Are cureloms imaginary?

[Honorentheos]

11 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Huh? What do you mean by engaged collectively?

Also note there are quite a few differences within the fairly broad category of pragmatism. In particular scholars typically see big gaps between the classic pragmatists and the neo-pragmatists like Putnam or Rorty. Also Rorty at the end acknowledged he wasn't really a pragmatist. Even among the main groups there are differences. So Rorty admits big differences from Dewey, despite a strong influence. Putnam breaks with Peirce over epistemology. And there were infamous debates between Putnam and Rorty on a wide number of things. Peirce thought James had screwed up pragmatism so badly that he changed his thought's name to pragmaticism. All that ignores the more minor figures both in the classic era like Schiller or Royce or in the contemporary era like Misak or Haack.

The "game" issue is much more Wittgenstein than the pragmatists, although he's a huge influence on Rorty and Rorty makes extensive use of the notion. While I find the game metaphor helpful at times, I also think it obscures some things. 

Mark here is much more Rorty and Wittgenstein and a heavy does of Dewey. I'm much more Peirce, Heidgger, Gadamer and Ricouer with a bit of Dewey along with an idiocyncratic take on Derrida. In particular Mark and I disagree over realism -- Peirce was a thoroughgoing realist and his type of pragmatism arises out of his background in physics, chemistry and logic. My own background is actually primarily physics and math so that might explain why I'm more sympathetic to Peirce than Rorty.

 

ugh. Exactly what you say above. Mark and you can't jump between responses because you bring content that isn't sorted when you do. Mark is going to just pretend to be relevant to the discussion by posting other people's thoughts rather than dealing with the implications and specific request to define or defend a position if history proves to have anything to say about the present. But yeah, it's bad form to jump to something that Mark is specifically being asked to defend precisely because he's being asked it based on content sorting that's already occurred. This is the price one pays by not owning the content of Mormonism as culturally understood and therefore assumed in conversation.

[hagoth7]

17 hours ago, Maidservant said:

I am satisfied that cureloms are llamas.  It's even the same word, to me.  LOM and LAM.  Same word.  Llama comes from a native Peruvian language, Quechua.  I guess they got tired of saying "cure" and dropped it, ha ha ha.  No, but seriously.

There is an Andean area/people, Quechua speakers, that are called q'ero (do they call themselves that?).  Maybe they are the ones that had the q'erolams.

I imagine Joseph receiving this as a pronunciation and recording it to the best of his ability as a pronunciation.

Cure-lom

llam-a? 

Hmm. The Emperor's New Groove in this thread?

And the Emperor's New Clothes in the Garments thread?

So rulers and priests and professors who opt to teach that  curelom are imaginary get a newly tailored set of clothes delivered to their door, pretending to be made of curelom wool and snipe feathers, and an invitation to a curelom feast to see who shows up appropriately attired? A fun day already. :0)  (Seriously, I have no interest in embarassing people who choose not to believe.) Repenting to tell the whole truth: Well, a wee bit of interest. Gonna blame it on the elvish in me. 

If I may riff a bit on your fun suggestion.

 

Cum-om? Cam-elids, and Elephants?

If so, the alpaca, another  cam-elid, and cam-el is of Semitic origin. In Semitic, would the plural of camel be generally be camum or camelum?

Any suggestions from the likes of Robert, etc. what Jaredite languages (fx. Akkadian) their word(s) might have been for camel before leaving the Old World? (Or has that already been offered by someone here much earlier in the thread?)

And the etymology for camel also says that in Olde English the camel was "olfend" which moderns assume to be confusion for elephant. Hmm. Elephants and camelids in OE, in the same breath...

