Nature of Joseph Smith's First Vision

[Gray]

On 11/8/2018 at 1:55 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

Scientists do not wallow in illogic or unscientific assertions.  You seem not to understand that.

Again, I never claimed to be a scientist. But the null hypothesis certainly isn't unscientific.

 

On 11/8/2018 at 1:55 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

Since such works are the physical artifacts of Joseph's visions (plural) and claims, they are certainly subject to forensic verification pro or con. 

I suppose the first problem with this is that the BOM and BOA are not artifacts of Joseph's visions. In fact, there are none.

 

On 11/8/2018 at 1:55 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

Indeed, under the rules of Bayesian analysis, the preponderance of evidence carries the day -- and can even verify biblical claims, since they are part of the context of the BofM and BofA claims.  The hard historical claims made in those works are readily testable by science and have presented us with an overwhelming case for positive verification.  You clearly do not understand the rules of extrapolation in science.  Facts do not stand independently.  They have far reaching scientific implications.

Oh dear. Overwhelming evidence, you say? You're overstating things just smidge, don't you think? The BOM is brimming with anachronistic  theology and doctrine. What is penal substitution atonement theory doing in in the BOM? And so forth. So far only historians on the absolute fringes are taking your position. It's so far on the fringes that it makes the fringes look mainstream. Could there be a reason for that?

Even if mainstream scholarship is someday overturned, it seems foolhardy and undisciplined to claim that the case for historicity is "overwhelming". Some humility for the realities of one's case is in order.

 

On 11/8/2018 at 1:55 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

Your commitment to apriorism is itself indicative of rejection of science and logic.  Those who reject hard forensic evidence traditionally do just what you do:  "Take em out and hang em.  No need for evidence or a trial !!"  Your commitment to lynch law for things Mormon tells us where you stand on science.

With all due respect, for all your talk about "real science" you seem to have completely missed the boat here on how science works. There is no hard forensic evidence for the first vision. Even if the BOA and BOM were historical, they would be completely immaterial to the question of whether or not Joseph's vision has only in his mind or not.

 

On 11/8/2018 at 1:55 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

Yokels do often think that Mormonism is just as supernaturally oriented as any other religion. 

Yokels like the leaders of the church? Sure, I guess that's fair. Look up the word "supernatural" on LDS.org and you'll find that's the base assumption these days.

 

On 11/8/2018 at 1:55 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

However, even if that were so (which it is not), supernaturalism is not subject to scientific inquiry.  Since you consider Mormonism to be supernatural, you agree with me that Mormon visions and personal revelation it is out of bounds for scientific inquiry. 

No, I consider Mormonism to be something in between. There are threads of pseudo-naturalism in its founding theology, for sure.

 

On 11/8/2018 at 1:55 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

Since visions and personal revelation are not amenable to laboratory experiment or controlled observation, we are not able to scientifically examine them -- even if Mormonism is naturalistic at base.  Science can only examine real, tangible artifacts, not subjective feelings and conjectures.  That is why a testimony is personal and non-transferrable.

If telepathy existed, could it be detected by science in some way?

 

On 11/8/2018 at 1:55 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

Again, only a yokel would consider a subjective vision, prayer, or personal revelation as testable by science.  Real scientists know that such claims cannot be tested by science.  Religion is a subjective belief system, which may or may not correspond to reality.  One may only test the artifacts of such a belief system, not the belief system itself.  The methods of testing are already available within academic disciplines such as archeology, linguistics, physics, chemistry, biology, math, and the like.

So we're backing away from science again? This conversation has been quite the merry-go-round

 

On 11/8/2018 at 1:55 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

In his book The Tao of Physics, physicist Fritjof Capra correctly understood that he could not directly test the claims of Eastern philosophy or religion.  Instead, he compared the conclusions of modern Western physics with the teachings of Eastern philosophy & religion.  He was surprised to find that the ancient Eastern teachings corresponded closely with modern physics.

I think there is much to learn from all kinds of spiritual traditions.

[Robert F. Smith]

2 hours ago, Gray said:

..........................................................................There is no hard forensic evidence for the first vision.

Correct.  As I have been trying to tell you in each of my comments.  Have you really finally understood that?  Probably not.

2 hours ago, Gray said:

I suppose the first problem with this is that the BOM and BOA are not artifacts of Joseph's visions. In fact, there are none.

False.  This indicates that you have no idea why or how those documents are intimately tied to Joseph and his visions, just as the visions of biblical prophets are tied to the Bible.  In each case, the visions themselves are untestable, but the document is readily testable.

2 hours ago, Gray said:

Oh dear. Overwhelming evidence, you say? You're overstating things just smidge, don't you think? The BOM is brimming with anachronistic  theology and doctrine. What is penal substitution atonement theory doing in in the BOM? And so forth. So far only historians on the absolute fringes are taking your position. It's so far on the fringes that it makes the fringes look mainstream. Could there be a reason for that?

Even if mainstream scholarship is someday overturned, it seems foolhardy and undisciplined to claim that the case for historicity is "overwhelming". Some humility for the realities of one's case is in order.

Even if the BOA and BOM were historical, they would be completely immaterial to the question of whether or not Joseph's vision has only in his mind or not.

Theology and doctrine are not testable by science.  Since you know nothing of science and the available methods of scientific inquiry, it is no surprise to find you completely missing the point and misstating the facts. Why would you think that I was referring to testing theology and doctrine?

2 hours ago, Gray said:

Yokels like the leaders of the church? Sure, I guess that's fair. Look up the word "supernatural" on LDS.org and you'll find that's the base assumption these days.

No, I consider Mormonism to be something in between. There are threads of pseudo-naturalism in its founding theology, for sure.

You want to have it both ways.  You know that LDS leaders have no more training in theology than you do.  Indeed, they also have no training in archeology -- also just like you.

2 hours ago, Gray said:

If telepathy existed, could it be detected by science in some way?

So we're backing away from science again? This conversation has been quite the merry-go-round................

You fundamentally reject science and the basic modes of scientific inquiry, and at the same time declare with certainty that science could not in any case be applied to Bible, Book of Mormon, or Book of Abraham, suggesting that the discussion is about theology or telepathy.  In so doing you deflect from facing science (which you admit you do not understand) and its accepted methods.  Since you have spent no time in a lab and have not dealt with hard forensic evidence, you pretend that it doesn't apply, all the while speaking out of both sides of your mouth -- pretending to accept science, while saying that it just doesn't apply.

I stated clearly that which you fundamentally do not accept:

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. . . a subjective vision, prayer, or personal revelation is not testable by science.  Real scientists know that such claims cannot be tested by science.  Religion is a subjective belief system, which may or may not correspond to reality.  One may only test the artifacts of such a belief system, not the belief system itself.  The methods of testing are already available within academic disciplines such as archeology, linguistics, physics, chemistry, biology, math, and the like.

Since visions and personal revelation are not amenable to laboratory experiment or controlled observation, we are not able to scientifically examine them -- even if Mormonism is naturalistic at base.  Science can only examine real, tangible artifacts, not subjective feelings and conjectures.  That is why a testimony is personal and non-transferrable.

. . . supernaturalism is not subject to scientific inquiry.  Since you consider Mormonism to be supernatural, you agree with me that Mormon visions and personal revelation it is out of bounds for scientific inquiry. 

You have a deep fear of dealing with the artifacts of religion, preferring to declare (what we already know) that religion cannot be directly tested by science.  It is a category mistake by you to continually harp on what we already know, and which is irrelevant.  Thus you reject even having a coherent conversation about scientific evidence, preferring to declare apriori that no such evidence exists.  You are clearly not interested in real science, nor in scientific inquiry.  Why?  Perhaps it is is too dangerous from your POV.  You share that POV with most religious believers, who are likewise deeply fearful of real conversations about their beliefs.

That reminds me of C. S. Lewis, once an atheist professor at Oxford University.  He said later, when had become a believing Christian, that his main mistake was to read Christian literature -- he called it "subversive literature."  You seem to fear confronting the facts for a similar reason.

[clarkgoble]

On 11/10/2018 at 6:08 PM, mfbukowski said:

"Better inquiry" into a personal vision of a person which allegedly occurred 200 years ago seems obviously to me to be impossible.  In fact any serious "inquiry" into any personal spiritual experience seems to me to be impossible.

Clearly for us. Not necessarily for Joseph.

But I certainly agree that there's a fair bit of the nature of the first vision unknowable as a practical matter by us. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.

That doesn't mean there aren't things we can't pick up upon in Joseph's claims and it's his speaking until his death along with interactions of others with "spiritual" phenomena that I was referring to. That is those broader more replicable phenomena. In that case then statements about Joseph's vision are just data points in a much larger collection of data.

