Tal Bachman On Lds Epistemology

[The Dude]

I haven't been following this thread for a while, but I have to say, at a glance these are interesting disproofs:

For example, finding a copy of the Book of Mormon, printed in (say) 1615 would certainly do it. (It would explain all that pesky Jacobean English that Royal Skousen has found.)

But Tal's creative points would certainly be applied by many members of the Church. I think the responses to the BoA difficulties shows how malleable belief can be. But not for everyone, and maybe not for you, Greg. I'll take your word for it that this type of finding would break your faith.

* Or, something like the Spaulding manuscript, to which Joseph had clear access, and with a lot more robust evidence of 'copying' than the rather sorry theories based on Spaulding or View of the Hebrews could.

Uncle Dale seems to think there is/was a better Spaulding manuscript out there somewhere. Maybe this is a corollary to the "missing parchment" theory for the BoA, eh?

* Having it fail to alter my character flaws and personality defects would also count (I realize that's not objective to anyone else, perhaps, but it would be for me).

What if you left the Church and realized that you are essentially the same person? Maybe you overestimate how much the LDS faith benefits you. (This has been my personal experience, BTW.)

* discovering I have a brain tumor that has been giving me all this "revelation," which following surgery makes all the revelation disappear

Awesome! LOL

* finding multiple drafts of the Book of Mormon manuscript, "working papers" for Joseph or co-conspirators.

Again, lots of people would manage to resolve this problem. This could be evidence of Joseph and co. "working it out in their minds." Maybe it would be a deal-breaker for you, though. I believe you.

[Tal Bachman]

Do you need me to count how many times you have been asked to stop misrepresenting Mormons in this thread alone? If you have difficulty with the word inscrutable does double standard mean anything to you? Dripping disdain disguised by sophomoric pretended surprise looks...sophomoric.

Uhh............

I'm still unsure what your issue is with the word "inscrutable"; I feel almost vicarious embarrassment because of your obsessive responses to it. It wasn't me who had difficulty with it. but you. By the way, as I hope you can appreciate, someone labeling a statement "caricature!" or "misrepresentation!", isn't enough to show that a statement was a caricature or a misrepresentation (which is why I'm reading Greg's comments closely). And because the question of whether my statement is a misrepresentation or not is precisely what we are trying to get to the bottom of here, your complaint that I haven't stopped "misrepresenting Mormons" seems equivalent to a complaint that I haven't just shut up and vanished. Thanks a lot, honey!

You can start by apologizing for your bilious and personal shredding of LDS scholars. Your quotes have been brought over here so you can stop the "who me?" anytime now. Your scholar of the month appears to be Armand Mauss...that "pitiful man", a "broken apologist for a fraudulent church". This is especially rich since you bounced onto this board with racist talk. Rodney King and "chilluns" in the same paragraph. Impressive to see how you characterize those black folk... not to mention enlightened. Again, who do you think you are kidding?

Well, I'm not sure I've ever said anything to the effect of "who me?". Rather, I invited you to bring up whatever I've written that bothers you. By the way, I referred to Mauss as "pitiable", not "pitiful" (there is a slight difference in connotation). And the reason I think Mauss's attempts at explaining away Brigham Young's racism are totally ridiculous, is that if they are credited, it means the church is a fraud. Do you understand that? Do you want me to elaborate? Would it even make any difference to you if his defense meant just what I think it means? And speaking of bizarre, me imitating the execrable (another word you can look up, amiga!) Rodney King is a lot different than announcing that all black people speak that way, or whatever it is you're insinuating. The fact is that Rodney King speaks pretty much the way I described, and me imitating him is about as "racist" as me imitating Prince Philip is against caucasians, or imitating Howard Cosell is against Jews. Juliann, you sound like you are whirling round at a thousand miles an hour, but hardly making any sense at all here.

Last point on Mauss - it was Mauss himself who said (not that you seem interested in why) that the older he gets, the more apart he feels from Mormonism, the more "marginalized" I think was his word. THAT is the main reason why I referred to Mauss as "pitiable" - he is a man who wishes to retain membership in an organization, which he also feels marginalized by. I think that's a pity. I think most people would, including most members of the church. Don't you?

I also think it is a pity that Mauss seems to have to twist his mind into pretzels in order to keep believing in that something , along the way issuing forth "apologetic" arguments which in fact ask listeners to believe that Brigham Young mistook a culturally-induced bias for a revelation from God himself, and then preached it to the church as doctrine. You seem to have missed that part of my comments on Mauss's explanations. If you wanted, I would start a thread about that "eat yourself to keep from dying of starvation" aspect of Mauss's apology for Young's racism, but it seems I can't start any threads here, and neither you nor any other moderator here has even explained why not though I emailed to ask. As far as I can tell, I've stuck more to the rules on your site (which I read as soon as I found) more closely than a lot of the other guys on here who seemingly enjoy complete immunity from any accountability. In any case, I referred to Armand Mauss as "broken" because he speaks just as though he was. If he's not in fact, he's doing a very good impression of being so: emotionally attached, forever justifying to himself that attachment, increasingly feeling lonely despite that attachment, etc.

And anyway, Juliann, would you care if I was saying the same stuff about D. Michael Quinn? Well guess what? I have - and I said it about Lavina Fielding Anderson, and Paul Toscano, and the rest of the September Six, except that I spoke far more harshly about them than I ever have about Armand Mauss. And as far as I'm concerned, they should have done the church (and their own self-respect) the courtesy of quitting years before they got booted out, and they ought to stop embarrassing themselves by whining about their excommunications. It's pathetic. But, I doubt you would have many complaints about those comments...so once again I am left wondering: is this in the end mostly about clan allegiance for you? It almost seems like it.

But do keep lecturing on manners. It is a sight to behold. I think a thread comparing both sides of your mouth is in order. Your claim that you never talk about Mormons is pretty hilarious. You really do need to tell RFM to hide your stuff after a day or two. I'm sure they would.

