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The Gold Plates


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8 hours ago, Saint Bonaventure said:

From my limited perspective, the situation is very much like Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, except the audience never sees the Ark.

As regarding the Book of Mormon, it is true that we never saw the Plates.  But the Witnesses did.  Joseph Smith did.  Mary Musselman Whitmer apparently did.  Emma apparently touched them when covered with a cloth, reporting "their outline and shape," and that they "seemed to be pliable like thick paper, and would rustle with a metallic sound when the edges were moved by the thumb, as one does sometimes thumb the edges of a book."  We seem to only have historical 

We also have the translated text.  Both the text and the witness statements need to be accounted for.  They constitute "evidence."  Whether these things are "admissible" or "probative" or "dispositive" evidence is going to be up to the individual.

By way of example, let us consider the assassination of Julius Caesar.  That there was such an actual, historical person seems to be beyond reasonable dispute.  Many of the facts of his life are generally established in society.  But how?  What is the evidence?  In particular, what is the evidence as to the circumstances of his assassination?  My understanding is that most of what we accept today as fact can be traced back to five sources: Nicolaus of Damascus, Suetonius, Plutarch, Appian and Cassius Dio.  

As I understand it, Nicolaus of Damascus "was not actually present when the assassination occurred but had the opportunity to speak with those who were."

It also seems that Suetonius was also not present at the assassination:

Quote

On 15 March 44 BCE, the Roman dictator Julius Caesar was murdered. There are several accounts of this incident, but the most famous and probably most accurate is the one written by Caesar's biographer Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (c.70-c.135), who seems to have had access to imperial archives and may have consulted eyewitness accounts.

Plutarch was born some 90 years after the death of Caesar, yet his account is generally credited and accepted as historical.

Same goes for Appian.  And Cassius Dio.

None of these sources of information are what a lawyer would call a "percipient witness."  They did not report their experiences, but rather reported what others told them.  And we are okay with that. 

Regarding the Book of Mormon, we have at least eight people (apart from Joseph) who claim to be percipient witnesses.  

8 hours ago, Saint Bonaventure said:

People are on-screen describing the plates, claiming they've seen them, trying to steal them, mortgaging a farm for them, telling translation stories, and laying claim to what they must be.

But the plates themselves?

I am not sure what it is you are looking for.  Are you saying that the only acceptable evidence for the existence of the Plates would be the Plates themselves?

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited by smac97
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52 minutes ago, smac97 said:

As regarding the Book of Mormon, it is true that we never saw the Plates.  But the Witnesses did.  Joseph Smith did.  Mary Musselman Whitmer apparently did.  Emma apparently touched them when covered with a cloth, reporting "their outline and shape," and that they "seemed to be pliable like thick paper, and would rustle with a metallic sound when the edges were moved by the thumb, as one does sometimes thumb the edges of a book."  We seem to only have historical 

We also have the translated text.  Both the text and the witness statements need to be accounted for.  They constitute "evidence."  Whether these things are "admissible" or "probative" or "dispositive" evidence is going to be up to the individual.

By way of example, let us consider the assassination of Julius Caesar.  That there was such an actual, historical person seems to be beyond reasonable dispute.  Many of the facts of his life are generally established in society.  But how?  What is the evidence?  In particular, what is the evidence as to the circumstances of his assassination?  My understanding is that most of what we accept today as fact can be traced back to five sources: Nicolaus of Damascus, Suetonius, Plutarch, Appian and Cassius Dio.  

As I understand it, Nicolaus of Damascus "was not actually present when the assassination occurred but had the opportunity to speak with those who were."

It also seems that Suetonius was also not present at the assassination:

Plutarch was born some 90 years after the death of Caesar, yet his account is generally credited and accepted as historical.

Same goes for Appian.  And Cassius Dio.

None of these sources of information are what a lawyer would call a "percipient witness."  They did not report their experiences, but rather reported what others told them.  And we are okay with that. 

Regarding the Book of Mormon, we have at least eight people (apart from Joseph) who claim to be percipient witnesses.  

I am not sure what it is you are looking for.  Are you saying that the only acceptable evidence for the existence of the Plates would be the Plates themselves?

