloquial "proof"—high-confidence conclusions from overwhelming evidence, akin to knowing a one-in-a-million chance won't pan out. You distinguish Latter-day Saint claims as "narrow and specific" (e.g., requiring spirit-brain interfaces) from more abstract religious ideas that don't demand physical interactions.

Let me refine the “non-material intervention” part a little bit. In this context I’m not talking about oxymoronic “immaterial matter.” What I’m talking about is proposed matter other than the “course and contaminated” matter of ordinary stuff. 

Sean Carroll walks through this with an example that starts as follows:

"Consider a new particle X that you might suspect leads to subtle but important physical effects in the everyday world, whether it’s the ability to bend spoons with your mind or consciousness itself. That means that the X particle must interact with ordinary particles like quarks and electrons, either directly or indirectly. If it didn’t, there would be no way for it to have any effect on the world we directly see.” (p. 181).

He then walks through how effective quantum field theory proves that X doesn’t exist. He doesn’t have to define “X”, he merely has to state it has the property of having "subtle but important physical effects in the everyday world.” According to quantum mechanics and over a hundred billion dollars in scientific experiments, we know that “X” doesn’t exist. Applying this to the alleged “fine and pure” matter that spirits are allegedly made of, as soon as you can say this spirit matter has "subtle but important physical effects in the everyday world”, I can confidently say it doesn’t exist.

That isn’t intuitive, but that is what QM tells us. In a completely fresh GPT I asked "If you crash an electron and a positron into each other at very high speeds, what happens?” It gave a long answer with a bottom line of:

Quote

• Low energy → two gamma rays

• High energy → potentially a whole zoo of particles

• Everything follows strict conservation laws.

If you'd like, I can explain what the Feynman diagram for this looks like.

I then followed with another simple prompt: "Does this tell you everything that can interact with the fields of an electron?"

It answered:

Quote

Short answer: it tells us a lot — but not “everything in principle.” It tells us everything that can interact with appreciable strength at the energies we’ve tested.
...
[a lot of detail]
...

What we can say with high confidence:

There are no undiscovered forces that couple to electrons with ordinary strength in everyday conditions. If there were, they would have shown up in collider data or precision QED tests.

What we cannot say with absolute metaphysical certainty:

That no conceivable interaction exists at any scale whatsoever. Physics never makes that claim.

But practically speaking — for interactions strong enough to influence chemistry, biology, or brain activity — those are already ruled out to very high precision.

That is exactly my point. This isn’t intuitive, but it is what the science says; if “spirit matter” is “strong enough to influence chemistry, biology, or brain activity”, then the existence of that is “already ruled out to very high precision."

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

2. My Counterarguments: Science's Limits and Epistemic Boundaries I have pushed back by arguing that science, by design, operates under methodological naturalism—it excels at empirical, repeatable, falsifiable phenomena but cannot address non-empirical or historical one-off events outside its wheelhouse. A few key points:

• Non-Falsifiability of Many Religious Claims: Claims like God's existence, spirits, or revelation do not, in my view, necessarily produce "repeatable, detectable violations of physics." If a spirit interacts subtly (e.g., influencing thoughts without measurable energy transfers), such an event would not be testable via EQFT or experiments. Carroll himself acknowledges this in places, noting science deals with "how the world works" but not ultimate "why" questions or unfalsifiable metaphysics.
• Historical Events Are Untestable: I have repeatedly asked how science could empirically disprove specific miracles which occurred in the past and outside of any sort of scientific/empirical observation, such as Christ's resurrection (a belief shared by billions of people, not just Latter-day Saints) or the Road to Emmaus (Luke 24—physical interactions like walking, talking, vanishing). These "interact with observable reality" but occurred millennia ago. No lab can recreate or falsify them; history relies on testimony, not replicable experiments. You have not yet provided a scientific methodology for testing or disproving such historical events, which highlights the practical epistemic limits of applying EQFT/Core Theory to particularized miraculous claims about events not empirically/scientifically observed or tested.
• Inconsistencies in Application: If Carroll's ideas disprove miraculous events accepted as such by Latter-day Saints, they should equally debunk biblical ones accepted broadly in Christianity (e.g., resurrection, walking on water). But you have generally focused on LDS-specific claims while not addressing the application of Carroll's framework to these comparable biblical events. This feels selective—either "science" disproves all supernatural/miraculous interactions, or its "purview" is narrower than you claim.
• Philosophy vs. Science: Carroll's book blends physics with philosophy (e.g., poetic naturalism). His "disproof" of souls relies on assumptions like physicalism, not pure empirical data. Science shows consistency with known laws but doesn't "prove" non-existence of undetected forces (e.g., dark matter was once "undiscovered"). Claims of "impossibility" overreach into metaphysics, where science defers to philosophy/theology.

I agree with a lot of this, but there are some subtle points I disagree on. One of the reasons that I’ve focused on the plausibility of the existence of "a new particle X that you might suspect leads to subtle but important physical effects in the everyday world, whether it’s the ability to bend spoons with your mind or consciousness itself,” is because that claim is within the purview of science, and is a generalized form of “spirit matter."

The assertion that particle X can “influence thoughts without measurable energy transfers” is an oxymoron--if it has enough energy to cause a single electron to fire in a neuron, then it has enough energy to be measurable. If it is more subtle than that, then it can’t affect thoughts. It has to be one or the other.

Regarding historical events (allegedly miraculous ones or mundane ones), etc., it depends on the specific claim. On a particular historical claim there might not be data, and the best we can do is say there isn’t any evidence of that one way or the other. But if the historical claim is unlikely or implausible, we can use that implausibility to be quite confident it didn't happen. 

Regarding inconsistencies in application, this is never something I meant to say or imply. Spirits don’t exist. Jesus didn’t walk on water. He didn’t snap his fingers and turn water into wine. He didn’t float into the sky after the alleged resurrection. The idea of a dead person returning to life isn’t inconsistent with QM the way these other things are, but depending upon the details is inconsistent with what we know about biology. 

On Philosophy of science, Carroll’s claims are a lot more nuanced than you are giving him credit for. When he says "The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known,” he chose his words very carefully. This has nothing to do with “poetic naturalism” or an assumption of physicalism. It is a direct result of QM. That is why he says we know “some” things, and that those things are enough to rule out “some” other things. This isn’t intuitive, but it is a result of QM.

Regarding naturalism, that is a result of science, not a premise. Science is based methodological empiricism--it’s based on the data.

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

3. Where We Agree (or Mostly Agree)

• Science is powerful for observable, interactive phenomena. If a claim predicts measurable effects, it can be tested and potentially debunked—as you've noted.
• Language matters: "Proof" is contextual. Philosophically, nothing is absolute. Colloquially, high-confidence conclusions are fine. (As an attorney, presenting claims of "proof" or "proving/disproving" is a potent thing, as I deal with evidentiary quanta—preponderance, clear and convincing, beyond reasonable doubt—and probabilities—more likely, less likely, etc. Claims of scientific "proof," in contrast, would seem more akin to mathematics—that is, reasonable minds cannot disagree about the outcome.)
• Interactions are key: Purely non-interactive entities (e.g., Sagan's garage dragon) are unfalsifiable and thus outside science.

Agreed.

