Does this video by anthropologists say the Book of Mormon didn't happen?

[cdowis]

26 minutes ago, Jim Stiles said:

The 500 people the resurrected Christ appeared to as documented by Paul, for one.

Could you give us a few names beside the apostles, something about their lives and character, a written statement from them.  Any death bed testimonies?  Any third party statements, such as mentioning "spiritual eyes" or visions, etc.  The Jewish leaders have their own witnesses to the contrary.

As I said, we have  a cloud of witnesses for Christ coming to Ameria, which is a testimony of the Book of Mormon.  Not sure how large the cloud of witnesses were.
 

Edited March 8, 2016 by cdowis

[canard78]

1 hour ago, Jim Stiles said:

The 500 people the resurrected Christ appeared to as documented by Paul, for one.

It's almost certainly pointless to keep this up. Enjoy your day.

[Jim Stiles]

2 hours ago, cdowis said:

 

OK, Martin Harris, David Whitmer and Oliver Cowdery saw the plates in a vision.  (Harris did not use the word "or imagination' -- those are the words of the person who threw away his pedestal.)
Now what?

PS.  I don't read articles.  If you have something to say, say it.

I put the URL for the article to show where I had gotten the quote from.  The quote says that Harris, Whitmer, and Cowdery saw the plates in a vision because they otherwise could not see the plates because the plates did not really exist.  The 500 people that the resurrected Christ appeared to saw him in their natural eyes.  He was really there.  He really existed.  He rose again.

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, Jim Stiles said:

The 500 people the resurrected Christ appeared to as documented by Paul, for one.

And around and around it goes.  The bible is true because it says so.  Sigh.

[flameburns623]

12 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

And around and around it goes.  The bible is true because it says so.  Sigh.

Citing the apostles as witnesses, or the somewhat offhand reference Paul makes to 500 other eyewitnesses, is fair and reasonable evidence that the claim of the Gospels of a resurrected Christ may have happened. It is not "proof", but it helps substantiate a claim.

I think Mr. Stiles might want to develop a bit more the concept of presuppositional apologetics. There has to be some reason given for granting preferment to the Old and New Testaments of the Protestant canon of the Bible than "because I feel good about it".

If that approach "merely presupposes" the Bible as true and then argues from there, then dialogue between presuppositiinal Evangelicals and presuppositional Mormons and presuppositional Vedicists and presuppositional Baha'i and presuppositional Muslims is going to be impossible.

[USU78]

40 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

And around and around it goes.  The bible is true because it says so.  Sigh.

 

[mfbukowski]

4 minutes ago, flameburns623 said:

Citing the apostles as witnesses, or the somewhat offhand reference Paul makes to 500 other eyewitnesses, is fair and reasonable evidence that the claim of the Gospels of a resurrected Christ may have happened. It is not "proof", but it helps substantiate a claim.

I think Mr. Stiles might want to develop a bit more the concept of presuppositional apologetics. There has to be some reason given for granting preferment to the Old and New Testaments of the Protestant canon of the Bible than "because I feel good about it".

If that approach "merely presupposes" the Bible as true and then argues from there, then dialogue between presuppositiinal Evangelicals and presuppositional Mormons and presuppositional Vedicists and presuppositional Baha'i and presuppositional Muslims is going to be impossible.

Really far off.  In that litany you should have included Catholics, as justifiably as Mormons- which means not justifiably at all.

Mormons are what James would call "radical empiricists" basing their knowledge of the gospel on the evidence of their own senses- religious experience.

We surrender to no tradition or magesterium, or philosophy of man.  We do not believe in insubstantial "substance" or that bread becomes flesh. I will be happy to get into that if you want to go there.

 We believe if God speaks to you, he has spoken to you.  No presuppositions whatsoever- spiritual confirmation of each and every belief.

If you have not experienced that, you should try it.  Moroni 10:4-5.

On the other hand if you HAVE experienced it and the path he confirmed for you is Catholicism fine.  We will see you on the other side and have this discussion again with more evidence at our disposal, and if you see it our way, your decisions here will not damage your progression

All roads lead to the true gospel- God just teaches us using whatever means is best for us individually.  If I had never been Catholic, I would not be a Mormon.  If I had never been an atheist, I would not be a Mormon.  All were necessary stages in my spiritual education.