Thanks,

-Smac

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Smac.

As regarding the witnesses--sure. Anyone who believes in the New Testament believes in the power of witnesses (and I do). I think what I find fascinating is the distinctive process by which the Book of Mormon came forth. Some textual critics question authorship of New Testament documents and such (although I think the critics, Bart Ehrman included, overplay their hands, but that's for another thread on another day). Joseph Smith's processes with the plates are just stunning in my world. As a medium, the gold plates of the book of Mormon seem distinctive in all of Abrahamic religion.

I'll add that I certainly appreciate an emphasis on the message of a religious book, and not just an emphasis on its historicity, or on it's existence as an artifact.

What I'm trying to illuminate with the comparison to Raiders, but without the Ark appearing to the audience, is the objective power of God's intervention in history. Apologists, critics, a deacon on a bad day, all of these folks can get caught up in subjectivity, and it seems like nothing short of an incontrovertible, objective witness from heaven will settle the fact of the Book of Mormon's gold plates. It's not like the next book, stream, post, or article about the gold plates will settle everything. What someday will settle things is God's objective reality, just as in Raiders where no one could look at the open Ark, and the power of the Ark overwhelmed any and every subjective position that tried to look upon it.

  

  

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1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Sure, I think that's true (assuming that the statement is accurate - which I have contended for years that it isn't). And the problem is that this conclusion is used not as evidence against Joseph as the author/translator but as evidence for the truth claims about the text and the narrative of its production. That is where this has the problems that I have listed elsewhere. It is evidence against something, not evidence for something else.

Of course it's evidence against something. That's what I said. 

The rest of what you wrote there is not gelling for me. Sorry.

And an apology in advance for the following! It was just going to be a few words, but my prolixity got the better of me, and, well, you see the result. If you finally don't read it (TL;DR), I understand perfectly.

 

1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Here we go again. An interpretation of scripture being used to justify a pre-existing conclusion. What is fascinating about this particular view that you present is that it is completely incompatible with the notion of absolute agency (not that I am much of a fan of the notion of absolute agency). A God for whom our existence is entirely before Him all at once can only create a deterministic universe. By the way, the scriptures don't indicate this at all. It is purely an act of interpretation.

When did the conclusion become pre-existing? 

You don't want me to cite or quote scripture that supports what I believe to be true? Not sure I understand this. And I'm going to do it anyway.

My ideas about the universe, its origin, and its future grow out of a question that occurred to me some time ago about the knowledge of God. Are you aware of how large the universe is? It's grown enormously since the James Webb Telescope went into operation recently, and it wasn't small before that. I am speaking of our perception of it. To start with, we can't even understand the size of our solar system, let alone the the size of the universe before JWT. It was already a trillion orders of magnitude beyond our capability. It's gotten so much worse, and will get still more worse. The only thing we have is numbers. And they will have to suffice, even if we cannot really understand them.

I've been sufficiently blessed by the Spirit that I have no doubts about the existence of God as our Father, and the Son as our Savior. But one thing really had me knocked for a loop about the omniscience of God was the size of the universe. As a computer programmer I know something about the storage of data, and the universe is so large, that in order for God to be aware of everything in it requires that His memory space be at least as large as the universe itself, just to chart the locations of every subatomic particle in it. And then we come to the details of status (is that particular quark up, down, strange, charm, bottom, or top?) and what other quarks are in association with it? In order for God to be omniscient he has to know all of it. And not only all of it at any given time, but all of it at all times over the entire existence time/space of the universe. All the way to the end.

The database required to keep all of that straight has to be as large as the universe itself, multiplied by however many Planck times the universe will exist, potentially quadrillions of years worth. Do you know how many Planck times there are in a second? Unimaginably many -- the "Planck time" is the shortest possible duration of time. Also keep in mind that His computer has to also keep track of every cubic Planck length of space, empty or not, and must correlate each Planck cube with whatever subatomic particle resides there at any given Planck time. And this is not even to mention dark matter or energy. Or gravitons. Assuming God's hard disk (though I would expect Him to use solid-state memory) has bits no smaller than a cubic Planck length, and He has an address space that allows for a unique memory location for each of those bits, and that He is somehow able to access each of those bits instantaneously or in Planck time, at any moment, and correlate them all... oh my aching head! It'd probably be a relational database, and that means the indexes themselves are going to be beyond imagining huge.

