Book Of Mormon: New Evidence Of 19Th Century Origin

[mfbukowski]

I do think it's reasonable to look at evidence of specific claims.

So do I.

 

I am alive today because of science.  But that has nothing to do with religion and your post does not fix the problem.  We have discussed this before.  It is a category error, as I have said before.

[wenglund]

Folks - this is lighting up some LDS-related sites:

 

http://askreality.com/hidden-in-plain-sight/#more-56

 

Seems a cursory textual analysis of works published pre-1830 has yielded some clue as to books that influenced the BOM!

 

I would encourage all interested parties to read the Late War by Gilbert J. Hunt. After the first five words ("Now it came to pass..."), it will be made obvious how little it could have influenced the Book of Mormon in terms of content and themes. Sure, there are some similarities in KVJ-ish phraseology, but that is to be expected of books written in the "Ancient Historical Style" of the KVJ.

 

Even the chapter on the Sketch of the History of America, bears no meaningful resemblance to the Book of Mormon, or the Book of Ether within the Book of Mormon, beyond a few cherry-picked phrases.

 

The evidence is "compelling" alright.

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited October 22, 2013 by wenglund

[mfbukowski]

Exactly, WHY the need to show the BoM is historical, especially when faith is so important?

JS even said at one time he didn't want to tell people what to believe. I wish I had the quote. Through the years, it seems our religion has been corralled into one perfect system, but hopefully the ability to believe what we want is still there. With our hearts and not our heads.

See this is exactly what these guys need to hear if I am understanding you.

 

I know you have had problems with the church and still do, but the bottom line is that you understand it is "our hearts and not our heads".

 

They of course will assume that one who says that doesn't have the intelligence to act with "their head" instead of their feelings.

 

But they are the ones missing the point!  Observing one's situation objectively has nothing to do with how one reacts to the observation.  It is said, accurately for example, that money can't buy you love or happiness, and though we joke about that, it is actually perfectly true.

 

Happiness is an attitude of a well-tuned life, when you are in cognitive harmony (as someone who has taken that moniker knows)

 

What that poster does not know is that one can have as much cognitive harmony in the church as out of it, depending on one's attitude.  So yes, facts make a difference in our lives but it is how we react or respond to those facts which make us happy or unhappy.

[jkwilliams]

So do I.

 

I am alive today because of science.  But that has nothing to do with religion and your post does not fix the problem.  We have discussed this before.  It is a category error, as I have said before.

And I disagree with you. The lack of evidence for Nephites (and the evidence against) suggests that there were probably no Nephites. What would be a category error would be in insisting that the lack of Nephites invalidates your spiritual experience or anyone else's. I've never said that at all.

I know this guy who believes he is a prophet. He sees revelations by looking at pictures of a certain mountain. He's published his revelations, and he asks you to join him based on his belief that, if you study and pray with him long enough and hard enough, you'll have spiritual experiences that will confirm he's really a prophet. What should you do with this? Do you think it's worth the time and effort to determine through spiritual experience that he's a prophet? What if he had been the first Mormon you met (he is Mormon in the sense that he believes Joseph Smith was a prophet and the scriptures he brought forth are true)? Why did you choose this particular branch of Mormonism? What, if anything, was the difference between randomly asking God for spiritual experiences, and asking about Mormonism?

I'm not trying to be snarky, but given that you have repeatedly said that nothing matters other than spiritual experience, I'm trying to understand how this philosophy came about and how it relates to your acceptance of Mormonism as true.

[wenglund]

I don't think this parallel has been mentioned here, but my brother, Chris, mentioned this one in his presentation:

TLWB 28:12 “they cut down the tall trees of the forest, and hewed them, and built many more strong vessels… and they put windows in them, and they pitched them within and without with pitch; after the fashion of the ark”

Ether 2:17 “And they were built... tight like unto a dish; and the length thereof was the length of a tree;”

Ether 2:23 “your vessels ... cannot have windows”

Ether 6:7 “their vessels being tight like unto a dish, and also they were tight like unto the ark of Noah”

 

So, you believe there is a meaningful parallel when there are five nouns in one verse of the TLWB that are also found skattered somewhat out of order across 67 verses of the Book of Ether? Really?

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[cognitiveharmony]

Joseph Smith openly claimed to translating by the gift and power of God. You must assume that is not true. If your a priori position is that such things simply can't happen, well then fine, but then I'm not sure why you are even arguing with any "apologists," since such conversations where the a priori  assumptions are so obviously different are bound to forever go nowhere. 