That does it. Joseph was a hack....or had an OE dictionary stashed under his quilt.   :::fleeing the building and converting to the local YMCA:::  

 

Edited July 14, 2017 by hagoth7

[clarkgoble]

39 minutes ago, Honorentheos said:

ugh. Exactly what you say above. Mark and you can't jump between responses because you bring content that isn't sorted when you do. Mark is going to just pretend to be relevant to the discussion by posting other people's thoughts rather than dealing with the implications and specific request to define or defend a position if history proves to have anything to say about the present. But yeah, it's bad form to jump to something that Mark is specifically being asked to defend precisely because he's being asked it based on content sorting that's already occurred. This is the price one pays by not owning the content of Mormonism as culturally understood and therefore assumed in conversation.

Not quite sure what you mean by "jump" or "sorted" here. I assume you mean the problem that threads are linear and not nested. Is that right?

I'll try and stay out of your responses to Mark if that helps.

[mfbukowski]

6 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

ugh. Exactly what you say above. Mark and you can't jump between responses because you bring content that isn't sorted when you do. Mark is going to just pretend to be relevant to the discussion by posting other people's thoughts rather than dealing with the implications and specific request to define or defend a position if history proves to have anything to say about the present. But yeah, it's bad form to jump to something that Mark is specifically being asked to defend precisely because he's being asked it based on content sorting that's already occurred. This is the price one pays by not owning the content of Mormonism as culturally understood and therefore assumed in conversation.

No clue what any of this means, your brilliance is.... incomprehensible.

[mfbukowski]

6 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Not quite sure what you mean by "jump" or "sorted" here. I assume you mean the problem that threads are linear and not nested. Is that right?

I'll try and stay out of your responses to Mark if that helps.

Stay or go, it doesn't much matter when the smoke is this thick.  Neither of us appear to know what he is talking about.  But of course that is because we are both trying to escape his incisive brilliance.

[USU78]

23 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

No clue what any of this means, your brilliance is.... incomprehensible.

The learned Constable ...

[mfbukowski]

11 hours ago, USU78 said:

The learned Constable ...

Indeed, kind sir!

If any one of our brilliant contemporaries among us here,  care to translate this into language more appropriate for my impoverished mind, praythee please do so immediately if not sooner, that I may partake of his wisdom.

[Honorentheos]

Mark, I wonder if at some level you know you bale on discussions every time the get specific? The resorting to ad hom and tossing up summaries is a smoke screen. Be honest about it. You have every opportunity to organize your thinking on faith and present it and the above is what you choose instead? Telling.

[mfbukowski]

10 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

Mark, I wonder if at some level you know you bale on discussions every time the get specific? The resorting to ad hom and tossing up summaries is a smoke screen. Be honest about it. You have every opportunity to organize your thinking on faith and present it and the above is what you choose instead? Telling.

You never get specific and that is precisely problem.   I have discussed faith ad infinitum here- you asked me to answer a question I could not even understand it was so garbled.

I am a Wittgensteinian and precise language is all there is.

There are no philosophical problems which are not linguistic confusions and you are buried in linguistic confusions.   I tried to educate you on correspondence theory NOT coming from me- but the the experts in the flippin SEP and then I tried to show you how Wittgenstein sought clarity and quoted something directly on point showing you what the problem was with your reasoning and you said I was posting something someone else said instead of answering your questions.

Quote

 

Mark is going to just pretend to be relevant to the discussion by posting other people's thoughts rather than dealing with the implications and specific request to define or defend a position if history proves to have anything to say about the present.

 

 

 

You ignore getting educated as to what the problem is and just blow smoke.  I have no clue how to define your jibberish and it appears you cannot clarify it so anyone else can understand it!

I do not understand you, and no one else here apparently does either.

I challenged ONE person to come forward and explain to me what your problem was and NO ONE has come forward yet- and I am still waiting

I think it is quite clear that you are the one who is deliberately obfuscating here, and the challenge is still open to anyone including you who can ask the question intelligibly OR someone- anyone - who can translate it for you into a philosophical form which is answerable

This is exactly what you always end up pulling

But until then I really have other projects to work on that are overdue and there are folks here who know what I am talking about.

I will leave this one up to the reader to decide- I really don't care what smoke you throw at me anymore.  You are cunning guy and know how to push my buttons and I am done with it.