One comment about the "Mormons" thing: I said that I "hardly ever" talk about "Mormons" per se; I mean, my posts on RFM don't usually focus on "why I don't like Mormons" (because in fact there are many Mormons I do like, and love, a lot). But it is no wonder you would be confused, my virtual friend, because you give every impression of being entirely unable to conceive of what difference there might be between discussing a problem with a Mormon truth claim or apologetic argument, and persecuting or disliking Mormons. But should those two things really be so hard to distinguish? Do you realize that Joseph Smith not telling the truth about his experiences, doesn't mean that "all Mormons are rotten" or something? It just doesn't.

In any case, maybe I should have said instead, "I talk far more often about Mormon truth claims, than I criticize 'Mormons'". I have lots of Mormon friends that I talk to, sometimes hang around with, and there's a lot about them to admire. But liking and admiring someone, and at the same time, thinking that their belief in, say, alien abductions, or palmistry, or Satan controlling water or our sun borrowing its light from a star called Kolob, are false and even absurd, isn't "talking out of both sides of your mouth". You have friends I am sure who have beliefs which you think border on nuts - maybe the gonzo chiropractor people, or the fad diet types, or somone with different political beliefs, whatever. You like them, you love them, you might talk about how wacko you think their beliefs are with others, but you don't show up at their house and say, "Hey - your crop circle thing is NUTS!", do you? So why would I come on here and speak in such a way as to hurt other people's feelings if I could avoid it? You ought to be congratulating me, woman!

It almost seems like you want me to go nuts, like you want a good fight. But I thought this place wasn't the place for a big fight...?

(Jim Carrey voice) "I think someone needs a hug....!"

Talk to you soon,

T.

[Benjamin McGuire]

Tal Bachman writes:

Maybe, maybe not - but there is another possibility: that my summation is exactly what Mormon epistemic claims, in the end, boil down to; but putting them this succinctly exposes just how untenable they really are; and for that reason, it is much safer for one's faith to simply label it a "caricature" and then move right on to thinking about how "disingenuous" I am, than to spend a few moments wondering if perhaps, some of the things we believe might derive from an original error of having (uncritically?) taken as true a very problematic claim.

Succint: close fitting.

So, you aren't certain at all how close fitting your claim really is. But you are more than willing to express your claim as close fitting and then use your ability to express it that way to draw a conclusion. Once more, the problem here is that Mormon epistemic claims do not revolve around this idea of feelings. We have lesson manuals that talk about feelings (but almost never as a sole criteria) and we have material that talks about epistemological claims which are anything but feelings. Joseph Smith didn't claim that he merely experienced feelings, he discusses personal visitations, hearing the voice of the Lord, and so on. And what continues to be disingenous on your part is the continued assertion that this notion of feelings is in fact a good summary - a succinct summary - of Mormon epistemological claims. Which is obviously a far cry from the truth.

Sometimes when we see a photograph of ourselves, we don't look as we imagined ourselves to be; in those cases, what do we usually do? We usually throw away the photograph...! Could that be analogous to some of the reactions to, â??I feel it is true, therefore, I know it is trueâ??

Let me say just one thing in response to this ..... Driver's License. Once again, you manage to make what appears to be a baseless argument. No matter how many quotes you provide you cannot get past the fact that the LDS Canon makes epistemological claims which are in direct conflict with your claims and your succinct description of them.

---Benjamin, not sure I'm following you exactly. Do you think that a statement like "chocolate is good", is equivalent to an epistemic claim like, say, the one heard normally at LDS testimony meetings, or found in Moroni 10?

Sure. Because we aren't at this point discussing whether or not it is really true (in the sense of absolute truth). We are discussing whether or not it is natural for people to believe that a statement that something is good is true. Apparently, I would suggest, we do this all the time - without the need to determine whether or not it is in fact true. You demonstrated this in your own comments by making the claim that something was good. And my point in all of this is that you aren't a universal skeptic. Rather your own choices of when to question seem to be largely subjective - there isn't a process (reason) by which you make every determination - only those that you choose to - that you think that reason becomes a significant evaluator.

But maybe most importantly, no one claims their hunch about a prospective lawn boy is equivalent to a revelation of knowledge from God about the nature of the cosmos, and which will then influence every single aspect of your existence.

Actually, I think this is exactly what you are claiming in your argument here. You have suggested repeatedly that LDS epistemology can be reduced (succintly was your word) to exactly this position. That there is no significant difference in a belief in God based on "feelings" and a hunch about a prospective lawn boy. So lets not get confused here.

But the truth is, and I think everyone reading this probably knows it, that not just for Mormons, but for members of most religions (J Dubs are one exception), how we feel when encountering the divine is maybe the most important thing of all about those moments. That is as true for me now even, as it was when I still thought that the religion I had devoted my life to was all it claimed. It is just that, I am not sure that that feeling should be taken to mean anything more than that we are having that feeling, you know? Like, if I feel overwhelmed spiritually when I walk through the woods, does that mean I should worship trees, like the next-door eco-freak does? I'm not so sure...

And unlike Joseph Smith, if this is the only way that you have encountered the divine, then you clearly haven't achieved a sufficient testimony according to LDS doctrine and theology as described in the LDS Canon. Do you see the issue here? Maybe you don't. But clearly, my personal belief hinges on a great deal more substantial encounter with deity than yours does. But I can't prove that it happened any more than you can prove that you spent some time contemplating a breakfast choice this morning.

In any case, if you look above, you'll see the result of my very first two-second search on lds.org on the role of feelings in the revelation of knowledge, at least according to Pres. Packer.

But I have absolutely zero interest in what President Packer has to say on the subject. What he said isn't canon. And I think if you were to ask him if you were correctly interpreting his comments, would he agree with you? That your take on feelings adequately conveys what he intended to convey about our interaction with deity?

