Not so easy?

[hooberus]

Surely the atheist who postulates the multi-verse theory (or the unknown gpc restrictor) to rescue his naturalistic Big Bang from the Fine Tuning Argument cannot fault the LDS who postulates that the BOM has the

[Tanyan]

Please humor me for a moment. What is the "Multi-Verse" view ?. I have an Idea, but I just wanted to see if its the same view that a simpleton such as I with limited reading on this subject has. Thanks in advance !.

[TOmNossor]

The

[alienward]

On what page did you define "prophet" in your book?

On the same page he defined "is". Only with people trying to deny something does one need to bicker over the meaning of simple words.

[Mighty Curelom]

The law of pasimony is only useful when dealing with real life; as soon as you introduce the supernatural, the law of pasimony (as well as logic and reason) goes out the window.

Example- How does lightning happen?

Naturalistic- complex reaction caused by differences in static potential resulting in a burst of electricity.

Supernatural- God does it.

We know for a fact now that God doesn't have anything to do with lightning, yet according to the law of parsimony, God MUST be the source of all lightning because the supernatural explanation is less complex. As you can see, the Occam's razor is useless when introducing God or any other supernatural explanation.

[Beowulf]

Alienward, that would be a useful put-down if "prophet" were a simple word.

But it is not. It carries heavy baggages of meaning that believers and non-believers (and every shade of each) will likely not agree on.

So, yes, Juliann is justified in asking for Mr. Vogel's definition of "prophet".

Beowulf

[cinepro]

But it is not. It carries heavy baggages of meaning that believers and non-believers (and every shade of each) will likely not agree on.

So Juliann (and other believers), when you claim Joseph Smith was a "prophet", how are you defining the term? Is this definition official doctrine, or can each member come up with their own definition?

[Quinn]

That's silly cinepro. The discussion at hand is neither official Church doctrine nor member understanding.

Juliann asked Dan for the definition that DAN used in the treatment of Joseph Smith in his book and in the statement he just made.

Go fish for red herring somewhere else.

Q

[Dan Vogel]

Juliann,

You ask a legitimate question. In my book, I did not define prophet specifically. Mostly I wanted to bet across the concept that JS did not believe his prevarications disqualified him as a prophet. He believed he was inspired and commanded by God to do what he did. What is important is JS

[Dan Vogel]

Mr. Hamblin:

An addenda to what I said above about JS

[alienward]

Alienward, that would be a useful put-down if "prophet" were a simple word.

But it is not. It carries heavy baggages of meaning that believers and non-believers (and every shade of each) will likely not agree on.

So, yes, Juliann is justified in asking for Mr. Vogel's definition of "prophet".

From definition of prophet in the Guide to the Scriptures definition:

"A person who has been called by and speaks for God. As a messenger of God, a prophet receives commandments, prophecies, and revelations from God. His responsibility is to make known God

[Confidential Informant]

Juliann,

You ask a legitimate question. In my book, I did not define prophet specifically. Mostly I wanted to bet across the concept that JS did not believe his prevarications disqualified him as a prophet. He believed he was inspired and commanded by God to do what he did. What is important is JS’s definition of what a prophet is (see my next post).

Another definition of prophet is whatever the community of believers say it is. If that definition changes, say, for example, they expand their definition to include pious fraud, then for that community that is what a prophet is.

As to the cosmic definition of God: Hamblin might believe he has direct line to the mind of God, but I do not. Scholars cannot discuss that kind of definition.

Dan,

I'm still struggling with your definition of a "pious fraud."

I think I understand the argument you are making about Joseph Smith but I'm not sure (I need to go dig your book out, I must have missed all this).

You seem to indicate that Joseph a) knew the book wasn't historical but considered it to be "inspired."

By "inspired" I assume you mean something along the lines a "nudge by God" or something that involves some sort of divine influence, correct?

If so, wouldn't that make God the "pious fraud" and not Smith? Whether historical or not, do you think he considered to the source of the book to be outside of himself? Isn't Smith just doing what he thinks he's been told do?

Moreover, I haven't quite grasped yet whether you are agitating for a conscious fraud or an unconscioius one.

Moreover, I think your term "fraud" is too narrow. If you step back and take a look at the story as a whole, you have to consider a "conspiracy" as it includes several people all of whom would have had to 1. know about the fraud. 2. Be willing to lie to perpetuate it. I say this based on the fact that there are several other participants in this, all of whom claimed supernatural experiences in support and furtherance of Smith's claims. (I'll excuse the 8 witness since their experience was not supernatural in nature).