Edited July 16, 2017 by mfbukowski

[JarediteSubmariner]

On 7/14/2017 at 4:42 PM, hagoth7 said:

Cure-lom

llam-a? 

Hmm. The Emperor's New Groove in this thread?

And the Emperor's New Clothes in the Garments thread?

So rulers and priests and professors who opt to teach that  curelom are imaginary get a newly tailored set of clothes delivered to their door, pretending to be made of curelom wool and snipe feathers, and an invitation to a curelom feast to see who shows up appropriately attired? A fun day already. :0)  (Seriously, I have no interest in embarassing people who choose not to believe.) Repenting to tell the whole truth: Well, a wee bit of interest. Gonna blame it on the elvish in me. 

If I may riff a bit on your fun suggestion.

 

Cum-om? Cam-elids, and Elephants?

If so, the alpaca, another  cam-elid, and cam-el is of Semitic origin. In Semitic, would the plural of camel be generally be camum or camelum?

Any suggestions from the likes of Robert, etc. what Jaredite languages (fx. Akkadian) their word(s) might have been for camel before leaving the Old World? (Or has that already been offered by someone here much earlier in the thread?)

And the etymology for camel also says that in Olde English the camel was "olfend" which moderns assume to be confusion for elephant. Hmm. Elephants and camelids in OE, in the same breath...

That does it. Joseph was a hack....or had an OE dictionary stashed under his quilt.   :::fleeing the building and converting to the local YMCA:::  

 

What a mind bend. Why would the Jaredites speak a semitic language? Why would they have the word "gamal" (camel) when the camel would not enter the levant until about 1000 years after the Jaredites left?

Do you really think curelom and Llama sound the same?  Word pronunciation butchery supported by nothing leaves us with - nothing. But it is a fine theory. Run with it.

[ksfisher]

9 minutes ago, JarediteSubmariner said:

What a mind bend. Why would the Jaredites speak a semitic language?

Why wouldn't they?  What language do you think they spoke?

[JarediteSubmariner]

Who knows? Is there any evidence their language was semitic? If the story of the Tower of Babel is to believed, then perhaps they spoke adamic:

 

 http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Adamic_Language

Quote

Brigham Young taught that it continued from Adam to Babel, at which time the Lord "caused the people to forget their own mother tongue,…scatter[ing] them abroad upon the face of the whole earth," except possibly for Jared and his family in the Book of Mormon (JD 3:100)...This statement reflects the widely held Mormon belief that the founding members of the jaredite civilization preserved the Adamic language at their immigration to the new world (Ether 1:33-43;3:24-28). Thus, the description by the brother of Jared of his apocalyptic vision was rendered linguistically inaccessible without divine interpretive help, since "the language which ye shall write I [God] have confounded" (Ether 3:21-28).

 

[Honorentheos]

2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

 You are cunning guy and know how to push my buttons...

True.

2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

I am a Wittgensteinian and precise language is all there is.

If I tell someone "Stand roughly here"-- may not this explanation work perfectly? And cannot every other one fail too? If I tell someone "Stand roughly here"-- may not this explanation work perfectly? And cannot every other one fail too? Yes; why shouldn't we call it "inexact"? Only let us understand what "inexact" means. For it does not mean "unusable". 

...

"Inexact" is really a reproach, and "exact" is praise. And that is to say that what is inexact attains its goal less perfectly than what is more exact. Thus the point here is what we call "the goal". Am I inexact when I do not give our distance from the sun to the nearest foot, or tell a joiner the width of a table to the nearest thousandth of an inch?

No single ideal of exactness has been laid down; we do not know what we should be supposed to imagine under this head  -- unless you yourself lay down what is to be so called. But you will kind it difficult to hit upon such a convention; at least any that satisfies you.

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

[Honorentheos]

Hey Clark,

Going back to the earliest points in this discussion, I think it's valuable to revisit what we both said that sent us down this particular road.