Perhaps I can also point out to you that drawing an analogy between what Joseph Smith claimed to experience in the Sacred Grove - a literal, personal visitation from the Presider over the universe, and Jesus of Nazareth, who is supposedly the Presider's literal son - strikes me as quite a bit different than a "burning in the bosom"; and so, I don't see how your analogy works at all. I mean, just one big difference - Joseph Smith claimed that his visitors not only showed up in person, but actually verbally communicated a sharply defined message, quoting particular scriptures, commenting on other religions, etc., etc.

But this is the pattern of the LDS canon, isn't it. It is the model of LDS epistemology isn't it. And when you note:

But that is not what "most Mormons" would ever claim happened when they "received their testimonies", is it?

I would agree with you. But, it is also my experience that a great many Mormon's, who move beyond their initial encounter with the Holy Spirit do in fact have experiences that reach to these kinds of levels (myself included). And so this may be the difference between yourself and your feelings, and the rest of us who essentially reject your succinct description of the process - a description which we find wholly inadequate to describe our reality.

The closest I imagine you could come to imagining some "evidence" which you would take as conclusive of fraud, is to say that God himself would have to reveal to you that it was a fraud, with the same force and clarity with which he once revealed to you that it was not.

You must have missed the discussion on this point we had just a a couple of days ago in this thread (or misunderstood it).

If that is right, it must be noted that this possibility in truth is, according to you, an actual IMpossibility, since it indicates that you have already entirely locked yourself into the beliefs that God himself once told you it was true, and that God would not have lied about that then...so that even in the act of claiming a hypothetical way of knowing it was false, you are conceding that you can only deny - even in the hypothetical world - that any such possibility could ever exist. It's like the equivalent of a "hypothetical" where "A" and "Not A" equal each other - it doesn't even make sense.

Actually, since truth - in any sort of absolute or pure form isn't possible for humanity, this conflict doesn't actually have to exist. And conflicting views of truth held at different times can be seen as quite natural - without implying that God has lied.

So what I'm asking is, isn't the fact that there is (I'm guessing here) no physical evidence so devastating, no logical argument so airtight, that it would ever cause you to consider whether your opinion of the church might be incorrect, all the evidence you really need that what you think is knowledge might better be described as conviction?

The second thing is that the Church is a man made, man run institution - even if its claims of divinely assisted leadership are also true. All that this does is guarantee that the church is not the final arbiter of truth, just as it isn't the final arbiter of salvation. And the church admites this itself.

But knowledge and conviction are two very different things, aren't they, even though we often confuse them...

Not really. They are in fact quite similar, and they function in much the same way. There isn't anything to suggest that what you think is knowledge is actually true. As I pointed out in some earlier comments to CKS, (quoting Will Smith's character Agent J in Men in Black), what we know is just as subject to change as anything else - and certainly doesn't have to be based on any one version of reality other than our own.

By the way, our feelings, passions, etc., may fuel the formation of our opinions and our convictions; but do they - really - transmit knowledge?

And the answer to this is that yes, they absolutely do. But whether or not this knowledge is an accurate reflection of the world is a completely different question, isn't it. What is this knoweldge that you refer to? It is nothing more than a sum of your experiences filtered as they are by languqage, by culture, by society, by politics and economics.

Ben

[cksalmon]

And the answer to this is that yes, they [feelings] absolutely do. But whether or not this knowledge is an accurate reflection of the world is a completely different question, isn't it. What is this knoweldge that you refer to? It is nothing more than a sum of your experiences filtered as they are by languqage, by culture, by society, by politics and economics.

Hi Ben--

Obviously, we're coming from different backgrounds (or at least different current conclusions) about the nature of knowledge.

Still, I would question the assertion that something can truly count as knowledge, in a rigorous sense, if it does not accurately reflect the external situation it purports to describe. Of course, I'm presuming (provisionally) knowledge=JTB.

I think it would behoove us to make some sort of categorical distinction between knowledge-as-JTB (filtered through a critico-realist epistemology) and, in this case, knowledge-as-feeling (filtered through the skittishly and perennially unsure postmodern project).

My $.02.

Best to you.

CKS

[Zakuska]

Since this ones about Tal I'd like to share a post of his from another thread:

If I may, I think the problem with all the Bible-based objections to Mormonism is that (as is pointed out ad nauseam, but apparently without much effect, by Mormon apologists), is that there is as little reason to believe what Christians claim about the Bible and Jesus, as there is to believe what Mormons claim about the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith, what Scientologists claim about "Dianetics" and L. Ron Hubbard, or what the whatever-they're-calleds claim about "A Course in Miracles" and the lady who wrote that...

This ones a keeper. See Christians... TAL isn't your friend.

[Tal Bachman]

Succint: close fitting.

So, you aren't certain at all how close fitting your claim really is. But you are more than willing to express your claim as close fitting and then use your ability to express it that way to draw a conclusion.

---What - there's another word besides "inscrutable" that regular MA&D posters get all crazy over?! NO!

This is what answers.com says:

Suc

[Tal Bachman]

Hi Zakuska

I know you're kind of being light-hearted, but just for the record, I am friends with loads of Christians - but I do think their Bible-based criticisms of Mormonism are awfully inadequate!

[selek]

---What - there's another word besides "inscrutable" that regular MA&D posters get all crazy over?! NO!

This is what answers.com says:

Suc

[Zakuska]

Hi Zakuska

I know you're kind of being light-hearted, but just for the record, I am friends with loads of Christians - but I do think their Bible-based criticisms of Mormonism are awfully inadequate!

Im just drawing attention to the fact that in your above statement you come off as more of an Athiest/agnostic than you do a Buddy Buddy Christian. Something Christians might want to take into mind when endorsing you.

[cksalmon]

Im just drawing attention to the fact that in your above statement you come off as more of an Athiest/agnostic than you do a Buddy Buddy Christian. Something Christians might want to take into mind when endorsing you.

I wasn't aware there'd been an EV endorsement deal signed with Tal; I wasn't involved in the discussions.