On 11/10/2018 at 6:08 PM, mfbukowski said:

Nagel wrote about epistemological issues of course as you well know and how one inquires about "things as they are" as opposed to how we experience them- our central bone of contention when we discuss Rorty or Peirce or Nagel.  Nagel's entire point was that what we observe are OBSERVATIONS of "reality" and not reality itself.

Speaking as a philosophical point and not a practical point I think this makes a divide between reality and observations I'd not accept. I think the keyboard I'm typing on now and observing is part of reality. So my observations are reality just not the whole of reality. This becomes significant when we talk about what we mean by the real.

On 11/10/2018 at 6:08 PM, mfbukowski said:

The reason I am using this is to emphasize that Pragmatists seek to eliminate the "Reality/Appearance" distinction.

Yes but there are different ways of blurring that distinction and I think it's there that we differ. To me I just make the "it's all reality and we're swimming in it" position. That is I adopt a strong form of content externalism.

On 11/10/2018 at 6:08 PM, mfbukowski said:

Pragmatists think in an evolutionary manner.

Yes and I think that's important since it implies a process rather than an event. So if we talk about "luck" then in a repeated process luck tends to disappear.

The implication is that it's the repeatable or perhaps better put as general that we can know best. 

So when you later invoke the Didiche and the doctrine of the two ways, that's really just getting at a very broad generality which is knowable. However it seems clear that we can take this same principle and know things about other repeatable phenomena like say the nature of electrons or even the nature of spirits to the degree they interact with us.

On 11/10/2018 at 6:08 PM, mfbukowski said:

And so as you know, that is the problem with pragmatism in general when one says "truth is what works".   It can be taken many different ways.

Yes. Certainly Peirce and James meant something very different by it. Peirce uses it more akin to how physical scientists use it and that's how I use it. 

[mfbukowski]

46 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Clearly for us. Not necessarily for Joseph.

But I certainly agree that there's a fair bit of the nature of the first vision unknowable as a practical matter by us. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.

That doesn't mean there aren't things we can't pick up upon in Joseph's claims and it's his speaking until his death along with interactions of others with "spiritual" phenomena that I was referring to. That is those broader more replicable phenomena. In that case then statements about Joseph's vision are just data points in a much larger collection of data.

Speaking as a philosophical point and not a practical point I think this makes a divide between reality and observations I'd not accept. I think the keyboard I'm typing on now and observing is part of reality. So my observations are reality just not the whole of reality. This becomes significant when we talk about what we mean by the real.

Yes but there are different ways of blurring that distinction and I think it's there that we differ. To me I just make the "it's all reality and we're swimming in it" position. That is I adopt a strong form of content externalism.

Yes and I think that's important since it implies a process rather than an event. So if we talk about "luck" then in a repeated process luck tends to disappear.

The implication is that it's the repeatable or perhaps better put as general that we can know best. 

So when you later invoke the Didiche and the doctrine of the two ways, that's really just getting at a very broad generality which is knowable. However it seems clear that we can take this same principle and know things about other repeatable phenomena like say the nature of electrons or even the nature of spirits to the degree they interact with us.

Yes. Certainly Peirce and James meant something very different by it. Peirce uses it more akin to how physical scientists use it and that's how I use it. 

Well  I think the anti-realist physicists like Bohr  might disagree but I understand your point and agree somewhat so perhaps progress has been made

The problem is that both of our positions- IF they are indeed different enough to  be called "different"- handle the question of the OP (which is philosophically  naive)- ?

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1. This nature of Joseph Smith's First Vision was raised and discussed in another thread. Was it a dream? Some form of physical visitation? How are we defining "vision"? So, here is how I'd like to phrase the question: If someone had been standing 10 feet behind Joseph Smith, would they have also seen God the Father and/or Jesus Christ? (This assumes "all else equal"... meaning: please ignore the fact that if another person had been there, the First Vision likely would have been postponed by Joseph Smith or God.)

Do  we  just  say "Yeah it was real" explaining nothing  about what that means or do we go into the nuances of the semantic differences between "appearance" and "reality"  and whether or not such differences are just semantic or not?

People eliminate speaking of the vision as "real" when it was "just in his head" because they are naive about the nuances of the reality/appearance discussion.

On one side, of course everything is "in your head" in one sense and on the other there clearly do exist causes of what "is in your head".

And people lose testimonies over what was "just in Joseph's head" and therefore it could not be "real"

So trying to extract this culture from dualism so far has been an abysmal failure but what religion even IS depends on collapsing the dualism so that religious phenomena can be classed as "real".

If religion is not about  what is "real" then why bother?

So that is the question I struggle with daily and have for most of my life now.   How does one explain the nuances without sounding like one is "on acid" as one joked the other day?

And this is also the question you were kind enough to publish for me on T&S and which is fundamentally the point we are still struggling with here.https://www.timesandseasons.org/harchive/2017/08/guest-post-justifying-visions/

On one hand it makes no sense to make a distinction between  appearance and reality- which is ultimately I think what you are saying above- but yet that leaves the religious question of visions as unanswered.

If all  we see is appearances then why not just SAY that say that ?

So you say

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" To me I just make the "it's all reality and we're swimming in it"

And I go with

"It's all just appearances we're swimming in"

And yet neither and both capture the full picture.

But the reason I stick with my view is because it explains the difference AND makes religious "appearance" as strong as any  other "reality", while you appear to linger with dualism and see religious experience as perhaps "not quite real"

So of course, I think my position is more complex, but better for theology.   And of course I have been critical toward Peirce's view of God for exactly that reason.

Maybe we are getting somewhere?

Edited November 15, 2018 by mfbukowski

[clarkgoble]

On 11/14/2018 at 5:10 PM, mfbukowski said:

The problem is that both of our positions- IF they are indeed different enough to  be called "different"- handle the question of the OP (which is philosophically  naive)- ?

I think the question would become how likely it is to be physical given some accounts suggesting physicality (such as the touching of the eyes I mentioned) combined with similar visions of heavenly beings. That is the question becomes the question of the physicality of the veil between this world and the spirit world and the nature of spiritual beings. Once you answer those questions then that changes the context for how to interpret the First Vision. You'd still not know for sure, but I think it changes how one views it.

On 11/14/2018 at 5:10 PM, mfbukowski said:

People eliminate speaking of the vision as "real" when it was "just in his head" because they are naive about the nuances of the reality/appearance discussion.

On one side, of course everything is "in your head" in one sense and on the other there clearly do exist causes of what "is in your head".

And people lose testimonies over what was "just in Joseph's head" and therefore it could not be "real"

Honestly I don't think it matters whether it was a communication from God directly to Joseph's brain versus a physical appearance. I think that's what you're getting at.  A communication via a virtual reality presentation is still real in some sense. I think what bothers people is whether it's possible he was just dreaming or imagining it. What makes Joseph significant for most people I think is that he wasn't just "visionary" but had tangible objects. It's that tangibility of the Book of Mormon that really changes how Joseph's comments are viewed. Take away that physicality and suddenly much of what he says becomes less trustworthy. (For I think completely understandable reasons)

Now of course the counterargument is that if it was given in a kind of VR mode (like say D&C 76 appears to have been) that doesn't mean the references aren't real. But the question is how to separate the interpretation from the reality. Or, put an other way, how do we tell what parts of an account are trustworthy. 

On 11/14/2018 at 5:10 PM, mfbukowski said:

On one hand it makes no sense to make a distinction between  appearance and reality- which is ultimately I think what you are saying above- but yet that leaves the religious question of visions as unanswered.

I think the real question (pardon the pun) is how many religious claims are accurate not about ethical behavior but about the actual composition of the universe and behaviors within that universe. I don't think everything is accurate, but I'm not sure I can always tell which. But some seems extremely accurate to me, which is why I'm Mormon. To me the ethical is a far distant concern since we all know we should be charitable and nice. That's easy to know independent of religion. It's the rest that seems significant. So when people reduce religion to the ethical I kind of role my eyes since while ethics is very important, it's also the least important thing about religion. After all we don't need religion for that. So how is religion plausibly important if it can only give what we don't even need it for?

On 11/14/2018 at 5:10 PM, mfbukowski said:

On one hand it makes no sense to make a distinction between  appearance and reality- which is ultimately I think what you are saying above- but yet that leaves the religious question of visions as unanswered.

 If all  we see is appearances then why not just SAY that say that ?

To me it's not just appearances though. We also have the inferences we make from that. Further appearances are themselves already inferences. I don't see colored blobs I interpret as a car. I see a car. In that process we have errors - meaning further inquiry would change the interpretation significantly. So if I think something's a car, but it turns out to be a garbage can, then the original appearance was erroneous. That question of accuracy is always a question of generalities we infer from experience which themselves then entail claims about future experiences. To use Peirce's favorite example, to say a diamond is hard is to make a claim about what would happen were I to hit the diamond. 

