On The Deflationary Theory

[Ahab]

Fortunately as you point out, they are also human. And yes, I am including God as a glorified Human in a glorified human family.

The whole point of this exercise is to take away sectarian dualism, which has resulted culturally in the "death of god", and replace it with a way of seeing based on the restoration.

Then I think you should make it clear that all that "we" can know is everything that can be known/experienced that is real/true even though "we" can have ideas/thoughts about things that really are not true/real.

Like a God without any parts or passions that does not have a body like ours, or more precisely, what our bodies are like. I know some of us/people have some ideas that such a being exists and is real/true, but the fact that they have that idea doesn't mean there really/truly is such a being. And it's interesting that they admit that such a being can not be known. So at least we agree to a point.

For me personally, this view has the power to resolve all the theological nonsense we have seen for the last 1800 years, and has dramatically changed my life in transforming me from the atheist I was into the unshakable True Believing Mormon I am today.

Some see it and some don't, but I am not alone in this view, thank God, and I see signs that I find very encouraging.

I take comfort in the fact that some of us are still learning all there is to be known, and that true knowledge has the power to transcend false knowledge. False knowledge being knowledge of things that are false. Those "Aha!" moments are pretty awesome to experience, and worth the sacrifice of all of the false ideas we have along with any associated pride or stubbornness. Edited July 17, 2015 by Ahab

[mfbukowski]

Just for the record, no Ahab, we are talking past each other.

 

Then I think you should make it clear that all that "we" can know is everything that can be known/experienced that is real/true even though "we" can have ideas/thoughts about things that really are not true/real.

Like a God without any parts or passions that does not have a body like ours, or more precisely, what our bodies are like. I know some of us/people have some ideas that such a being exists and is real/true, but the fact that they have that idea doesn't mean there really/truly is such a being. And it's interesting that they admit that such a being can not be known. So at least we agree to a point.

I take comfort in the fact that some of us are still learning all there is to be known, and that true knowledge has the power to transcend false knowledge. False knowledge being knowledge of things that are false. Those "Aha!" moments are pretty awesome to experience, and worth the sacrifice of all of the false ideas we have along with any associated pride or stubbornness.

[Ahab]

Just for the record, no Ahab, we are talking past each other.

Close, but not quite.

I understand you and simply disagree with some of what you are saying.

[mfbukowski]

Ahab, my buddy

 

Just because there are many who might draw the wrong conclusions, I must tell you that it is clear that you do not understand nor does your post say anything that "disagrees" with my point.  We are clearly talking past each other.

 

I like you- I just do not want to give any readers the wrong impression.  I will not respond any more to you on this subject because it will just go on forever.  Thanks for the discussion. As I said earlier, this is not for everyone.  Thanks again.

[Mars]

I just don't think truth can be separated from our thoughts and language. We under the truth in terms of our language. Like literally. Until you hear the word of God, your understanding of what is true is necessarily insulated from it.

Its not useful to a person to make a comparison between what is true and what they postulate because any comparison between the two necessarily means to consider something they haven't considered.

After they have been introduced to concepts such as Jesus, Book of Mormon, or what else, then we can talk about why they do or don't accept it as true. Why would someone think that the book of Mormon is false? Many reasons. It's still in terms of their perception, though, and not in terms of something that is independent of their understanding. You just can't get them to separate themselves from their language. And that's OK.

I will come back to this. I reserve the right to think about it thoroughly and type it up on something other than a phone.

[mfbukowski]

I just don't think truth can be separated from our thoughts and language. We under the truth in terms of our language. Like literally. Until you hear the word of God, your understanding of what is true is necessarily insulated from it.

Its not useful to a person to make a comparison between what is true and what they postulate because any comparison between the two necessarily means to consider something they haven't considered.

After they have been introduced to concepts such as Jesus, Book of Mormon, or what else, then we can talk about why they do or don't accept it as true. Why would someone think that the book of Mormon is false? Many reasons. It's still in terms of their perception, though, and not in terms of something that is independent of their understanding. You just can't get them to separate themselves from their language. And that's OK.

I will come back to this. I reserve the right to think about it thoroughly and type it up on something other than a phone.

Please do!