I of course now am speaking philosophically about James, but he offers the philosophical justification for religious experience.   It is not presuppositionalism by any possible measure

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_empiricism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience

[flameburns623]

1 minute ago, mfbukowski said:

Really far off.  In that litany you should have included Catholics, as justifiably as Mormons- which means not justifiably at all.

Mormons are what James would call "radical empiricists" basing their knowledge of the gospel on the evidence of their own senses- religious experience.

We surrender to no tradition or magesterium, or philosophy of man.  We do not believe in insubstantial "substance" or that bread becomes flesh. I will be happy to get into that if you want to go there.

 We believe if God speaks to you, he has spoken to you.  No presuppositions whatsoever- spiritual confirmation of each and every belief.

If you have not experienced that, you should try it.  Moroni 10:4-5.

On the other hand if you HAVE experienced it and the path he confirmed for you is Catholicism fine.  We will see you on the other side and have this discussion again with more evidence at our disposal, and if you see it our way, your decisions here will not damage your progression

All roads lead to the true gospel- God just teaches us using whatever means is best for us individually.  If I had never been Catholic, I would not be a Mormon.  If I had never been an atheist, I would not be a Mormon.  All were necessary stages in my spiritual education.

I of course now am speaking philosophically about James, but he offers the philosophical justification for religious experience.   It is not presuppositionalism by any possible measure

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_empiricism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience

Presumably as a twice-resigned former LDS, I will in your eschatology be heading directly to Outer Darkness following this life, no further discussions and no collecting $200.00 en route. For my part Catholicism is rather more optimistic about the fate of LDS: invincible ignorance, baptism of desire, and all that. Thanks for the kind words notwithstanding.

[mfbukowski]

25 minutes ago, flameburns623 said:

Citing the apostles as witnesses, or the somewhat offhand reference Paul makes to 500 other eyewitnesses, is fair and reasonable evidence that the claim of the Gospels of a resurrected Christ may have happened. It is not "proof", but it helps substantiate a claim.

I think Mr. Stiles might want to develop a bit more the concept of presuppositional apologetics. There has to be some reason given for granting preferment to the Old and New Testaments of the Protestant canon of the Bible than "because I feel good about it".

If that approach "merely presupposes" the Bible as true and then argues from there, then dialogue between presuppositiinal Evangelicals and presuppositional Mormons and presuppositional Vedicists and presuppositional Baha'i and presuppositional Muslims is going to be impossible.

It substantiates nothing and is circular reasoning.

If you want to look at this rationally, we have a semi-legendary book written thousands of years ago which claims that a man came back to life and then cites people who supposedly saw this.  Rationally speaking it might as well be Harry Potter.  People do not come back to life.  This is no more preposterous than golden plates and Nephites. The bible contains stories about talking donkeys and physical impossibilities like floods covering the earth.  It has pillars of fire and the parting of seas, water becoming wine etc etc.

Scientifically none of it makes sense.

But that is me speaking as a logical positivist. 

Speaking as a Christian Mormon it is among the most precious books in the world- a chronicle of Christ- the annointed one who has taken away my sins and through whom I will have eternal life.  The difference can only result from God directly telling you that the bible is true, as well as the Book of Mormon.  Rationally, both are preposterous.  Spiritually both give meaning beyond measure and together they are two witnesses of Christ and the story of God's dealings with man

But the only way you can get from the rational to the spiritual is by God showing you the way, each of us, individually.  No presuppositions- God speaking to you and telling you that.

As Joseph said, once that happens and you know that God knows that YOU know, everything changes.  It cannot be denied.  

[flameburns623]

12 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

It substantiates nothing and is circular reasoning.

If you want to look at this rationally, we have a semi-legendary book written thousands of years ago which claims that a man came back to life and then cites people who supposedly saw this.  Rationally speaking it might as well be Harry Potter.  People do not come back to life.  This is no more preposterous than golden plates and Nephites. The bible contains stories about talking donkeys and physical impossibilities like floods covering the earth.  It has pillars of fire and the parting of seas, water becoming wine etc etc.

Scientifically none of it makes sense.