My first exposure to TB was the podcast referred to, lo, these few hundred posts ago. He came off as quite interesting and anything but a "buddy buddy Christian"--what would give you the idea that he was trying to? I assumed he was agnostic or a nominal atheist. Am I missing something?

Best.

CKS

[Severian]

Last point on Mauss - it was Mauss himself who said (not that you seem interested in why) that the older he gets, the more apart he feels from Mormonism, the more "marginalized" I think was his word. THAT is the main reason why I referred to Mauss as "pitiable" - he is a man who wishes to retain membership in an organization, which he also feels marginalized by. I think that's a pity. I think most people would, including most members of the church. Don't you?

T.

No, I think that would make Mauss simply an agent for change and such people tend to make the world better even if they are not appreciated or tend to feel maginalized at the time.

[Benjamin McGuire]

CKS writes:

Still, I would question the assertion that something can truly count as knowledge, in a rigorous sense, if it does not accurately reflect the external situation it purports to describe. Of course, I'm presuming (provisionally) knowledge=JTB.

I am not sure I follow you. Your suggestion implies that we can accurately and externally observe the world that we exist inside of. I have my perspective on this which claims, quite simply, that you can't. So any kind of description of our world that we give or that we have is inseperably linked to the ways in which we observe the world - linkages filtered by language, by culture and so on.

I think it would behoove us to make some sort of categorical distinction between knowledge-as-JTB (filtered through a critico-realist epistemology) and, in this case, knowledge-as-feeling (filtered through the skittishly and perennially unsure postmodern project).

I am not sure that any categorical distinction like this would be valid - in the sense that it would still be a subjective criteria that would be used. Nor do I think that in any given circumstance, people treat these different categories (as you would describe them) separately.

So, let me ask you a question. A long time ago, Newton created some laws of physics which we all became familiar with in gradeschool. One of the basic formuals was that force = mass X acceleration. And this was believed to be absolute "knowledge" until some time later, Einstein demonstrated that this formula did not hold true, and that mass wasn't constant but (simply put) changed according to the velocity at which it was traveling. What you (CKS) seem to be suggesting is that despite the assumption that Newtonian physics was correct, and that it was knowledge, in fact, now we know better, and we realize that they didn't have knowledge. Yet this doesn't prevent us from supposing that our own theoretical models are a sufficient basis for claiming knowledge even though we have no guarantees that this knowledge is right - even when we can discuss chaos and the uncertainty principle, and the issues surrounding Plank's constant, and so on. What are the sorts of things that we can claim are absolutely accurate reflections of the situations they purport to describe?

Ben

[Benjamin McGuire]

Tal writes:

This is what answers.com says:

yes, yes. You got me. I was going off the etymology of the word.

Your argument here relies on a misdefinition of a perfectly common English word. What's up with you, bro?

Your argument here I think contains a non sequitir as well as a personal insult: I am "disingenuous", and that is obvious because you and I disagree. Is that really how you think?

No. I suggest that you are disengenous because you have repeatedly made the same claim over, and over again without addressing any of the issues which I have raised. The major point being that the LDS Canon presents epistemological claims which have nothing to do with your "feelings".

As I said, we are talking about an epistemic claim. An epistemic claim by definition deals with how something can be known. To my knowledge, there has never been any authoritative Mormon claim about how Mormonism can be known to be true, which does not at some critical point request a suspension of rational faculties, and an acceptance that the feelings one is experiencing are "the fruits of the spirit", and that they should be taken to mean that "Mormonism is true!".

And see, here you go again. The visitation of God the Father to Joseph Smith is an epistemological claim made by the LDS church which has nothing to do with feelings. The appearance of angels to numerous figures in the LDS canon (and in fact, in LDS historical accounts) has nothing to do with "feelings". Your claim here is nothing more than an attempt to ignore the stronger epistemological claims of the LDS faith, and focus on what apparently is limited to your own experience.

I have seen nothing on here to cause me to revise that view; but that being the case, I submit, is hardly grounds for you to conclude I am being disingenuous. You and Juliann seem to think that what amounts to a denial about a certain claim should be enough to induce everyone who disagrees with them to shut up forever; but I don't see how things work that way.

The problem is that you simply aren't interacting on any kind of real level with the issues raised by the LDS believers here. What did you expect? That we were simply going to let you continue to give your own unsupprted version without a challenge?

Perhaps I can ask you, for clarification purposes: would you say, as do so many other Mormons, that you "know beyond a shadow of a doubt that the church is true"? Yes or no?

No. Because the whole idea that the "church is true" is a reather vague ambiguous claim. What does it mean? This is a serious question. I can assert that a proposition is true - I can suggest that the notion that "chocolate is good" is true. Buy "the Church" isn't a proposition. It's a noun. And what does it mean to assert that a noun is true? Certainly the church exists. Now, I can say that know without a shadow of a doubt that the proposition that God exists is true. But the statement that the church is true - despite its popularity in LDS chapels on Fast Sunday is a rather markedly meaningless phrase.

Is that supposed to be a big refutation of my main point or something?

No. I was simply pointing out that for most of us, we don't actually throw away pictures that we have of ourselves that we don't think reflect what we really look like.

---Benjamin, answer this question: Was The Day of Pentecost an exercise in mass delusion? Yes or no?

I have no idea. I wasn't there. But this is completely beside the point. After all, LDS aren't taught that we have to accept everything uncriticially, or that our own belief in God is dependant on the accuracy of such accounts. We encounter deity on a personal level - unhibited by the interpretations of others (only inhibited by our own intepretations), and so whether or not God exists has nothing to do with whether or not the pentecost really happened. At the same time, LDS epistemology assumes that it really happened (as with the accounts of occurences at Kirtland), and so there is a strong claim for an epistemology which isn't based on "feelings".

---That's not what I'm discussing. I'm discussing whether Mormon claims about how someone can know that the Utah-branch of the religion started by Joseph Smith is the only true religion in the history of the universe.

But no LDS (at least not those who follow the theological position of the church) is going to suggest that the church even makes this claim. Nor is the LDS church going to suggest that it is the only repository of truth, or that it is the final arbiter of salvation.