In the same way, to make claims about visions not merely being dream-like but to have some reference to real physical entities is to make a claim about being able to encounter those entities in a physical (non-VR) way. (It's worth noting that Peirce deals with virtuality in a rather sophisticated way which gets at what I sense your objections about appearances get at)

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

I think the question would become how likely it is to be physical given some accounts suggesting physicality (such as the touching of the eyes I mentioned) combined with similar visions of heavenly beings. That is the question becomes the question of the physicality of the veil between this world and the spirit world and the nature of spiritual beings. Once you answer those questions then that changes the context for how to interpret the First Vision. You'd still not know for sure, but I think it changes how one views it.

Oops I think we went backwards.  I do not think in terms of "physicality" I think in terms of appearances of what is called "physicality".

Since we cannot in principle "know for sure" it doesn't change how one views it for me.   It's impossible to know so why even bother with worrying about the difference when it is a distinction without a difference?

This always drives me nuts- just when I think it is coming together.

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Honestly I don't think it matters whether it was a communication from God directly to Joseph's brain versus a physical appearance. I think that's what you're getting at.  A communication via a virtual reality presentation is still real in some sense. I think what bothers people is whether it's possible he was just dreaming or imagining it. 

 

Another distinction without a difference.  You say it doesn't matter which and then it does?  And again that pesky word "real" which cannot be defined?

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What makes Joseph significant for most people I think is that he wasn't just "visionary" but had tangible objects. It's that tangibility of the Book of Mormon that really changes how Joseph's comments are viewed. Take away that physicality and suddenly much of what he says becomes less trustworthy. (For I think completely understandable reasons)

 

Tangible objects or appearances of tangible objects?  How can you experience "objects" and not experiences of "objects"?

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Now of course the counterargument is that if it was given in a kind of VR mode (like say D&C 76 appears to have been) that doesn't mean the references aren't real.

Again the reality/ appearance distinction.  It doesn't work.  Virtual reality is clearly not an experienced caused by nature- you put on a device and see things projected on a screen and you know it.  You have the experience of knowing that the experiences you are about to have are artificial like going to a movie.  Movies are not at all like natural experiences.

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But the question is how to separate the interpretation from the reality. Or, put an other way, how do we tell what parts of an account are trustworthy. 

 

You can't separate them and that is the whole point.  They are trustworthy if the can be repeated and in this case they cannot be repeated, so there is no such thing as "trustworthy" unless you think descriptions of personal experience can be "trustworthy".  And clearly in every court in the world every day when some witness provides an account of a personal experience we take it as "trustworthy" if it coheres with other personal experiences.

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I think the real question (pardon the pun) is how many religious claims are accurate not about ethical behavior but about the actual composition of the universe and behaviors within that universe. I don't think everything is accurate, but I'm not sure I can always tell which. But some seems extremely accurate to me, which is why I'm Mormon. 

 

 

 

Yet again NOTHING in language CAN BE "accurate" about the "actual composition of the universe"

Why do you think science changes as often as it does??  Was it right before and now it is wrong?  All we can hope for is paradigms that work for a while and then are revised based on OBSERVATIONS filter through human brains!!  NONE of them are "correct" about the actual composition of the universe!!

No distinction between reality and appearances- for physics as well as religion.  Quine- dogmas of empiricism, Bohr on the nature of physics- I could go on forever.

This view is well established.  

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To me the ethical is a far distant concern since we all know we should be charitable and nice. That's easy to know independent of religion. It's the rest that seems significant. So when people reduce religion to the ethical I kind of role my eyes since while ethics is very important, it's also the least important thing about religion. After all we don't need religion for that. So how is religion plausibly important if it can only give what we don't even need it for?

 

The fact that we believe ethics to be "true" is precisely what proves you do not have to have data about "the world" we cannot see by d

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efinition to be "true"

To me it's not just appearances though. We also have the inferences we make from that. Further appearances are themselves already inferences. I don't see colored blobs I interpret as a car. I see a car. In that process we have errors - meaning further inquiry would change the interpretation significantly. So if I think something's a car, but it turns out to be a garbage can, then the original appearance was erroneous.

 

Yes but how is it corrected?? By another Experience and interpretation of it.  If you call it a car that is semantics.  I call it an experience of a car, an interpretation of perception.  Just as the mirage analogy I used before  The perception is corrected by another perception not "reality" which is beyond perception!!!  It's a circular argument- you can NEVER get out of perceptions

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That question of accuracy is always a question of generalities we infer from experience which themselves then entail claims about future experiences. To use Peirce's favorite example, to say a diamond is hard is to make a claim about what would happen were I to hit the diamond. 

That is actually a known logical fallacy "Appeal to the Stone"  I would think Peirce would have known better.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_the_stone  

It was a well known fallacy even in his time  http://www.irishphilosophy.com/2016/03/12/berkeleys-immaterialism/

Here is a good explanation of Berkeley's argument and why this approach does not work:

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Given this, why presume there is some external substance that is causing perceptions? If we lose this concept, how does that affect what really exists? It doesn’t affect it at all, says Berkeley: “The philosophers lose their abstract or unperceived Matter…Pray wt do the rest of mankind lose? As for bodies, &c., we have them still”4

Instead, Berkeley argues that our talk of existence is purely talk of ideas, or potential ideas: “The table I write on I say exists; that is, I see and feel it: and if I were out of my study I should say it existed; meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it”5. And from this Berkeley argues that the idea of an sensible object that cannot be perceived is incoherent – it is essential to it that it must be possible to perceive it. Thus, all sensible objects are necessarily dependant on minds.

Where Swift and Johnson went wrong was in forgetting that solidity is just as much a property perceived by the senses as taste or smell. (Given that extension was regarded as the defining attribute of matter by Descartes and extension as a primary quality by Locke, this is not surprising.) Johnson’s kicking of a stone is therefore beside the point – Berkeley would expect a sensation to result. He would expect the repeated dropping of a hammer on his foot to result in pain. Johnson’s refutation has thus named a type of fallacy: the Argumentum ad lapidemor appeal to the stone, where a position is dismissed as absurd without proof of its absurdity.

 

 

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In the same way, to make claims about visions not merely being dream-like but to have some reference to real physical entities is to make a claim about being able to encounter those entities in a physical (non-VR) way. (It's worth noting that Peirce deals with virtuality in a rather sophisticated way which gets at what I sense your objections about appearances get at)

They are not dream like- one does not wake up in bed after seeing a red car.  One instantly knows it was a dream.

I don't know what Peirce thought about the reality appearance distinction but it appears to me at this moment that he did not understand what had not yet been formulated philosophically.   How could he know?

There has been a lot more to pragmatism that what Peirce even imagined I guess if you are right

Edited November 17, 2018 by mfbukowski

[AdultConvert]

What about JS vision in D&C 132?  He says he saw Adam and Abraham, his Father & Mother and Brother Alvin. 

This would seem to be a supernatural, spiritual vision.  Because as far as known doctrine, Alvin, his father & mother could not have been in the Celestial Kingdom with Heavenly Father and Christ yet but in the Spirit World. 

This vision was a revelation of things to come and could not have been a reality at the time. 

Visions in the 1800s are a prominent feature in American religious experience.  Ellen White, founder of Seventh-day Adventist Church (SDA), claimed to have had over 2000 visions in her lifetime.  Other SDA leaders also described visions.  These visions were all part of the development of doctrine much the same as JS visions for LDS doctrine. 

Bible and BOM contain plenty of visions (Daniel & John (Book of Revelation). 

God's Universe is not bound by the physics of this world.  It would seem that dreams and visions have been a common mode of communication between His world to humans on Planet Earth. 

[clarkgoble]

15 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

I do not think in terms of "physicality" I think in terms of appearances of what is called "physicality".

Just to be clear, by physicality I mean things that exist inside space and time and encounterable via some sense-experience. That is to distinguish them from thoughts in my head that aren't outside of me. The reason this becomes significant is because of the phenomena of hallucination and false memory. So most of what I'm after is just this distinction which I assume you hold between dreams and what's "out there" independent of just my mind. I keep seeing you attempting to blur what is a fairly straightforward distinction and certainly not a "difference without a difference." The difference is what other people in the spatio-temporal vicinity will experience.

If you are at 7-11 and claiming to see purple unicorns and no one else is, regardless of what it appears to be happening to you, we have compelling evidence that it's all in your brain and not the physical world outside of your brain.

