Probability and NHM

[Mighty Curelom]

Furthermore, whereas I am personally certain of the truth of the Book of Mormon because of what I accept as personal revelation to me, any fully analogous but opposite certainty is blocked to Mr. Vogel because he rejects the existence of such personal revelation.

That's only true if your positive affirmation is genuine. Since there is no way to determine if your positive affirmation is genuine or a more mundane combination of biology, chemistry, psychology and wishful thinking, you're in the same situation as us lowly materialists.

Considering the track record of so-called personal revelations, I'd further venture that personal revelation is probably the worst justification for dogmatism.

(This is precisely the same situation as exists with every other rationally contestable historical claim.)

Given that more people believe the moon landing was a hoax than believe the supernatural explanation of BoM origins, one could say that the very idea that Mormonism is rationally contestable is, itself, contestable (rationally).

[japanguy]

I think what many of you do not understand is that to those who believe that the BofM is not what JS claimed there is no good evidence for it. For some we have studied the BofM over and over again and what we have concluded is that it is not what JS claimed. If we did not we would be defending it as the apolagists. So when we hear things like the NHM discoveries we think "Hmmm interesting" but if it is not convincing enough to change our opinion than we still think the BofM is not what is claimed. It may be interesting but does not have to be evidence.

On the other hand to those of you that believe in the BofM any evidence presented by unbelievers is not seen as evidence since you believe and therefore it may be interesting but it is still not evidence.

What many on both sides seen to not understand is that each side has a different worldview. And what is evidence to one is not to the other.

Japanguy

[livy111us]

How could this in any way just be interesting? The odds are that Joseph Smith actually translated it, and did not guess it or find it on a map. The counter argument has not been sufficiently argued because the evidence is stacked against it. It is not something that was just guessed, but was actually in the text. There is ALOT more evidence of Lehi in Arabia in the video Journey of Faith [found at www.farms.byu.edu]. You should take a look at it to know both sides of the story.

[japanguy]

Livvy,

If your post was directed at me I think that you are misunderstanding and doing just what I stated apolagists do. And that is just ignore that there are other worldviews. While to you the evidence in favor of the BofM may seem overwhelming, to others it is far from it. And you assume that others have not looked at your "evidence". I have and I haven't come to the same conclusions as you have. I am not dismissing your views or testimony as unimportant as they are very important to you. But my conclusions are that the BofM is of 19th century origin. Now I know that many will not and do not agree with me, but the "evidence" as I view it does support this. It may not be your view but it is mine. And so such things as NHM just are not anything more than just things that I go "hmmm" at. It is not conclusive. It is just interesting. It does not change my view of the BofM so it is not "evidence" to me. Just as my "evidence" of the BofM being a 19th century book are not "evidence" to you. Open your mind to the idea that others can view the BofM as a fraud just as much as you may view it as coming from God. Evidence for one doesn't make it evidence for another. And before someone posts about what is "legal" evidence or get the law book out. Just understand that all I am trying to point out is that my, your, anyones world view does not make it real. But that your own world view determines what is evidence to you. So Dan Vogel may not see NHM as evidence because he does not see the BofM as being true. But Dan Peterson sees NHM as strong evidence because it seems to confirm his previous views that the BofM is from God. So what is evidence to Dan Peterson is not evidence to Dan Vogel.

Japanguy

[cdowis]

>What many on both sides seen to not understand is that each side has a different worldview.

I understand that completely. I have a knowledge that BOM is authentic history, so any arguments by the critics is, for me, simply an interesting puzzle to solve. And I have found that few of these puzzles are beyond a very simple solution of pointed out the logical flaws, unfounded assumptions or factual errors.

Some of the solutions require a knowledge of science and technology which I do not have, such as the DNA issue. You simply go and find someone who has that knowledge, ask them a few questions, and there it is.

The only puzzle beyond what I have found so far is the chronology puzzle -- people living in America 12yka, so I just put it on the shelf and have confidence that there will eventually be a solution.