The problem is, as far as I can see, insurmountable, even for God. In short, God cannot possibly be omniscient. And not being omniscient, it follows that He cannot be omnipotent. And the final conclusion must be that there is no God. Not as we understand Him, anyway.

But He Himself claims omniscience (Moses 1:33-37):

33 And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten.
34 And the first man of all men have I called Adam, which is many.
35 But only an account of this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, give I unto you. For behold, there are many worlds that have passed away by the word of my power. And there are many that now stand, and innumerable are they unto man; but all things are numbered unto me, for they are mine and I know them.
36 And it came to pass that Moses spake unto the Lord, saying: Be merciful unto thy servant, O God, and tell me concerning this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, and also the heavens, and then thy servant will be content.
37 And the Lord God spake unto Moses, saying: The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine. [emphasis added]

So, God claims to know everything. Because he created everything. My problem was that the address-space and the size of the database made it utterly impossible for God to know everything, because His brain would have to be larger than, say, seven sextillion universes. Much larger. Not infinitely larger, but after trying to count that high, you might just as call it infinite. And as I have said in other topics on that board, not even God can count to infinity, because infinity cannot be reached.

Oddly enough, my perplexity was rescued by Stephen Hawking.

In his last book, published after he died, Hawking spoke of the existence of a creator God. He concluded that such a God was, from the point of view of Physics, impossible. It's actually quite a clever argument! It doesn't involve mathematics, but it doesn't seem to need to. I shall reproduce it here:

"As we travel back in time towards the moment of the Big Bang, the universe gets smaller and smaller and smaller, until it finally comes to a point where the whole universe is a space so small that it is in effect a single infinitesimally small, infinitesimally dense black hole. And just as with modern-day black holes, floating around in space, the laws of nature dictate something quite extraordinary. They tell us that here too time itself must come to a stop. You can’t get to a time before the Big Bang because there was no time before the Big Bang. We have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in."

Slam dunk, right? I was intrigued by this obviously logical argument, and realized immediately that whatever one thinks of Big Bangs, the brilliant Hawking seems to have missed a very important absurdity in these last two sentences.

In order for a creator to have created the Big Bang, he could not possibly be in the universe then created, because it would have required that He create Himself. Which is an absurdity. So that which is the Cause of the universe had to have caused it from outside that universe -- and thus the argument that "there [was] no time for a creator to have existed in" fails. 

Sounds crazy, right? But modern physics does not exclude the existence of multiple universes. Some physicists actually seem to enjoy disconcerting the masses with this idea. 

For the Creator to have created our universe, he had to exist outside of it. And not only outside of its space, but also its time. Now, ask yourself this question: can God be surprised by the outcomes in the universe which He created? He exists outside its space-time, so the answer to the question is a resounding NO. He can't and won't be surprised. You might be, but He won't.

God Himself says this in that wonderful book of scripture in the Pearl of Great Price that is named after Moses, in the first chapter, verse 6, He says:

"...all things are present with me, for I know them all." [emphasis added]

We like to say that 1,000 years with us is one day with God. There's a scripture indicating this in the New Testament. All this means is that God's time is not our time. I've given a name to God's time. I call it Supertime. Not Suppertime.

You write that "A God for whom our existence is entirely before Him all at once can only create a deterministic universe."

It is as if you believe that God has no idea how things are really going to turn out. And that He can only be sure of what happens after it has occurred. As if He has no idea if Schroedinger's Cat is alive or dead until he opens the box. As if His time runs in lockstep with ours, and that He must wait and see. As if He were in doubt as to whether His Son would, in the end, actually consent to endure the sufferings of the Atonement or not. As if He were not actually in control.

You seem to think that if God knows in advance that you will choose X and not Y, just because He has seen it happen, means that He determines that you will choose X. And that means that you have no agency at all. 