Again these seem like simple distinctions. One can attempt to problematize them but usually those only apply in special non-typical cases.

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Honestly I don't think it matters whether it was a communication from God directly to Joseph's brain versus a physical appearance. I think that's what you're getting at.  A communication via a virtual reality presentation is still real in some sense. I think what bothers people is whether it's possible he was just dreaming or imagining it. 

15 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Another distinction without a difference.  You say it doesn't matter which and then it does?  And again that pesky word "real" which cannot be defined?

The word real can easily be defined as something whose properties don't depend upon how it is represented in any particular representation. An other way of putting this is a thing whose statements about truth don't depend upon what any finite group think about it. If what the person or group thinks about it changes its truth value then it's not a real property or thing because those properties are intrinsically tied to people's thought. This gets at the old "if a tree falls without anyone seeing it did it fall" sort of distinction.

To say that the above is a difference without a difference is to basically say that there's no difference between dreams and reality (IMO).  To give the obvious joke, if I dream of falling off a cliff the difference is I die when I fall off a real cliff.

So the difference is always in the consequences. It's that temporal element which typically in our discussions you don't engage with but which is key to this position.

15 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

How can you experience "objects" and not experiences of "objects"?

How can you have experience without objects? I've never had an experience without objects. Maybe you have but I have a hard time even contemplating what that is. I'm not even sure newborns are like that.

15 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Again the reality/ appearance distinction.  It doesn't work.  Virtual reality is clearly not an experienced caused by nature- you put on a device and see things projected on a screen and you know it.  You have the experience of knowing that the experiences you are about to have are artificial like going to a movie.  Movies are not at all like natural experiences.

Right, but you're basically just conceding my points here. To say it is "artificial" is to simply note there's a difference in our experiences we can detect. All I'm saying is that artificiality would be something we can look at in visionary experiences as well.

15 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Yet again NOTHING in language CAN BE "accurate" about the "actual composition of the universe"

If you say the sky is black when it's a nice sunny day you're being inaccurate. Again, these are trivial common sense recognitions. I'm certainly not arguing for some kind of Cartesian absolute infallibility. So I think you're attacking a position I don't hold by trying to push this off into a discussion of absolutes. 

15 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Yes but how is it corrected?? By another Experience and interpretation of it.

Certainly. We're talking processes and not time slices.

15 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

That is actually a known logical fallacy "Appeal to the Stone"  I would think Peirce would have known better.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_the_stone  

Not sure what you're referring to here. I don't see how what I said relates to Berkeley or so forth. I was explaining the meaning of accuracy. To say something is accurate is just to make a claim about future classes of experience. 

15 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

They are not dream like- one does not wake up in bed after seeing a red car.  One instantly knows it was a dream.

But we don't instantly know what is or isn't a dream. Often we do for sure, but frequently we don't. The reason we typically can tell it's a dream is simply because reality starts acting upon us in a fashion incompatible with the dream.

15 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

I don't know what Peirce thought about the reality appearance distinction but it appears to me at this moment that he did not understand what had not yet been formulated philosophically.   How could he know?

Again I think you're just missing the temporal element in all this. The question is what continued inquiry leads us to believe.

The question is not whether there are appearances. Of course there are. The question is the evolution of appearances over time and what regularities in the appearances we can discern. It's those regularities that lead us to postulate general rules. Those postulates are claims about potentially future tests. We determine if the regularities hold (I'll avoid the phrase "are accurate" for your sake although I think that's all we mean by it) by testing them within future experiences. Interpretations of "appearances" that don't hold up to continued testing are judged "inaccurate" precisely because they aren't regularities.

So if I look out my window and see a fox then step outside and notice it's some bushes that look somewhat like a fox but clearly are bushes then I know my initial interpretation was inaccurate. I can continue to look out to see if they are still bushes and not foxes. That's the process we continue with over time for any general claim about our experiences.

From my perspective you keep talking about appearances but leave out the question of regularities in experience and the temporal element that I think undermines your position.

Edited November 17, 2018 by clarkgoble

[clarkgoble]

15 hours ago, AdultConvert said:

What about JS vision in D&C 132?  He says he saw Adam and Abraham, his Father & Mother and Brother Alvin. 

Do you mean D&C 137?  Yes that seems clearly a vision about the future.

15 hours ago, AdultConvert said:

God's Universe is not bound by the physics of this world.  It would seem that dreams and visions have been a common mode of communication between His world to humans on Planet Earth. 

I'm not sure about that statement about physics. It's a common religious claim but I think Mormon materialism can easily be interpreted as opposing that claim since God is within the universe and essentially embodied, unlike in Protestantism. If God is bound by law then those are the fundamental laws of physics. 

Certainly I agree that dreams and visions are common ways God communicates with us. I don't think it's the only way he does. I also think he sends messengers and can provide "miracles" which are physical interactions not merely dream-like. 

 

[mfbukowski]

4 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Just to be clear, by physicality I mean things that exist inside space and time and encounterable via some sense-experience. That is to distinguish them from thoughts in my head that aren't outside of me. 

You admit right there they are encounterable by sense experience.

They are not encounterable any other way.

That's exactly the contradiction, and where the Berkeley quote comes in.

All the stuff about the tree falling in the forest and jumping off the cliff and all of that is what the Berkeley quote solves. It's all the ad lapidem fallacy.

All of those are sense experiences. There's no root need to postulate a reality outside of sense experience.

This is exactly also what is being said in the Rorty quote below. 

That is exactly what the Berkeley quote says.

In all our discussions it seems to always be the same. if you have a point that would refute Berkeley that would help. 

But then you also have Quine and Searle and all the other neo pragmatists including Wittgenstein to refute and all of phenomenology.

All of those essentially rest upon this kind of thinking that  Berkeley States quite clearly.

All we have is since experience of things and nothing Beyond. so if you're saying that what you call reality is just sense experience that's fine. That's the source of the confusion. It's still a semantic problem and nothing more. it's how we define reality as sense experience instead of something Beyond sense experience.

Perhaps if you read it again?

 

Edited November 18, 2018 by mfbukowski

[clarkgoble]

8 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

You admit right there they are encounterable by sense experience.

That's exactly the contradiction, and where the Berkeley quote comes in.

All the stuff about the tree falling in the forest and jumping off the cliff and all of that is what the Berkeley quote solves. It's all the ad lapidem fallacy.

All of those are sense experiences. There's no root need to postulate a reality outside of sense experience.

That is exactly what the Berkeley quote says.

Perhaps if you read it again?

I think you're taking me as arguing something I'm not. Again I'm not disputing that things are appearances. It's the implication of that for regularities that's at issue. 

Going to Peirce, he's an idealist in that it's all signs. Matter is just congealed ideas and ideas are effete matter in Peirce's view. So I think you're assuming I'm adopting Cartesian dualism when that's exactly what I'm rejecting.

The question is the significance of the experience we have - what it signifies. No dualism to it. This isn't matter outside of mind. Rather matter is mind. The question isn't ontology but rather whether the implications I draw from an experience are supportable through continued inquiry. So the ontological arguments you are making are completely irrelevant - Berkeley in particular. I'm not quite sure what you think me embracing but I'm pretty sure it's not what you think it is.

Edited November 18, 2018 by clarkgoble

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

I think you're taking me as arguing something I'm not. Again I'm not disputing that things are appearances. It's the implication of that for regularities that's at issue. 

Going to Peirce, he's an idealist in that it's all signs. Matter is just congealed ideas and ideas are effete matter in Peirce's view. So I think you're assuming I'm adopting Cartesian dualism when that's exactly what I'm rejecting.

The question is the significance of the experience we have - what it signifies. No dualism to it. This isn't matter outside of mind. Rather matter is mind. The question isn't ontology but rather whether the implications I draw from an experience are supportable through continued inquiry. So the ontological arguments you are making are completely irrelevant - Berkeley in particular. I'm not quite sure what you think me embracing but I'm pretty sure it's not what you think it is.

Now see when you talk like this we are in complete agreement but as I see it you do not talk this way usually.

From previous posts- on this thread

Quote

 

Just to be clear, by physicality I mean things that exist inside space and time and encounterable via some sense-experience. That is to distinguish them from thoughts in my head that aren't outside of me. 

 

So if matter is mind, then what "physicality" is "distinguished from thoughts in my head"?

Quote

To say that the above is a difference without a difference is to basically say that there's no difference between dreams and reality (IMO).  To give the obvious joke, if I dream of falling off a cliff the difference is I die when I fall off a real cliff.

If everything is mind then there IS no "ontological" difference between dreams and reality.