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

4. Unresolved Questions and My Bottom Line Despite our exchanges, key challenges remain unanswered:

• How would EQFT/Core Theory empirically falsify historical, non-repeatable events like the resurrection (or the Road to Emmaus, or the First Vision, etc.)?
• If Carroll's framework applies to Latter-day Saint claims, why not equally to other miraculous claims? Does this mean science "disproves" them too?
• If spirits/God operate without violating detectable physics (e.g., subtle influences indistinguishable from natural processes), aren't they outside science's epistemic reach?
• How can Carroll or you make sweeping pronouncements about the existence or non-existence of "God" and "spirits" when you have not even defined these terms?

I've addressed most of these above. EQFT says that some things just can’t happen. He doesn’t merely claim that we doubt spoon bending with the mind is possible because it’s never been done in a controlled environment. He’s claiming we know that it is impossible because QFT has proven that it can’t happen. This same confidence in the implausibility of spoon bending transfers to the implausibility of certain claims about historical miracles. This applies equally to all such miraculous claims. 

As my GPT said without any leading questions or prompts, "But practically speaking — for interactions strong enough to influence chemistry, biology, or brain activity — those are already ruled out to very high precision.” Things that aren’t strong enough to influence those things could (and probably do) exist, but they don’t have any impact on our lives.

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

In the end, I see your position as conflating science's strengths with overreach. Science excels at the "how" of the natural world but can't adjudicate the "why" or supernatural/miraculous claims that do not necessarily leave empirical and detectable fingerprints.

I understand how it seems this way. What you are saying is intuitive and makes sense. But the surprising claim is that according to QM, if a supernatural/miraculous claim is strong enough to have an impact on everyday reality, then it must leave fingerprints, 100% of the time. Furthermore, we know exactly how to look for and detect such fingerprints. We’ve looked for them very carefully, and they aren’t there. That is strong evidence that these imagined forces aren’t real.

 

[smac97]

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

That is exactly my point. This isn’t intuitive, but it is what the science says; if “spirit matter” is “strong enough to influence chemistry, biology, or brain activity”, then the existence of that is “already ruled out to very high precision."

I agree with a lot of this, but there are some subtle points I disagree on. One of the reasons that I’ve focused on the plausibility of the existence of "a new particle X that you might suspect leads to subtle but important physical effects in the everyday world, whether it’s the ability to bend spoons with your mind or consciousness itself,” is because that claim is within the purview of science, and is a generalized form of “spirit matter."

As soon as you or Carroll can quantify and define "spirit matter" and how it works, I'll give this further consideration. 

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

The assertion that particle X can “influence thoughts without measurable energy transfers” is an oxymoron--if it has enough energy to cause a single electron to fire in a neuron, then it has enough energy to be measurable. If it is more subtle than that, then it can’t affect thoughts. It has to be one or the other.

And yet you cannot define or quantify the attributes of "particle X."

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Regarding historical events (allegedly miraculous ones or mundane ones), etc., it depends on the specific claim. On a particular historical claim there might not be data, and the best we can do is say there isn’t any evidence of that one way or the other. But if the historical claim is unlikely or implausible, we can use that implausibility to be quite confident it didn't happen. 

"Unlikely or implausible" sure seem like non-objective, value-laden, non-scientific presuppositions.

I agree that if a purported supernatural/miraculous influence were to produce measurable, repeatable physical effects (e.g., spoon-bending, neuron-firing without biochemical cause, macroscopic violations of conservation laws), then quantum field theory + the Core Theory would indeed rule it out to extremely high precision. Carroll’s argument is strong on that narrow ground: any force strong enough to noticeably alter everyday physics should have left detectable traces in controlled experiments, and it hasn’t.

The sticking point is the jump from that to “therefore spirits/God/miracles cannot exist or did not happen.” That only follows if one assumes every possible divine or spiritual interaction must be strong, direct, and detectable in the way spoon-bending would be. Many religious claims—including core Latter-day Saint ones—don’t require that kind of fingerprint:

• Subtle influence on thoughts, feelings, or agency (e.g., revelation, the “still small voice,” moral promptings) could be indistinguishable from natural brain processes.
• Historical miracles (resurrection, Road to Emmaus, First Vision) are one-time events, not ongoing physical violations. Science can’t rerun history in a lab; it can only say “we have no empirical record of such an event leaving traces we can now detect,” which is true but not the same as disproof.  And yet you have used Carroll and "science" to declare that such things have been "flatly disproven" and such.
• If God/spirits operate through, rather than against, natural laws (e.g., guiding probabilities, inspiring people, working within emergent complexity), then by definition there would be no anomalous fingerprints to find.  Indeed, this is why I have repeatedly qualified or re-worded references to "supernatural" with "miraculous."  I reject the former, as I believe God, being the "God of nature" (1 Nephi 19:12) works within natural law, not in violation of it. 

Carroll’s framework is devastating against crude, physics-violating supernaturalism (ghosts moving furniture, telekinesis, etc.). But it is silent on the subtler, non-violating forms of theism that most serious religious thinkers (including Latter-day Saints) actually hold. Saying “no detectable fingerprints” therefore equals “impossible” requires an additional philosophical premise—that all causal influence must be detectable in the Core Theory’s equations. That premise is not itself a scientific result; it’s a metaphysical commitment (physicalism or causal closure).  It's both a logical and rhetorical jump that I think you are making without realizing it.

So while I fully grant that EQFT/Core Theory has closed off certain crude versions of "supernatural" intervention, I do not see it as having disproven the existence of God, spirits, or the specific miraculous claims of the Restoration. The absence of evidence for one kind of interaction is not evidence of absence for every conceivable kind.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Regarding inconsistencies in application, this is never something I meant to say or imply. Spirits don’t exist.

That is a statement of belief, not scientifically and empirically demonstrated fact.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

On Philosophy of science, Carroll’s claims are a lot more nuanced than you are giving him credit for. When he says "The laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely known,” he chose his words very carefully. This has nothing to do with “poetic naturalism” or an assumption of physicalism. It is a direct result of QM. That is why he says we know “some” things, and that those things are enough to rule out “some” other things. This isn’t intuitive, but it is a result of QM.

I give Carroll credit for the careful wording. When he says the laws underlying everyday life are “completely known,” he is anchoring that claim in the empirical success and predictive power of quantum field theory (plus general relativity) at the scales relevant to chemistry, biology, and such. He is not waving a philosophical flag, he is pointing to the extraordinary tightness of the equations which have been tested in labs.

I concede, without fully understanding the concepts, that the Core Theory + QFT rules out—with very high confidence—any new particle or field that would produce detectable, systematic deviations from those equations in everyday matter (e.g., spoon-bending, macroscopic telekinesis, consciousness as an independent force that measurably pushes electrons around without an energy source we can account for). That part is not intuitive, and I don’t dispute the physics behind it.  Where we still diverge is the scope of what that rules out (with some help from Grok) :

1. Subtle, non-violating interaction If a spiritual influence operates within the statistical wiggle-room of "quantum indeterminacy" or through emergent complexity, then it would leave no anomalous fingerprint in the equations. The Core Theory would be silent on that, not because it disproves it, but because it was never designed to detect or rule out influences that are causally invisible at the level of particle physics.
2. Historical one-offs Even granting that EQFT makes certain kinds of miracles implausible in principle today, it still can’t do what you avhe repeatedly tried to do, which is to reach back and falsify (or confirm) a singular event 2,000 years ago that left no surviving physical trace we can now measure. Saying “it’s implausible given modern physics” is fine in a Bayesian sense, but saying, as you have over and over, “therefore we know it didn’t happen” is a much stronger claim that requires bridging from present physics to past history in a way that science itself doesn’t provide tools for.
3. The leap to “spirits don’t exist” The tight constraints on everyday physics rule out crude supernaturalism. They don’t rule out every conceivable form of theism or spirit that religious people actually believe in. To go from “no detectable violations” to “no spirits/God/revelation at all” still requires an extra premise (e.g., “any real causal influence must be detectable in the Core Theory”). That premise is philosophical, not a direct result of QM.