 

The rest of your comment is just plain nonsense. No one is insisting that the supernatural be invoked at every turn, but since the Book of Mormon was claimed to be and is presented as a translation, you can't make arguments against that possibility which presume that it is not. That is, and always will be, circular reasoning. 

 

 

Actually, I have considered both "anachronistic implications" and "revelatory factors" as I have worked through my own views on the translation. What's more, nothing I have said has been about those, because what you said was not about those. I strictly responding as to whether this new text eliminates the possibility of a tight translation. It does not. Other factors, such as anachronisms and revelation, are irrelevant as to whether this single factor does what you say it does.

 

Beyond that, you are conflating tight control with tight translation. Skousen does this same thing, and Gardner points this out in his book. Tight control deals the transmission of the text. Tight translation deals with the relationship of the translated text to the original text. A text can be tightly controlled but not tightly translated, and can just as well be loosely controlled, but not loosely translated. There is clearly evidence of tight control in the transmission process from seer stone to written page, but tight translation is less clear. Even still, though, the question must be raised about who is exerting control? Is it God who exerts this tight control, or is it Joseph Smith? And, if it is God, need we assume that such tight control of transmission entails that he is the source of the translation?

 

Other comments above should make it clear that I do not ascribe to a view that God gave Joseph Smith a word-for-word translation of the text. Still, though, I disagree that, as you say, "this text almost forces" the view that God did not give the translation word-for-word. And if this has nothing to do with, "how close to the original language" the translation was, again as you say, then you have already defeated your own argument, if you ask me. Is God not allowed to reveal a loose translation? Can his translation not employ common terms of the day like "curious workmanship" or "stripling warrior"?

 

This certainly may tell us somethings about the translation of the Book of Mormon, why it is in the style it is, why it uses the terms it uses, etc. But it cannot, to my mind, at least not by itself, tell us whether or not it is a translation, whether it is a tight or loose translation, or whether the translation was given to Joseph Smith word-for-word or as impressions. There is a host of different evidences that must be weighed together to reach those kinds of conclusions, and no single item forces one thing or the other. Not even this.

 

Let's break this down. Blake puts forth the idea that the OT forms present in the BOM are there because of divine inspiration and puts forth no evidence to support this other than.....that they are there and he doesn't believe that JS could have come up with them on his own or could have taken them out of the KJV because maybe he wasn't smart enough...I don't know. But this is very obviously circular reasoning. I then state that this argument is weak because the very fact that these forms are included in the BOM is in FACT an indicator that JS could have taken them out of the KJV and thus is EVIDENCE that he most likely had access to this book and could have very well used this book as opposed to any divine inspiration.  There is no assumption on my part, I'm just very clearly pointing out that the assumption that the BOM was translated by the "power of God" is illogical in and of itself when you consider the very evidence being discussed. I did not begin this analysis by assuming that Joseph Smith did not translate the BOM by divine inspiration. I may conclude from the evidence that this is the case but besides that, my main point is to say that you don't need the supernatural to explain how these things ended up in the BOM, you only need look at the evidence. 

 

I understand where you're going with this. You want  to invalidate all arguments for or against. Unfortunately this approach is generally taken by the side that has the most to lose and the weakest case.

 

I'm not trying to insult you, I just believe that you are trying to go beyond reason in an attempt to defend what you believe. If all one needs to do to exclude logical criticism from their undertaking is claim some sort of supernatural involvement...then maybe JS was in fact a genius and I invite you to believe any illogical explanation that you would like. I'd love to hear you defend any other faith's supernatural claims especially when they are this easily explained by the empirical evidence. Somehow I don't think you'd be so eager to leave the rational logical approach behind.

 

As far as your comments about the translation, it really doesn't make any sense to me unless maybe your mindset is that you already ascribe to the loose translation theory and this text is just more of the same.  I never meant or specifically said that this text IN AND OF ITSELF forces a loose translation theory, and maybe I should have been more explicit but would expect the people frequenting this board to be familiar with all of the other evidence that also contributes to this. I do however believe that this text is the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back and makes a tight translation or word for word translation theory untenable. 

[mfbukowski]

Hypothetically, if the Book of Mormon is a 19th century work, then it's interesting to think about why the Lord is portrayed here as explaining to the Brother of Jared that windows won't work in the vessels, since the Brother of Jared would likely never have heard of (glass) windows in 2200 BC. If The Late War is a text which heavily influences the wording, style, themes, and content of the Book of Mormon, then the passage in Ether could almost be seen as a response to the ship-building technology of the early 19th century.