If you have a dream of the EXPERIENCE of falling off the cliff, then you wake up and have the waking experience of falling off the cliff it will be quite different- it's going to hurt a lot.  And while you are laying there waiting to die who knows what you would be experiencing?  And then you would have the EXPERIENCE of dying and presumably for believers the experience of what happens after death.

But it's all still experience ONLY.  Dreams are experiences, falling is an experience, pain is an experience and dying is an experience.  After that all bets are off. 

If there is a dying tree in the forest and you paint an X on it to know it is the "same" tree for future reference, then you come back and it has fallen and no one heard it - ie - no reports of it from others- then you conclude it has fallen.  But all those are experiences.  You infer that it fell because you experienced it as standing and then you experienced it as fallen and concluded that it had fallen.

Then it's like Hume said- one experience follows another and we infer causality- that the change in the tree's position was caused by the fall.  Who knows what really happened?   Maybe a giant picked it up and then put it down, or aliens did it or theoretically who knows for sure because it was NOT experienced by anyone- until you came along and checked to see if it was still up or down.

And your temporal point to me is confusing.  You predict that if you put water in a pot and put a fire under it you will experience bubbles and steam a few minutes later.   Every time you do that, you experience bubbles.

The experience is predictable.  And predictable experiences are very helpful- if you experience taking an aspirin you have repeatedly experienced that your experience of pain from a headache goes away.   Science tells us that if we put compound x with compound x with compound y you will experiencing blowing  up the lab.   

And every time you experience putting those two together you will experience blowing up the lab.  You can predict the experiences perfectly down to the quanity of the explosives and how long it takes to have the experience of the explosion etc but it is  STILL EXPERIENCE

Certain experiences predict others 100% of the time.  If I am holding an egg and experience opening my hand I predict that I will experience what is called "the egg falling" and "the egg breaking"

What does having repeatable experiences have to do with whether or not they are "real" or not?   The experience is repeatable, period, nothng else needs to be inferred.   That's all you need.  Put salt on it and it tastes salty.  Is it really salty or just your perception?  It is ridiculous to draw a distinction.

They are all mental states and as Rorty and Berkeley would say

Quote

  Truth cannot be out there- cannot exist independently of the human mind- because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there.  The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not.  Only descriptions of the world can be true or false.  The world on its own- unaided by the describing activities of human beings- cannot."   Richard Rorty- Contingency Irony and Solidarity, P 5.

How can anybody argue with that????

All sensible objects are dependent on minds to be sensed.  That is a tautology.   How anyone cannot see that is frankly beyond my understanding.   

You said this:

Quote

The question is not whether there are appearances. Of course there are. The question is the evolution of appearances over time and what regularities in the appearances we can discern. It's those regularities that lead us to postulate general rules. Those postulates are claims about potentially future tests. We determine if the regularities hold (I'll avoid the phrase "are accurate" for your sake although I think that's all we mean by it) by testing them within future experiences. Interpretations of "appearances" that don't hold up to continued testing are judged "inaccurate" precisely because they aren't regularities.

I agree with that but what does that have to do with anything??

Is being "accurate" really the same to you as just meaning that the experiences cohere?   NOT that they correspond to some non-sensible world which is "physical" beyond appearance?

Then what is all the talk about falling off cliffs and the hardness of diamonds??  It seems that by bringing up that diamonds are hard you are talking about "attributes" of diamonds which are beyond experience.

Are diamonds hard independent of our perception of them as hard?  If the answer is no- we agree.  WE PERCEIVE them as "hard" and "attributes" are simply PERCEPTIONS

If you think they are "hard" independent of our perceptions that is unintelligible to me.   

If "everything is mind" I have no clue why you would bring up the hardness of diamonds because the hardness of diamonds is also mind

So which is it?

[clarkgoble]

On 11/17/2018 at 10:25 PM, mfbukowski said:

Now see when you talk like this we are in complete agreement but as I see it you do not talk this way usually.

From previous posts- on this thread

I don't think those two ways of talking are opposed if experience is experience of things as being in space and time. To go back to the infamous falling tree example, Berkeley & proponents want to salvage the falling tree by having God there experiencing everything. So even if you and I aren't aware of it, someone is. The other popular view is a more panpsychist view. For myself, I don't think I have to adopt a particular ontological claim about the ultimate grounds of reality. I just want to make the more pragmatic claim that reality seems consistent and claims about reality are just claims about future experiences tied to those claims. So again to use the old diamond example, to say diamonds are hard is to make a claim about what would happen in potential future experiences of diamonds as spacial-temporal objects. 

Going to Joseph Smith, this just means the question of whether Joseph's vision of God was real is simply to ask whether it was just his brain states or if the experience includes spatiotemporal entities outside of Joseph's body as well. The question of whether it was a vision or appearance is just to ask whether in his local spatio-temporal environment there were these external entities or whether they were just again in his brain, even if perhaps God was affecting those brain states from afar.

Once we get clear what the question we are asking means, we can then proceed with trying to answer it. I think the reason these questions get so muddled is just because we're not clear with our questions.

On 11/17/2018 at 10:25 PM, mfbukowski said:

So if matter is mind, then what "physicality" is "distinguished from thoughts in my head"?

If you are a dualist who thinks mind is just in the head, then of course one wouldn't. If one is an externalist who thinks all mind phenomena include essentially the objects within the experience then that's not a problem. So the mental phenomena of me typing on my keyboard can't be exhausted by only talking about brain states but one has to essentially also talk about the keyboard as part of that experience. It's reducing experience to "thoughts in my head" that's the problem. However if the mental has intentionality and those objects of intention external to my brain, then the mental can't merely be my brain.

On 11/17/2018 at 10:25 PM, mfbukowski said:

If everything is mind then there IS no "ontological" difference between dreams and reality.

If by ontology we mean the being of the objects in question then I don't see why we have to say that. The mental may have ontological differences within it. But again I'd say we have to clarify this question to really make sense of it. Regardless of whether we call this difference ontological or physical though, there is a difference.

On 11/17/2018 at 10:25 PM, mfbukowski said:

What does having repeatable experiences have to do with whether or not they are "real" or not?   The experience is repeatable, period, nothng else needs to be inferred.   That's all you need.  Put salt on it and it tastes salty.  Is it really salty or just your perception?  It is ridiculous to draw a distinction.

The value in the category of real vs. non-real is just to ask whether it exists only in the experience of a small group or not.  That is it's to ask a question of about the nature of the objects in the experience. In one sense we might say that my experience of meeting my wife and my experience of meeting Sherlock Holmes through the pages of Doyle are both experiences that repeat. However it seems rather obvious that there is a value in distinguishing the kind of being my wife is from the kind of being Sherlock Holmes is.

This seems like such a common sense distinction that I'm surprised you'd object.

My experiences may indeed involve perceptions, but that doesn't mean we can't observe useful differences. It's that constant downplaying of what seems like easy to establish differences that I confess I don't understand with your position.

On 11/17/2018 at 10:25 PM, mfbukowski said:

How can anybody argue with that????

All sensible objects are dependent on minds to be sensed.  That is a tautology.   How anyone cannot see that is frankly beyond my understanding.

But surely you'd agree the nature of the sensing matters a great deal. That's what you seem to be downplaying.

On 11/17/2018 at 10:25 PM, mfbukowski said:

Is being "accurate" really the same to you as just meaning that the experiences cohere?   NOT that they correspond to some non-sensible world which is "physical" beyond appearance?

I don't think cohere is quite the way I'd put it. But that's close. The problem with cohere is that some experiences don't cohere and are thrown out as erroneous. To use my example from the weekend, I may experience a bush as a cat, but that's erroneous if future experiences show it's a bush.

I'm not arguing for "some non-sensible world which is physical beyond appearance" although I'm not quite sure what you mean. You put a lot of weight on appearance but aren't quite clear what you mean by it. If by appear you just mean sense, then that's fine. But again the nature of sense matters. If my eyes are open and I see a blue sky or I dream of a blue sky in some way both are senses. Yet it seems clear we can and should distinguish the type of sensing going on. It's those differences I'm focusing on. 

My sense, (pardon the pun), is that you want appearance to be some kind of irreducible ontological ground. I'm really not arguing that kind of ontology. I'm just asking what differences we can discern in experience. Real vs. non-real seems an obvious distinction we make all the time. Likewise accurate vs. inaccurate seems a distinction we regularly make. They're extremely useful distinctions that do a lot of work in helping us deal with experience and make predictions about future experiences.