As you'll recall, you said the following as a counter to my claim that Alma 32 describes truth as being a choice -

On 7/12/2017 at 8:35 AM, clarkgoble said:

First off I'd strongly reject the reading of Alma 32 that makes it choosing to believe. I think that's the exact opposite of what it says. Rather it says hoping something was true enough to test it. It's the results of testing that lead to our belief.

If you're interested I have a writeup on this tied to Hebrew conceptions of truth over at T&S.

https://www.timesandseasons.org/index.php/2016/08/35605/

Fundamentally though I just don't think belief is volitional at all. At best we can select where we put our focus. But belief is something that happens.

Your and my reading of Alma 32 hangs on the question of what it means to test the seed if one follows the language of Alma 32's seed metaphor. I made the case that when it describes a person making space for the seed or, as you say, desiring to believe something that this is an act of volition. And it is the only active one made in the metaphor. Every other act by the hypothetical seed planter is defensive of the seed. The planter chooses not to discard the seed due to lack of belief. The planter allows the seed to grow. And when the seed bears fruit, the fruit is described as causing effects on the planter that I argue all came from choosing to plant the seed and then protecting it. When Alma 32 uses terms such as 'experiment' it does not do so in a way that explicitly or implicitly describes what you or I might reasonably consider as an actual experiment. The planting of the seed IS the experiment.

I put two main questions on the table along with this. First, how does one not view the act of faith (planting the seed, desiring to believe if you prefer) as an act of volition on the part of the planter? And second, if we take the process up to the point Alma 32 tells the hearer that the fruit of faith was knowledge, what fruit of this so-called experiment can't be said to have been contained in the seed itself?

Psychologically, the process reads to me as telling a person they should desire to believe whatever the thing is that is being presented in which they ought to have faith. They are to protect it from doubt (i.e. - reject counter-evidence that might cause doubt to arise). And in due time they will come to feel certain about this thing in a way that now feels like they know it is so rather than just have hope that it is so. As epistemology it's extremely flawed. If there is another reading of the text that seems to maintain the metaphor, I don't see it in the text itself. One gains certitude about the object of faith by desiring it to be true and protecting this desire. A testimony is to be found in the bearing of it. Doubt your doubts.

I don't see what this is such a complicated discussion.

 

ETA: The process isn't one I'm arguing is unique to Mormonism. It's universal, biological that we would find ourselves convinced of something were we to follow this process. I've argued in this thread that the scientific method is the better tool for the truth seeker because it interrupts this process. Maybe not for the person who maintains a desire to believe something is true (secular examples might include Einstein's resistance to quantum theory), but that proves the point rather than refutes it.

Edited July 16, 2017 by Honorentheos

[mfbukowski]

54 minutes ago, Honorentheos said:

True.

If I tell someone "Stand roughly here"-- may not this explanation work perfectly? And cannot every other one fail too? If I tell someone "Stand roughly here"-- may not this explanation work perfectly? And cannot every other one fail too? Yes; why shouldn't we call it "inexact"? Only let us understand what "inexact" means. For it does not mean "unusable". 

...

"Inexact" is really a reproach, and "exact" is praise. And that is to say that what is inexact attains its goal less perfectly than what is more exact. Thus the point here is what we call "the goal". Am I inexact when I do not give our distance from the sun to the nearest foot, or tell a joiner the width of a table to the nearest thousandth of an inch?

No single ideal of exactness has been laid down; we do not know what we should be supposed to imagine under this head  -- unless you yourself lay down what is to be so called. But you will kind it difficult to hit upon such a convention; at least any that satisfies you.

~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

Thanks for his precise explanation of ambiguity.

I hope you get it now

This is why no one can give you the exact definition you seek. There is no such convention for the terms you seek to define

Edited July 16, 2017 by mfbukowski

[Honorentheos]

What he said is that exactness does not necessarily equal useful. And can work again it.

Pointing out yet again you keep using him poorly and mostly as a smokescreen to escape dealing with the difficulties in your thinking. You seem to prefer early W to his more developed later thinking.