 

Again, in this hypothetical world, if Joseph read this passage from The Late War, he could have read that ships have windows, but if it didn't fit the narrative he'd intended then he could have used the character of the Lord to specify that windows would be forbidden.

Why are crtics often literalists?

 

Since Kevin did not post this I will. 

 

William Perry claimed (and his claims have been substantiated by subsequent research) that college students (but others, too) "journey" through 9 "positions" with respect to intellectual (and moral) development. These stages can be characterized in terms of the student's attitude towards knowledge. The 9 positions, grouped into 4 categories, are:

Dualism/Received Knowledge:

There are right/wrong answers, engraved on Golden Tablets in the sky, known to Authorities.

1. Basic Duality:

   All problems are solvable;

   Therefore, the student's task is to learn the Right Solutions

2. Full Dualism:

   Some Authorities (literature, philosophy) disagree;

   others (science, math) agree.

   Therefore, there are Right Solutions, but some teachers' views of the Tablets are obscured.

   Therefore, student's task is to learn the Right Solutions and ignore the others!

• Rapaport's speculation, part 1: Perhaps we begin as Dualists because we begin by accepting information from the world and reacting to it.

1. Multiplicity/Subjective Knowledge:

   There are conflicting answers;

   therefore, students must trust their "inner voices", not external Authority.

   3. Early Multiplicity:

      There are 2 kinds of problems:

      • those whose solutions we know
      • those whose solutions we don't know yet
      (thus, a kind of dualism).

      Student's task is to learn how to find the Right Solutions.

   4. Late Multiplicity:

      Most problems are of the second kind;

      therefore, everyone has a right to their own opinion;

      • or
      some problems are unsolvable;

      therefore, it doesn't matter which (if any) solution you choose.

      Student's task is to shoot the bull.

      (Most freshman are at this position, which is a kind of relativism)

   At this point, some students become alienated, and either retreat to an earlier ("safer") position ("I think I'll study math, not literature, because there are clear answers and not as much uncertainty") or else escape (drop out) ("I can't stand college; all they want is right answers" or else "I can't stand college; no one gives you the right answers".)

   • Rapaport's speculation, part 2: Perhaps we evolve into Multiplists after we learn things tacitly and have internal or implicit "feelings" or intuitions about things, but not conscious or explicit beliefs that can be explained or justified.

    

2. Relativism/Procedural Knowledge:

   There are disciplinary reasoning methods:

   Connected knowledge: empathetic (why do you believe X?; what does this poem say to me?)

   vs. Separated knowledge: "objective analysis" (what techniques can I use to analyze this poem?)

   5. Contextual Relativism:

      All proposed solutions are supported by reasons;

      i.e., must be viewed in context & relative to support.

      Some solutions are better than others, depending on context.

      Student's task is to learn to evaluate solutions.

      • Rapaport's speculation, part 3: Perhaps we then evolve into Contextual Relativists when we can express our intuitions in language and seek justifications for them and relationships among them.
   6. "Pre-Commitment":

      Student sees the necessity of:

      • making choices
      • committing to a solution

    

3. Commitment/Constructed Knowledge:

   Integration of knowledge learned from others with personal experience and reflection.

   7. Commitment:

      Student makes a commitment.

   8. Challenges to Commitment:

      Student experiences implications of commitment.

      Student explores issues of responsibility.

   9. "Post-Commitment":

      Student realizes commitment is an ongoing, unfolding, evolving activity

   The journey is sometimes repeated; and one can be at different stages at the same time with respect to different subjects.

Knowledge is constructed, not found

[volgadon]

First of all, those aren't my own remarks that I quoted. I do agree with these thoughts from an anonymous member of the church, cited elsewhere (take it however you wish):

At least you agree that this deserves some looking into instead of a hand-waving dismissal. Incidentally, your response here sounds suspiciously similar to the response of a lot of critics to Book of Mormon parallels to ancient documents. In both cases, one side is looking for parallels, and the other side is trying to invalidate the parallels. The moral of the story is that, when trying to establish parallels, one must be careful and rigorous. Of course, people are going to see what they want to see, no matter what.

 

 

That is Ryan Thomas, I believe, but references to weapons and mechanical devices are not at all uncommon.

 

Neither Hunt nor the Book of Mormon refer to architecture being of curious workmanship.