I would start a new thread devoted to the interesting topic of the relationship "what is good" and "what is true", and we could talk all about William James and pragmatism for twenty pages, but it seems I haven't yet earned the approval of the moderators, and so I'm not actually permitted to start such threads. In any case, what you are talking about, or what you are trying to turn this thread towards, isn't what I'm talking about at all. No wonder there is some confusion here.

But you aren't talking about LDS claims of Epistemology either. You are talking only about what Tal Bachman thinks (erroneously I might add) is THE LDS epistemology.

One of them seems to me the decision to grant to some external party the authority mentioned above. What I'm saying is, I think "one true religion" type claims ought to be evaluated with the utmost use of our brains, but that isn't necessarily the case with other decisions at all. Do you disagree with that?

And so the question is - how do you propose to invesitgate this claim? Wouldn't you expect that a confirmation from God would be adequate confirmation? If God appeared to you (ala Joseph Smith) and said to you "The LDS church is the one true religion" - wouldn't that serve as justification for a rational belief in the LDS church as the one true religion?

---Ah, the old "that wasn't really doctrine" move. Does that mean you're interested in scriptural examples?

Sure. As long as you deal with my scriptural examples as well. Cherry picking claims doesn't really help your argument much.

---Benjamin, answer this question: Is it "absolutely/purely true"or not, that Jesus Christ was the Savior?

Yes, as far as I know, it is absolutely true.

---So, in your opinion, can the prophet lead the church astray by making a false truth claim?

Yes, that is the case. In fact, (as I noted earlier in this thread), Brigham Young (as the prophet) also thought that this was the case. He noted (from the pulpit):

What a pity it would be if we were led by one man to utter destruction! Are you afraid of this? I am more afraid that this people have so much confidence in their leaders that they will not inquire for themselves of God whether they are led by Him. I am fearful they settle down in a state of blind self-security, trusting their eternal destiny in the hands of their leaders with a reckless confidence that in itself would thwart the purposes of God in their salvation, and weaken that influence they could give to their leaders, did they know for themselves, by the revelations of Jesus, that they are led in the right way. Let every man and woman know, by the whispering of the Spirit of God to themselves, whether their leaders are walking in the path the Lord dictates, or not. This has been my exhortation continually.

The point is that we have access to the truth independant of the prophet. Further, the prophet himself is merely interpreting what he has been given by God when he speaks to the church. We learn from Lehi and Nephi that revelation is experiential - it is dependant on us individually. We understand it differently. So, I would also suggest that the prophet's claim to absolute truth is misplaced, and that it isn't an absolute truth, whether or not the prophet believes that it is.

There isn't anything to suggest that what you think is knowledge is actually true.

But this is universally so. For everyone. This kind of ambiguity and uncertainty, I am completely comfortable with (even if you are not). On the other hand, what I think is true is for the most part buoyed up by personal experience.

---Ah, well there we have it, don't we? Is that really what apologetics for the one "TRUE" religion in the world must come down to?

No. This is my philosophical position about life and truth in general. Your sarcastic dismissal doesn't serve as much of a response however.

---Doesn't the word "knowledge" mean some discovery of what is true?

No. It simply implies that we have discovered what we think is true. Otherwise, no one knows anything at all, and I am not that nihilistic.

Clearly to be true in some sort of abosute sense (which cannot be determined) is to always place knowledge out of our hands. We cannot externally define the world in which we exist and which has already defined us.

Ben

[juliann]

And speaking of bizarre, me imitating the execrable (another word you can look up, amiga!) Rodney King is a lot different than announcing that all black people speak that way, or whatever it is you're insinuating. The fact is that Rodney King speaks pretty much the way I described, and me imitating him is about as "racist" as me imitating Prince Philip is against caucasians, or imitating Howard Cosell is against Jews.

Execrable means detestable. What a surpirse. But the "detestable" black person, Rodney King, talks like any body else. Here is a video (about 4:30 min into the video). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRag97AepK0 I don't hear him saying "chilluns". Does anyone else? You are doing a parody of slave speech to caricature blacks. Yuk yuk. I lived in the LA area during the riots. I've seen quite a bit of King on local TV. I suggest you react from something besides ignorance before you launch into your black stereotypes. You are currently on RFM launching into Martin Luther King, Jr. as an adulterer and plagiarist. Your disdain for blacks would fit much better in the Brigham Young era but you need him to keep up the hatespeech. What a dilemma.

Well, I'm not sure I've ever said anything to the effect of "who me?". Rather, I invited you to bring up whatever I've written that bothers you.

My, you certainly do change your words a lot when you talk yourself into a corner. What you said was "If it means anything to you, I am happy to be held accountable for what I've written elsewhere, explain it to you, respond to it, apologize for it as the case may be, whatever. I'm not being disingenuousness - I'm serious." Obviously you weren't serious. You just got out dictionaries and redefined more of those pesky words that keep shooting out of your mouth.

Last point on Mauss - it was Mauss himself who said (not that you seem interested in why) that the older he gets, the more apart he feels from Mormonism, the more "marginalized" I think was his word. THAT is the main reason why I referred to Mauss as "pitiable" - he is a man who wishes to retain membership in an organization, which he also feels marginalized by. I think that's a pity. I think most people would, including most members of the church. Don't you?

He feels marginalized because he is in no man's land...he gets crap from people like you and he gets crap from LDS. If you knew the least bit about him you would know that. But why let that bothersome detail get in the way of a good attack?

I also think it is a pity that Mauss seems to have to twist his mind into pretzels in order to keep believing in that something , along the way issuing forth "apologetic" arguments which in fact ask listeners to believe that Brigham Young mistook a culturally-induced bias for a revelation from God himself, and then preached it to the church as doctrine. You seem to have missed that part of my comments on Mauss's explanations.