Edited July 16, 2017 by Honorentheos

[Honorentheos]

For a more fun version of the exchange:

http://existentialcomics.com/comic/170

[clarkgoble]

On 7/16/2017 at 0:25 AM, Honorentheos said:

I made the case that when it describes a person making space for the seed or, as you say, desiring to believe something that this is an act of volition. And it is the only active one made in the metaphor. Every other act by the hypothetical seed planter is defensive of the seed. The planter chooses not to discard the seed due to lack of belief.

To me the planting of the seed or the discarding of the seed are the same act. So if you have enough desire or faith you plant it to see what happens. If you don't then there's no planting and you'll never know (from Alma's perspective)

Quote

When Alma 32 uses terms such as 'experiment' it does not do so in a way that explicitly or implicitly describes what you or I might reasonably consider as an actual experiment. The planting of the seed IS the experiment.

The planting of the seed most definitely is the experiment.

Quote

First, how does one not view the act of faith (planting the seed, desiring to believe if you prefer) as an act of volition on the part of the planter?

You could consider it volitional but that would be in addition to what the text says. i.e. the text simply doesn't address the question of volition.

If you think all actions are volitional unless there's explicit evidence they're not then of course you'll call that volitional. My point is just that questions of volitional are alien to the text in question which doesn't seem concerned with them. I'm not even sure the contemporary volitional/non-volitional distinction necessarily even is something Alma would be aware of. The best we have to go on is the use of "free" elsewhere in the text. But that use is quite different than the sense of volition that develops in the western modern era. I know some would say it should be read back into the Book of Mormon due to the Calvinist/Arminian disputes which were in Joseph's environment. But I confess I just don't see a lot of evidence for seeing the Arminian debates in the Book of Mormon. In any case, anyone arguing for an Arminian reading would first have to argue for Arminianism in the text and then argue for why that forms an essential context for this passage.

Quote

And second, if we take the process up to the point Alma 32 tells the hearer that the fruit of faith was knowledge, what fruit of this so-called experiment can't be said to have been contained in the seed itself?

I think the whole point of the metaphor is that it was contained in the seed already. Thus my emphasis on the Hebrew conception of true as offering an important way to read the text.

Quote

Psychologically, the process reads to me as telling a person they should desire to believe whatever the thing is that is being presented in which they ought to have faith.

But that misses the crucial distinction where desire isn't to desire to believe but is desire to conduct the test. That's a pretty essential difference.

Quote

They are to protect it from doubt (i.e. - reject counter-evidence that might cause doubt to arise).

But that's not in our metaphor. All that happens is you plant or don't plant. What in the metaphor is this protecting? The discarding of the seed happens when the seed doesn't grow. (32)  i.e. it reveals itself to be a false seed. 

I understand why you want to inject questions of doubt and blind faith into the metaphor, but they're really pretty alien to how Alma discusses it even though they are completely part of how we think of belief today. 

Quote

I don't see what this is such a complicated discussion.

It's not. The discussion you wish to have is a fine discussion to have. It just doesn't have much to do with how Alma discusses the issue. The problem fundamentally is that you want to think of faith in the way it's become considered in the west. That's completely understandable and is how most people read Alma 32. It's just that Alma's writing before those concepts arose.  So we can't assume he holds them. Further, he simply never engages the key parts of that reading. Doubt (or lack of belief) is merely determinative of whether the seed is planted to test it. Volition is simply not part of the discussion. That culturally we read those things into the discussion because we want to make it an epistemological discussion in our modern sense I fully acknowledge. That's what you're doing. I'm just saying that from an exegesis we shouldn't do that.

Really what you want to do is treat Alma 32 as if Joseph Smith were writing it as a way of speaking about issues like epistemology and free will. I'm just saying that's not an appropriate step. (Even if you think Joseph was entirely the author, we can't assume the mindset out of which he is writing)

Edited July 17, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Honorentheos]

On ‎7‎/‎17‎/‎2017 at 1:54 PM, clarkgoble said:

To me the planting of the seed or the discarding of the seed are the same act. So if you have enough desire or faith you plant it to see what happens. If you don't then there's no planting and you'll never know (from Alma's perspective)

The planting of the seed most definitely is the experiment.