Edited November 19, 2018 by clarkgoble

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

I don't think those two ways of talking are opposed if experience is experience of things as being in space and time. To go back to the infamous falling tree example, Berkeley & proponents want to salvage the falling tree by having God there experiencing everything. So even if you and I aren't aware of it, someone is. The other popular view is a more panpsychist view. For myself, I don't think I have to adopt a particular ontological claim about the ultimate grounds of reality. I just want to make the more pragmatic claim that reality seems consistent and claims about reality are just claims about future experiences tied to those claims. So again to use the old diamond example, to say diamonds are hard is to make a claim about what would happen in potential future experiences of diamonds as spacial-temporal objects. 

Going to Joseph Smith, this just means the question of whether Joseph's vision of God was real is simply to ask whether it was just his brain states or if the experience includes spatiotemporal entities outside of Joseph's body as well. The question of whether it was a vision or appearance is just to ask whether in his local spatio-temporal environment there were these external entities or whether they were just again in his brain, even if perhaps God was affecting those brain states from afar.

Once we get clear what the question we are asking means, we can then proceed with trying to answer it. I think the reason these questions get so muddled is just because we're not clear with our questions.

If you are a dualist who thinks mind is just in the head, then of course one wouldn't. If one is an externalist who thinks all mind phenomena include essentially the objects within the experience then that's not a problem. So the mental phenomena of me typing on my keyboard can't be exhausted by only talking about brain states but one has to essentially also talk about the keyboard as part of that experience. It's reducing experience to "thoughts in my head" that's the problem. However if the mental has intentionality and those objects of intention external to my brain, then the mental can't merely be my brain.

If by ontology we mean the being of the objects in question then I don't see why we have to say that. The mental may have ontological differences within it. But again I'd say we have to clarify this question to really make sense of it. Regardless of whether we call this difference ontological or physical though, there is a difference.

The value in the category of real vs. non-real is just to ask whether it exists only in the experience of a small group or not.  That is it's to ask a question of about the nature of the objects in the experience. In one sense we might say that my experience of meeting my wife and my experience of meeting Sherlock Holmes through the pages of Doyle are both experiences that repeat. However it seems rather obvious that there is a value in distinguishing the kind of being my wife is from the kind of being Sherlock Holmes is.

This seems like such a common sense distinction that I'm surprised you'd object.

My experiences may indeed involve perceptions, but that doesn't mean we can't observe useful differences. It's that constant downplaying of what seems like easy to establish differences that I confess I don't understand with your position.

But surely you'd agree the nature of the sensing matters a great deal. That's what you seem to be downplaying.

I don't think cohere is quite the way I'd put it. But that's close. The problem with cohere is that some experiences don't cohere and are thrown out as erroneous. To use my example from the weekend, I may experience a bush as a cat, but that's erroneous if future experiences show it's a bush.

I'm not arguing for "some non-sensible world which is physical beyond appearance" although I'm not quite sure what you mean. You put a lot of weight on appearance but aren't quite clear what you mean by it. If by appear you just mean sense, then that's fine. But again the nature of sense matters. If my eyes are open and I see a blue sky or I dream of a blue sky in some way both are senses. Yet it seems clear we can and should distinguish the type of sensing going on. It's those differences I'm focusing on. 

My sense, (pardon the pun), is that you want appearance to be some kind of irreducible ontological ground. I'm really not arguing that kind of ontology. I'm just asking what differences we can discern in experience. Real vs. non-real seems an obvious distinction we make all the time. Likewise accurate vs. inaccurate seems a distinction we regularly make. They're extremely useful distinctions that do a lot of work in helping us deal with experience and make predictions about future experiences.

Sorry my good friend,   we are just  going in circles on this one.  

[Alaris]

What an interesting question! Obviously something physical happened there enough to leave a sacred residue... Well I guess that could be the spirit testifying of the sacred event whether it occured in our reality, in Josephs minds eye, or somewhere in between as Robert F Smith pointed out with the Acts scripture. Thank you for that point. 

I tend to think a passersby would have witnessed something. Peter, James and John heard the Father who was veiled in a cloud. Had they been there with Joseph Smith would the father have been veiled to them? Quite possibly. I believe quite firmly only the seven Partriarchs have obtained the reward of the sixth promise of overcoming in the book of Revelation, which includes knowing the name of the Father. 

Now that I think on this I wonder if Peter saw the father while he was veiled to James and John. Super interesting! 

How many here have had a sacred event in your life where you'd get the details consistent with each retelling. I've had such an experience or two, and I know the few times I've shared wouldn't get past the person addicted to disbelief. That doesn't mean the experiences did not happen however.

[Gray]

On 11/14/2018 at 3:00 PM, Robert F. Smith said:

Correct.  As I have been trying to tell you in each of my comments.  Have you really finally understood that?  Probably not.

You seem to not be picking up on two different threads. One, that's actually what I've said from the beginning, not you. Two, based on your subsequent comments, I've speculated on how one MIGHT go about detecting a vision that was broadcast from a third party, assuming sufficient advancement in technology. To which you responded by talking about Ghostbusters.

 

Quote

False.  This indicates that you have no idea why or how those documents are intimately tied to Joseph and his visions, just as the visions of biblical prophets are tied to the Bible.  In each case, the visions themselves are untestable, but the document is readily testable.

In what way are the BOM and BOA either a) artifacts of the first vision b) testable artifacts of the first vision? The answer is they can't be used to confirm or disconfirm the first vision.

 

Quote

Theology and doctrine are not testable by science.  Since you know nothing of science and the available methods of scientific inquiry, it is no surprise to find you completely missing the point and misstating the facts. Why would you think that I was referring to testing theology and doctrine?

Robert, you're lashing out, but apparently not thinking clearly here. For instance, you keep telling me I don't understand science but at the same time you think the first vision can be scientifically confirmed with a historical analysis of books produced by Joseph Smith many years later. That's bad science and bad theology. 

 

Quote

You want to have it both ways.  You know that LDS leaders have no more training in theology than you do.  Indeed, they also have no training in archeology -- also just like you.

You fundamentally reject science and the basic modes of scientific inquiry, and at the same time declare with certainty that science could not in any case be applied to Bible, Book of Mormon, or Book of Abraham, suggesting that the discussion is about theology or telepathy.  In so doing you deflect from facing science (which you admit you do not understand) and its accepted methods.  Since you have spent no time in a lab and have not dealt with hard forensic evidence, you pretend that it doesn't apply, all the while speaking out of both sides of your mouth -- pretending to accept science, while saying that it just doesn't apply.

Robert, I think it's clear that although I am a lay person, I seem to understand science better in some respects than you. For instance, I understand that a historical confirmation of the BOM is not a scientific validation of the first vision, where you clearly seem to have gotten the impression that this is a scientific idea.

 

Quote

I stated clearly that which you fundamentally do not accept:

You have a deep fear of dealing with the artifacts of religion, preferring to declare (what we already know) that religion cannot be directly tested by science.  It is a category mistake by you to continually harp on what we already know, and which is irrelevant.  Thus you reject even having a coherent conversation about scientific evidence, preferring to declare apriori that no such evidence exists.  You are clearly not interested in real science, nor in scientific inquiry.  Why?  Perhaps it is is too dangerous from your POV.  You share that POV with most religious believers, who are likewise deeply fearful of real conversations about their beliefs.

Again, you seem to misunderstand what I'm saying. Some artifacts of religion can be tested, but that doesn't tell us that for instance whether or not Joseph really saw God.

 

Quote

That reminds me of C. S. Lewis, once an atheist professor at Oxford University.  He said later, when had become a believing Christian, that his main mistake was to read Christian literature -- he called it "subversive literature."  You seem to fear confronting the facts for a similar reason.

Not at all. I understand, for instance, Biblical scholarship well enough to know that the Book of Mormon can't be an ancient Jewish document. Its theology is far too modern and far too Christian. But I also understand the limits of science, and that even if the BOM were historical, that would tell us nothing about a personal dream/vision that Joseph Smith had as a teenager.

If you're going to only half read my comments and then respond to straw man versions of them, I wonder is there any point to this conversation?

In any case, I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving.

Edited November 23, 2018 by Gray

[Robert F. Smith]

4 hours ago, Gray said:

You seem to not be picking up on two different threads. One, that's actually what I've said from the beginning, not you. Two, based on your subsequent comments, I've speculated on how one MIGHT go about detecting a vision that was broadcast from a third party, assuming sufficient advancement in technology. To which you responded by talking about Ghostbusters.

A major category mistake in logic and science.  Visions and faith are not testable by science, and cannot be by their very nature.

4 hours ago, Gray said:

In what way are the BOM and BOA either a) artifacts of the first vision b) testable artifacts of the first vision? The answer is they can't be used to confirm or disconfirm the first vision.