 

 

 

Neither do some of the books refering to weapons.

[jkwilliams]

Why are crtics often literalists?

 

Since Kevin did not post this I will. 

Knowledge is constructed, not found

Being a good postmodernist, I would say that applies to spiritual knowledge, as well.

[Nemesis]

Off topic posts have been removed. Stay on topic please.

Nemesis

[canadaduane]

So, you believe there is a meaningful parallel when there are five nouns in one verse of the TLWB that are also found skattered somewhat out of order across 67 verses of the Book of Ether? Really?

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

 

I think it's interesting, on it's own. But no, it isn't meaningful until you take the whole book into account.

[mfbukowski]

And I disagree with you. The lack of evidence for Nephites (and the evidence against) suggests that there were probably no Nephites. What would be a category error would be in insisting that the lack of Nephites invalidates your spiritual experience or anyone else's. I've never said that at all.

I know this guy who believes he is a prophet. He sees revelations by looking at pictures of a certain mountain. He's published his revelations, and he asks you to join him based on his belief that, if you study and pray with him long enough and hard enough, you'll have spiritual experiences that will confirm he's really a prophet. What should you do with this? Do you think it's worth the time and effort to determine through spiritual experience that he's a prophet? What if he had been the first Mormon you met (he is Mormon in the sense that he believes Joseph Smith was a prophet and the scriptures he brought forth are true)? Why did you choose this particular branch of Mormonism? What, if anything, was the difference between randomly asking God for spiritual experiences, and asking about Mormonism?

I'm not trying to be snarky, but given that you have repeatedly said that nothing matters other than spiritual experience, I'm trying to understand how this philosophy came about and how it relates to your acceptance of Mormonism as true.

John you just don't listen.

 

I was a Pragmatist and an atheist before I studied Mormonism.  I believed all this Rorty stuff before I found the church.  I believed that humans created everything in the sense that there is nothing a human can know which is not somehow "run though" the consciousness of a human.

 

That is indisputable.  We do not see things as dogs see them, we do not see things as whales see them, we see things as humans see them.  Everything we know and see is from a human perspective.  In a real sense, humans create all we know.

 

I studied William James who essentially said- "spiritual experiences are as real as any other experience" for the above reasons

 

I studied Wittgenstein who said that all allegedly philosophical problems, like these alleged problems, are just problems with words.

 

I studied Nietzsche who said that there are no facts, only interpretations- precisely for the same reason the others did.

 

Then I studied Mormonism.  They preached that God is a Man who "called" things into existence on the first day second day etc.  God is a linguistic constructivist!

 

I studied Humanism which taught that we should be the best humans we can- and surprise surprise, Mormonism teaches the same thing.

 

Then somebody gave me a Book of Mormon.  The angel and plate story was preposterous!  Then I read some of it and found philosophical messages which tied all the other stuff into one whole and gave it all a Christian twist besides.   Did it matter to me if there were Nephites or not?  Not at all!  Why should it?  I was looking at a religious position not a system of facts.

 

I prayed if this was the path that the "Ideal Man" - inside me or outside me didn't matter- wanted me to take. (Translation: I asked God if the Book of Mormon was true- I see both these statements as equivalent)

 

Out of the blue I had the most amazing experience of my life.  It was without a doubt coming from outside myself.  It was pure intelligence and love and peace, all at once, flowing through my being.  It was a clear answer that God (or the Ideal Human outside me now, for sure) wanted me to follow this path.

 

That was over thirty years ago and I have never looked back.

 

So all this nonsense about whether there were Nephites was totally resolved in my mind before I even prayed about the BOM.  It was irrelevant.  Maybe it happened that way, maybe not.  I really did not care.  The religious teachings had nothing to do with that

 

God told me that this was the path he wanted for me, and I followed it and will follow it forever.  I will continue trying to be the best human I can be- according to values I have defined for myself, and which parallel the Didache "Way of Life", which of course also parallel the 10 commandments perfectly.

 

That's the last time I am telling you the story John.  It is getting really old.

[Tacenda]

See this is exactly what these guys need to hear if I am understanding you.

I know you have had problems with the church and still do, but the bottom line is that you understand it is "our hearts and not our heads".

They of course will assume that one who says that doesn't have the intelligence to act with "their head" instead of their feelings.

But they are the ones missing the point! Observing one's situation objectively has nothing to do with how one reacts to the observation. It is said, accurately for example, that money can't buy you love or happiness, and though we joke about that, it is actually perfectly true.