1. The Three Witness: All claimed "supernatural" experience in seeing the plates. Thus, you've got two possible (that I can see) explanation: a. They all three lied. b. Smith figured out someway to make them believe they'd experienced a supernaturl event.

2. Extend Cowdery's experience to include testifying to the reality of the restoratoin of the two priesthoods.

2. The conspiracy must also expand to include Sidney Rigdon, who supported Smith's "fraud" at the production of the Section 76. Moreover, I think this one cannot be explained as Smith hoodwinking him somehow. The story behind that revelation indicates that the only way it could have been (if you deny the supernatural) would have been for Smith and Rigdon to plan what they would say and play how they would say it. i.e. It would have required practice.

3. The conspiracy must expand to include various and sundry members of the Church who testified as to various "supernatural" events. I refer to incidents such as the mass healing of the folks afflicted with malaria. Also, the accounts of supernatural goings on at the dedication of the Kirtland temple. Otherwise, you must account for how Smith managed to make them think they were experiencing such miracles which actually weren't.

4. The Knight family must be included, as they testified about the expulsion of a demon by Smith. Again, Smith either fooled them or they were in on the fraud.

I'm sure there are several other examples that I'm missing of cases where people "witnessed" supernatural events in the presence of Smith. My point is, of course, that conspiracies are even harder to maintain than fraud involving a single person. Just look at mob families and how easily they are flipped against each other. Yet this "conspiracy" seems to have maintained itself remarkably well, to the point where, as near as I can tell, not one of the alleged conspirators ever "broke ranks" as it were. In fact, those who did become disillusions -- the very ones who would have been most likely to expose the conspiracy -- never did. Rather, they mainted the truth of their experiences even though they took issue with Smith.

From a prosecutorial standpoint, I find that amazing.

C.I.

[Bill Hamblin]

Vogel

Can JS lie about BM historicity and his interviews with the angel and still be a prophet? Mr. Hamblin says, no, as if he can speak for God. Again, the real question is: Did JS believe deception sometimes comes from God?

I am not claiming to speak for God. It is rather simple logic, and I am at a loss to understand why you can

[TOmNossor]

Forgive me Cal, but your post was meaningful to my understanding here so I wish to try to capture what this may all mean.

If I understand correctly Dan Vogel is an atheist. As an atheist his believe would fall somewhere on the spectrum starting at

[Calm]

I'm going to try again so I can shut my brain off for the rest of the night.

When "the community believes he is a prophet" (or the alternate "he believes" etc.) becomes equivalent to "he is a prophet," it appears to me that "prophet" has been defined as a completely subjective, opinion-driven term as opposed to an objective, factual-driven one. Thus "prophet" becomes simply an expression of perception/interpretation (along the lines of what Tom says above), something meaningless when one is talking about reality in the sense of existence.

An analogy would be the term "beauty." Beauty is not a "fact;" it does not technically exist in space-time, but rather describes a emotional reaction amounting to "I enjoy looking at it." No real information beyond a personal value statement has been made when someone is labeled a "beauty." You know nothing about any behaviour or personal qualities, but only about the response of the person making the comment. Not only that, but the only possible argument against such a position is also an emotional judgment one along the lines of "not to me."

At best, using the term this way may convey some information about the perceptions of the community/individual, but it's too vague for any extended analysis IMO and is best dispensed with in favour of specific influences.

[Ray Agostini]

If I understand correctly Dan Vogel is an atheist.

Hi Tom,

Good to see you here. Just a small interjection. Dan can speak for himself when he comes back on, but I understand he's agnostic. In any case, it will good for him to clarify that. He will probably say there's not much difference.

[Bill Hamblin]

Tom and Calmoriah have it exactly right. I am fairly confident that Vogel actually understands the distinction between "perceived prophet" and "real prophet," and that he is merely equivocating (i.e. using the term prophet in two different senses). I have no idea as to why he is equivocating. If he doesn't understand this distinction he really shouldn't be writing about these issues.

[alienward]

I am not claiming to speak for God.  It is rather simple logic, and I am at a loss to understand why you can

[kolobian]

Mr. Gardner:

I have seen this basic question broached several times. The first part appears to want a secular (and accepted) methodology applied to the Book of Mormon as a text. Immediately after that request, however, is a denial that it is even possible because religion is involved.