I’m not trying to rescue spoon-bending or macro-violations, or even all religious truth claims (I am sure a number of them did not happen, including some claimed in the Church).  Rather, I am saying the Latter-day Saint view of God, spirits, and revelation doesn’t need those things to be true. If the influence is subtle enough to be compatible with known physics, then the absence of fingerprints is exactly what we’d expect—not evidence against it.

19 hours ago, Analytics said:

Quote

• How would EQFT/Core Theory empirically falsify historical, non-repeatable events like the resurrection (or the Road to Emmaus, or the First Vision, etc.)?
• If Carroll's framework applies to Latter-day Saint claims, why not equally to other miraculous claims? Does this mean science "disproves" them too?
• If spirits/God operate without violating detectable physics (e.g., subtle influences indistinguishable from natural processes), aren't they outside science's epistemic reach?
• How can Carroll or you make sweeping pronouncements about the existence or non-existence of "God" and "spirits" when you have not even defined these terms?

I've addressed most of these above.

Not really feeling like you have.  I've quoted a number of "sweeping pronouncements" which you seem to want to hang on to, but which I think are not justified or grounded in what "science" can prove or disprove.

Thanks,

-Smac

[Analytics]

55 minutes ago, smac97 said:

As soon as you or Carroll can quantify and define "spirit matter" and how it works, I'll give this further consideration. 

The argument doesn't depend on a specific definition of "spirit matter". It depends on "spirit matter" broadly having these properties:

1. It consists of something other than the electrons, protons, and neutrons that make up our physical bodies
2. It interacts with the electrons, protons, and neutrons of our physical body in a way that might be incredibly subtle, but is still strong enough to make any difference in how we think or feel

That's it. If spirit matter has those properties, then the argument is on point. If spirit matter doesn't have those properties, then the argument is irrelevant to spirit matter. So you tell me. Do we know whether or not "spirit matter" has those two properties?

55 minutes ago, smac97 said:

I agree that if a purported supernatural/miraculous influence were to produce measurable, repeatable physical effects (e.g., spoon-bending, neuron-firing without biochemical cause, macroscopic violations of conservation laws), then quantum field theory + the Core Theory would indeed rule it out to extremely high precision. Carroll’s argument is strong on that narrow ground: any force strong enough to noticeably alter everyday physics should have left detectable traces in controlled experiments, and it hasn’t.

The sticking point is the jump from that to “therefore spirits/God/miracles cannot exist or did not happen.” That only follows if one assumes every possible divine or spiritual interaction must be strong, direct, and detectable in the way spoon-bending would be. Many religious claims—including core Latter-day Saint ones—don’t require that kind of fingerprint:

• Subtle influence on thoughts, feelings, or agency (e.g., revelation, the “still small voice,” moral promptings) could be indistinguishable from natural brain processes.

You want it both ways. Either "spirit matter" can subtly influence thoughts, feelings, or agency, or it can't. If it can, then it has the same basic conflicts with EQFT as spoon-bending does. If it can't, then it is irrelevant to our everyday lives.

For clarity, I have never said "therefore God cannot exist" because of this. I've said that about spirits and some miracles, but not "God" in general.

If you want an out that is scientifically literate, you should simply hypothesize that what makes spirit matter "fine and pure" is its ability to manipulate normal matter using fields that aren't anticipated or described by QM. There isn't any evidence of this, of course, but at least you would be proposing a theory hypothesis that isn't contradicting what we already know.

55 minutes ago, smac97 said:

• Historical miracles (resurrection, Road to Emmaus, First Vision) are one-time events, not ongoing physical violations. Science can’t rerun history in a lab; it can only say “we have no empirical record of such an event leaving traces we can now detect,” which is true but not the same as disproof.  And yet you have used Carroll and "science" to declare that such things have been "flatly disproven" and such.

You have conceded that Core Theory rules out with very high confidence spoon bending. If we accept that, then if somebody claims that a really long time ago somebody used the power of their mind to bend a spoon, then we can say with commensurately very high confidence that this didn't happen. The same reasoning applies to anything like spoon bending--walking on water, floating away in the air, etc. That is the entire argument.

55 minutes ago, smac97 said:

• If God/spirits operate through, rather than against, natural laws (e.g., guiding probabilities, inspiring people, working within emergent complexity), then by definition there would be no anomalous fingerprints to find.  Indeed, this is why I have repeatedly qualified or re-worded references to "supernatural" with "miraculous."  I reject the former, as I believe God, being the "God of nature" (1 Nephi 19:12) works within natural law, not in violation of it. 

"To imagine that the soul pushes around the electrons and protons and neutrons in our bodies in a way that we haven’t yet detected is certainly conceivable, but it implies that modern physics is profoundly wrong in a way that has so far eluded every controlled experiment ever performed." Carroll, Sean M. . The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (p. 212). (Function). Kindle Edition. 

55 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Carroll’s framework is devastating against crude, physics-violating supernaturalism (ghosts moving furniture, telekinesis, etc.). But it is silent on the subtler, non-violating forms of theism that most serious religious thinkers (including Latter-day Saints) actually hold.

It's not, though. Carroll addresses this directly in detail. Please read Chapter 23 (The Stuff of Which We Are Made), and Chater 26 (Body and Soul). When he says "The verdict is unambiguous," he's talking specifically about something that has a small subtle effect on normal matter that is subtle but enough to make a difference in a thought and feeling. He talks about this directly. At length.

55 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Saying “no detectable fingerprints” therefore equals “impossible” requires an additional philosophical premise—that all causal influence must be detectable in the Core Theory’s equations. That premise is not itself a scientific result; it’s a metaphysical commitment (physicalism or causal closure).  It's both a logical and rhetorical jump that I think you are making without realizing it.

From a philosophical perspective, "impossible" is an overstatement. But that said, the choices are either that "modern physics is profoundly wrong in a way that has so far eluded every controlled experiment ever performed", or these imagined spirit forces don't exist.

While it's true that science can't literally prove anything in a deductive way, it's also true that when a theory provides robust explanations of the universe that withstand a ton of scrutiny, that is meta evidence that the theory is true.

55 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Rather, I am saying the Latter-day Saint view of God, spirits, and revelation doesn’t need those things to be true. If the influence is subtle enough to be compatible with known physics, then the absence of fingerprints is exactly what we’d expect—not evidence against it.

I'm certainly not going to argue with you about what you need to be true. But your view does bring to mind what Carl Sagan said: "Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?"

Sagan, Carl. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (p. 171). (Function). Kindle Edition.

[smac97]

On 2/20/2026 at 7:49 PM, Analytics said:

Quote

As soon as you or Carroll can quantify and define "spirit matter" and how it works, I'll give this further consideration. 