You speak and think like someone who does not at all understand the Gestalt nature of all scientific inquiry.  Same applies to modern forensic investigations in archeology or murder.  The method of combining data from disparate sources is always the same.  So in the case of a biblical text generated thousands of years ago.  The manifold sources of evidence (internal and external) may indeed include claims which cannot be evaluated by science, in which case those items are an integral part of the overall set of claims, but not amenable to discrete testing.  Faith and visions may indeed not be subject to scientific evaluation (which I have repeatedly emphasized, and which you have repeatedly ignored), but remain an integral part of the overall mise en scene (which you reject).  Consequently any investigation by you would be only piecemeal and fragmentary.  In a murder investigation, for example, you'd have the DNA, ballistics, and fingerprints, but no motive -- because we can't read minds, which is a non sequitur.  You just don't see why the case must include a full data set.

4 hours ago, Gray said:

Robert, you're lashing out, but apparently not thinking clearly here. For instance, you keep telling me I don't understand science but at the same time you think the first vision can be scientifically confirmed with a historical analysis of books produced by Joseph Smith many years later. That's bad science and bad theology. 

Robert, I think it's clear that although I am a lay person, I seem to understand science better in some respects than you. For instance, I understand that a historical confirmation of the BOM is not a scientific validation of the first vision, where you clearly seem to have gotten the impression that this is a scientific idea.

OT prophets had visions and produced books.  Why would I divorce one from the other?  In fact biblical scholars do not set out to test those visions.  Instead they look at the Hebrew grammar and expressions, along with the archeology of the period.  They compare it with other prophetic texts.  If Jeremiah states that the Jews will go into exile for 70 years, it is not possible know scientifically that he rec'd that prophecy from God (or even that there is a God).  However, it is possible to date precisely that 70 year period and to verify fulfillment of the prophecy through archeology.  Any critic can justly suggest that this was just a coincidence.  After all, coincidences do happen in real history.  Yet, a compound-complex series of such coincidences does begin to call into question the automatic pretense that it is all just coincidence.  Moreover, when such coincidences fit like a glove into other books (Bible and Book of Mormon), it raises a serious question about the entire enterprise. That is why your claims are so short-sighted and fragmentary.   Scholars who investigate Scriptural claims are not interested in proving that a particular vision occurred.  That would be silly.  You can see how I evaluate the Book of Mormon in my “The Preposterous Book of Mormon: A Singular Advantage,” lecture, August 8, 2014, at the annual FAIRMORMON Conference, Provo, Utah, online at  http://www.fairmormon.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/PREPOSTEROUS-BOOK-OF-MORMON.pdf .

4 hours ago, Gray said:

Again, you seem to misunderstand what I'm saying. Some artifacts of religion can be tested, but that doesn't tell us that for instance whether or not Joseph really saw God.

Of course.  But you miss the Gestalt.

4 hours ago, Gray said:

Not at all. I understand, for instance, Biblical scholarship well enough to know that the Book of Mormon can't be an ancient Jewish document. Its theology is far too modern and far too Christian. But I also understand the limits of science, and that even if the BOM were historical, that would tell us nothing about a personal dream/vision that Joseph Smith had as a teenager.

Sounds like a declaration of heads I win, tails you lose.  You (1) make apriori false claims about scholarship, and then (2) talk about theology as though it is amenable to science.

4 hours ago, Gray said:

.......................In any case, I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving.

I did and hope you had the same.  That might be the only thing upon which we can agree.  Trouble is that your basic views on science and religion are fundamentally no different that the views of your religious opponents.  They and you seem to equate real science with Ghostbusters technology, which of course is a Hollywood construct which does not exist.  Doing real science in a real lab is apparently only an imaginary enterprise.

[clarkgoble]

On 11/23/2018 at 9:09 AM, Gray said:

I understand, for instance, Biblical scholarship well enough to know that the Book of Mormon can't be an ancient Jewish document. Its theology is far too modern and far too Christian.

That seems far too strong a claim. First off there's the issue that claims about pre-exilic Israel are largely based upon zero texts. We know that later Judaism was quite diverse but the same accord oddly usually isn't given to early Israel. Second there's the trouble with the issue of a loose translation that is interpretive of the underlying text akin to Pesher or Targum. Third, the theology is a bit more complex, especially if one (as I'm sure Robert will note) looks at non-Canaanite religion such as Egypt.

[hope_for_things]

19 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

That seems far too strong a claim. First off there's the issue that claims about pre-exilic Israel are largely based upon zero texts. We know that later Judaism was quite diverse but the same accord oddly usually isn't given to early Israel. Second there's the trouble with the issue of a loose translation that is interpretive of the underlying text akin to Pesher or Targum. Third, the theology is a bit more complex, especially if one (as I'm sure Robert will note) looks at non-Canaanite religion such as Egypt.

I agree with Gray's comment earlier.  For your first point, are you asserting that since we don't have a whole lot of pre-exilic textual evidence, that there is a chance that specific modern protestant Christian theological concepts were present these no longer extant pre-exilic texts?  

For the third point, are you saying the non-Canaanite religions contain specific modern Christian theology?  

The key problem for me is that the BoM contains very specific modern Christian theology that is dependent on Christianity directly.  Of course one could expect to find loose parallels to more ancient religions.  I'm sure a creative person could find some loose parallels between motifs in Scientology or perhaps even the world of Harry Potter for that matter.  

[clarkgoble]

38 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I agree with Gray's comment earlier.  For your first point, are you asserting that since we don't have a whole lot of pre-exilic textual evidence, that there is a chance that specific modern protestant Christian theological concepts were present these no longer extant pre-exilic texts?  

I think more of a resemblance is quite possible if there was the diversity of thought in pre-exilic Israel that we see in say the Hellenistic era when we actually have texts. That is claims about evolution are based upon a paucity of data and redating texts claiming to be pre-exilic as late precisely because they differ. There's a certain unfalsifiability to the arguments. If it seems similar to later beliefs they must be late. This type of argument is only possible because we only have late texts.

I'm not saying they'd be exactly the same as later Protestant beliefs though. Clearly the Book of Mormon's translation is heavily affected by its 19th century context. That transforms in some ways Nephite belief.

38 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

For the third point, are you saying the non-Canaanite religions contain specific modern Christian theology?  

I'm saying there's more resemblance when we turn to non-Canaanite religion either in Babylon, Persia, Greece or Egypt. 

38 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

The key problem for me is that the BoM contains very specific modern Christian theology that is dependent on Christianity directly.  Of course one could expect to find loose parallels to more ancient religions.  I'm sure a creative person could find some loose parallels between motifs in Scientology or perhaps even the world of Harry Potter for that matter.  

The question is how loose. Again I'm not in the least denying that the translation makes use of Protestant ideas to translate the text but rather what's on the text. 

More or less all I'm saying is that the relative lack of theological/cosmological beliefs in early Israel may itself be an evolution due to engagement with Canaan rather than the actual starting point if we go to the era of the Judges or even Moses. We know for sure for instance that there were unknown cultic practices quite at odds with Canaan that were disrupted by Josiah - say serpent "worship" that was tied to Moses' bronze serpent staff. No one is even sure what is going on there since so much was expunged from the texts in the post-exilic period. All we have is a couple of brief condemnations and then the limited narrative that survived in Exodus. 

Suggesting that there was more theological diversity in the pre-Josiah period let alone the Northern Kingdom shouldn't be that controversial a claim. That it is suggests something about the willingness to distinguish what was likely versus what we know given the best evidence. I think scholars simply make too strong of claims from a paucity of evidence. They'd be far better off simply say we really don't know much about what was going on in the region.

Edited November 27, 2018 by clarkgoble

[Gray]

21 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

That seems far too strong a claim. First off there's the issue that claims about pre-exilic Israel are largely based upon zero texts. We know that later Judaism was quite diverse but the same accord oddly usually isn't given to early Israel. Second there's the trouble with the issue of a loose translation that is interpretive of the underlying text akin to Pesher or Targum. Third, the theology is a bit more complex, especially if one (as I'm sure Robert will note) looks at non-Canaanite religion such as Egypt.

There comes a point where the translation is so loose that you cease to be able to say anything about the contents of the ur text (if it existed) at all. If you can get post-Biblical atonement theology and late Christian messiah theology  out of an ancient Jewish text, you might as well loose translate Buddhism or dianetics out of it too.

Edited November 27, 2018 by Gray

[hope_for_things]

11 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Suggesting that there was more theological diversity in the pre-Josiah period let alone the Northern Kingdom shouldn't be that controversial a claim. That it is suggests something about the willingness to distinguish what was likely versus what we know given the best evidence. I think scholars simply make too strong of claims from a paucity of evidence. They'd be far better off simply say we really don't know much about what was going on in the region.