You could consider it volitional but that would be in addition to what the text says. i.e. the text simply doesn't address the question of volition.

If you think all actions are volitional unless there's explicit evidence they're not then of course you'll call that volitional. My point is just that questions of volitional are alien to the text in question which doesn't seem concerned with them. I'm not even sure the contemporary volitional/non-volitional distinction necessarily even is something Alma would be aware of. The best we have to go on is the use of "free" elsewhere in the text. But that use is quite different than the sense of volition that develops in the western modern era. I know some would say it should be read back into the Book of Mormon due to the Calvinist/Arminian disputes which were in Joseph's environment. But I confess I just don't see a lot of evidence for seeing the Arminian debates in the Book of Mormon. In any case, anyone arguing for an Arminian reading would first have to argue for Arminianism in the text and then argue for why that forms an essential context for this passage.

I think the whole point of the metaphor is that it was contained in the seed already. Thus my emphasis on the Hebrew conception of true as offering an important way to read the text.

But that misses the crucial distinction where desire isn't to desire to believe but is desire to conduct the test. That's a pretty essential difference.

But that's not in our metaphor. All that happens is you plant or don't plant. What in the metaphor is this protecting? The discarding of the seed happens when the seed doesn't grow. (32)  i.e. it reveals itself to be a false seed. 

I understand why you want to inject questions of doubt and blind faith into the metaphor, but they're really pretty alien to how Alma discusses it even though they are completely part of how we think of belief today. 

It's not. The discussion you wish to have is a fine discussion to have. It just doesn't have much to do with how Alma discusses the issue. The problem fundamentally is that you want to think of faith in the way it's become considered in the west. That's completely understandable and is how most people read Alma 32. It's just that Alma's writing before those concepts arose.  So we can't assume he holds them. Further, he simply never engages the key parts of that reading. Doubt (or lack of belief) is merely determinative of whether the seed is planted to test it. Volition is simply not part of the discussion. That culturally we read those things into the discussion because we want to make it an epistemological discussion in our modern sense I fully acknowledge. That's what you're doing. I'm just saying that from an exegesis we shouldn't do that.

Really what you want to do is treat Alma 32 as if Joseph Smith were writing it as a way of speaking about issues like epistemology and free will. I'm just saying that's not an appropriate step. (Even if you think Joseph was entirely the author, we can't assume the mindset out of which he is writing)

Hi Clark -

Let's just start at the first clause and see how the text lines up, then proceed. Fair?

Your comment:

Quote

To me the planting of the seed or the discarding of the seed are the same act. So if you have enough desire or faith you plant it to see what happens. If you don't then there's no planting and you'll never know (from Alma's perspective)

Here's what Alma 32 says:

27 But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.

28 Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.

On close reading, it doesn't seem like the first act is planting. Rather it's gaining a desire to believe. This is then described as acting on the individual so now they are passively being conditioned and at that point they act again. This time by giving place for the seed to be planted in their heart. They aren't actually planting it. They can then decide to protect it or cast it out of their heart.

Do you agree?

[clarkgoble]

2 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

On close reading, it doesn't seem like the first act is planting. Rather it's gaining a desire to believe.

It's using the desire. So the first act is the planting and he's trying to explain why someone would want to plant. Either they have a little faith or just a desire to find out so they plant or they have a lack of belief and don't plant.

[Honorentheos]

10 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

It's using the desire. So the first act is the planting and he's trying to explain why someone would want to plant. Either they have a little faith or just a desire to find out so they plant or they have a lack of belief and don't plant.

I admit the text seems to be all over the place. It says this in v.28 -

Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart,

Later on it says this -

And now, behold, because ye have tried the experiment, and planted the seed, and it swelleth and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, ye must needs know that the seed is good.