But that is me speaking as a logical positivist. 

Speaking as a Christian Mormon it is among the most precious books in the world- a chronicle of Christ- the annointed one who has taken away my sins and through whom I will have eternal life.  The difference can only result from God directly telling you that the bible is true, as well as the Book of Mormon.  Rationally, both are preposterous.  Spiritually both give meaning beyond measure and together they are two witnesses of Christ and the story of God's dealings with man

But the only way you can get from the rational to the spiritual is by God showing you the way, each of us, individually.  No presuppositions- God speaking to you and telling you that.

As Joseph said, once that happens and you know that God knows that YOU know, everything changes.  It cannot be denied.  

We have an "epistle" a publicly- read letter, making a truth claim to contemporaries who were aware of the claim being made. The claim seems from what evidence we presently have, to have been accepted on its face; no denials of the existence of 500 witnesses to Jesus' appearance sometime followinv His Crucifixion have survived.

What that claim means would take an ocean of words to sort out.

A miracle is a spontaneous, unique event. It's not something likely to be repeated undee testable circumstances. Those situations where the dead have allegedly been raised will remain permanently contested.

[mfbukowski]

13 minutes ago, flameburns623 said:

We have an "epistle" a publicly- read letter, making a truth claim to contemporaries who were aware of the claim being made. The claim seems from what evidence we presently have, to have been accepted on its face; no denials of the existence of 500 witnesses to Jesus' appearance sometime followinv His Crucifixion have survived.

What that claim means would take an ocean of words to sort out.

A miracle is a spontaneous, unique event. It's not something likely to be repeated undee testable circumstances. Those situations where the dead have allegedly been raised will remain permanently contested.

See above.

[Gervin]

55 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

 Rationally, both are preposterous.

Incorrect.  The Bible includes stories that would be called preposterous but the poetry, genealogy, historical components, etc., etc. aren't preposterous.

The Book of Mormon is rightfully called preposterous because it has zero provenance.

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Gervin said:

Incorrect.  The Bible includes stories that would be called preposterous but the poetry, genealogy, historical components, etc., etc. aren't preposterous.  

The Book of Mormon is rightfully called preposterous because it has zero provenance.

LOL

Of course I was not talking about the spiritual value.  Provenance has nothing to do with religious truth.  Talking donkeys and seas parting and people coming back to life are "preposterous" from a logical point of view- THAT was my point

The Bhagavad Gita is older than the Bible and I don't see you making the same argument there.  I have seen the Ishtar Gate of Babylon with my own eyes and I do not see you saying we should therefore worship Marduk.  The Avesta of Zoroaster is well documented and in the same age range as the bible as well and so are many many other religious writings.

The cult of Mithras parallels the stories of Christianity quite closely but I do not see you extolling its virtues either.

The idea that "it's true because it's old" is absurd.  

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, USU78 said:

 

I know Jesus loves me because he has told me so himself.  I do not need the Bible for that.

There's other cool stuff in there, but we can only know the Lord loves us through personal revelation.  Without that, he is just a bunch of old legends.

[Gervin]

27 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Of course I was not talking about the spiritual value.  Provenance has nothing to do with religious truth.

I didn't assume anything about "spiritual value."  Of course, provenance has nothing to do with religious truth.  Where did I claim that it did? 

 

28 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Talking donkeys and seas parting and people coming back to life are "preposterous" from a logical point of view- THAT was my point

And I agreed.  Did you read my post?  The Bible contains preposterous stories.  But it is not a preposterous book.  The Book of Mormon, as you say, is a preposterous book.

 

30 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

The Bhagavad Gita is older than the Bible and I don't see you making the same argument there.  

You compared the Bible and the Book of Mormon and I commented on it.  Perhaps if you compare the Bhagavad Gita to the Bible someone will comment.  

 

32 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

he idea that "it's true because it's old" is absurd.  

You argue this point whenever you fail to prop up the Book of Mormon as having a valid historicity (in other words, quite often).  Of course, no one on this board that I've seen  claims that the Bible is "true because it's old."  

What percentage (roughly) of the Bible would you say is fiction?

[Jim Stiles]

3 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

I know Jesus loves me because he has told me so himself.  I do not need the Bible for that.