Happiness is an attitude of a well-tuned life, when you are in cognitive harmony (as someone who has taken that moniker knows)

What that poster does not know is that one can have as much cognitive harmony in the church as out of it, depending on one's attitude. So yes, facts make a difference in our lives but it is how we react or respond to those facts which make us happy or unhappy.

I've evolved to this way of thinking for the mean time...I think it is up to the individual because so much out there cannot be proven, it is scary to not believe in a God and I've come close to the edge since my struggles. Now I just think I need to go with my heart. Especially after listening to the latest podcast on Mormon Matters! I hope people will take a listen, you may like it MF!

[mfbukowski]

Let's break this down. Blake puts forth the idea that the OT forms present in the BOM are there because of divine inspiration and puts forth no evidence to support this other than.....that they are there and he doesn't believe that JS could have come up with them on his own or could have taken them out of the KJV because maybe he wasn't smart enough...I don't know. But this is very obviously circular reasoning. I then state that this argument is weak because the very fact that these forms are included in the BOM is in FACT an indicator that JS could have taken them out of the KJV and thus is EVIDENCE that he most likely had access to this book and could have very well used this book as opposed to any divine inspiration.  There is no assumption on my part, I'm just very clearly pointing out that the assumption that the BOM was translated by the "power of God" is illogical in and of itself when you consider the very evidence being discussed. I did not begin this analysis by assuming that Joseph Smith did not translate the BOM by divine inspiration. I may conclude from the evidence that this is the case but besides that, my main point is to say that you don't need the supernatural to explain how these things ended up in the BOM, you only need look at the evidence. 

 

I understand where you're going with this. You want  to invalidate all arguments for or against. Unfortunately this approach is generally taken by the side that has the most to lose and the weakest case.

 

I'm not trying to insult you, I just believe that you are trying to go beyond reason in an attempt to defend what you believe. If all one needs to do to exclude logical criticism from their undertaking is claim some sort of supernatural involvement...then maybe JS was in fact a genius and I invite you to believe any illogical explanation that you would like. I'd love to hear you defend any other faith's supernatural claims especially when they are this easily explained by the empirical evidence. Somehow I don't think you'd be so eager to leave the rational logical approach behind.

 

As far as your comments about the translation, it really doesn't make any sense to me unless maybe your mindset is that you already ascribe to the loose translation theory and this text is just more of the same.  I never meant or specifically said that this text IN AND OF ITSELF forces a loose translation theory, and maybe I should have been more explicit but would expect the people frequenting this board to be familiar with all of the other evidence that also contributes to this. I do however believe that this text is the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back and makes a tight translation or word for word translation theory untenable. 

I really wish you would define "logical"

 

Are you taking a postivist position? 

[jkwilliams]

John you just don't listen.

I guess not, as I don't recall you ever telling me this story this way.

 

That's the last time I am telling you the story John.  It is getting really old.

Sorry to have bothered you about it.

[cognitiveharmony]

I really wish you would define "logical"

 

Are you taking a postivist position? 

hmmm. Are you saying that I misused the word?

 

I usually do take a postivist position until I'm given a 'logical' or valid reason not to.

[wenglund]

I think it's interesting, on it's own. But no, it isn't meaningful until you take the whole book into account.

 

I am trying to imagine how taking the whole book into account would somehow make these kinds of un-meaningful parallels meaningful.

 

Let's look at this in terms of the mechanics in producing the Book of Mormon using your brother's parallel as just one example.

 

Do you have in mind that Joseph Smith had the TLWB in hand while producing the book of Ether, and when he got to the second chapter of Ether, he decided to use in verse 17, and out of sequence, two of the nouns from a single verse in TLWB, and then when he got to verse 23, he decided to use two more of the nouns from that same single verse in TLWB, and then several chapters later, he decided to use one of the previous nouns along with another noun from the same single verse in the TLWB? Do you have in mind that he did the same with various other verses throughout the Book of Mormon?

 

When considered in these term, to me the suggestion of "meaningful parallels" seems more than a little spectacular, if not unbelievable.

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited October 22, 2013 by wenglund

[mfbukowski]

hmmm. Are you saying that I misused the word?

 

I usually do take a postivist position until I'm given a 'logical' or valid reason not to.

Well it sounds like you are in that ballpark.  Basically it means that if a statement is not scientifically verifiable, you should not accept it.