Not so. Einstein was somewhat dismayed by quantum physics, especially by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. In response to a 1926 paper written by Max Born discussing the quantum wave function, which he described as very probabilistic, Einstein wrote:

"Quantum mechanics is very worthy of respect. But an inner voice tells me this is not the genuine article after all. The theory delivers much but it hardly brings us closer to the Old One's secret. In any event, I am convinced that He is not playing dice."

But you seem to believe that God is, indeed, playing dice. I say He's not, and I am with Niels Bohr when he says: "stop telling God what to do." <- that's not directed at you, by the way, it's just something that amused me when I read about it! Those physicists are real comedians.

It's been said in other contexts that dropping a ball, knowing in advance that the ball will fall to the ground does not determine that the ball will fall. Assuming that foreknowledge determines the outcome is to assume an absurdity. You and I live in this time and in this space. We are bound to our space-time, and because we progress second by second within it, we cannot know in advance what will come and how we will react to it. We have the freedom to choose because we don't know what will happen. That someone else knows, because it is all present to Him, does not interfere with our agency.

Anyway, going back to Hawking, he helped me finally see what now seems completely evident. And that is that God's omniscience comes about because He sees the end from the beginning, because as He says "all things are present with me." In short, God is outside the universe, sees the entire universe at one moment, including all its outcomes, and He doesn't need a core memory seven sextillion times the size of the universe, because the universe itself is His database, and He can see and access every part of it at every moment. No part of it is a mystery to Him. 

1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Once again, this is a post-hoc explanation. This approach allows us to find a way to explain away every supposed flaw or problem with a theory. The theory becomes unfalsifiable. Have you ever read Voltaire's Candide? You sound a lot like Liebniz defending the existence of evil in the world. Clearly, since God created everything (knowing exactly how it would end up), we must assume that it all has a purpose and that this is the best of all possible worlds.

I've not read Candide, sorry.

I just now refreshed my memory of what Leibniz said about the subject. He didn't know what he was talking about, because he was hamstrung by the apostate theology that he inherited. You think I sound like Leibniz? You're entitled to your opinion, but to me he sounds like a kindergartner speculating on the nature of the universe.

I realize that that sounds a little (or a lot) arrogant, making myself seem greater than Leibniz, but I am not greater than he. I am just a bit more knowledgeable than he in one particular area of knowledge. He was definitely ten times smarter than I, overall.

1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

"To ask 'Should God do this?' when it's clear he didn't, you're second-guessing the Almighty. A great hobby, to be sure." There is no difference between what you wrote and the little edit that I made, is there.

Maybe not, but we disagree as to what God knows, so perhaps it doesn't make any difference.

1 hour ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I am not an academic type. I am just an engaged thinker with a lot of experience articulating the things I like to think about (I talk a lot).

Calling you an "academic type" was a compliment, by the way. You seem like an academic, i.e. someone who is well-studied. I generally love reading your thoughts. I talk a lot, too. My wife occasionally tells me, "You know, I'm not particularly interested in what you're talking about right now." Being a little OCD, I sometimes try to finish my thought, even if she isn't actually listening. 

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On 9/21/2022 at 3:52 PM, OGHoosier said:

You have to look at the practical incentives for academics with limited time and resources. It simply does not pay to engage such a niche market as Latter-day Saint apologetics. Findings in favor of our arguments won't advance any academic field since generally apologetic arguments are about showing how our beliefs work with academic findings, not expanding the knowledge base of the field. Why would a journal care about an article saying "actually the Mormons agree with us"? What incentive does a professor have to publish that outside of personal interest - which according to you is "problematic." Academics aren't journalists, with their noses to the ground looking for a good scoop. They research in specific - and increasingly narrow - directions and must make their case to increasingly narrow audiences on whose opinions their careers rely. Getting involved in LDS polemics is a bad investment for outsiders

I guess I have some sympathy to this point. I am not a scholar/academic. So I do not know the culture, etc all that well. The BoM has its roots in fantastical claims.  I see why most would shy away.  On the other hand if the evidence LDS scholars and apologists put forward have as much merit as some here think it would seem that it ought to gather a bit of attention.  I don't know.  And the bolded above certainly is a valid point.