There's other cool stuff in there, but we can only know the Lord loves us through personal revelation.  Without that, he is just a bunch of old legends.

Without the Bible, what evidence is there for a person named Jesus of Nazareth even existing?

Edited March 9, 2016 by Jim Stiles

[Jim Stiles]

6 hours ago, flameburns623 said:

Citing the apostles as witnesses, or the somewhat offhand reference Paul makes to 500 other eyewitnesses, is fair and reasonable evidence that the claim of the Gospels of a resurrected Christ may have happened. It is not "proof", but it helps substantiate a claim.

I think Mr. Stiles might want to develop a bit more the concept of presuppositional apologetics. There has to be some reason given for granting preferment to the Old and New Testaments of the Protestant canon of the Bible than "because I feel good about it".

If that approach "merely presupposes" the Bible as true and then argues from there, then dialogue between presuppositiinal Evangelicals and presuppositional Mormons and presuppositional Vedicists and presuppositional Baha'i and presuppositional Muslims is going to be impossible.

Actually, I have a Ph.D., in civil engineering, not in apologetics.

Dialogue between Roman Catholics and Protestants tend to center around the interpretation of key verses and key historical events.  With respect to the Protestant Old Testament canon, the 16th and 17th century Protestants chose their canon because it was the canon that most Jews used.  They saw no reason to revere Old Testament books that the Jews regarded as not inspired.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon#Protestant_canon

Quote

Many modern Protestants point to the following four "Criteria for Canonicity" to justify the selection of the books that have been included in the New Testament—though these ideas aren't isolated to Protestant theology, but extend to or are derived from other Christian traditions:

1. Apostolic Origin — attributed to and based upon the preaching/teaching of the first-generation apostles (or their close companions).
2. Universal Acceptance — acknowledged by all major Christian communities in the ancient world (by the end of the 4th century) as well as accepted canon by Jewish authorities (for the Old Testament).
3. Liturgical Use — read publicly when early Christian communities gathered for the Lord's Supper (their weekly worship services).
4. Consistent Message — containing a theological outlook similar to or complementary to other accepted Christian writings.[49]

It is sometimes difficult to apply these criteria to all of the books in the accepted canon, however, and one can point to writings that Protestants consider to be unscriptural which would fulfill these requirements. In practice, most Protestants hold to the Jewish Tanakh for the Old Testament and the Roman Catholic canon for the New Testament.

Actually the Wikipedia article is a good introduction to the topic.  I find it interesting how many different people view Wikipedia as a good introductory source for some topics, but Mormons do not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presuppositional_apologetics#Comparison_with_other_schools_of_apologetics

Quote

Presuppositionalists contrast their approach with the other schools of Christian apologetics by describing the others as assuming that the world is intelligible apart from belief in the existence of God and then arguing on purportedly neutral grounds to support trusting the Christian Scriptures and the existence of God. Specifically, presuppositionalists describe Thomistic (also "Traditional" or "Classical") apologetics as concentrating on the first aspect of apologetics with its logical proofs for the existence of God, simply assuming common ground with the non-Christian and utilizing a piece-by-piece methodology. In this scheme, the common foundation of neutral brute facts leads to a generic concept of deity, then to the various characteristics of the Christian God as revealed in Scripture, and so forth. Piece-by-piece, Christian theology is built up from a neutral common ground.

Presuppositionalists assert that many of the classical arguments are logically fallacious, or do not prove enough, when used as arguments to prove the existence or character of God.^[a] They criticize both the assumption of neutrality and the "block house" or "piecemeal" method for failing to start at the level of the controlling beliefs of worldviews and implicitly allowing non-Christian assumptions from the start, thereby trying to build a Christian "house" on a non-Christian "foundation".^[5][6] Evidentialists demur from this assessment, claiming that presuppositionalism amounts to fideism because it rejects a neutral starting point for reasoning between the Christian and non-Christian.