The argument doesn't depend on a specific definition of "spirit matter".

Yes, that is sort of the problem.  The argument purports to disprove the existence of something it cannot even define.

On 2/20/2026 at 7:49 PM, Analytics said:

It depends on "spirit matter" broadly having these properties:

1. It consists of something other than the electrons, protons, and neutrons that make up our physical bodies
2. It interacts with the electrons, protons, and neutrons of our physical body in a way that might be incredibly subtle, but is still strong enough to make any difference in how we think or feel

That's it. If spirit matter has those properties, then the argument is on point. If spirit matter doesn't have those properties, then the argument is irrelevant to spirit matter. So you tell me. Do we know whether or not "spirit matter" has those two properties?

I do not think we can answer whether spirit matter has those properties (or evaluate Carroll's argument against it) without first defining what "spirit matter" actually is and providing a coherent model of how it works. Your proposed framing ("Does spirit matter interact in a way that affects the physical brain, or doesn’t it?") presupposes that any such interaction would be empirically observable in a way that physics could test — but that is exactly the kind of assumption we cannot make until the entity is defined. Without that, we're just talking in vague terms that cannot be assessed scientifically one way or the other.

To answer your direct question: No, we do not know whether or not "spirit matter" has those two properties — because without a specific definition or model, there's nothing scientific to know. The Latter-day Saint description (D&C 131:7–8) gestures at property #1 ("more fine or pure" matter), but property #2 has never been given a mechanism that fits known physics.

On 2/20/2026 at 7:49 PM, Analytics said:

You want it both ways. Either "spirit matter" can subtly influence thoughts, feelings, or agency, or it can't.  If it can, then it has the same basic conflicts with EQFT as spoon-bending does.  If it can't, then it is irrelevant to our everyday lives.

I am not trying to have it both ways.  I think I have been consistent from the start: Without a clear definition of what “spirit matter” is and a coherent model of how it’s supposed to function, we can’t meaningfully evaluate whether it has causal influence (your property #2) or whether any argument against it holds up. The binary you’re presenting (“either it can subtly influence… or it can’t”) only makes sense after we have that definition and mechanism on the table.

The spoon-bending comparison is especially problematic for exactly that reason. We know far more about spoon “matter” than we do about “spirit matter.” A metal spoon is ordinary physical stuff: we have an essentially complete, predictive model of its atomic structure, electromagnetic interactions, thermal properties, etc. We know precisely what kinds of forces or energies would be required to bend it at a distance, and we know those forces would produce massive, easily detectable side-effects in the surrounding fields and particles.  These effects have been, as Carroll notes, extensively tested, with no evidence allowing for spoon-bending. This is why spoon-bending (or any similar psychokinetic claim) conflicts with known physics.

“Spirit matter,” by contrast, has no such model (nor, for that matter, does "Priesthood power"). Neither you, nor Sean Carroll, nor anyone else has defined spirit matter's (or "priesthood power's") composition, its particles/fields, or the mechanism by which this “more fine or pure” substance (D&C 131:7–8) is supposed to couple to ordinary electrons, protons, and neutrons strongly enough to affect thoughts or feelings — yet weakly enough to have evaded every experiment. Without that, you can’t claim it “has the same basic conflicts” as spoon-bending. It’s not that we have looked for the interaction and ruled it out; it’s that we don’t even know what variables to look for.

So to answer the binary directly: we cannot say whether it “can” or “cannot” influence the physical brain, because the entity itself remains undefined. That’s why it still feels unreasonable to treat Carroll’s argument as having settled the question of spirits when the thing being argued against hasn’t been specified in a way physics can actually test.

On 2/20/2026 at 7:49 PM, Analytics said:

For clarity, I have never said "therefore God cannot exist" because of this. I've said that about spirits and some miracles, but not "God" in general.

This seems like a mighty fine hair to split.  A compilation of your prior declarations:

Quote

• "All I claimed is that the supernatural elements of the book are impossible and hence did not happen."

The existence of God is necessarily an element of The Book of Mormon.

The pre-incarnate Christ was a "spirit."

And there is no qualifier ("some miracles") here.

Quote

• "It takes Dr. Carroll several chapters to lay out the framework for how we can and do have positive evidence that these (for lack of a better word) 'supernatural' forms of matter and energy do not exist, rather than merely not being discovered yet. But he does make the case."

The Latter-day Saints believe that God has a physical body, and you are here declaring we have "positive evidence" that "supernatural" (or "miraculous") "forms of matter and energy do not exist."

Quote

• "I pointed out that we know from Effective Quantum Field Theory that the miracles in and around the Book of Mormon did not happen."

The "miracles in and around the Book of Mormon" include the First Vision, the pre-incarnate (and hence seemingly comprised of "spirit matter" Jesus Christ appearing to the Brother of Jared, angelic ministrants (e.g., appearing to Laman and Lemue), etc.

Quote

• "Earlier in this thread, smac97 asked me when, precisely, science proved that spirits don’t exist. The answer to that question is that this knowledge started to emerge in 1989 when the Large Electron-Positron Collider was first fired up."
• "I've presented evidence from mainstream physics that shows basic truth claims of Mormonism, such as the existence of spirits and revelation, are flatly disproven."

The "basic truth claims of Mormonism" include the existence of God, which you declare here to be "flatly disproven."

Quote

• "{T}hings like spirits, revelation, and priesthood power are within the purview of science because they make concrete claims about the real world. As I've shown on this thread, the strongest, most robust, most well-tested theory of all of science, the theory that is as strong as a child of the Hulk and Godzilla, proves that spirits and revelation don't exist."

"Revelation" being communications from God.

Quote

• "According to the massive experimental evidence supporting it, quantum field theory is true, within its domain of applicability. And if quantum field theory is true, we know there is not a mysterious thing made out of "more fine and pure matter" that connects with the brain in a way that has enough energy to have any effect on how the brain functions."

Science has empirically disproven the existence of something that hasn't even been defined?  

On 2/20/2026 at 7:49 PM, Analytics said:

You have conceded that Core Theory rules out with very high confidence spoon bending. If we accept that, then if somebody claims that a really long time ago somebody used the power of their mind to bend a spoon, then we can say with commensurately very high confidence that this didn't happen. The same reasoning applies to anything like spoon bending--walking on water, floating away in the air, etc. That is the entire argument.

Well, no. 

First, I am not not obligated to take an all-or-nothing approach to "supernatural" / "miraculous" claims.  Some can be spurious, and some can be legitimate.

To clarify what I actually conceded: yes, the Core Theory rules out—with very high confidence—claims of someone (today or long ago) bending a physical metal spoon with their mind through some unknown force or particle interaction on ordinary matter. We have an extremely complete, predictive model of what a spoon is made of (atomic lattice, electron clouds, electromagnetic and thermal properties, etc.). Any causal influence strong enough to bend it would leave massive, easily detectable fingerprints in the fields and particles we’ve already tested to absurd precision. Same logic applies to naturalistic versions of walking on water, levitation, etc.

But that is not the same situation as “spirit matter.”