Edited by Teancum
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16 hours ago, Bernard Gui said:

Does this really resolve the riddle of the plates? Seems to me it just creates a different set of unanswerable questions. 

If a Book of Mormon manuscript comes to light it means there are no real plates. At that point there’s nothing left worth answering. 

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2 hours ago, Stargazer said:

When did the conclusion become pre-existing? 

Here is the premise -

If God created something, knowing the end from the beginning, then God could also change that creation to create a different outcome. Ergo, a deterministic creation from the perspective of deity. That's the simplified version. This is all about the nature of God and not about the nature of the Universe (which I am not sure is all that relevant in this discussion). LDS theology tends to deal with this in different ways. The Book of Mormon seems to argue that agency is limited - but the limited agency is sufficient to move man towards his eternal end, and that God only judges us to the extent that we are able to exercise our agency. Other Mormons believe that we have a more absolute agency and that our actions in mortality are fully determinate in the eternities. Even other LDS theologies deal with the idea of eternal progression (even between kingdoms) in the afterlife.

The way that Liebniz gets around this relative to the problem of the existence of evil is to argue that there is a necessity to creation being exactly the way that it is - that it couldn't be better than it is (or God would have created it that way). This led to the often mocked statement that this is the best of all possible worlds (and that mockery is largely the subject of Candide's Voltaire).

I am somewhat partial to the idea that our universe is the event horizon of a 4th dimensional star exploding (that's the simple explanation). Of course, such a theory explains the Big Bang as a mirage. So the idea that in the Big Bang we have something without a cause isn't necessarily the only option open to us. It is just a way that we have of explaining the phenomenon we recognize in the expanding universe. The idea that our universe is merely a 3-Brane object existing in a 4th dimensional space would also (as far as we can tell) explain the observations of expansion that we see.

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7 hours ago, smac97 said:

As regarding the Book of Mormon, it is true that we never saw the Plates.  But the Witnesses did.  Joseph Smith did.  Mary Musselman Whitmer apparently did.  Emma apparently touched them when covered with a cloth, reporting "their outline and shape," and that they "seemed to be pliable like thick paper, and would rustle with a metallic sound when the edges were moved by the thumb, as one does sometimes thumb the edges of a book."  We seem to only have historical 

We also have the translated text.  Both the text and the witness statements need to be accounted for.  They constitute "evidence."  Whether these things are "admissible" or "probative" or "dispositive" evidence is going to be up to the individual.

By way of example, let us consider the assassination of Julius Caesar.  That there was such an actual, historical person seems to be beyond reasonable dispute.  Many of the facts of his life are generally established in society.  But how?  What is the evidence?  In particular, what is the evidence as to the circumstances of his assassination?  My understanding is that most of what we accept today as fact can be traced back to five sources: Nicolaus of Damascus, Suetonius, Plutarch, Appian and Cassius Dio.  

As I understand it, Nicolaus of Damascus "was not actually present when the assassination occurred but had the opportunity to speak with those who were."

It also seems that Suetonius was also not present at the assassination:

Plutarch was born some 90 years after the death of Caesar, yet his account is generally credited and accepted as historical.

Same goes for Appian.  And Cassius Dio.

None of these sources of information are what a lawyer would call a "percipient witness."  They did not report their experiences, but rather reported what others told them.  And we are okay with that. 

Regarding the Book of Mormon, we have at least eight people (apart from Joseph) who claim to be percipient witnesses.  

I am not sure what it is you are looking for.  Are you saying that the only acceptable evidence for the existence of the Plates would be the Plates themselves?

Thanks,

-Smac

All right.  So given that we have pretty good historical evidence for plates existing, what’s the plausibility that the plates could have been fabricated well enough to fool all eleven witnesses including the secondary ones?

Edited by Rivers
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10 hours ago, Saint Bonaventure said:

I didn't realize you are Catholic, BG. I'm certainly glad to hear your point of view.