The conclusion of evidential apologetics is that the Bible is probably more accurate about what it reports than not, thus the whole of Biblical revelation is probably true, and where we don't have absolute certainty we must accept the most probable theory.^[7][8] The goal of presuppositional apologetics on the other hand, is to argue that the assumptions and actions of non-Christians require them to believe certain things about God, man and the world which they claim they do not believe. This type of argument is technically called a reductio ad absurdum in that it attempts to reduce the opposition to holding an absurd, i.e. contradictory position; in this case, both believing in facts of Christian revelation (in practice) and denying them (in word). So in essence, evidential apologetics attempts to build from a common starting point in neutral facts, while presuppositional apologetics attempts to claim all facts for the Christian worldview as the only framework in which they are intelligible.^[9]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presuppositional_apologetics#Clarkian_presuppositionalism

Quote

Gordon Clark and his followers treat the truth of the Scriptures as the axiom of their system. Like all axioms, this axiom is considered to be self-evident truth, not to be proven, but used for proof. However, the worldview that results from the axiom may be tested for consistency and comprehensiveness.^[28] Testing for internal contradiction exemplifies Clark's strict reliance on the laws of logic (he famously translates the first verse of the Gospel of John as "In the beginning was the Logic, and the Logic was with God, and the Logic was God.")^[29] Thus, in order to invalidate non-Christian worldviews, one must simply show how a different presupposition results in necessary logical contradictions, while showing that presupposing the Bible leads to no logical contradiction. By contrast, some Van Tillians have suggested that God as He has revealed Himself in Scripture reveals apparent paradoxes.^[30]

However, Clark allowed that presupposing axioms (or "first principles") themselves do not make a philosophical system true, including his own; the fact that all worldviews he examined other than Christianity had internal contradictions only made Christianity highly more probable as truth, but not necessarily so.^{[citation needed]} Nonetheless, he believed that this method was effective in many practical cases (when arguing against, for instance, secular humanism or dialectical materialism) and that, in the end, each of us must simply choose (that is, make an informed selection) from among seemingly consistent worldviews the one that most adequately answers life's questions and seems the most internally coherent. Some Van Tillian critics suggest that the concept of coherence itself must be defined in terms of Christian presuppositions but is instead being used by Clark as a "neutral" principle for discerning the truth of any proposition.^{[citation needed]}

Using this approach, Clark labored to expose the contradictions of many worldviews that were in vogue in his day and to defend the Christian worldview by proving its consistency over and against those who attacked it. His unflagging use of logic sometimes led him to what most Reformed theologians consider rather unorthodox ideas on such topics as the problem of evil—topics which are most often treated by theologians as paradoxes or apparent contradictions not resolvable by human logic. But Clark famously rejected the idea that Scripture teaches paradoxes and notion of "apparent contradiction", asking "apparent to whom?". He described an alleged biblical paradox as nothing more than "a charley-horse between the ears that can be eliminated by rational massage."^[31]

With regard to other schools of apologetics, Clark suggested that the cosmological argument was not just unpersuasive but also logically invalid (because it begged the question), and he similarly dismissed the otherThomistic arguments.^[32] As a staunch critic of all varieties of empiricism, he did not tend to make much use of evidential arguments, which yield likelihoods and probabilities rather than logical certainties (that is, either coherence or incoherence).

 

[Jim Stiles]

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

LOL

Of course I was not talking about the spiritual value.  Provenance has nothing to do with religious truth.  Talking donkeys and seas parting and people coming back to life are "preposterous" from a logical point of view- THAT was my point

The Bhagavad Gita is older than the Bible and I don't see you making the same argument there.  I have seen the Ishtar Gate of Babylon with my own eyes and I do not see you saying we should therefore worship Marduk.  The Avesta of Zoroaster is well documented and in the same age range as the bible as well and so are many many other religious writings.

The cult of Mithras parallels the stories of Christianity quite closely but I do not see you extolling its virtues either.

The idea that "it's true because it's old" is absurd.  

Is God honored by his followers believing in something that is not true?  If provenance is important when making an investment or purchasing a rare and valuable artifact for one's pawn shop, then why would it not be important when it comes to judging claims of a religious nature?

Edited March 9, 2016 by Jim Stiles
added Pawn Stars reference

[flameburns623]

Mr. Stiles:

If you'd like to debate Catholic theology, there are Catholic apologetics forums for that. We're guests on a Latter-Day Saint forum and should interact with them on topics relevant to our gracious hosts.