I agree that there is much we don't know about that time period.  However, I don't think that position should necessitate taking a leap to this idea that there is a chance that BoM concepts that have a clear connection to 19th century Christian ideas, might have instead had their roots in pre-exilic Israel or even other surrounding ancient religions.  

The base assumption for all of these explorations searching for ancient parallels is that some pre-translated ancient text actually existed.  Unfortunately, we don't have any empirical evidence that such a text did exist or what it would even contain, hence all the creative efforts to imagine what the text might have contained. 

I think after all is said and done, the way forward with the most scholarly integrity is to change the base assumption that some actual ancient text was literally translated by Joseph, and to look at the BoA catalyst mechanism as something that works for BoM production as well.  A creative narrative was envisioned by an inspired Joseph.   

I don't see this approach as much different from moving away from biblical literalism, especially with the Hebrew Bible and the stories of the old patriarchs that we have no archaeological support that they even existed as literal humans, so its becomes much easier to read the stories as moral tales instead of requiring that the stories had to have a backbone of historicity.  A person could still think there was a historical backbone, but just recognize that this is a position of faith, not supported by scholarly evidence.  

[clarkgoble]

31 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I agree that there is much we don't know about that time period.  However, I don't think that position should necessitate taking a leap to this idea that there is a chance that BoM concepts that have a clear connection to 19th century Christian ideas, might have instead had their roots in pre-exilic Israel or even other surrounding ancient religions.  

I suspect this just gets back to the old burden of proof question. If we both acknowledge there's likely diversity of thought in ancient Israel and ignorance of what that thought is, then I don't think we should assume the Book of Mormon is ahistoric because of an argument from silence. But of course if one already thinks it's 19th century then the assumption is that it is ahistoric and appeals to what at best might be is itself an argument from silence.

I'd certainly never think I'd convince the doubter in the Book of Mormon that things like a Satan figure who is a tickster and tempter was a pre-exilic belief. (I think a stronger case can be made for Canaanite beliefs where we do have actual evidence - but those aren't usually what gets seen as anachronistic)

31 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I think after all is said and done, the way forward with the most scholarly integrity is to change the base assumption that some actual ancient text was literally translated by Joseph, and to look at the BoA catalyst mechanism as something that works for BoM production as well.  A creative narrative was envisioned by an inspired Joseph.   

Well again that presupposes it's false. That is we should only believe what we can establish by public evidence. But by that measure we should all be agnostic at best as well.

Really the issue is just the public/private evidence issue which I've brought up numerous times and won't belabor again.

1 hour ago, Gray said:

There comes a point where the translation is so loose that you cease to be able to say anything about the contents of the ur text (if it existed) at all. If you can get post-Biblical atonement theology and late Christian messiah theology  out of an ancient Jewish text, you might as well loose translate Buddhism or dianetics out of it too.

I think an inherent problem with Blake Ostler's expansion model is that there's a certain unfalsifiability to it (without the original plates anyway).  That is if we can always point to anything being an artifact of expansion then what do we really know about Nephite belief?

I think I'm trying to take this seriously by postulating that while the form of a sentence or so forth might be 19th century the content in most cases should be seen as ancient. That is there might be slight distortion but we shouldn't eliminate the ultimate content. That doesn't avoid all claims for translation expansion (or 19th century fraud) but I think it tames the problem somewhat.

To give an example I think Lehi's use of Isaiah 14 in 2 Nephi 2 shouldn't be seen as a 19th century expansion let alone a translation artifact. That means the theology of a fallen angel (which most scholars don't see as the original meaning of Isaiah 14) has to be explained. There was already a theology of Nephilim in Genesis 6 which is usually taken as pre-exilic. The meaning of Nephilim is of course controversial but by the Hellenistic era were seen as fallen angels, such as in 1 Enoch. The problem with reading Nephilim as fallen, as some do, is that the typical Hebrew term for "come down" or "fallen" is yarad which is unrelated to Nephilim. Some have tied the Nephilim to Sumeran deities and tie the term to naphal which means to fall such as in battle. Typically though the term is seen as giant rather than fallen such as the purported giants on the period of the judges as well as Goliath that David slew. However it's certainly plausible to see Nephilim as fallen and certainly post-exilic texts take that as the identification. Further the pre-exilic Genesis stories parallel in many ways the Mesopotamian flood story. Not just in terms of Noah but also the Apkallu who dispense divine knowledge to humans and have children with human women who become demigods and giants. (Gilgamesh being one of these) That means that there's reason to assume the 1 Enoch account are tied to these figures which lets at minimum have the idea of semi-divine figures who come to earth. If Genesis 6 though is about the Mesopotamian Apkallu whose children are the giants it's worth noting that the pre-exilic text portrays them as evil (unlike the Mesoptamian texts). That means you have semi-divine figures who are evil. Even if one can't establish the more robust theology that develops post-exilic, it's not hard to argue that there was something like it pre-exilic. The only question then is whether Sons of God should be seen as Apkallu who became evil. That seems a natural reading even if not the only one.

Edited November 27, 2018 by clarkgoble

[hope_for_things]

5 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I suspect this just gets back to the old burden of proof question. If we both acknowledge there's likely diversity of thought in ancient Israel and ignorance of what that thought is, then I don't think we should assume the Book of Mormon is ahistoric because of an argument from silence. But of course if one already thinks it's 19th century then the assumption is that it is ahistoric and appeals to what at best might be is itself an argument from silence.

I'd certainly never think I'd convince the doubter in the Book of Mormon that things like a Satan figure who is a tickster and tempter was a pre-exilic belief. (I think a stronger case can be made for Canaanite beliefs where we do have actual evidence - but those aren't usually what gets seen as anachronistic)

Well again that presupposes it's false. That is we should only believe what we can establish by public evidence. But by that measure we should all be agnostic at best as well.

Really the issue is just the public/private evidence issue which I've brought up numerous times and won't belabor again.

I think we should assume that books are written by the authors that write them.  To argue otherwise requires a great deal of substantial evidence which we don't have here.  If Mark Twain claimed that he didn't write Huckleberry Finn, but instead translated it from an ancient account written in a different language from a time period over 2,000 years ago, then we'd need to find evidence to corroborate those claims.  And we would also need to look at contradictory evidence that could invalidate the claim itself, things like anachronisms become very important to evaluate.  

It just seems to me that the current and flawed apologetics on this topic are ignoring the contradictory evidence.  The idea that you can just set aside all the contradictory evidence and say that this was not a work produced by Joseph, but that there is a core ancient historical story buried deep inside the narrative strains credibility.  The more 19th century connections that continue to come out, the larger this pile of evidence becomes, and it keeps towering over the supposed ancient parallels.  

If by private evidence you're suggesting prayer and personal subjective spiritual experience, then I certainly can't compel anyone to change their opinion on this topic.  I thought we were talking about scholarly inquiry that can be supported by empirical evidence.  You can't mix these two types of inquiry, it becomes impossible to have an intelligent conversation.  

[clarkgoble]

3 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I think we should assume that books are written by the authors that write them.

In this case it's worth noting that the "author" claims it was a translation not something he wrote.

4 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

It just seems to me that the current and flawed apologetics on this topic are ignoring the contradictory evidence.  The idea that you can just set aside all the contradictory evidence and say that this was not a work produced by Joseph, but that there is a core ancient historical story buried deep inside the narrative strains credibility.  The more 19th century connections that continue to come out, the larger this pile of evidence becomes, and it keeps towering over the supposed ancient parallels.  

If by private evidence you're suggesting prayer and personal subjective spiritual experience, then I certainly can't compel anyone to change their opinion on this topic.  I thought we were talking about scholarly inquiry that can be supported by empirical evidence.  You can't mix these two types of inquiry, it becomes impossible to have an intelligent conversation.  

As you know I don't think private evidence is non-empirical. So that line of argument just doesn't work IMO.

Certainly I agree one should look at contradictory evidence but I don't think it's as overwhelming as you clearly do. In particular I'm far from convinced that the purported anachronisms really are. And there's really not that many of even those if you are looking at content issues. The main ones are the nature of Satan, often taken to being too influenced by Milton, pre-Christian Christology (a messiah who saves from sin and death rather than just politically), pre-Christian mikvah for conversion, quotations of deutero (not trito interestingly) Isaiah, resurrection and a few others.

Some are pretty plausible given the influence of Egypt on the Canaanite region along with extensive trade with Egypt. Especially when the text is explicit the main figure, Nephi, has extensive Egyptian background. That means resurrection is completely plausible even if it wasn't a common Jewish belief around the time of Josiah. Most of the rest can, I think, be dealt with similarly. Will it be enough to convince those who think the burden of proof is on believers demonstrating via public empirical evidence that Nephites are historic? No of course not. But I'm not sure that even matters.