After all this time and now you think I’m Catholic? 😁

The comments to which I refer to are those of the fellow with the Saint name…..that would be……you. 🙂 Your thoughts about the plates are odd considering your religious affiliation. 

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1 hour ago, Rivers said:

All right.  So given that we have pretty good historical evidence for plates existing, what’s the plausibility that the plates could have been fabricated well enough to fool all eleven witnesses including the secondary ones?

The only thing I can come up with is they were felt and not seen. As I recall, I remember something that I read years ago that they were in a paper sack. Or cloth maybe if paper sacks weren't around.

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6 hours ago, Stargazer said:

Of course it's evidence against something. That's what I said. 

The rest of what you wrote there is not gelling for me. Sorry.

And an apology in advance for the following! It was just going to be a few words, but my prolixity got the better of me, and, well, you see the result. If you finally don't read it (TL;DR), I understand perfectly.

 

When did the conclusion become pre-existing? 

You don't want me to cite or quote scripture that supports what I believe to be true? Not sure I understand this. And I'm going to do it anyway.

My ideas about the universe, its origin, and its future grow out of a question that occurred to me some time ago about the knowledge of God. Are you aware of how large the universe is? It's grown enormously since the James Webb Telescope went into operation recently, and it wasn't small before that. I am speaking of our perception of it. To start with, we can't even understand the size of our solar system, let alone the the size of the universe before JWT. It was already a trillion orders of magnitude beyond our capability. It's gotten so much worse, and will get still more worse. The only thing we have is numbers. And they will have to suffice, even if we cannot really understand them.

I've been sufficiently blessed by the Spirit that I have no doubts about the existence of God as our Father, and the Son as our Savior. But one thing really had me knocked for a loop about the omniscience of God was the size of the universe. As a computer programmer I know something about the storage of data, and the universe is so large, that in order for God to be aware of everything in it requires that His memory space be at least as large as the universe itself, just to chart the locations of every subatomic particle in it. And then we come to the details of status (is that particular quark up, down, strange, charm, bottom, or top?) and what other quarks are in association with it? In order for God to be omniscient he has to know all of it. And not only all of it at any given time, but all of it at all times over the entire existence time/space of the universe. All the way to the end.

The database required to keep all of that straight has to be as large as the universe itself, multiplied by however many Planck times the universe will exist, potentially quadrillions of years worth. Do you know how many Planck times there are in a second? Unimaginably many -- the "Planck time" is the shortest possible duration of time. Also keep in mind that His computer has to also keep track of every cubic Planck length of space, empty or not, and must correlate each Planck cube with whatever subatomic particle resides there at any given Planck time. And this is not even to mention dark matter or energy. Or gravitons. Assuming God's hard disk (though I would expect Him to use solid-state memory) has bits no smaller than a cubic Planck length, and He has an address space that allows for a unique memory location for each of those bits, and that He is somehow able to access each of those bits instantaneously or in Planck time, at any moment, and correlate them all... oh my aching head! It'd probably be a relational database, and that means the indexes themselves are going to be beyond imagining huge.

The problem is, as far as I can see, insurmountable, even for God. In short, God cannot possibly be omniscient. And not being omniscient, it follows that He cannot be omnipotent. And the final conclusion must be that there is no God. Not as we understand Him, anyway.

But He Himself claims omniscience (Moses 1:33-37):

33 And worlds without number have I created; and I also created them for mine own purpose; and by the Son I created them, which is mine Only Begotten.
34 And the first man of all men have I called Adam, which is many.
35 But only an account of this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, give I unto you. For behold, there are many worlds that have passed away by the word of my power. And there are many that now stand, and innumerable are they unto man; but all things are numbered unto me, for they are mine and I know them.
36 And it came to pass that Moses spake unto the Lord, saying: Be merciful unto thy servant, O God, and tell me concerning this earth, and the inhabitants thereof, and also the heavens, and then thy servant will be content.
37 And the Lord God spake unto Moses, saying: The heavens, they are many, and they cannot be numbered unto man; but they are numbered unto me, for they are mine. [emphasis added]

So, God claims to know everything. Because he created everything. My problem was that the address-space and the size of the database made it utterly impossible for God to know everything, because His brain would have to be larger than, say, seven sextillion universes. Much larger. Not infinitely larger, but after trying to count that high, you might just as call it infinite. And as I have said in other topics on that board, not even God can count to infinity, because infinity cannot be reached.