I seem to take longer than most others to reply, but I do wish to, as I think this is a serious argument. I have reflected through the day as to whether I am guilty of this particular error. There does seem to be a problem here, but what is the origin? Isn't it the case that one might wish to make a secular claim about the Book of Mormon: namely that it presents the most parsimonious theory to explain the relevant data. As an aside, I note that parsimony seems to have been the subject of some discussion on this thread today, but I am bypassing it because I can't deal with everything at once. Suffice to say that this language still has currency in scholarly discussion. That said, my concern is this. Isn't it the case that when a proponent makes this claim about the book, he is forwarding something that should be testable by conventional standards? But this is problematic because it is unclear how the subject matter can be applied to secular standards. In short, I want to trace the problem back another step. My questions seem intuitive (to me) at that point. What are the criteria? How can the religious content be dealt with by these criteria? Barring the original claim (which was that scholars would be making an intellectual mistake my not accepting the Book of Mormon), I don't think this problem arises.

If the Book of Mormon is historical, then historical methodologies may be applied. If it passes those tests, then it is historical - and I leave it to you to figure out what that means for the religious aspects.

But isn't the difference that when other documents are tested for authenticity, there is no ontological commitment that goes into the test itself? That is, to believe the Book of Mormon could be historical, to submit it to the tests, one must already believe that divine translation, angelic visitation, and all the rest, is a coherent possibility. How can the religious aspects be pushed sequentially to the rear? I take it that for other documents, one need not make this commitment at the outset. Is a particular piece of writing really in the hand of Thomas Hobbes? That, for instance, is an altogether different question. I am still unclear as to why the Book of Mormon's exceptionalism is not relevant.

Each text presents its own interesting and unique challenges. However, the principles that Bill Hamblin applies to the text are the same as those he uses when he writes secular history. The principle I apply are the same as I have used in writing secular ethnohistory.

Let me be clear: I am not denigrating the scholarship. It seems very impressive to me, in fact, but I am uncertain as to what the conclusion is. To say that the conclusion is that believing the Book of Mormon is rationally preferable to not believing it seems like an unwinable battle. That is not so say that the scholarship is not winning an argument--I just don't understand how it could be winning the most ambitious possible argument.

It is strange that it is the proponents of the Book of Mormon who are most willing to deal with the text in a non-religious context.

Only proponents are willing to make the commitment that makes the test interesting, right?

You (kolobian) doubt that secular tools can be used because the book is associated with prophets.

I just don't know that anyone has ever shown how exactly they can be used. What I desire is metatheory. Yes, the scholarship provides evidence. I am sure that you (Mr. Gardner) and other scholars behave in the same way doing work on the Book of Mormon as on other projects. But how is that evidence to be evaluated? How strong is it? Is it ever possible that a belief in God (and everything else that attends belief in the Book of Mormon) is more parsimonious than other beliefs? People often make the argument that I point out in my prior post. But does anyone make the argument about what burden must be proven? Even under an ideal case (say, we find a perfect map of Mesoamerica in the Book of Mormon), is that enough? How would we know? Above I try to sketch reasons about why our intuitions are often deceptive. Surely intuiting that "its just unreasonable that Joseph could know this" doesn't compel others to give up the game?

Are you really afraid that good scholarship won't support your presuppositions and therefore must hide behind a fear of believing in modern prophets?

Yes. I think. The last clause confuses me a bit; I do believe in modern prophets, and I don't take that belief to be related to fear, exactly. But yes. I am concerned that arguing others are intellectually confused in failing to accept the Book of Mormon is a setup for failure. If accepting the Book of Mormon is the outcome of rational behavior, a very strange world exists, I gather. It would be a world in which people could be argued into it the same way they can be argued into Copernican astronomy or Euclidian geometry. Only the unwillingness of the world to think clearly deprives them of our basic insight.

This does concern me. I am very skeptical this is true, not to mention being unsure if it is good.

1) If good scholarship will perform this function, mustn

[juliann]

Finally, it is your fundamentalist paradigm that has led to your prophet/fraud false dichotomy. As far as you are concerned my pious fraud paradigm does not exist. As an exercise in competing paradigms, let’s reverse your assumptions.