What bothers me is when the critic pretends to be "objective" when, in reality they are no more objective than I am.

[cdowis]

>P.S. Speaking from a legal standpoint, the NHM evidence is decent. Not conclusive and certainly attackable...but still decent.

From a legal point of view, then, look at the *pattern* of so-called coincidences. As one coincidence piles upon the other, you have a tapestry of evidence.

And what roles does that play, how does that work in the courtroom? Each piece of evidence can be explained away, perhaps, but the tapestry of evidence?

[japanguy]

Cdowis,

You stated

"I understand that completely. I have a knowledge that BOM is authentic history, so any arguments by the critics is, for me, simply an interesting puzzle to solve. And I have found that few of these puzzles are beyond a very simple solution of pointed out the logical flaws, unfounded assumptions or factual errors."

So no you do not understand. You continue to think but your opinions are "true". That anyone who disagrees with you is just foolish. While this could be, the opposite could also be true. You seem to just discredit and put down others by saying they are not as "smart" as you. You have studied everything and have all the answers because you asked the "experts". Maybe we should just all forget about our own views and stop thinking and just let you do it for us.

I don't think the BofM is "true" and your evidence does not sway me but I do not go around telling people how "logically flawed, unfounded your assumptions are, or how unfactual" your views are. That just seems egotistical and proud to me.

Japanguy

[cdowis]

>That anyone who disagrees with you is just foolish. While this could be, the opposite could also be true. You seem to just discredit and put down others by saying they are not as "smart" as you.

Your statement, Sir, is factually incorrect as evidenced by my several thousand posts here and elsewhere.

My I suggest, my dear ffellow, you ignore my posts and I will ignore yours.

[charity]

I second that motion, cdowis. And japanguy, belieivng in "logical flaws, unfounded assumptions or factual errors" does not make one foolish. But continuing to do so, once they are pointed out, does call ones criticial thinking abilities into question.

[cdowis]

The antis may be many things, but stupid they ain't.

I go on the assumption, as we all do, that the other person is our intellectual equal, if not superior.

Dan Vogel, et al, are no dummies. They know exactly what is going on.

[Drewm777]

I'd agree. You'd have to be a dumbie to think that just because someone disagrees with you they must be a dumbie.

[japanguy]

Well all I was attempting to do was to say that we are all different and have our own opinions based upon our experiences. I was not calling anyone foolish or stupid. I only quoted what Cdowis had stated about those that do not see things as he does. And I quote

"I understand that completely. I have a knowledge that BOM is authentic history, so any arguments by the critics is, for me, simply an interesting puzzle to solve. And I have found that few of these puzzles are beyond a very simple solution of pointed out the logical flaws, unfounded assumptions or factual errors.

Some of the solutions require a knowledge of science and technology which I do not have, such as the DNA issue. You simply go and find someone who has that knowledge, ask them a few questions, and there it is."

And then Charity comes along and restates and backs up Cdowis. And then she calls into question others critical thinking skills.

I have not been trying to back up or justify either sides position. I was just trying to point out the reasons for their views. And why evidences is evidence to some but not to others. And what happens I get attacked. Why? It seems that often we have a hard time putting ourselves in others shoes and at least trying to understand where they are coming from. Believers look at evidence such as NHM as supporting their world view while is may just be a "Hmmm" for me or Dan. And seeing Bible verses quoted or paraphrased throughout the BofM may seem a sign of plagurism to me it may be just be interesting to you.

That is my point and not to attack one side or the other. So please let's just get along and understand each.

Japanguy

[Garden Girl]

Hi Japanguy...

I get your point, and it's true that we each have our view... and yes, let's try and agree to disagree...

It's just that Charity, cdowis, livy111us, drewm777 cancel you and D. Vogel out... Ha! Just kidding Japanguy (really, and mean no offense)

[juliann]

That's only true if your positive affirmation is genuine.  Since there is no way to determine if your positive affirmation is genuine or a more mundane combination of biology, chemistry, psychology and wishful thinking, you're in the same situation as us lowly materialists. 