I, by the way, don't enjoy mixing it up in incessant wrangling. I try to ask questions, render any poor insights I might have to share, and just enjoy the conversation.

I had seen the Wiki article. You yourself have noted it has shortcomings. I hoped that you might be aware of other resources which might enlarge on the matter of "Why the Bible?" as a starting point for presuppositinalism.

God, who knows all human hearts, is honored by the heart's intent to honor Him and loves with such an encompassing Love that we can hope that he overlooks the failings and shortcomings of all who seek to give him laud.

 

[cdowis]

2 hours ago, Jim Stiles said:

Is God honored by his followers believing in something that is not true? 

That is why the Lord has restored the Gospel in these last days by calling a prophet and giving us continued revelation.  By His loving grace He has provided a means to find out whether this largess of His word is authentic.

Christ told the disciples, seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened to you.  Was He telling them to seek after archaeology and research historical books?  
Christ told Peter, Matt 16  [15] He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?
[16] And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.
[17] And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.

In our day, he gave us His promise in Moroni 10:4-5 and you are well acquainted with this promise.  The research is to read and study the Book of Mormon with an open heart and mind, and ask God whether it is true.  And He will give us an answer.

Edited March 9, 2016 by cdowis

[mfbukowski]

9 hours ago, Jim Stiles said:

Without the Bible, what evidence is there for a person named Jesus of Nazareth even existing?

NONE!!

At last you are beginning to see the problem.

My evidence is that I talk to him daily and he talks to me.  That's the only evidence anyone can have.  Without that direct evidence, there is nothing.  But the bible gives us clues that that is what we need to do, and so does the Book of Mormon.

[mfbukowski]

8 hours ago, Jim Stiles said:

Is God honored by his followers believing in something that is not true?  If provenance is important when making an investment or purchasing a rare and valuable artifact for one's pawn shop, then why would it not be important when it comes to judging claims of a religious nature?

Maybe you got your faith from a pawn shop but I did not.

Mine comes from what God has told me.

You do not even understand the argument.  On one hand your position is supposedly based on logic, and on the other it is based on legends.

Total contradiction.   I have always seen that "The Word" IS logic, because logic is based in language and the patterns of human thought,  but what your friend Clark does not understand is that logic is sophistry because it is based on language, which is ambiguous.  Math on the other hand is not ambiguous, but is not a natural language.

This is an important distinction.  "The Word" is the message of God to his children, and can only be understood through personal revelation.  It is like say, radio waves.  A thought comes from a mind/spirit and is encoded into faulty words and sent through the air to another mind/spirit which must decode the message, which is garbled by the process.  Words garble everything.  The only way to decipher the message is to have a direct "meeting of the minds" which entails spirit to spirit communication.

The same problem exists with the gospel.  We have it in words which are faulty.  The message is garbled.  The words serve only as an approximation of the message, to be decoded by the individual.

Yes that leads to error.  But there is a merciful God on the other end who knows us better than we know ourselves and knows the intents of our hearts.

What I also find interesting is that Clark THINKS that logic is of God, but it is not.  It is the philosophies of men.  All the logic he uses is not based on the bible at all, but is based on human philosophy - the pagan Greeks to be exact.  So he uses pagan philosophy to interpret the faulty words and legends in the bible which were written by men in the first place to try and express the wonders that God had revealed to them personally.  I have studied the history of logic and know its history.  I have been in lectures with Alonzo Church at UCLA in my undergraduate days and know whereof I speak.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alonzo_Church

For some reason, he never mentioned going to the bible to learn logic.

If your are logical you will understand that the proposition "Jesus of Nazareth died near Jerusalem in 33 AD" Does NOT entail the proposition "Our sins are forgiven"

You can put that in symbolic logic, and rely upon the entire system of mathematical logic, and there is no way to make those two propositions entail each other.

And that is why history has nothing to do with religion.  Jesus'death logically does not even entail that God exists.   A man died on a cross.  Sad.  Jesus was a man who was crucified, if you accept the historical evidence for that.

But that does not entail that he was the Son of God, God himself, forgave our sins, or any of the rest.

I suppose this long post was just a waste of time though, because you will still not see it.

You have succeeded in wearing me out.  Have a good one.