 

Indeed!  It is direct experience of "knowing" just as one directly knows the color red or the sound of a trumpet.  "It is true that THAT was the sound of a trumpet" is something no one would ever say.  We do not doubt direct experience.  Is that "really" my wife I see now sitting on the couch?  I cannot doubt it, and it is superfluous to say that it is "true"- it just IS.

 

You do not consider saying "It is true that my wife is sitting on the couch"- there is no need for it.  If someone asks "Where's mom?"  the answer is "Sitting on the couch"- no truth is involved- it just IS what it IS as we sometimes say to make the point that "This is a brute fact, a condition of the world and there is nothing more to be said about it."  No appeals, no changes, no other way of seeing it or saying it- "It is what it is".

 

The expression at first blush is useless and certainly one can see that.  Yet it expresses perfectly the finality of how experience reveals itself.  It is not a representation, it is not something else, it is what it is, and that says all that can be said about it.  Get on with life and deal with it, because "it is what it is".

One crucial typo in your post

 

We under the truth in terms of our language

 

What was that "under" supposed to be?  I really want to see what that sentence was about!

[Mars]

Understand. That was it.

I just don't know how two people have private - and bear with me for the following description as I attempt to be as general as possible:

I just don't know what to make of two conflicting conclusions by two different people concerning the same subject matter.

My evangelical friend is just 100% certain that my convictions wrt the restoration are not of God. He hasn't gotten the same communication from God that I claim to have gotten. We both claim to have done the same requisite legwork.

Is his sentence false when I hear it? Is mine true? 'the book of Mormon did/did not come from God.'

How is that resolved? Does it need to be? Is it OK that I have my reservations about the sincerity of his legwork as he (I'm guessing) has the same about mine? For instance, I doubt strongly he left the door open for it to be true and I doubt strongly he considers my faculties to be free of mental coercion. But I could never possibly know it.

I suppose it's possible that we're both correct. But I don't know what that implies exactly. For now I have just concluded that my experience was authentic and for some reason God did not impart to him the way He did to me the truthfulness of the restoration.

Still more to come

Edited July 19, 2015 by Mars

[mfbukowski]

Understand. That was it.

I just don't know how two people have private - and bear with me for the following description as I attempt to be as general as possible:

I just don't know what to make of two conflicting conclusions by two different people concerning the same subject matter.

My evangelical friend is just 100% certain that my convictions wrt the restoration are not of God. He hasn't gotten the same communication from God that I claim to have gotten. We both claim to have done the same requisite legwork.

Is his sentence false when I hear it? Is mine true? 'the book of Mormon did/did not come from God.'

How is that resolved? Does it need to be? Is it OK that I have my reservations about the sincerity of his legwork as he (I'm guessing) has the same about mine? For instance, I doubt strongly he left the door open for it to be true and I doubt strongly he considers my faculties to be free of mental coercion. But I could never possibly know it.

I suppose it's possible that we're both correct. But I don't know what that implies exactly. For now I have just concluded that my experience was authentic and for some reason God did not impart to him the way He did to me the truthfulness of the restoration.

Still more to come

OK get it now about "understand". duh, now I fee dumb.   Yes that's it.

 

Your EV friend needs to understand Alma 32, and its implications for both of you, but of course he will never do that because he is caught in a paradigm where there IS only one "true" answer for everything, which there only "sort of" is!

 

Let's look at it as a pure pragmatist.  Pragmatism is a theory about the way thought and language about the world work.   As such a theory it is itself a paradigm, a theory, a belief system that enables to us to put a lot of these questions together into a neat package. Note also that this question itself becomes a discussion about the gospel, which I believe is essentially pragmatism.  So we are discussing both questions at once.

 

So is the "theory of pragmatism" itself "true"?

 

I believe that Pragmatism is the best explanation we have presently for the nature of "truth".  The view is essentially Alma 32- which says that the truth becomes "sweet" to you as you live its principles.

 

So could God cause Evangelical beliefs to be "sweet" to someone?  I believe absolutely that could happen.  God teaches us individually what we personally need to learn to grow closer to God.

 

Looking at each personality, which sets of belief will advance Mars?  Which will advance coolrok, one of our Evangelicals?   I think there is something deep inside us that defines what beliefs we need to move each of us closer to God.  Some need absolutes, others do not,  We are at different stages of progression.