 

 

Logical positivism, logical empiricism, or neopositivism embraced verificationism, a set of theories of knowledge that combined logicism, empiricism, and linguistics to ground philosophy on a basis consistent with exemplary examples of empirical sciences. Seeking to overhaul all of philosophy and convert it to a new scientific philosophy,^[1] the movement emerged in the late 1920s from the Berlin Circle and from the Vienna Circle.

Appalled by Western society's flaring racism, bigotry, and nationalism, but perhaps no less by countermovements toward metaphysics, mysticism, and intuition, logical positivists were inspired by developments in mathematical logic, philosophy of language, and physics, especially general theory of relativity. They sought to give the world a transparent, universal language where all statements were both meaningful and verifiable, either logically or empirically. In the positivistic tradition, all knowledge, that is, justified belief, was within sciences, which all would unify via shared method. Otherwise, logical positivists held diverse views,^[2] yet generally endorsed scientific materialism and metaphysical naturalism.^[3]

 

 

 

But there are problems with that view.  Unfortunately the world is not always "logical".

 

Good old wikipedia. There are other sites of course, but not quite as user friendly.   I added the underlining.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_positivism

 

Critics

After the Second World War's close in 1945, key tenets of logical positivism, including its atomistic philosophy of science, the verifiability principle, and the fact/value gap, drew escalated criticism. It was clear that empirical claims cannot be verified universally true.^[14] Thus, as initially stated, the verifiability criterion made universal statements meaningless, and even made statements beyond empiricism for technological but not conceptual reasons meaningless—quite a problem for science.^[22][35][36] These problems were recognized within the movement, which hosted attempted solutions—Carnap's move to confirmation, Ayer's acceptance of weak verification—but the program drew sustained criticism from a number of directions by the 1950s. Even philosophers disagreeing among themselves on which direction general epistemology ought to take, as well as on philosophy of science, agreed that the logical empiricist program was untenable, and it became viewed as selfcontradictory.^[37] The verifiability criterion of meaning was itself unverified.^[37] Notable critics were Nelson Goodman, Willard Van Orman Quine, Norwood Hanson, Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, J L Austin, Peter Strawson, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty.

Quine

Although quite empiricist, American logician Willard Van Orman Quine published the 1951 paper "Two dogmas of empiricism",^[38] which challenged conventional empiricist presumptions. Quine attacked the analytic/synthetic division, which the verificationist program had been hinged upon in order to entail, by consequence of Hume's fork, both necessity and apriocity. Quine's ontological relativity explained that every term in any statement has its meaning contingent on a vast network of knowledge and belief, the speaker's conception of the entire world. Quine later proposed naturalized epistemology.

Hanson

In 1958, Norwood Hanson's Patterns of Discovery undermined the division of observation versus theory,^[39] as one can predict, collect, prioritize, and assess data only via some horizon of expectation set by a theory. Thus, any dataset—the direct observations, the scientific facts—is laden with theory.

Popper

An early, tenacious critic was Karl Popper whose 1934 book Logik der Forschung, arriving in English in 1959 as The Logic of Scientific Discovery, directly answered verificationism. Popper heeded the problem of induction as rendering empirical verification logically impossible.^[40] And the deductive fallacy of affirming the consequent reveals any phenomenon's capacity to host over one logically possible explanation. Accepting scientific method as hypotheticodeduction, whose inference form is denying the consequent, Popper finds scientific method unable to proceed without falsifiable predictions. Popper thus identifies falsifiability to demarcate not meaningful from meaningless but simply scientific from unscientific—a label not in itself unfavorable.

Popper finds virtue in metaphysics, required to develop new scientific theories. And an unfalsifiable—thus unscientific, perhaps metaphysical—concept in one era can later, through evolving knowledge or technology, become falsifiable, thus scientific. Popper also found science's quest for truth to rest on values. Popper disparages the pseudoscientific, which occurs when an unscientific theory is proclaimed true and coupled with seemingly scientific method by "testing" the unfalsifiable theory—whose predictions are confirmed by necessity—or when a scientific theory's falsifiable predictions are strongly falsified but the theory is persistently protected by "immunizing stratagems", such as the appendage of ad hoc clauses saving the theory or the recourse to increasingly speculative hypotheses shielding the theory.