You have not made a convert.

 

[longview]

9 hours ago, Jim Stiles said:

Without the Bible, what evidence is there for a person named Jesus of Nazareth even existing?

Josephus, among others.  Pontius Pilate would attest to having met Jesus and actually put Him to death.

[flameburns623]

36 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

Maybe you got your faith from a pawn shop but I did not.

Mine comes from what God has told me.

You do not even understand the argument.  On one hand your position is supposedly based on logic, and on the other it is based on legends.

Total contradiction.   I have always seen that "The Word" IS logic, because logic is based in language and the patterns of human thought,  but what your friend Clark does not understand is that logic is sophistry because it is based on language, which is ambiguous.  Math on the other hand is not ambiguous, but is not a natural language.

This is an important distinction.  "The Word" is the message of God to his children, and can only be understood through personal revelation.  It is like say, radio waves.  A thought comes from a mind/spirit and is encoded into faulty words and sent through the air to another mind/spirit which must decode the message, which is garbled by the process.  Words garble everything.  The only way to decipher the message is to have a direct "meeting of the minds" which entails spirit to spirit communication.

The same problem exists with the gospel.  We have it in words which are faulty.  The message is garbled.  The words serve only as an approximation of the message, to be decoded by the individual.

Yes that leads to error.  But there is a merciful God on the other end who knows us better than we know ourselves and knows the intents of our hearts.

What I also find interesting is that Clark THINKS that logic is of God, but it is not.  It is the philosophies of men.  All the logic he uses is not based on the bible at all, but is based on human philosophy - the pagan Greeks to be exact.  So he uses pagan philosophy to interpret the faulty words and legends in the bible which were written by men in the first place to try and express the wonders that God had revealed to them personally.  I have studied the history of logic and know its history.  I have been in lectures with Alonzo Church at UCLA in my undergraduate days and know whereof I speak.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alonzo_Church

For some reason, he never mentioned going to the bible to learn logic.

If your are logical you will understand that the proposition "Jesus of Nazareth died near Jerusalem in 33 AD" Does NOT entail the proposition "Our sins are forgiven"

You can put that in symbolic logic, and rely upon the entire system of mathematical logic, and there is no way to make those two propositions entail each other.

And that is why history has nothing to do with religion.  Jesus'death logically does not even entail that God exists.   A man died on a cross.  Sad.  Jesus was a man who was crucified, if you accept the historical evidence for that.

But that does not entail that he was the Son of God, God himself, forgave our sins, or any of the rest.

I suppose this long post was just a waste of time though, because you will still not see it.

You have succeeded in wearing me out.  Have a good one.

You have not made a convert.

 

MF Bukowski: I hope this doesn't turn into a long post because I am already worn out. I work nights, had an appointment this morning, and ran some errands or I would be sawing some Zzz's already.

And at the risk of contradicting what I said earlier about not mixing it up much I think you do the traditional Scriptures, the Old and New Testaments, a disservice by waving them off as "legends". There is something more to those 66 or those 73 or those 80-odd collected books and epistles (depending upon whether one prefers the Protestant, the Roman Catholic, or one of the Eastern Orthodox canons).

And that difference starts at about the time that canon began to be written in earnest--oddly, just around the time the central story of the Book of Mormon opens, around 600 B.C.

Around that time, the monolatrous purported heirs of the polytheist-apostate turned henotheist, Abraham, were begining to whole-heartedly reject the objective existence of any deity except their own Yahweh. They were becoming monotheistic.

And they were doing, probably over generations, more-or-less what Joseph Smith would claim that Mormon and Moroni did: they were taking oral histories, liturgical hymns and poetry, the preserved sermon and declamations of their best remembered holy men, and accounts and whatever written records they had to hand: and they were creating a record of how their. One God had intervened in real time throughout their history.

They were making a serious attempt at a real history of themselves. And weaving what they felt were accounts God's workings within that history. To my knowledge, that hadn't been done quite like this previously. Prior stories of Gods and Goddesses seem to have happened, somehow, "outside of time". Outside of the context of real human beings: or if real humans were involved, those humans seem to have been demi-gods or extra-human.

The Jews brought God into the lives not only of Kings and Heroes and Titans, but into some rather ordinary folks lives.