 

That is pure pragmatism.  We choose the tool that will work the best for us.  Pick any job around the house as an analogy.  Is a hammer always the best tool to drive a tack into the wall?  Maybe one person who is skilled with a hammer may not worry about missing and putting a hole in the wall.  Maybe a person who is not so skilled will pick some kind of pushing tool to push the tack in.  Some may use a butter knife as a screw driver if one is not available.

 

Is a butter knife the one true tool to put in a screw?  No, but it will work if that is all you have.  Do we teach new investigators about the Church of the Firstborn and the Patriarchal Order before we teach them about the atonement?  Of course not!

 

The Lord teaches us what we need to know to move forward.

 

So is pragmatism itself "true"?  Yes and no, depending on what you mean by "true".

 

I am convinced it is the best possible overall view available and I am convinced that eventually everyone will see that.  EVERYONE will see that

 

Same with the gospel.  Not everyone will see that right away, but are they "wrong"?  We have to assume that they have their own ability and right to address the Lord and that they also have the same responsibility to follow their individual consciences.

 

I believe that they have found their path "for now" and when they learn what they need to learn, they will grow naturally and organically and find new "fruit" that is even more sweet than what they have now.

 

But there ARE principles which "always work" as well, and I believe those are defined by what we as a species need for civilization to work.  I happen to believe that the 10 commandments are not only God;s eternal truths but also always "work" for humanity.  One cannot live in a culture where there is random murder robbery rape and chaos happening 24-7.  That NEVER "works" for anyone.  "Family values" always "work" because we need those values to survive.  Babies cannot survive without families and their welfare improves in direct proportion to how their parents live the commandments.

 

We can agree with Evangelicals that the only way you can know that Jesus is the Christ is by revelation.  They will say it's the bible, but ultimately they have to answer how they know the Bible itself is "true" or works

 

They are prejudiced against the BOM and that often stands in their way.   But when you ask them how they KNEW that becoming a Christian was "right" it will always come back to essentially a Moroni 10:4-5 experience without them even knowing that while it was happening.

 

So I think we have more in common with them than they will ever admit.  I remember exchanges with Rob Bowman and Richard Abanes that I have had and that question about how they know the bible is true always gets them.   I ask them what they were feeling when they "accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior"  and it is always going to be a Moroni 10:4-5 experience.  

 

It is inescapable- that IS the way God works.

Edited July 20, 2015 by mfbukowski

[Mars]

then what do we do with contradictory sentences?

[Mars]

and as an addendum

 

yeah...  i've had my suspicions about evangelical approaches to evaluating moroni's promise.  as in, i don't believe it's as easily dismissed as they have asserted to me in the past.  saying that feelings and the human heart are frail and unable to be trusted means you have to throw out the answers to very pertinent questions such as how do you know Jesus is able to save and not some nutjob from Galilee?  how do you know the message of the Bible is true?  how do you know you can trust the Bible? essentially boils down to the same thing we assert, though they may use different language to describe it.  (which makes us come full circle, ha!)  i honestly can't tell, though, if i only perceive the similarities due to the way i understand the world around me.  i see them using moroni's promise because i know moroni's promise.  or to borrow your tool analogy, when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

[mfbukowski]

then what do we do with contradictory sentences?

Not sure I see the problem.. What do you mean?  Can you give me examples?

 

And as far as the Bible is concerned- it's even worse than that if you want to be skeptical.  We don't know who the authors were, disputed evidence about the Exodus even happening, other mythical gods having the same story as "Jesus" who possibly did not exist etc.

 

If you think like an atheist, all of it doesn't measure up, and a squabble between a Mormon and and Evangelical would be like a squabble between a phrenologist and an astrologer about which science was better.  A true skeptic would see the question as totally absurd, and yet that skeptic would be wrong.  He would go to his save the whales ot meeting confident he was doing the right thing, with no more evidence of that than the bible being true.

 

We will find meaning for our lives or we have no reason to live, and none of it is based on logic.  It is always based on the best model we can find that goes with our emotions and prejudices. 