Popper's scientific epistemology is falsificationism, which finds that no number, degree, and variety of empirical successes can either verify or confirm scientific theory. Falsificationism finds science's aim as corroboration of scientific theory, which strives for scientific realism but accepts the maximal status of strongly corroborated verisimilitude ("truthlikeness"). Explicitly denying the positivist view that all knowledge is scientific, Popper developed the general epistemology critical rationalism, which finds human knowledge to evolve by conjectures and refutations. Popper thus acknowledged the value of the positivist movement, driving evolution of human understanding, but claimed that he had "killed positivism".

Kuhn

With his landmark, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn critically destabilized the verificationist program, which was presumed to called for foundationalism. (Actually, even in the 1930s, Otto Neurath had argued for nonfoundationalism via coherentism by likening science to a boat that scientists must rebuilt at sea.) Although Kuhn's thesis itself was attacked even by opponents of neopositivism, in the 1970 postscript to Structure, Kuhn asserted, at least, that there was no algorithm to science—and, on that, even most of Kuhn's critics agreed.

Powerful and persuasive, Kuhn's book, unlike the vocabulary and symbols of logic's formal language, was written in natural language open to the laypersons.^[41] Ironically, Kuhn's book was first published in a volume of Encyclopedia of Unified Science—a project begun by logical positivists—and some sense unified science, indeed, but by bringing it into the realm of historical and social assessment, rather than fitting it to the model of physics.^[41] Kuhn's ideas were rapidly adopted by scholars in disciplines well outside natural sciences,^[41] and, as logical empiricists were extremely influential in the social sciences,^[24] ushered academia into postpostivism or postempiricism.^[41]

Putnam

The "received view" operates on the correspondence rule that states, "The observational terms are taken as referring to specified phenomena or phenomenal properties, and the only interpretation given to the theoretical terms is their explicit definition provided by the correspondence rules".^[13] According to Hilary Putnam, a former student of Reichenbach and of Carnap, the dichotomy of observational terms versus theoretical terms introduced a problem within scientific discussion that nonexistent until this dichotomy was stated by logical positivists.^[42] Putnam's four objections:

1. Something is referred to as "observational" if it is observable directly with our senses. Then an observation term cannot be applied to something unobservable. If this is the case, there are no observation terms.
2. With Carnap's classification, some unobservable terms are not even theoretical and belong to neither observation terms nor theoretical terms. Some theoretical terms refer primarily to observation terms.
3. Reports of observation terms frequently contain theoretical terms.
4. A scientific theory may not contain any theoretical terms (an example of this is Darwin's original theory of evolution).

Putman also alleged that positivism was actually a form of metaphysical idealism by its rejecting scientific theory's ability to garner knowledge about nature's unobservable aspects. With his "no miracles" argument, posed in 1974, Putnam asserted scientific realism, the stance that science achieves true—or approximately true—knowledge of the world as it exists independently of humans' sensory experience. In this, Putnam opposed not only the positivism but other instrumentalism—whereby scientific theory as but a human tool to predict human observations—filling the void left by positivism's decline.

Retrospect

By the late 1960s, the neopositivist movement had clearly run its course.^[43] Interviewed in the late 1970s, A J Ayer supposed that "the most important" defect "was that nearly all of it was false".^[44] Although logical positivism tends to be recalled as a pillar of scientism,^[3]Carl Hempel was key in establishing the philosophy subdiscipline philosophy of science^[15] where Thomas Kuhn and Karl Popper brought in the era postpositivism.^[41]John Passmore found logical positivism to be "dead, or as dead as a philosophical movement ever becomes".^[44]

Logical positivism's fall reopened debate over the metaphysical merit of scientific theory, whether it can offer knowledge of the world beyond human experience (scientific realism) versus whether it is but a human tool to predict human experience (instrumentalism).^[45][46] Meanwhile, it became popular among philosophers to rehash the faults and failures of logical positivism without investigation of it.^[47] Thereby, logical positivism has been generally misrepresented, sometimes severely.^[48] Arguing for their own views, often framed versus logical positivism, many philosophers have reduced logical positivism to simplisms and stereotypes, especially the notion of logical positivism as a type of foundationalism.^[48] In any event, the movement helped anchor analytic philosophy in the Anglosphere, and returned Britain to empiricism. Minus logical positivists, tremendously influential outside philosophy, especially in psychology and social sciences, intellectual life of the 20^th would be unrecognizable.^[15]

I would say there is a whole boatload there of valid reasons not to take a positivist position.