Interesting. So in order to proceed you have to set yourself up as the default position? What if we are no better position than "materialist" apologists? Are you really going to make yourself a negative?

Considering the track record of so-called personal revelations, I'd further venture that personal revelation is probably the worst justification for dogmatism.

Whereas "materialism" is the best justification.

[charity]

japanguy, I do not mean to attack any person. I do attack the idea, whenever presented, that those who make statements about what science proves are somehow on a higher intellectual plane. Science does not prove. Science can only disprove. Those who make high sounding pronouncements about what science proves are not scientists. Real scientisits make only tentative statements because they know that some new discovery can come along tomorrow that will set them all on their heads.

[Mighty Curelom]

Interesting. So in order to proceed you have to set yourself up as the default position? What if we are no better position than "materialist" apologists? Are you really going to make yourself a negative?

I'm only responding to the supernaturalist claim that materialists are at an epistemological disadvantage because there is no materialist experience analogous to personal revelation. We're only at such a disadvantage if personal revelations are genuine, supernatural events. Given that so many personal revelations contradict so many other personal revelations, and considering how often personal revelation turns out to be flat wrong, I don't think supernaturalists can justifiably claim personal revelation as an epistemic advantage.

In other words, for both the supernaturalist and the materialist, the best information with which to form a conclusion is empirical data.

Whereas "materialism" is the best justification.

Given the track record of supernaturalism, it's the only justification.

[charity]

MC, but when supernaturalism is good it is very, very good. And even when it's bad it isn't horrid.

Okay, I'll explain. I have used the same argument you used about psychic predictions. There are so many hits and misses they cancel each other out. But this same idea does not apply to real events.

If Moses parted the Red Sea, and the chilren of Israel walked across on dry ground, and then the seas came together again and drowned the Egyptian chariots, that event is not cancelled out because someone else tried to part the Willamette River because he was too lazy to go a mile to use the bridge and it didn't part.

[Daniel Peterson]

Furthermore, whereas I am personally certain of the truth of the Book of Mormon because of what I accept as personal revelation to me, any fully analogous but opposite certainty is blocked to Mr. Vogel because he rejects the existence of such personal revelation.

That's only true if your positive affirmation is genuine. Since there is no way to determine if your positive affirmation is genuine or a more mundane combination of biology, chemistry, psychology and wishful thinking, you're in the same situation as us lowly materialists.

In a sense, that's true. All personal conviction is ultimately . . . personal. In non-religious matters as in religious matters, X is convinced by evidence that Y finds unpersuasive, while Y is confident of propositions that X finds still quite uncertain. This is so whether considering stock purchases, election issues, arguments about the authorship of Shakespeare's plays, jury questions, or any other topic on which two or more rational opinions exist. People don't typically reach their conclusions on the basis of purely rational and cleanly quantifiable calculations, but on the basis of logic more or less impacted by biology, chemistry, moods, psychology, experience, wishful thinking, self-interest, knowledge, ignorance, and a host of other factors. This is true of you every bit as much as it is true of me.

But, unless demonstrated to be in error by some essentially indubitable fact or facts -- of the kind that I do not believe to exist against the Book of Mormon or against Mormonism in general -- my subjective confidence in my conclusions is mine, and justifiable. And, absent plainly superior facts and/or analysis, you are in no privileged position to suggest that your subjective confidence in your conclusions should trump mine. Nor am I under any obligation, merely because my conclusion involves what I regard as supernaturally granted certainty, to acknowledge that your subjective confidence even equals mine. I'm under no such obligation in non-religious matters, and to hold that I should feel such an obligation in religious matters would be tacitly to grant your claim that spiritual assurance is intrinsically inferior, even debilitating. But there is no reason to grant such an advantage to you. Moreover, while my position accepts the possibility of divinely granted inner certainty, yours does not. In that sense, I do enjoy a potential epistemological advantage over you, while you cannot avail yourself of such a possibility.