Get a clue. Your arrogance is underwhelming. Many of us here know Mauss. I've heard hours and hours of discussion from him and had discussions with him. You are representing him as well as you do the Mormon church and with just as little concern for accuracy.

In any case, I referred to Armand Mauss as "broken" because he speaks just as though he was. If he's not in fact, he's doing a very good impression of being so: emotionally attached, forever justifying to himself that attachment, increasingly feeling lonely despite that attachment, etc.

Then do something besides smear people personally and then come here and demand protection for yourself.

And anyway, Juliann, would you care if I was saying the same stuff about D. Michael Quinn? Well guess what? I have - and I said it about Lavina Fielding Anderson, and Paul Toscano, and the rest of the September Six, except that I spoke far more harshly about them than I ever have about Armand Mauss.

Well, maybe they can join with Mauss and Peterson for a class action defamation lawsuit.

One comment about the "Mormons" thing: I said that I "hardly ever" talk about "Mormons" per se; I mean, my posts on RFM don't usually focus on "why I don't like Mormons" (because in fact there are many Mormons I do like, and love, a lot). But it is no wonder you would be confused, my virtual friend, because you give every impression of being entirely unable to conceive of what difference there might be between discussing a problem with a Mormon truth claim or apologetic argument, and persecuting or disliking Mormons. But should those two things really be so hard to distinguish? Do you realize that Joseph Smith not telling the truth about his experiences, doesn't mean that "all Mormons are rotten" or something? It just doesn't.

I guess I missed the nuance between how much you love Mormons as people and only talk about the problems with "truth" claims (a word you have yet to define, despite your clutching a dictionary for dear life.).

Tal Bachman preaching from the Compound, showing his love for Mormons and their cult truth claims.

Jan 10

Armand Mauss is one pitiable man. I don't really have anytihng to add to that

Well, I did say "pitiable", as in, "one could feel pity for him", and not "dumb" or "disingenuous" or something else...

His attempts to rationalize Mormon racism, by the way, rely on a nifty, self-induced blindness to what that legacy says about Mormon truth and authority claims (and what it says, glaringly, is that they cannot possibly be valid).

Jan 11

Yes, I read the Armand Mauss quotes you provided on that other thread, and (probably like you) I find them to be as stupid, ignorant, and indicative of emotional brokenness as the quotes I put into my piece.

My advice, Armand - if you don't want to keep looking like a loon, run an inventory check on your own beliefs, prior to lecturing your "intellectual inferiors" in the cult you belong to, on theirs.

You sound like a palm reader chastizing fellow palm readers for reading the wrong wrinkle. You're all still nuts, you know?

Boy, you sure demolished those truth claims! And that was just two days of awesome material!

[juliann]

Your argument here I think contains a non sequitir as well as a personal insult: I am "disingenuous", and that is obvious because you and I disagree. Is that really how you think?

Nah, silly. We think a personal insult is stuff like this!

pitiable man

self-induced blindness

stupid, ignorant, and indicative of emotional brokenness

loon

the cult you belong to

Hope that helps.

[cksalmon]

What are the sorts of things that we can claim are absolutely accurate reflections of the situations they purport to describe?

Hi Ben--

You wrote in an earlier post:

And the answer to this is that yes, they [feelings] absolutely do [transmit knowledge].

Based on other posts, I'm assuming that you mean something along the line of "feelings really do transmit knowledge," rather than "feelings transmit absolute knowledge."

I think you and I will end up in a superficially similar place, epistemologically. I'm not sure what sorts of things we can claim are "absolutely accurate reflections" of the situations they purport to describe.

But the critico-realist approach to epistemology, as you know, does not necessarily require that we must make such claims. Rather, the critical realist makes the lesser claim that some sense data is able accurately to describe an external reality, although all data is subject to reinterpretation as all constructs are subject to revision.

Theologically, I come to this approach in a bit of a circuitous way--think Gadamer-via-Thistleton, filtered through the practical example of critical realist N.T. Wright.

What is perceived to be knowledge may, of course, need to be reconfigured in light of new and material evidence. And one should always be cognizant of perceptual liabilities. But I see critical realism as a sort of halfway house between the overreach of Comte's positivism and postmodernism's overemphasis on our "situatedness" across a variety of domains.

With reference to our conversation, this may just bring us to our respective takes on pragmatism. But I leave that for another time.

Best.

CKS

PS. I am quite attached philosophically to JTB, though I'm not sure how it should factor in to critical realism. If one is not careful, he may too easily begin to talk out of both sides of his mouth.

[Pahoran]

Juliann,

you quoted Tal the Great thus:

His attempts to rationalize Mormon racism, by the way, rely on a nifty, self-induced blindness to what that legacy says about Mormon truth and authority claims (and what it says, glaringly, is that they cannot possibly be valid).

Please tell me you took that out of context. Please tell me you left something out of that quote that mitigates this ridiculous claim.

[Edited per moderator request.]

Regards,

Pahoran

[juliann]

Juliann,

you quoted Tal the Great thus:

Please tell me you took that out of context. Please tell me you left something out of that quote that mitigates this ridiculous claim.

[Tal Bachman]

Benjamin, I think we can save us a whole lot of time. Here is my view of things. I hope this isn't putting it too bluntly.

Some of your claims about Mormonism - for example, that Mormonism doesn't claim to be the only true religion - are blatantly untrue. You strike me as a confused man, Benjamin - you are on here defending a religion which from the get-go has claimed to be the only true religion, and more, a religion which can be known to be so through the Holy Ghost, and yet at the same time you cast doubt on anyone's ability to know anything. You see, I find that self-contradictory. Perhaps you don't; perhaps a few of your ideological comrades don't; but I do, and my guess is that most others, Mormon and non-Mormon, would find it so as well.