As Hamblin replied, "The fact that you refuse to engage these other questions, and refuse to admit these questions even exist, does not mean they cannot and should not be asked. It is crystal clear that your Joseph the Pious Fraud model is simply another way of saying that JS was a false prophet, when answering the REAL question. "

Let me say it one more time, only fundamentalists try to nail false prophets. Besides not asking the right questions (and asking the right questions was one of the Five Commandments mentioned at the CGU conference). You have already broken another commandment...to know Mormonism you must know something else. Notice that you are...again...having to move into the Bible to explain yourself while knowing so little about secular biblical scholarship that you are unable to determine what commentary to use when trying to prove that a belief about John was false.

You cannot make up a self-serving definition of prophet if you want to venture outside of the circle of scholars who think that they can know Mormonism without knowing anything else.

Have you asked the questions that the scholars are asking? Is it realistic to think that you can judge JS's prophetic claims without asking the same questions? Are you aware that leading scholars have consistently said that they have been unable to determine a dominant definition? [Ann Wire, The Corinthian Women Prophets ( Fortress Press, 1990), 226; Gerald T. Sheppard and William E. Herbrechtsmeier, "Prophecy: An Overview", in Mircea Eliade, ed., The Encyclopedia of Religion, (Macmillan Publishing Co.,1987) 14.]

If Aune concludes that Christian prophecy did not produce a dominant form or structure and "no distinctive speech forms which would have been readily identifiable as prophetic speech"... where are you going to determine JS' prophetic speech? Hinduism? [David E. Aune, Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean World (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1983), 230-231]

Here are some legitimate questions. Where do you place JS?

It remains for us to discuss the question of criteria.

[Dan Vogel]

I have quickly read through the responses and found them very interesting and thought provoking. I don't have time to respond at the moment. Meanwhile, I'm quite amuzed that everyone assumes I'm an atheist. I might very well be -- I'm not sure myself what I am -- but nothing I have said warrants that conclusion. Is it because I said I was a naturalist and question claims of the paranormal? Well, so did the deists. There are many rationalists and skeptics who also believe in God. Simply put, I have trouble with traditional definitions of God and find them incoherent. Perhaps I might explain this further at another time, but I must go.

[Brant Gardner]

kolobian:

BG: "I have seen this basic question broached several times. The first part appears to want a secular (and accepted) methodology applied to the Book of Mormon as a text. Immediately after that request, however, is a denial that it is even possible because religion is involved."

K: I have reflected through the day as to whether I am guilty of this particular error. There does seem to be a problem here, but what is the origin? . . . What are the criteria? How can the religious content be dealt with by these criteria? Barring the original claim (which was that scholars would be making an intellectual mistake my not accepting the Book of Mormon), I don't think this problem arises.

In other words, yes, kolobian - you are doing exactly what I suggested.

But isn't the difference that when other documents are tested for authenticity, there is no ontological commitment that goes into the test itself? That is, to believe the Book of Mormon could be historical, to submit it to the tests, one must already believe that divine translation, angelic visitation, and all the rest. . .

I think it helps to have that belief in order to care enough to spend the time it takes. However, the impetus to do research is very different from the methods and rigor of the research itself. Since everyone approaches comlex questions with some preconditions, under your suggestion no one would be doing scholarly work because they all bring some version of an ontological commtiment to their task (different ontologies, of course).

I still maintain that the quality of the methods and analysis are not inherently dependent upon the initial assumptions brought to the question. Were that true no one would ever change their minds about anything.

[Paul Osborne]

Gee wizz this is a long thread.

Paul O

[Bill Hamblin]

Vogel:

I'm quite amued that everyone assumes I'm an atheist. I might very well be -- I'm not sure myself what I am -- but nothing I have said warrants that conclusion.

I assume you are an atheist because several people have reported to me that you personally told them you are an atheist (or agnostic). Were they wrong? The fact that you shy away from openly admitting your presuppositions and paradigms on this matter is also very revealing.

[will2believe]

3- If there was no Moroni and were no golden plates, Joseph Smith was either lying or delusional.

The old "Lord, Liar, or Lunatic" trichotomy. Isn't this the same simplistic reasoning for which the anti's are chided? I think we can all come up with other possible scenarios. Maybe they require that we attribute certain actions (or non-actions) to God that we consider bizarre, but any belief in God imputes to him things that we can't understand.