 

Revelation must be cultivated and is part of a righteous life style of "seeking the spirit".  Through the ages some have understood that and the vast majority of mankind has not.

There is nothing that can compare with knowing God and his love and goodness, that peace and warmth filling your being.  No other cause or human effort is worth it, in my opinion.

[Mars]

best contradictory example that i can think of is:

 

the book of mormon is the word of God

the book of mormon is NOT the word of God

 

all naturally assumed implications and consequences can be attached - restoration, joseph smith is prophet or charlatan, etc... etc... and so forth ad infinitum ad nauseum

 

all of what you wrote about skeptics - i've seen it firsthand both in person and interacting on social media.  i know of some people who purposefully group in God, Jesus, Zeus, and the Tooth Fairy to help contemporary americans such as myself see the categorization which they consider that God falls under.  one particular fella that i have in mind wants me to know, he has told me expressly, that he sees my views and beliefs in God as every bit as understandable and reasonable as i would see the mythology of the ancients or the fun fairy tales my children believe in.  in other words: naive and shallow.  lacking an explanation for the inexplicable and hence made up to serve a need to make sense of the world around me.  and i get that they have no more or less concrete ground to stand on than i.  they just refuse to act in the positive without that concrete ground, so they act in the negative and profess agnosticism (which is atheism in all practical terms, imo) and atheism if they say that the lack of concrete ground coupled with the horrors and crimes of the world is sufficient reason in their opinion to believe that there is no god.

 

as for the rest of your post:

 

i have it in mind that truth is supposed to agree.  that's how we frame it in the objective world.  both of us put heat sources under our pots of water, both of us have temperature taking mechanisms which we've calibrated off a shared source and both of us return and report that water boils at 100C or 212F, or even at 10 Bukowskis.   and we agree that we've established something to be true until we have reason to discard some of the facets of the truth.  the strength of the truth is the fact that it can be repeated and shared independent of person.  they just need to satisfy the conditions and they can be observed by outside parties.  this last point is crucial, imo, because the transparency makes the conclusions unequivocal.  you can't argue with the method and results unless you either don't understand them or you're being intentionally obtuse.

 

maybe this is part of the 'correspondence theory' that you've alluded?  i admit i'm not well read, and i certainly understand how the deflationary theory of truth boils down to (GET IT?!?!?) the thought that ascribing a truth element to a statement adds nothing to it, and that in matters of subjectivity, the honest assertion based on personal experience is every bit as valid as the shared experience's conclusion, but in the deflationary theory of truth, it feels like we're calling conflicting things true when in normal american 2015 parlance, truth should agree

 

more limited explanations that aren't fully reflective of how i think but are a good place to start:

 

chocolate is good = not really 'true', technically speaking.  the way that sentence can read in american english is such that it can imply that all chocolate in all stages in all situations in all history in all people is good.  it can also just be a quick and lazy way of saying:

 

i think chocolate is good.  this statement is more "true" than its counterpart above imo, because it is more narrow in its definition and hence less likely to have reasonable opposition to it.

 

as such - the book of mormon *IS* true - is not something i really go around saying.  i prefer to put it in terms of "i had an experience which i choose to believe came from God which tells me the Book of Mormon is His word and thus I am generally on board with this whole restoration thing"

 

it's easier for me to do that because when i used to say "the book of mormon *IS* true!" then my evangelical and critical and disbelieving friends would act as though their assertion to the contrary was sufficient to undermine the truth of my statement.  on my mission, i routinely encountered french folks who would say (and at the time, it maddened me like crazy to hear this) "you have your truth and i have mine.  your church might be true for you, but it's not true for me."  i would always counter that if something is true, it's always true, and it doesn't change the fact that it's true if you don't believe it.  now i find myself agreeing with them.  as far as they're concerned, the book of mormon wasn't true - and how could i have argued otherwise?  they had no interaction with the divine upon which to base a judgment and all their experiences up to that point didn't talk about the book of mormon, joseph smith, a new american religion, or anything of the sort - so why would they, upon first interaction with it, assume that it's true?  it's crazy to think they would.  ah 19 year old Mars...  you needed a chill pill, dude. 