Oddly enough, my perplexity was rescued by Stephen Hawking.

In his last book, published after he died, Hawking spoke of the existence of a creator God. He concluded that such a God was, from the point of view of Physics, impossible. It's actually quite a clever argument! It doesn't involve mathematics, but it doesn't seem to need to. I shall reproduce it here:

"As we travel back in time towards the moment of the Big Bang, the universe gets smaller and smaller and smaller, until it finally comes to a point where the whole universe is a space so small that it is in effect a single infinitesimally small, infinitesimally dense black hole. And just as with modern-day black holes, floating around in space, the laws of nature dictate something quite extraordinary. They tell us that here too time itself must come to a stop. You can’t get to a time before the Big Bang because there was no time before the Big Bang. We have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in."

Slam dunk, right? I was intrigued by this obviously logical argument, and realized immediately that whatever one thinks of Big Bangs, the brilliant Hawking seems to have missed a very important absurdity in these last two sentences.

In order for a creator to have created the Big Bang, he could not possibly be in the universe then created, because it would have required that He create Himself. Which is an absurdity. So that which is the Cause of the universe had to have caused it from outside that universe -- and thus the argument that "there [was] no time for a creator to have existed in" fails. 

Sounds crazy, right? But modern physics does not exclude the existence of multiple universes. Some physicists actually seem to enjoy disconcerting the masses with this idea. 

For the Creator to have created our universe, he had to exist outside of it. And not only outside of its space, but also its time. Now, ask yourself this question: can God be surprised by the outcomes in the universe which He created? He exists outside its space-time, so the answer to the question is a resounding NO. He can't and won't be surprised. You might be, but He won't.

God Himself says this in that wonderful book of scripture in the Pearl of Great Price that is named after Moses, in the first chapter, verse 6, He says:

"...all things are present with me, for I know them all." [emphasis added]

We like to say that 1,000 years with us is one day with God. There's a scripture indicating this in the New Testament. All this means is that God's time is not our time. I've given a name to God's time. I call it Supertime. Not Suppertime.

You write that "A God for whom our existence is entirely before Him all at once can only create a deterministic universe."

It is as if you believe that God has no idea how things are really going to turn out. And that He can only be sure of what happens after it has occurred. As if He has no idea if Schroedinger's Cat is alive or dead until he opens the box. As if His time runs in lockstep with ours, and that He must wait and see. As if He were in doubt as to whether His Son would, in the end, actually consent to endure the sufferings of the Atonement or not. As if He were not actually in control.

You seem to think that if God knows in advance that you will choose X and not Y, just because He has seen it happen, means that He determines that you will choose X. And that means that you have no agency at all. 

Not so. Einstein was somewhat dismayed by quantum physics, especially by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. In response to a 1926 paper written by Max Born discussing the quantum wave function, which he described as very probabilistic, Einstein wrote:

"Quantum mechanics is very worthy of respect. But an inner voice tells me this is not the genuine article after all. The theory delivers much but it hardly brings us closer to the Old One's secret. In any event, I am convinced that He is not playing dice."

But you seem to believe that God is, indeed, playing dice. I say He's not, and I am with Niels Bohr when he says: "stop telling God what to do." <- that's not directed at you, by the way, it's just something that amused me when I read about it! Those physicists are real comedians.

It's been said in other contexts that dropping a ball, knowing in advance that the ball will fall to the ground does not determine that the ball will fall. Assuming that foreknowledge determines the outcome is to assume an absurdity. You and I live in this time and in this space. We are bound to our space-time, and because we progress second by second within it, we cannot know in advance what will come and how we will react to it. We have the freedom to choose because we don't know what will happen. That someone else knows, because it is all present to Him, does not interfere with our agency.