We know far more about spoon “matter” than we do about “spirit matter.” A spoon is ordinary physical stuff whose interactions with the world are fully mapped. “Spirit matter,” by contrast, has never been defined with any composition, particles, fields, or interaction rules. Neither you, nor Carroll, nor anyone else has specified how this “more fine or pure” substance is supposed to couple to electrons, protons, and neutrons strongly enough to affect thoughts/feelings (or enable miracles) yet weakly enough to have evaded every experiment. Without that model, you simply cannot claim it “has the same basic conflicts” as spoon-bending. There’s nothing concrete for the Core Theory to rule out.

Also, we have focused on "spirit matter," but not really about "priesthood" power.  Or the power of "faith."  The Book of Mormon seems to speak of these things as having non-figurative "power."  See, e.g., Ether 12:30 ("For the brother of Jared said unto the mountain Zerin, Remove —and it was removed. And if he had not had faith it would not have moved; wherefore thou workest after men have faith.").

I think this actually makes my original challenge stronger. Moving an entire mountain is an enormous macroscopic physical event — far more dramatic than subtle influence on thoughts or even spoon-bending. It would require massive, obvious transfers of energy and momentum that the Core Theory (and basic conservation laws) describe with extreme precision.  Yet we still have no definition or model for what “priesthood power” or “faith power” actually is as a causal agent, what particles/fields it involves, or how it couples to ordinary matter strongly enough to move mountains (or part seas, etc.) while leaving no detectable trace in all the experiments we’ve done.

If these powers operate through some extension of “spirit matter,” then they run into exactly the same Core Theory conflicts you described. If instead they mean “God supernaturally/miraculously intervenes when faith is present,” then that’s a direct claim of divine action outside of - or a higher manifestation of - the natural laws Carroll is describing — not something his physics argument is equipped to rule out one way or the other.

Either way, we’re right back where I started: without a specific, coherent model of how these powers actually work in the physical world, Carroll’s argument cannot be applied. Faith is one thing. Claiming science has disproved it is another.

On 2/20/2026 at 7:49 PM, Analytics said:

I'm certainly not going to argue with you about what you need to be true.  

But your view does bring to mind what Carl Sagan said: "Now, what’s the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?

Hypothetically, one would exist and one would not.

On 2/20/2026 at 7:49 PM, Analytics said:

If there’s no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?"

Sagan, Carl. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (p. 171). (Function). Kindle Edition.

Carl Sagan’s dragon analogy a clever warning against claims that are deliberately unfalsifiable and produce zero observable effects. If nothing could ever count against it, then saying “it exists” is indistinguishable from saying it doesn’t.

But that dragon is nothing like Latter-day Saint beliefs. Doctrine and Covenants 131:7–8 teaches that “all spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure.” This spirit interacts with the physical world through faith and priesthood authority. Ether 12:30 describes the brother of Jared commanding a mountain to move by faith — a real, macroscopic effect on ordinary matter, not heatless fire.  Faith is explicitly testable: Alma 32 invites an explicit experiment: plant the “seed” of the word, nourish it, and observe whether it grows into knowledge through real spiritual and practical fruits. Moroni 10:4–5 promises that sincere prayer about the Book of Mormon will bring a personal confirmation by the power of the Holy Ghost — something millions of Latter-day Saints have experienced as unmistakable (a “burning in the bosom,” peace, or clear guidance that leads to verifiable life changes).

Faith is presented as testable, but not in the empirical, laboratory sense Sagan and Carroll require. Alma 32 invites a personal experiment: plant the “seed” of the word, nourish it, and observe whether it grows into knowledge through real spiritual and practical fruits in your own heart and life.

Dark matter illustrates the point beautifully. It existed for billions of years before scientists inferred its presence from gravitational effects (Zwicky 1933, Rubin 1970s). Its existence was never contingent on our observation; we simply reached the point where knowledge and technology allowed us to detect its clear, testable physical traces.

Similarly, God may exist — and exercise power — beyond our current ability to empirically confirm. Priesthood could be an extension of (or even the source of) natural law itself, since God is, after all, the “God of Nature,” 1 Nephi 19:12).  If so, He could do so in ways we do not yet comprehend or have tools to measure. Science has epistemic limits: it is powerful for the measurable, repeatable, natural world but cannot, by design, investigate or disprove realities known through spiritual discernment (“purer eyes”) or divine action that respects agency.

The dragon analogy is powerful against claims that dodge all evidence — but not against a faith that invites honest personal testing within its proper domain.

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited February 23 by smac97

[Ryan Dahle]

I haven't commented on this board for some time, but this conversation has intersected with some of my own ponderings lately. 

56 minutes ago, smac97 said:

Carl Sagan’s dragon analogy a clever warning against claims that are deliberately unfalsifiable and produce zero observable effects. If nothing could ever count against it, then saying “it exists” is indistinguishable from saying it doesn’t.

I actually think there is a significant distinction between making a scientifically unfalsifiable positive claim and making a negative claim. Just because something can't be objectively tested does not equate to it being untrue or non-existent. For instance, imagine that someone claims, through firsthand experience, to have been abducted by aliens at a certain time and place. And let's just say, for the sake of argument in this hypothetical, that the event actually happened but there is no way the individual can prove, much less even moderately support his claims, with any sort of objective evidence (outside of his own testimony). At least for the individual who hypothetically experienced such an event, the mere fact that there is no possible way to test or affirm his claims does not equate to their falsity.

In essence, there may sometimes be a significant difference between the following types of phenomena: 

1. Things that are true and have supporting objective evidence. 
2. Things that are true and don't have supporting objective evidence.
3. Things that are false. 

It is fallacious to concede that category 2 is effectively category 3, since there are many propositions in the universe which may be true but which may also be unfalsifiable based on currently available evidence. There is also always the possibility, in many circumstances, that what is currently unfalsifiable today may not be unfalsifiable in the future. 

I think most of your later talking points essentially concur or align with this view, but I thought I would just make the distinction anyway. 

Edited February 23 by Ryan Dahle

[Ryan Dahle]

1 hour ago, smac97 said:

Faith is presented as testable, but not in the empirical, laboratory sense Sagan and Carroll require. Alma 32 invites a personal experiment: plant the “seed” of the word, nourish it, and observe whether it grows into knowledge through real spiritual and practical fruits in your own heart and life.

Dark matter illustrates the point beautifully. It existed for billions of years before scientists inferred its presence from gravitational effects (Zwicky 1933, Rubin 1970s). Its existence was never contingent on our observation; we simply reached the point where knowledge and technology allowed us to detect its clear, testable physical traces.

Similarly, God may exist — and exercise power — beyond our current ability to empirically confirm. Priesthood could be an extension of (or even the source of) natural law itself, since God is, after all, the “God of Nature,” 1 Nephi 19:12).  If so, He could do so in ways we do not yet comprehend or have tools to measure. Science has epistemic limits: it is powerful for the measurable, repeatable, natural world but cannot, by design, investigate or disprove realities known through spiritual discernment (“purer eyes”) or divine action that respects agency.

The dragon analogy is powerful against claims that dodge all evidence — but not against a faith that invites honest personal testing within its proper domain.

I might just add a few points to the discussion. In the realm of Latter-day Saint theology, it seems like the best explanation for our mortal identity is that our spirits are interfacing with our bodies on an emergent level. Those who subscribe to strictly naturalistic frameworks struggle to counteract this hypothesis because science actually doesn't understand consciousness. It can certainly demonstrate that our perceptions of consciousness are connected to brain activity. And it can demonstrate that normative perceptions of conscious awareness and control (i.e. agency) can be significantly modified, hindered, or entirely compromised by various medical conditions or anomalies that affect brain activity and functioning. But the Plan of Salvation doesn't seem to assume, in the first place, that all mortal beings have the same degree of free will, mental capacity, or accountability. In other words, the LDS theological framework can accommodate all sorts of aberrations in this area, including circumstances where free will is entirely compromised. 