Finally, while it's a very big subject that I do not intend to explore here, I'm not sure that materialists even have the logical right to claim that they have rational thought. If thinking is merely a secretion of the brain, and the brain is merely a material object, it would seem that the notion that we construct thoughts rationally is mere illusion, since thoughts are actually only epiphenomenal subjective manifestations of neuroelectric/biochemical events that are not controlled by nonexistent immaterial "mental" processes in a nonexistent immaterial mind but are entirely part of the chain of mindless physical cause and effect. (Quantum phenomena may introduce an element of randomness or indeterminacy here, but do not, I think, fundamentally alter the issue. In either case, it is not logic that leads from one thought to another, but material brain events that function in the same way, in the end, as every other material event, according to the same laws of physical causality.)

Considering the track record of so-called personal revelations, I'd further venture that personal revelation is probably the worst justification for dogmatism.

You're ignoring my denial that I can fairly be charged with the same kind of dogmatism that I have attributed to Dan Vogel. His position grants no strength or evidence whatever to my position, whereas I willingly grant that his position, broadly speaking, possesses certain strengths and is supported by some evidence. Our approaches are very easily distinguished. You will never, ever -- in this life, or perhaps pending the Millennium -- see me claim that there is absolutely no evidence against the historicity of the Book of Mormon. I will argue that it is not decisive, and even that it is relatively weak, but I won't, in the way Mr. Vogel has, deny altogether that it exists.

Further, as I've noted, when I'm engaged in public argument, I do not cite my private certainty as evidence. It is for me. It is not transferable to others.

Given that more people believe the moon landing was a hoax than believe the supernatural explanation of BoM origins, one could say that the very idea that Mormonism is rationally contestable is, itself, contestable (rationally).

I think it should be obvious that I'm more than welcome to engage in rational contestation. If you want to argue for that position, feel free to do so. But if you expect anybody to take you at all seriously, you should make it clear that you are not dogmatically unwilling to grant the existence of evidence against your position.

[juliann]

In other words, for both the supernaturalist and the materialist, the best information with which to form a conclusion is empirical data.

We have a testable population that undoes your assumption of the value of empirical data. Autistic children (or severely language disordered children). I teach this populaton to communicate by whatever means they can access. What is always missing is what you assume is always present.

    As the great logical positivist Rudolf Carnap put it many years later,

[Mighty Curelom]

But, unless demonstrated to be in error by some essentially indubitable fact or facts -- of the kind that I do not believe to exist against the Book of Mormon or against Mormonism in general -- my subjective confidence in my conclusions is mine, and justifiable.

D&C 77 says mankind has existed for 6,000 years. It is essentially an indubitable fact that mankind has existed for longer than that, thus demonstrating that you are in error.

And, absent plainly superior facts and/or analysis, you are in no privileged position to suggest that your subjective confidence in your conclusions should trump mine.

I haven't claimed such. Only that we're both on equal footing.

. Nor am I under any obligation, merely because my conclusion involves what I regard as supernaturally granted certainty, to acknowledge that your subjective confidence even equals mine.

That's understandable. But you must admit that, in general and apart from your own experience, personal revelation has historically been an unreliable epistemological tool. This alone should at least mitigate the certainty you feel about your own personal revelations.

You're ignoring my denial that I can fairly be charged with the same kind of dogmatism that I have attributed to Dan Vogel. His position grants no strength or evidence whatever to my position, whereas I willingly grant that his position, broadly speaking, possesses certain strengths and is supported by some evidence.

Ok. Your dogmatism is different. However, I think this issue is more a question of semantics than anything else. Vogel has already granted that NHM is an "interesting correlation." His refusal to grant it the specific word "evidence" seems to me, on the one hand overly cautious, but given the amount of attention such a denial has received, could be prudent. I also sympathize with Vogel's reluctance to use the word "evidence" because such a term can be so easily misunderstood. From a strictly legal standpoint, anything that supports a given conclusion--no matter how absurd the conclusion is--can be considered evidence. But just as the word "theory" has a different meaning to a scientist than it does to your average house wife, the word "evidence" has a different colloquial meaning apart from the legalistic treatment.