[phaedrus ut]

I'm not one to engage in hyperbole but this book is amazing.  Don't look at it trying to find the words Nephi or Zarahemla.  Look at it from the standpoint of what a contemporary of Joseph Smith in 19th century New York would write when constructing a narrative based using pseudo biblical language, holding a belief in American exceptionalism, and using types of ancient sounding stories. If Mark Hoffman had found this he would have changed the names of the characters and cities and sold it as the lost 116 pages. 

 

My initial assessment was that this was a bullseye but the more I read it’s starting to look like a hat trick.

 

Phaedrus

[mfbukowski]

I would say there is a whole boatload there of valid reasons not to take a positivist position.

I mean I hate it when people don't question their religious beliefs- don't you? 

[wenglund]

I'm not one to engage in hyperbole but this book is amazing.  Don't look at it trying to find the words Nephi or Zarahemla.  Look at it from the standpoint of what a contemporary of Joseph Smith in 19th century New York would write when constructing a narrative based using pseudo biblical language, holding a belief in American exceptionalism, and using types of ancient sounding stories. If Mark Hoffman had found this he would have changed the names of the characters and cities and sold it as the lost 116 pages. 

 

My initial assessment was that this was a bullseye but the more I read it’s starting to look like a hat trick.

 

Phaedrus

 

I read through the first couple of chapters of the Late War, and with the exception of the first five words, I found little in common between it and the Book of Mormon. One may transpose the name Madison with that of Nephi, and then change the name of the city Washington to Jerusalem, and it wouldn't make any difference. The story lines and content and themes are about as similar as the Rise of the Third Reich is to my personal journal--which is virtually nil.

 

I, can't see how anyone who is the least bit familiar with the two books could reasonably, even in theory, believe the Late War was the origin of, let alone "influenced," the Book of Mormon.

 

Even still, I invite the theorist to see if the theory is rendered absurd or not by putting the theory into practice (try writing a similar story to the Book of Mormon using the Late War, and see what I mean).

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Edited October 23, 2013 by wenglund

[volgadon]

Hypothetically, if the Book of Mormon is a 19th century work, then it's interesting to think about why the Lord is portrayed here as explaining to the Brother of Jared that windows won't work in the vessels, since the Brother of Jared would likely never have heard of (glass) windows in 2200 BC. If The Late War is a text which heavily influences the wording, style, themes, and content of the Book of Mormon, then the passage in Ether could almost be seen as a response to the ship-building technology of the early 19th century.

 

Again, in this hypothetical world, if Joseph read this passage from The Late War, he could have read that ships have windows, but if it didn't fit the narrative he'd intended then he could have used the character of the Lord to specify that windows would be forbidden.

 

Why assume that the text refers to glass windows?

[Calm]

Why assume that the text refers to glass windows?

Why not assume both got the idea of associating an ark like vessel and windows from the Bible if one is assuming a literary creation?

[Glenn101]

I read through the first couple of chapters of the Late War, and with the exception of the first five words, I found little in common between it and the Book of Mormon. One may transpose the name Madison with that of Nephi, and then change the name of the city Washington to Jerusalem, and it wouldn't make any difference. The story lines and content and themes are about as similar as the Rise of the Third Reich is to my personal journal--which is virtually nil.

 

I, can't see how anyone who is the least bit familiar with the two books could reasonably, even in theory, believe the Late War was the origin of, let alone "influenced," the Book of Mormon.

 

Even still, I invite the theorist to see if the theory is rendered absurd or not by putting the theory into practice (try writing a similar story to the Book of Mormon using the Late War, and see what I mean).

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

 

 

Maybe it means that finally, at last, the Spaulding manuscript theorists have given up and are looking for new fodder.

 

Glenn

[The Grimace]

I read through the first couple of chapters of the Late War, and with the exception of the first five words, I found little in common between it and the Book of Mormon. One may transpose the name Madison with that of Nephi, and then change the name of the city Washington to Jerusalem, and it wouldn't make any difference. The story lines and content and themes are about as similar as the Rise of the Third Reich is to my personal journal--which is virtually nil.

 

I, can't see how anyone who is the least bit familiar with the two books could reasonably, even in theory, believe the Late War was the origin of, let alone "influenced," the Book of Mormon.

 

Even still, I invite the theorist to see if the theory is rendered absurd or not by putting the theory into practice (try writing a similar story to the Book of Mormon using the Late War, and see what I mean).

 

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Wade, your opinion would hold a lot more weight if we did not have access to both books. Fortunately we have both books, and this thread contains but a few of the many parallels that are evident. 

 

We are beyond "this is absurd".