So I find myself in the position of discussing how we know things, with someone who is already committed to the proposition that we don't know things, even though he belongs to a church which sponsors monthly testimony meetings in every single branch and ward on earth (by the way, I guess all that choking up when "feeling the spirit" has nothing to do with feelings, right?). So what am I doing really, other than making myself look like an idiot in discussing this with you? If you don't believe that anything can be known, at least according to the usual definition of the verb "to know", then I think it is completely pointless for us to be discussing this. And I suppose if anyone might be considered disingenuous, it might be someone who at the same time defends a certain epistemic claim (whatever it might consist of), who at the same time gives away his opinion that "epistemology" is really in the end, nothing but nonsense.

By the way, I doubt even you would argue that Brigham Young's claim equals in authority the canonical claims about the Lord not allowing the prophet to lead the church astray found after the WW Manifesto in D&C. One more thing - saying that "as far as you know, it is absolutely true that Jesus is the Savior", is totally pathetic for someone in your position! Can you imagine Pres. Hinckley saying, at the end of his conference address, "and to be perfectly accurate about it, AS FAR AS I KNOW, Jesus Christ is the Savior"?! Don't be ludicrous, bro! You sound like Richard Bushman talking about how the setting for the Book of Mormon hasn't even been definitively established to be somewhere in the Americas! How much worse can these attempts get?

And your claim of ignorance about whether the Day of Pentecost was an exercise in mass delusion or not pretty much says more about where you're coming from than anything I could say. I hope anyone still following this thread takes time to read that account (Acts 2 or something, I forget the exact chapter), or the account of Wilford Woodruff at the Benbow Farm, or in truth, ANY conversion account in the scriptures or Ensign, so that they can see for themselves just those experiences are described...

What is the point of discussing "how we know", with someone whose comments all boil down to, "we cannot know, because knowing is impossible"? It's like being sucked into some weird mindgame or something...

Okay, I see that my hot new virtual girlfriend Juliann has posted something so I want to read that and reply.

T.

[Calm]

Benjamin, I think we can save us a whole lot of time. Here is my view of things. I hope this isn't putting it too bluntly.

Some of your claims about Mormonism - for example, that Mormonism doesn't claim to be the only true religion - are blatantly untrue. You strike me as a confused man, Benjamin

Since this is not what he is claiming, I believe you are the one that is confused.

The actual exchange:

TB

---That's not what I'm discussing. I'm discussing whether Mormon claims about how someone can know that the Utah-branch of the religion started by Joseph Smith is the only true religion in the history of the universe.

Ben: But no LDS (at least not those who follow the theological position of the church) is going to suggest that the church even makes this claim. Nor is the LDS church going to suggest that it is the only repository of truth, or that it is the final arbiter of salvation.

Since LDS believe the gospel was known and practiced in other dispensations (why else would we need "Latter-Day"), any LDS is hardly going to claim that the "Utah-branch of the religion started by Joseph Smith is the only true religion in the history of the universe." That totally contradicts the claim that the Church is part of a restoration.

[Tal Bachman]

Execrable means detestable. What a surpirse.

?....."Someone still needs a hug.....!" (Yes, I was aware of what "execrable" meant...).

Guys blasted on PCP speeding through residential neighbourhoods, ignoring police warnings to pull over, thereby endangering innocent lives, and who afterwards keep up their careers in law-breaking, I find execrable. Don't you? Why should that be surprising? They should have shot the guy before he smashed into a house and killed a bunch of kids or something. I couldn't care less what colour he is!

Anyway....it's kind of funny we're arguing about RK! Whew...at least I'm not still stuck in Benjamin-Maguire-no-one-really-knows-anything-land...

But the "detestable" black person, Rodney King, talks like any body else. Here is a video (about 4:30 min into the video). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRag97AepK0 I don't hear him saying "chilluns". Does anyone else?

--- All I can tell you is that the last time I went over to Rodney's for his monthly video slumber party, that's just how he talked...anyway, thanks for the clip. I'm going to work on my imitation so that next time, you're really impressed.

You are doing a parody of slave speech to caricature blacks.

----Wow....you got me, honey! I hate all black people because I hazarded an imitation of Rodney King. Boy, am I embarrassed...

I lived in the LA area during the riots. I've seen quite a bit of King on local TV. I suggest you react from something besides ignorance before you launch into your black stereotypes. You are currently on RFM launching into Martin Luther King, Jr. as an adulterer and plagiarist. Your disdain for blacks would fit much better in the Brigham Young era but you need him to keep up the hatespeech. What a dilemma.

---WHAT? ARE YOU JOKING?

Listen, my friend - YOU NEED MY HELP. As it happens, I have a soft spot for damsels in distress, so you are in some serious luck. But speaking of serious, let me address your MLK comment.

I'm into facts, okay? You may not be, but I am. And THE FACT is, that MLK was a Christian minister with a huge appetite for adultery. Didn't you know? I recommend you read David Garrow's "MLK and the FBI" if you didn't. Garrow is very sympathetic to King, while acknowledging his poor choice of comrades (some with ties to the US communist party during the Cold War), and his weakness for the ladies. And it is also a fact that MLK plagiarized his dissertation.

But here is where you need help my chivalrous help: For you to say that the mere acknowledgement of those facts - which, by the way, all of his closest friends acknowledge, his wife Coretta, every person who reads a biography of MLK, everyone who studies the man black or white - necessarily betrays "disdain for blacks", I submit, makes you look unfair and unreasonable.

I might also point out that you didn't repeat on here the last part of my MLK RFM post, where I suggested why MLK could still be considered a hero. Why not? Was it incompatible with the latest guilty verdict you've hoped to stick on me, and for that reason had to be left out? But my friend, you are not a very fair judge if you don't include all the evidence, are you?

Acknowledging any historical figure's vices is no more a betrayal of disdain for whatever "group" he might be thought to have belonged to, than is recognizing his virtues would be a betrayal of a starry-eyed bias toward that group. Surely you can understand that, amiga...

My, you certainly do change your words a lot when you talk yourself into a corner. What you said was "If it means anything to you, I am happy to be held accountable for what I've written elsewhere, explain it to you, respond to it, apologize for it as the case may be, whatever. I'm not being disingenuousness - I'm serious." Obviously you weren't serious. You just got out dictionaries and redefined more of those pesky words that keep shooting out of your mouth.