 

even today, as much as i understand their position when i play over mission experiences in my head, i'm left wondering if i'm a relativist.  clearly not everyone can have the same set of experiences so as to baseline what *IS THE TRUTH!*  so obviously we're going to have different takes on what is true and what isn't.  and some of Jesus' parables have begun to read differently to me as a result.  the parable of the talents, now, (and i think i've said this so many times so bear with me as i repeat it once more) is more about God's explanation of what happens to each of and every single one of His children in the scope of the plan of salvation than it is about making sure that you learn to play the piano.  the firs two servants were in the clear and made their Master happy because they acted upon the truth they received, not because the had the same truth or wound up with the same amount of truth while in mortality.

 

and yet i can't quite let go of the fact that those people who have 'a different truth' need to discard it and come unto Christ and be perfected in Him.  my tone and language of the invite has changed dramatically over the last 15 years.  but i still hold on to this notion that even though i have my truth and you have yours, there is still one final truth - God's truth - that we need to iterate towards.

 

so this is why i ask "what do we do with conflicting truths?"

Edited July 20, 2015 by Mars

[mfbukowski]

Mars this is not an answer to your post- yet

 

I posted this on another thread and thought it showed the problem with the correspondence theory perhaps better than I have stated it before, so I thought I would repeat it here

 

The question was about why Mormons tend to become atheists if they leave the church
 

 

I was an atheist before I was a Mormon and was converted intellectually to Mormonism (The spirit did the actual converting, as always) through rational argumentation.

 

The bottom line is whether or not personal revelation is "rational" and whether or not taking action on it and changing ones life in accordance with personal revelation is rational.  One must believe that.

 

I was converted to that principle- that personal revelation is rational- through the philosophy of William James and the pragmatists, as most around here know.

 

The question becomes a simple one, as I see it.  If it is rational to believe in personal revelation, Mormonism is the church for you because you are essentially a Pragmatist.  We cannot see God, but we can feel Him in our hearts.  What is that feeling we have?  Is it "in our heads" or "real"?  The bottom line for a William James devotee is that it doesn't matter how you characterize it- that which works in your life is "true".

 

Surprise surprise, that is straight Alma 32.  THAT is the bottom line for Mormons intellectually speaking.  Either Moroni 10:4-5, James 1:5 and Alma 32 describe "truth" or they don't.

 

But most Mormons don't even understand that- they are Mormons because their parents told them that Joseph saw God.  They question whether or not it is "rational" to believe that Joseph saw God and conclude it is not.  If Joseph did not see God, they reason, the whole thing is a lie.  If it is not possible to communicate with an invisible being, then religion itself is irrational, there is no revelation, the bible and all scriptures are made up by men and a scam to boot.  Often the problem is confusing science with religion, but that is for other threads. THAT is the problem that is caused by Neoplatonism- the world of appearances vs "reality" and the problem solved by Pragmatism.

 

The answer is to teach a philosophy which can show that revelation and belief in it is "rational".  That is what Bushman is saying, but never makes explicit.

 

There are too many of us stuck in sectarian thinking which teaches an invisible realm of truth floating around somewhere and no where where God as amorphous spirit floats or fills the universe or some such nonsense.  We desperately want to be "Christians", a term that believers in Neoplatonism have totally co-opted and does not any longer mean "followers of Christ" but "followers of Neoplatonism".

 

Anyway, as I see it that is the bottom line.

 

The basis of all of it has to be personal revelation, as Bushman implies, or it is all nonsense.  If personal revelation is rational, God is real and we need to seek him.

 

Those three scriptures, James 1:5, Moroni 10:4-5, and Alma 32 are the basis for the "rationality" BOTH of the church and of belief in God in general.  Lose belief in those three scriptures for whatever irrational "reason" and it is all over.

 

[Mars]

roger - reading.

[Mars]

in general, provided someone doesn't turn on light and revelation given to them - irrespective of how, where, and when they got it - i agree.  when you receive light and revelation you receive light and revelation

 

but it smacks uncomfortably of relativism.

[mfbukowski]

Mars:

Quick answer, I will come back tonight to do the details if necessary.

 

Assume that Pragmatism is true.  What works is true.  Assume that on a cosmic level as well as on a personal level.  Think of evolution as an analogy

 

A person finds what works for them.  It disagrees with what works for someone else, but in both cases it really does "work" for them and they get closer to God, or at least so they think.