As far as I can tell, then, the real problem is simply that there is no objective scientific evidence that any sort of spiritual matter or entity is interfacing with the human brain in the realm of conscious decision-making. If science actually knew what caused perceptions of consciousness, in the first place, it would be better positioned to rely on this type of absence-of-evidence argument. It would also help if it could do more than generalize about how certain biological or environmental factors may be affecting conscious decision-making processes. But the simple fact is that in most deliberative decision-making processes, science actually can't specifically determine why an individual makes one decision over another. Why buy this home over that one. Why choose this spouse over that one. Why give up faith or maintain it in any given religious claims. And so forth. Science can appeal to combinations of genetics and environmental factors to propose possible explanations. But for most complex decisions, it can never be certain of the ratios involved, much less all the possible contributing factors. It can never say that Johnny bought home X over home Y for precisely a certain combination of reasons (these particular genes + these particular environmental factors). Nor can science reliably predict what any given human will do in most circumstances, especially not based on the science alone (outside of sociologically monitoring human patterns of behavior). Even with social data, you never know when a given human being is going to act outside of the "norm" in any given context. 

I've always found it rather fascinating that the level at which spirits are believed to interact with the human body is also an area where science has admitted to being largely ignorant. It is making progress in mapping out what portions of the brain are connected to what types of perceptions. But the actual causal processes involved--from the base atomic and subatomic levels all the way up to the macro decision and conscious awareness of the decision--are still a mystery. It doesn't work very well to claim that spirits aren't interfacing with this remarkable biological machine (the human brain) when you actually don't know how the machine works most of the time with any degree of specificity. 

As I see it, the door should be reasonably open for belief, assuming some other line of evidence can help corroborate the spiritual-interfacing hypothesis. 

Edited February 23 by Ryan Dahle

[Ryan Dahle]

4 hours ago, smac97 said:

The dragon analogy is powerful against claims that dodge all evidence — but not against a faith that invites honest personal testing within its proper domain.

The dragon analogy is especially inappropriate when applied to a set of religious claims that have a very unusual degree of supporting secular evidence (which seems useful as a supplement to prioritized spiritual experiences). In my experience, core LDS religious claims have a unique (and I believe unprecedented) degree of supporting secular evidence.

Edited February 23 by Ryan Dahle

[smac97]

On 2/23/2026 at 1:19 PM, Ryan Dahle said:

The dragon analogy is especially inappropriate when applied to a set of religious claims that have a very unusual degree of supporting secular evidence (which seems useful as a supplement to prioritized spiritual experiences).

I agree.  The text of The Book of Mormon needs to be accounted for.  The statements of the Witnesses needs to be accounted for.

The secular disdain baked into it also does not help.

On 2/23/2026 at 1:19 PM, Ryan Dahle said:

In my experience, core LDS religious claims have a unique (and I believe unprecedented) degree of supporting secular evidence.

Indeed.  And yet despite the probative value of that evidence, we're still left with accepting, or not accepting, these things on faith.

This includes, I think, our @Analytics.  In this 2021 discussion he posited, without evidence, that "Sidney Rigdon made the plates out of tin," and/or that "the angel was really an alien doing an anthropology experiment on Joseph Smith," and/or that "the devil conjured up the plates" as all being "more likely" than the explanation given by Joseph Smith, which he (Roger) said is "just not possible."  "{A}ny explanation," Roger said, "is more likely than {The Book of Mormon} being an accurate translation of an actual ancient manuscript."

Roger, the same person now espousing strict science-based empiricism when examining religious truth claims, was (is?) more willing to believe in space aliens or Satan being the source of The Book of Mormon than to attribute its origins to the explanation claimed by the Church.

I have sometimes ruminated on this mindset, where a skeptic is willing to go with "any explanation" for The Book of Mormon except the one presented by Joseph Smith.  I responded to Roger this way:

Quote

Quote

It's more likely Sidney Rigdon made the plates out of tin.

That would have been a neat trick, since Sidney Rigdon did not encounter missionaries or the Book of Mormon from the Church until October 1830, six months after the Book of Mormon was published.  How do you account for that in your "more likely" scenario?  And what evidence do you have to support it?

Meanwhile, we can look at what Signey Rigdon told his son:

Quote

In 1865, more than two decades after Sidney’s excommunication, John Wycliff Rigdon, who, as a young adolescent, had followed his parents out of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, interviewed his father about the Book of Mormon.

"I concluded,” he later wrote, “I would make an investigation for my own satisfaction and find out, if I could, if he had all these years been deceiving his family and the world, by telling that which was not true, and I was in earnest about it. If Sidney Rigdon, my father, had thrown his life away by telling a falsehood and bringing sorrow and disgrace upon his family, I wanted to know it and was determined to find out the facts, no matter what the consequences might be.”

In his mid-30s by this time, John hadn’t seen his father for a considerable while. Among other things, though, he’d visited the Mormon settlements in Utah, which, he said, “had not impressed me very favorably toward the Mormon church, and as to the origin of the Book of Mormon I had some doubts.” So he came right to the point:

“You have been charged,” he said, “with writing that book and giving it to Joseph Smith to introduce to the world. You have always told me one story; that you never saw the book until it was presented to you by Parley P. Pratt and Oliver Cowdery; and all you ever knew of the origin of that book was what they told you and what Joseph Smith and the witnesses who claimed to have seen the plates had told you. Is this true? If so, all right; if it is not, you owe it to me and to your family to tell it. You are an old man and you will soon pass away, and I wish to know if Joseph Smith, in your intimacy with him for 14 years, has not said something to you that led you to believe he obtained that book in some other way than what he had told you. Give me all you know about it, that I may know the truth.”

His father, he recorded, raised his hand above his head and slowly said, with tears running down his cheeks, “My son, I can swear before high heaven that what I have told you about the origin of that book is true. Your mother and sister … were present when that book was handed to me in Mentor, Ohio, and all I ever knew about the origin of that book was what Parley P. Pratt, Oliver Cowdery, Joseph Smith and the witnesses who claimed they saw the plates have told me, and in all of my intimacy with Joseph Smith he never told me but one story, and that was that he found it engraved upon gold plates in a hill near Palmyra, New York. … I believed him, and now believe he told me the truth.”

 

Not a whole lot of empiricism going on with the "Sidney Rigdon made the plates out of tin" explanation.

Quote

Quote

It's more likely that the angel was really an alien doing an anthropology experiment on Joseph Smith. 

Really?  How do you figure "an alien" being a "more likely" explanation than an angel?

Quote

It's more likely that the devil conjured up the plates.

This is you explaining how we should approach evidence regarding the Book of Mormon?
...

Quote

Given what we know about the world, {Joseph's explanation is} just not possible.

Sidney Rigdon, Space Aliens or Satan as the source of The Book of Mormon: "More likely."

Joseph Smith's narrative re: the source of The Book of Mormon: "Just not possible."

Quote

I'll quote a previous summary of DCP's overall reasoning on this issue:

Quote

As Daniel Peterson commented: "It's amazing what Joseph Smith was able to pick up on the western frontier."
...