Now, these Jewish histories are not perfect histories. They aren't written by the rules of modern historians or biographers. They are piously enhanced, "mythologized" as Bible-as-Literature teachers might say. But the intent of those writers and those compilers and those redactors was to tell a true story about real people.

At the heart of even the most improbable of these stories, we frequently are startled to find a kernel of truth: something, SOMEWHAT akin to the broad outlines of Noah's Flood or the Tower of Babel or the nine-foot Goliath slain by a shepherd with a sling is plausible, not beyond possibility.

What the Jews were doing probably had a lot to do with other developments in the world. The 6th century before Christ was a time of ferment. Those pagan (Greek, mainly) philosophers were coming along, with their logic and their mathmatics and their early medicine. Zoroaster was around, and in faraway India, Buddha was sitting under a tree. I'm not enough of a cultural anthropologist or historian to remember how much cross-ferment was thought to be taking place in that era, but quite a lot. My point though, is that the OT is scarcely mere legend: though I concur it is not "history" as properly understood.

By the time we get to the New Testament, there is even more focus by the Gospel authors on telling a reliable account of real things which actually happened in real time to real people. And, yes, those Gospels are still piously augmented: try to seriously work out the bugs in either or both of the genealogies of Christ. Any schema attempted has its shortcomings, because those genealogies are not compiled so that they can be submitted to the Salt Lake Temple: they reflect religious sensibilities even as they attempt to groynd Jesus in real time.

So the OT, and the NT are not "legends", as is Babe the Big Blue Ox. They are history in a way that archaeologists and historians can work with those texts without an a priori assumption that they "know" these texts are true by dint of personal revelation.

The same cannot be said of the Book of Mormon. I, personally, never believed it could. When I bore my testimony of the BoM I never once intended to say that I "knew" that Lehi, Nephi, Gadianton, Zarahemla, or Moroni had ever existed in real time in real human history. I "knew" the BoM was "true" in some far more abstract sense, as a model and exemplar for wise and good living, as a key to living a happier and more wholesome life within a community of good and supportive fellow believers.

Because, in the end I agreed then with your sentiments above: faith cannot be boiled down to a logical postulate nor a mathematical formula. It is about the heart: the human heart, so often wretched and depraved; and about the Heart of God, so eager to align itself with ours, will we but allow.

Mormonism could not hold me: blame either the happenstances of life or my own abstract testimony. But it was a good experience for me, and when I cone here to visit I strive to be respectful because of those good memories.

But I am also respectfull of Jim Stiles and his ilk, probably more respectful than is he of my faith or of yours. Most presuppositionalists I have experienced can be abrupt, rude, and certainly disrespectful of all outside their paradigm. But they do as they do for love of God and of their fellow-man. They mean well enough, however exasperating they are.

More importantly, I respect the Bible and hate to see it treated as dismissively as you did in your cited post.. 

Apologies for this rambling response. Many blessings! To bed with me.

 

[USU78]

12 hours ago, Jim Stiles said:

Without the Bible [snipsies]

Don't know for sure if this is true of this poster, but I have my suspicions:

Quote

I know that I have learned much in this continuing dialogue [between Evangelicals and LDS], and I am now convinced that we evangelicals have often seriously misrepresented the beliefs and practices of the Mormon community. Indeed, let me state it bluntly to the LDS folks here this evening: we have sinned against you. The God of the Scriptures makes it clear that it is a terrible thing to bear false witness against our neighbors, and we have been guilty of that sort of transgression in things we have said about you. We have told you what you believe without making a sincere effort first of all to ask you what you believe. We have made much of the need to provide you with a strong defense of traditional Christian convictions, regularly quoting the Apostle Peter’s mandate that we present to people like you a reasoned account of the hope that lies with in us-but we have not been careful to follow the same Apostle’s counsel that immediately follows that mandate, when he tells us that we must always make our case with “gentleness and reverence” toward those with whom we are speaking. Indeed, we have even on occasion demonized you, weaving conspiracy theories about what the LDS community is “really” trying to accomplish in the world. And even at our best, we have – and this is true of both of our communities-we have talked past each other, setting forth oversimplified and distorted accounts of what the other group believes.