---Huh? Like what? The only thing I've been doing is telling guys on here, who evidently don't own a dictionary, what the words I'm using mean, since apparently they're confusing.

He feels marginalized because he is in no man's land...he gets crap from people like you and he gets crap from LDS. If you knew the least bit about him you would know that. But why let that bothersome detail get in the way of a good attack?

---You might be entirely right about the reasons why he feels marginalized and alienated. By the way, I thought a "smear" might be, "Armand Mauss is a LIAR", or something. I didn't say he was a liar - I said his apologetic arguments torpedo the very religion he's trying to defend. It is true I think of him as pitiable and in some ways, broken emotionally; if that's a smear, I guess I'm guilty, but if I am, then I'm not sure that Armand isn't as well, since I don't know how else to interpret the descriptions that he himself made of himself.

Get a clue. Your arrogance is underwhelming.

Many of us here know Mauss. I've heard hours and hours of discussion from him and had discussions with him. You are representing him as well as you do the Mormon church and with just as little concern for accuracy.

---I presume then that you and I can start a thread in which we discuss in detail just what Mauss's defense of Mormon racism consists of, and whether it in fact only really shows that according to Mauss, the canonical (D&C) statement specifying that the Lord would not permit a prophet to lead the church astray is highly doubtful. And you can show all the world just how vastly I'm misrepresenting his remarks (which, by the way, I took occasion to insert verbatim on a long RFM post on this topic), and how dastardly are my distortions. Are we on? I ask Juliann, because I don't think I have misrepresented him at all, and therefore, I don't think that anyone could show that I have. His remarks and arguments were perfectly clear. I would almost say they were too clear, because it made their true (counterproductive) implications all the more detectable. So...are we on? You started it - what do you say?

Well, maybe they can join with Mauss and Peterson for a class action defamation lawsuit.

I guess I missed the nuance between how much you love Mormons as people and only talk about the problems with "truth" claims (a word you have yet to define, despite your clutching a dictionary for dear life.).

---Well, someone around here's gotta clutch the dictionary on your behalf, don't they? Besides, if you don't like me explaining what the words I use mean, why don't you just look them up yourself?

Just to make clear as well - a "truth claim" is a claim that something is true. The Mormon church makes many of them: that the Book of Mormon is a historical work, that its original text was inscribed on pages of gold, that John the Baptist and James and John and Peter and Elijah and someone named "Elias" and Moses and Jesus and God the Father visited Joseph Smith, that the LDS church is the only church authorized by Christ to perform the saving ordinances in his name, etc.

I feel sure you have had many moving spiritual experiences, which have deepened your appreciation of the role the church plays in your life. I understand that. And I don't know that Mormonism isn't just where you should be, Juliann, I really don't. It might be the best place for you, at least right now, but its truth claims still not be true. I think underneath everything else is that question. I am not sure that trying to casting doubt on knowledge or doubt is really a way out for a devout Mormon, given Mormon scriptures and truth claims...

Just my two cents,

T.

[Argos]

Mr. Bachman:

Lose the condescension. It's not as cute as you seem to think it is.

-- Argos, Moderator

[wenglund]

Since Tal seems to be ignoring my questions to him, perhaps I can throw this out to whomever.

In the scenerio to follow, please indicate whether knowledge was gained, and if so, was it by "feelings" and/or/ by reasoning.

Scenerio: Several weeks ago I ate some spaghetti about an hour before going to bed. I didn't think anything of it at the time because I often snack prior to going to be (though the snacks are typically cookie or cake or toast etc.). But afterwards, while laying in bed trying to get to sleep, I developed some heartburn, which I thought was due to the spaghetti (since I rarely if ever get heartburn). However, I decided to test this hypothesis, and sure enough, the next three nights that I had spaghetti, I got heartburn, and the fifth night I didn't get heartburn after not eating spagetti, but instead had my usual pumpkin chocolate chip cookie.

Did I obtain knowledge through the course of these events?

If so, did the "feelings" of heartburn, and/or reasoning, "transmit" the knowledge?

I ask because this scenerio, I believe, helps illustrate that even given the presence of "feelings" conveying knowledge, reasoning is also a necessary component. The same is true with the LDS epistemology. In fact, if one looks just at Moroni 10 as an LDS epistemic tool, I defy anyone to come up with a way that someone may investigate the truth claims of the Church through prayer absent reasoning.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[SumResCogitans]

From "The Church is Not True" podcast archive (an interview with Tal Bachman):

I think Tal has a legitimate point. Feelings are not the path to a solid epistemology, at least not as such is understood in the broader society.

I couldn't agree more that feelings, in the emotional sense, are not a solid foundation upon which to base epistemology, but these are not the kind of feelings - at least this is what it means to me - that Moroni is talking about. Spiritual feelings are something else entirely. Now, this is the point where symbolic language fails me, for I can not explain it. But through the spirit, I am given a spiritual understanding that far exceeds my mental understanding - seeing as it's bound by mortality - and I am unable to deny that I know it is true. I'm sorry; these sorts of things are difficult to put into words.

Now, I know that this does not refute Descartes' "evil genius" argument. But I am inclined to agree with Kant that you can't empirically prove God's existence or the truth of scripture by a priori deduction. In the end, God sends you messages, and it's up to you to seek understanding and take up the slack with faith.

[Nomad]

Talmage,

You continue to manifest an extraordinary capacity for eisegetical analysis. No surprise there. As someone who quite obviously never advanced beyond the â??warm fuzzy feelingâ? level of gospel understanding, it is not difficult to understand why certain concepts continue to elude you.

So permit me to simplify matters considerably for you:

On the day of Pentecost, as reported in the 2nd chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, we read the following:

1 AND when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.

2 And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.

3 And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them.

4 And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

5 And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven.

6 Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language.

7 And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying one to another, Behold, are not all these which speak Galil