Daniel Peterson has commented on the tendency of critics who, when pressed in an adversarial construct, suddenly go all quiet and agnostic and conveniently ambivalent about such controversies.  They are vocally adamant about the Church's position being necessarily and demonstrably wrong, but then become curiously uncurious when asked to provide and substantiate and defend a coherent alternative explanation for, say, the source of the Book of Mormon or the Book of Abraham.  

Some excerpts from DCP:

Quote

I want to suggest something like that in this case, that to me, the explanation of Joseph Smith is simple and elegant, and the alternative explanations just don’t work and they get more and more complex and it’s just too much for me, and so I’ve said sometimes that I simply don’t have the faith to disbelieve Joseph Smith’s story. I just can’t get there. I can’t do it. And I’ve tried. I’ve really tried to give it a serious look. I cannot put together hallucinatory explanations of the witnesses and stealing from Solomon Spaulding and stealing from Ethan Smith, and I’m just mentioning a few, and putting it all together. Joseph Smith, this incredibly learned young man who’s sitting there on the frontier.
...
I remember my friend Bill Hamblin once being in communication with a one-time, fairly prominent, ex-member critic of the Church and of the Book of Mormon. And he said, “Look, let’s assume for a moment that you’re right and that Joseph Smith did not have plates. Did he know that he didn’t have plates or did he think that he had the plates? In other words, was he a conscious deceiver, or was he in some sense mad?”

To which this critic responded: “I don’t have to lower myself to your simplistic little dichotomies.”

Well, see, I think it’s intellectually incumbent upon people like that to, come on, give us an answer to this. Otherwise it’s like guerrilla warfare. You attack and attack and attack, you always withdraw, you never defend territory. You never have to stake out your own explanation, which then will be subject to criticism and attack.

 

I continue to feel that DCP made a solid point.  It is "intellectually incumbent" upon people like Analytics to, in affirmatively denying the claimed origins of The Book of Mormon, present a plausible alternative explanation.

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See also here (also by Dr. Peterson) (emphasis added):

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The most serious contemporary criticisms of the Book of Mormon and of Mormonism more broadly tend to come not from self-proclaimed orthodox (i.e., usually Evangelical) Christians, but from self-identified atheistic materialists or naturalists. The Utah-based historian Dale Morgan, largely forgotten today but still much admired in certain small contemporary circles, wrote a 1945 letter to the believing Latter-day Saint historian Juanita Brooks. In it, he identifies the fundamental issue with unusual candor:

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With my point of view on God, I am incapable of accepting the claims of Joseph Smith and the Mormons, be they however so convincing. If God does not exist, how can Joseph Smith’s story have any possible validity? I will look everywhere for explanations except to the ONE explanation that is the position of the church.

I see very little daylight between what what Dale Morgan wrote 81 years ago and what Analytics is writing today.  Our critics are not really making much headway, it seems.

More from DCP:

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In Risen Indeed, Stephen Davis remarks that 

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believers point to something of an embarrassment in the position of those who do not believe in the resurrection: their inability to offer an acceptable alternative explanation of the known facts surrounding the resurrection of Jesus. The old nineteenth-century rationalistic explanations (hallucination, swoon theory, stolen body, wrong tomb, etc.) all seem to collapse of their own weight once spelled out, and no strong new theory has emerged as the consensus of scholars who deny that the resurrection occurred.

A similar situation obtains, in my judgment, with regard to the Book of Mormon and certain other elements of the Restoration. While, for instance, this or that aspect of the Book of Mormon can, hypothetically, be accounted for by means of something within Joseph Smith’s early nineteenth-century information environment, a fully comprehensive counterexplanation for Joseph’s claims remains promised but manifestly unprovided. Critics have disagreed over the nearly two centuries since the First Vision about whether Joseph was brilliant or stupid, whether he was sincerely hallucinating or cunningly conscious of his fraud, whether he concocted the Book of Mormon alone or with co-conspirators (their own identity either hotly debated or completely unknown), whether he was a cynical atheist or a pious fraud defending Christianity, and so forth.

I think this is a pretty solid line of reasoning.  And yet as years and decades go by, all we get from critics in the end is appeals to ridicule and "anything but that"-style counter-explanations, even to the point of a man as intelligent as Roger giving notions of space aliens and/or Satan more credence as the source of The Book of Mormon.

More from my 2021 comments:

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With respect, I think you are taking a Dale Morgan-esque approach that just doesn't work for me.  I think it is problematic to, as Morgan put it, "look everywhere for explanations except to the ONE explanation that is the position of the church."  This is a heads-the-Church-loses-tails-the-Church-loses approach.  
...

I continue to feel a bit perplexed at

• A) critics and skeptics taking a Dale Morgan-esque I-will-look-everywhere-for-explanations-except-to-the-ONE-explanation-that-is-the-position-of-the-church approach to the Church's claims,
• B) critics and skeptics adopting a "guerrilla warfare" attitude when examining the BOM, BOA, etc. (endlessly disputing the Church's explanation of the BOM, BOA, etc., while not actually getting around to formulating a coherent counter-explanation);
• C) critics and skeptics suddenly going all quiet and agnostic and conveniently ambivelant about issues pertaining to the Church when pressed to present a coherent counter-explanation for these things, and
• D) critics and skeptics not really listening to, or meaningfully interacting with, what the Church and its scholars and apologists are actually saying, and instead trying to distort, misconstrue, misstate and mischaracterize what we are saying so as to put us in the worst possible light (such as what Consig and Analytics did re: Givens).

Responses like "beats me" and “I don’t have to lower myself to your simplistic little dichotomies" are singularly unimpressive to me, particularly in 2020, and particularly given the wealth of readily-available information and scholarship we have seen come out in the last many years.  

And in response to the foregoing, Analytics said this:

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I'm not going to try to even summarize the evidence against the Book of Mormon. It is quite literally overwhelming.

I responded:

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I'm not going to try to even summarize the evidence against the Book of Mormon. It is quite literally overwhelming.

It is quite literally nothing of the sort.  See?  I can make bald conclusory assertions too.  They aren't worth much.
...

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I brought up aliens and demons to point out that even if you proved Joseph Smith needed supernatural help to produce the Book of Mormon, that doesn't mean an honest angel is the most likely supernatural explanation; a supernatural explanation involving a trixter would be more likely because that would be consistent with the overwhelming evidence that the book os 19th century fiction. 

Aliens or Satan are are more reasoned and "likely" explanation for the Book of Mormon than Joseph Smith's explanation?

This is you demonstrating the Scientific American sit-down-before-a-table-of-facts, weigh-them-pro-and-con, and-choose-the-most-logical-and-rational-explanation" thing?

At this point I think the Dale Morgan "anything but that" style of argument, even to the point of finding space aliens and Satan as "more likely" explanations for The Book of Mormon, requires its advocates to exercise more faith than what we as Latter-day Saints are asked to do.

Thanks,

-Smac

 

Edited February 24 by smac97

[Analytics]

On 2/23/2026 at 12:07 PM, smac97 said:

Yes, that is sort of the problem.  The argument purports to disprove the existence of something it cannot even define.