But there is a decision the individual must make to have a desire to believe that is clear. And this is described as giving place in their heart for the seed. Whether actively acting as the planter or passively receiving the seed seem irrelevant to the nature of the metaphor.

It is described as "a desire to believe" rather than a desire to find out. The first act does appear to be in desiring to believe.

27 But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words.

Edited July 19, 2017 by Honorentheos

[clarkgoble]

1 hour ago, Honorentheos said:

But there is a decision the individual must make to have a desire to believe that is clear. And this is described as giving place in their heart for the seed. Whether actively acting as the planter or passively receiving the seed seem irrelevant to the nature of the metaphor.

I don't see why you interpret that as a desire to believe rather than a desire to test. The "give place for a portion of my words" isn't saying to believe them but to try them out.

Edited July 19, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Honorentheos]

26 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I don't see why you interpret that as a desire to believe rather than a desire to test. The "give place for a portion of my words" isn't saying to believe them but to try them out.

V27 uses the phrase.

Edited July 19, 2017 by Honorentheos

[clarkgoble]

13 hours ago, Honorentheos said:

V27 uses the phrase.

Yes but look at how it uses it. "But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words."

So it's connecting faith and belief but how this then leads to conducting the test. It's a secondary effect. Exercise (use) your faith to conduct the test. If you don't have enough faith to conduct the test, let the desire to believe work until you can conduct the test. It's not desire to believe as faith but desire to believe as a ground to conduct the text.

The idea is that there has to be a minimal amount of faith/belief to conduct the test. It's the means not the ends.

Edited July 19, 2017 by clarkgoble

[Honorentheos]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

Yes but look at how it uses it. "But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words."

So it's connecting faith and belief but how this then leads to conducting the test. It's a secondary effect. Exercise (use) your faith to conduct the test. If you don't have enough faith to conduct the test, let the desire to believe work until you can conduct the test. It's not desire to believe as faith but desire to believe as a ground to conduct the text.

The idea is that there has to be a minimal amount of faith/belief to conduct the test. It's the means not the ends.

First, we agreed that the experiment is the planting of the seed. So everywhere you refer to a test or exercising of faith we ought to be able to insert "plant the seed". Correct? If so, much of what you say above is tautological. "Exercise (use) your faith to conduct the test" could be rendered, "Plant the seed to plant the seed." "If you don't have enough faith (planting the seed) to conduct the test (plant the seed), let the desire to believe (let the desire to plant the seed) work until you can conduct the text (until you can plant the seed).

Faith is the act of planting the seed. "It's not desire to believe as faith but desire to believe as a ground to conduct the test" could be rendered, "It's not the desire to believe as planting the seed but desire to believe as grounds to plant the seed."

Clearly there are issues.

Alma 32 is clear the seed is the words, in this case the words of Alma but apparently anything in which one seeks to have faith in. And the result of "planting the seed" is one gains knowledge.

So, here are the relevant verses yet again -

28 Now, we will compare the word unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that the word is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.

29 Now behold, would not this increase your faith? I say unto you, Yea; nevertheless it hath not grown up to a perfect knowledge.

30 But behold, as the seed swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, then you must needs say that the seed is good; for behold it swelleth, and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow. And now, behold, will not this strengthen your faith? Yea, it will strengthen your faith: for ye will say I know that this is a good seed; for behold it sprouteth and beginneth to grow.

31 And now, behold, are ye sure that this is a good seed? I say unto you, Yea; for every seed bringeth forth unto its own likeness.

32 Therefore, if a seed groweth it is good, but if it groweth not, behold it is not good, therefore it is cast away.

33 And now, behold, because ye have tried the experiment, and planted the seed, and it swelleth and sprouteth, and beginneth to grow, ye must needs know that the seed is good.

34 And now, behold, is your knowledge perfect? Yea, your knowledge is perfect in that thing, and your faith is dormant; and this because you know, for ye know that the word hath swelled your souls, and ye also know that it hath sprouted up, that your understanding doth begin to be enlightened, and your mind doth begin to expand.