 

Pragmatism, the great Truth in the sky says that what works is true.  Each are using a different tool to get the same job done.

 

Eventually they will see this.  Eventually they will give up the notion that "TRUTH" is One Thing, and accept that Truth is What Works.

 

But guess what?  By so doing they affirm the One Truth that Pragmatism is True.   They get up in church and say "I know that Pragmatism is true".

 

There IS ultimately One Truth- and that One Truth is that Pragmatism is it.

 

How can relativism be true?  Because it is .  Ask any relativist.

 

Think of evolution and let's throw in a Star Trek /Star Wars central assumption.  You've got a zillion planets all working "pragmatically" where organisms are "evolving" APPEARING to be in a random matter.  Fish crawl ashore and become amphibians then reptiles birds, mammals and ultimately you have us.

 

The process itself selects for US- humans.  Arms and hands evolve because they "work" better at manipulating the enviroment.  Eventually these creatures get bigger brains for manipulating the environment.  they develop language and the rest is literally "history".

 

So all over the universe you have creatures practicing "pragmatism".  What works for them works.  There are dead ends because that path does not "work" but what survives, survives.  The environment changes.  What survives survives.

 

Ultimately on each planet after eons of pragmatism, you have the Ultimate Survival Machine.  All have language, big brains, bipedal locomotion so you can hold the baby while you run from the lion or throw the spear.

 

All those individual "conflicting" paths (amphibians did not grow feathers - if they did that was a dead end and "false") end up in ONE PRAGMATIC TRUTH that truth itself evolves because it all "works".

 

So individual truths in the long run are over ruled by the BIG TRUTH that always "works".

 

So now you have Klingons and Humans and Ferengis etc etc.  You end up in a bar scene from Star Wars with "humanoids" all different, but in all important ways, the same.

 

Does that help?

[mfbukowski]

in general, provided someone doesn't turn on light and revelation given to them - irrespective of how, where, and when they got it - i agree.  when you receive light and revelation you receive light and revelation

 

but it smacks uncomfortably of relativism.

So what?

[Mars]

So what?

 

on some level, i feel like truth is supposed to agree.

Edited July 20, 2015 by Mars

[mfbukowski]

Is relativism true?  relatively. 

[mfbukowski]

on some level, i feel like truth is supposed to agree.

It does in the long run.

 

Look at Star Trek

 

What works works.  Evolution as we call it- (not Darwinian for me- I believe in theistic evolution with a "purpose" in mind- the unity of the Godhead is "purpose") works.

 

That kind of pragmatic evolution gives us humans and morals.  Morality works in society, the commandments work in society.  Moral chaos does not work.  We need families to survive, and therefore family values.

 

That is the One Truth of relativism and pragmatism.  What works works- because God makes it work!!  He has a purpose- the immortality and eternal life of beings like himself and the best way to get there is Alma 32.  Pragmatism.

[mfbukowski]

Remember the big problem is language.  Saying words that do not conflict while appearing to do so.

[Mars]

how do you approach missionary work under this paradigm?  if someone's found something that works for them, do you invite them to consider a new alternative, or do you just let it go?

[Mars]

and resuming devil's advocate:

 

if we talk about iterating towards a more and more correct understanding of God, and that the relative path we're on - and the relative position we're in on that path - is not so much important as the journey you take and that you take the journey at your pace

 

how can we talk about there being some external endpoint?  all we have is our perception but we find new ways to perceive all the time.  so there really is something else out there?  or no?

[Ahab]

Learning who is being referred to as "God" is part of the process of discovering what is really true, too. Thus "personal revelation" can and should be contradictory depending on who the personal revelation came from, even though both can be referred to as God.

And then there's also the fact that not everybody likes or agrees on what is sweet, or good.

So it all comes back to the perspective that every personal perspective is subjective perspective with 2 opposing perspectives in every situation.

No good reason to think both perspectives should agree with each other.

[mfbukowski]

EVs are Newtonians and we are Einsteinians.

Their paradigm is OK as far as it goes and true for them- as far as their truth can take them.

But we understand Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

Does that help? Light is a wave and particle depending on how we look at it. Which is true? Both