You aren’t dealing with the structure of the argument. Imagine I said, “'John Smith' isn’t in my hotel room. I know this because I have thoroughly checked the room and the only person here is me.” If I said that, you’d respond, “You are purporting to disprove John Smith is in your room without even defining who, specifically ‘John Smith’ is! You can’t prove he isn’t in the room until you give me his birth certificate so we know who, specifically, you are claiming isn’t there."

Likewise, Carroll says: 

"Consider a new particle X that you might suspect leads to subtle but important physical effects in the everyday world, whether it’s the ability to bend spoons with your mind or consciousness itself. That means that the X particle must interact with ordinary particles like quarks and electrons, either directly or indirectly. If it didn’t, there would be no way for it to have any effect on the world we directly see."

Carroll, Sean M. . The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (p. 181). (Function). Kindle Edition. 

“John Smith" has the property of being a person who isn’t me. Nothing with that property is in my room. It doesn’t need to be defined beyond that for my proof to be valid.

Likewise, “spirit matter” has the property of being a particle X. It doesn’t need to be defined beyond that for Carroll’s proof to be valid.

On 2/23/2026 at 12:07 PM, smac97 said:

Your proposed framing ("Does spirit matter interact in a way that affects the physical brain, or doesn’t it?") presupposes that any such interaction would be empirically observable in a way that physics could test — but that is exactly the kind of assumption we cannot make until the entity is defined. Without that, we're just talking in vague terms that cannot be assessed scientifically one way or the other.

No, it certainly does not presuppose that such an interaction would be empirically observable. Rather, it presupposes that effective quantum field theory works within its domain of applicability.

On 2/23/2026 at 12:07 PM, smac97 said:

The spoon-bending comparison is especially problematic for exactly that reason. We know far more about spoon “matter” than we do about “spirit matter.” A metal spoon is ordinary physical stuff: we have an essentially complete, predictive model of its atomic structure, electromagnetic interactions, thermal properties, etc.

This has nothing to do with the arguments we’re talking about. You are imagining that Sean Carroll’s arguments are fundamentally different (and weaker) than what they are. A spoon apologist might say that there is a different force (the power of the “spoonhood”?) that can be used by people to bend spoons with their mind, and just because physicists haven’t observed it doesn't mean it isn’t there.

Carroll would argue that we are extremely confident that a force such as the “spoonhood” does not exist, and would cite effective quantum field theory and experiments done in particle accelerators as proof (i.e. extremely strong evidence) that spoonhood powers don’t and can’t exist. It isn’t merely about declaring that spoons are ordinarily physical stuff. It’s about esoteric but extraordinarily robust theories that show that there can’t be unknown forces that could bend a spoon. 

On 2/23/2026 at 12:07 PM, smac97 said:

“Spirit matter,” by contrast, has no such model (nor, for that matter, does "Priesthood power"). Neither you, nor Sean Carroll, nor anyone else has defined spirit matter's (or "priesthood power's") composition, its particles/fields, or the mechanism by which this “more fine or pure” substance (D&C 131:7–8) is supposed to couple to ordinary electrons, protons, and neutrons strongly enough to affect thoughts or feelings — yet weakly enough to have evaded every experiment. Without that, you can’t claim it “has the same basic conflicts” as spoon-bending. It’s not that we have looked for the interaction and ruled it out; it’s that we don’t even know what variables to look for.

Again, Carroll’s arguments are fundamentally different than what you are imagining. We are confident that there isn’t an unknown force that can bend a spoon. For the exact same reason, we are confident there isn’t an unknown force that can tweak the probability of a neuron firing. In both cases, we don’t have to define these alleged unknown forces to know they aren’t there. 

On 2/23/2026 at 12:07 PM, smac97 said:

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For clarity, I have never said "therefore God cannot exist" because of this. I've said that about spirits and some miracles, but not "God" in general.

This seems like a mighty fine hair to split.  A compilation of your prior declarations...

A list of things where I didn’t say “therefore God cannot exist” is consistent with my claim that I never said “therefore God cannot exist.” My arguments are about things that allegedly interact with things in the everyday world. “God” doesn’t necessarily do that.

On 2/23/2026 at 12:07 PM, smac97 said:

We know far more about spoon “matter” than we do about “spirit matter.”

It isn’t about comparing "spoon matter" and “spirit matter.” It’s about comparing hypothetical “spoon bending particles” and their associated “spoon bending forces” to “spirit matter” and “spirit forces.” We don’t have to define exactly what these imaginary “spoon bending particles” are to be confident they aren’t real. The reason we are confident they don’t exist is because we are confident there aren’t any unknown particles or forces that could have any real-world effect on spoons. Likewise, we also have the same level of confidence for the same reasons that there aren’t any unknown particles or forces that could have any real-world affect on human brains.

Quoting Carroll:

"If the world we see in our experiments is just a tiny part of a much bigger reality, the rest of reality must somehow act upon the world we do see; otherwise it doesn’t matter very much. And if it does act upon us, that implies a necessary alteration in the laws of physics as we understand them. Not only do we have no strong evidence in favor of such alterations; we don’t even have any good proposals for what form they could possibly take."

Carroll, Sean M. . The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself (p. 221). (Function). Kindle Edition. 

That is equally true of the hypothetical unseen reality is spoon-bending magic forces or priesthood power.

On 2/23/2026 at 12:07 PM, smac97 said:

But that dragon is nothing like Latter-day Saint beliefs. Doctrine and Covenants 131:7–8 teaches that “all spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure.” This spirit interacts with the physical world through faith and priesthood authority.

Earlier in the same post, you told me that "No, we do not know whether or not 'spirit matter' [interacts with the physical world].” Now you are saying the spirit hypothesis is that the spirit does interact with the physical world?

You can’t have it both ways. Either the spirit matter hypothesis includes the claim that spirits interact with the physical world, or it does not. If it interacts, Carroll discusses it extensively in the book you haven’t read. If it doesn’t interact, it’s an invisible dragon in the garage. 

 

[Analytics]

On 2/23/2026 at 6:52 PM, smac97 said:

Roger, the same person now espousing strict science-based empiricism when examining religious truth claims, was (is?) more willing to believe in space aliens or Satan being the source of The Book of Mormon than to attribute its origins to the explanation claimed by the Church.

Spencer, the alien/Satan comments from years ago were not positive claims about what actually happened. They were illustrations about comparative probability.

Here’s the structure of the point.

If a proposed explanation requires overturning large, interlocking domains of well-confirmed physics, biology, neuroscience, and history, then its prior probability becomes extremely low. That doesn’t mean it’s logically impossible. It means it conflicts with a vast body of independently confirmed knowledge.

Once you reach that conclusion, then any alternative explanation that does not require overturning those domains — even a bizarre one — can be comparatively more plausible. Not because it is likely. Not because I affirm it. But because it does not require rewriting the rest of our understanding of reality.

That is not “anything but that.”
It is coherence across domains of evidence.

If someone claims a perpetual motion machine exists, I don’t need a detailed alternative engineering diagram to reject the claim. The conflict with thermodynamics is sufficient.

Likewise, if I conclude that the Book of Mormon’s supernatural claims conflict with extremely well-supported background knowledge, then I am rationally justified in rejecting that explanation without being obligated to provide a fully worked counter-theory of how every detail unfolded.

Rejecting an explanation is not the same thing as affirming a specific alternative.

The alien/Satan examples were rhetorical illustrations of that asymmetry. They were not endorsements.