And also, given Vogel's expansive research into the topic of Mormon history, I think any dogmatism ascribed to him is just as justifiable as any certainty obtained through supernatural sources. More so. I wouldn't fault a holocaust historian for refusing to grant to holocaust deniers that there is evidence supporting their conclusion. Is that unjustifiable dogmatism? More generally, is any dogmatism justifiable, lacking the absolute certainty of personal revelation? You might suggest that materialistic dogmatism is only justifiable upon absense of rational contestability, but how would we know if a position is "rationally contestable"? Certainly the people contesting it, like the holocaust or moon landing deniers, find their position rationally contestable when it's obvious--at least to me--that it is not. The only objective way I can think of is popular consensus, but obviously you'll disagree with that. So what's the solution?

(and one more thing. I don't think Vogel is as dogmatic as you think he is. If I'm not mistaken, he's not even a full-fledged atheist, but more of a non-commital agnostic. As far as ideological certainty goes, I put you, Bro. Peterson, higher up on the dogmatic scale than Mr. Vogel.)

[juliann]

I haven't claimed such.  Only that we're both on equal footing.

Ah, come on...you are using the buzzword empirical.. thinking it eliminates the supernatural.

But you must admit that, in general and apart from your own experience, personal revelation has historically been an unreliable epistemological tool.

[Kenngo1969]

The BOM gives us little to go on...

Maybe. Maybe Joseph Smith, while being quite cunning, wasn't very smart. Maybe he just didn't realize the folly of trying so hard to cloak his "history" in an air of geographical genuineness. Maybe he just wasn't smart enough to realize that the more geographical details one includes in a project one wishes to pass off as genuine, the greater the likelihood that such a project will be exposed as a fraud when it is compared with the real geography of the area one is attempting to portray. (Personally, I think you attribute far too much guile to Brother Joseph, but I'll let you take that up with him when next ye meet. )

On the other hand, maybe Nephi really was trying to tell his readers something by including such intricate Old World geographical detail in the early part of the Book of Mormon; and maybe Mormon was trying to tell us something by including equally-intricate New World geographical detail in the rest of the book. With respect to Mormon's inclusion of such detail, John Sorenson certainly thinks there was "method" to Mormon's "madness," as Shakespeare's Polonius said of Hamlet.

It

[cdowis]

An example of flawed logic is when someone confuses opinion and speculation with facts and data. Scientific opinion can and does change as new discoveries are made, especially in the historical sciences as archeology.

"Silk did not exist in ancient America" is a conclusion based on "Evidence of silk has not been discovered" which is a fact. Now we are beginning to find evidence of the Chinese in ancient America, and the presence of silk becomes a possibility -- Chinese visiting America and trading silk. No records are extant because this is a trade secret.

That's why when someone sez "There was no XXX in ancient America", I ask them to allow us the use their time machine to check it out for ourselves.

[Daniel Peterson]

But, unless demonstrated to be in error by some essentially indubitable fact or facts -- of the kind that I do not believe to exist against the Book of Mormon or against Mormonism in general -- my subjective confidence in my conclusions is mine, and justifiable.

D&C 77 says mankind has existed for 6,000 years. It is essentially an indubitable fact that mankind has existed for longer than that, thus demonstrating that you are in error.

Gosh. I've never read that passage. Wow. It's all over. You win.

And also, given Vogel's expansive research into the topic of Mormon history, I think any dogmatism ascribed to him is just as justifiable as any certainty obtained through supernatural sources.

Dogmatism belongs to ideology, not to empiricism. I've read Dan's stuff. Dogmatic certainty goes far, far beyond what the materials he's gathered can justify.

More generally, is any dogmatism justifiable, lacking the absolute certainty of personal revelation?

No. Which is precisely my point.

As far as ideological certainty goes, I put you, Bro. Peterson, higher up on the dogmatic scale than Mr. Vogel.)

That's nice.

[cdowis]

Dan ponders

>It