Anyway, going back to Hawking, he helped me finally see what now seems completely evident. And that is that God's omniscience comes about because He sees the end from the beginning, because as He says "all things are present with me." In short, God is outside the universe, sees the entire universe at one moment, including all its outcomes, and He doesn't need a core memory seven sextillion times the size of the universe, because the universe itself is His database, and He can see and access every part of it at every moment. No part of it is a mystery to Him. 

I've not read Candide, sorry.

I just now refreshed my memory of what Leibniz said about the subject. He didn't know what he was talking about, because he was hamstrung by the apostate theology that he inherited. You think I sound like Leibniz? You're entitled to your opinion, but to me he sounds like a kindergartner speculating on the nature of the universe.

I realize that that sounds a little (or a lot) arrogant, making myself seem greater than Leibniz, but I am not greater than he. I am just a bit more knowledgeable than he in one particular area of knowledge. He was definitely ten times smarter than I, overall.

Maybe not, but we disagree as to what God knows, so perhaps it doesn't make any difference.

Calling you an "academic type" was a compliment, by the way. You seem like an academic, i.e. someone who is well-studied. I generally love reading your thoughts. I talk a lot, too. My wife occasionally tells me, "You know, I'm not particularly interested in what you're talking about right now." Being a little OCD, I sometimes try to finish my thought, even if she isn't actually listening. 

Or God employs Lu-Tze (the only master of the martial art deja-fu) and the Monks of History to keep everything running properly.

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1 hour ago, Rivers said:

All right.  So given that we have pretty good historical evidence for plates existing, what’s the plausibility that the plates could have been fabricated well enough to fool all eleven witnesses including the secondary ones?

Any ideas about how that was done?

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Re:  "God knows everything from the beginning to the end" (etc.) you said:

10 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

What is fascinating about this particular view that you present is that it is completely incompatible with the notion of absolute agency (not that I am much of a fan of the notion of absolute agency). A God for whom our existence is entirely before Him all at once can only create a deterministic universe.

Is this really a correct view of the foreknowledge (omniscience) of God with respect to free will?  (Maybe I'm misunderstanding you).  My understanding is that both logical determinism and epistemic determinism commit the modal fallacy.   It's difficult for me to explain (I'm not a philosopher and my brain doesn't work like mfbukowski's), but here's one source that describes the logic problems with respect to Foreknowledge and Free Will.  

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6 hours ago, Rivers said:

Apparently Richard Bushman’s book on the Gold Plates is finally coming out soon.  That’s what I saw on a social media post.

Anybody here know of when we can expect to see this book?

I heard that only eleven witnesses will actually get to see his book.   (Nah, just kidding). 

I hadn't heard about him doing a book on this topic, so thanks for posting this.  This website has a question about the status of Richard Bushman's book about the gold plates, and it has this recent update:  "Bushman submitted his manuscript to Oxford University Press in September 2022."   The same site (What Was the Purpose of Joseph Smith’s Gold Plates?) has a lot of discussion related to the topic of this thread.

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21 minutes ago, InCognitus said:

I heard that only eleven witnesses will actually get to see his book.   (Nah, just kidding). 

I hadn't heard about him doing a book on this topic, so thanks for posting this.  This website has a question about the status of Richard Bushman's book about the gold plates, and it has this recent update:  "Bushman submitted his manuscript to Oxford University Press in September 2022."   The same site (What Was the Purpose of Joseph Smith’s Gold Plates?) has a lot of discussion related to the topic of this thread.

Thanks.  He announced this project several years ago.  I’ve been looking forward ever since.  It should be an interesting book.

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11 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Here is the premise -

If God created something, knowing the end from the beginning, then God could also change that creation to create a different outcome. Ergo, a deterministic creation from the perspective of deity. That's the simplified version.

Ah ha! I understand.

11 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

This is all about the nature of God and not about the nature of the Universe (which I am not sure is all that relevant in this discussion).

The nature of the universe is the backdrop for it all, without which it would all be completely different.

The nature of God is of course highly integrated into it. As God says to Moses in Moses 1:39, His entire purpose is developing a work-product: us. As such, His entire effort bends towards that. An entire gorgeous universe with so much beauty and power, imagine that, is intended solely to produce eternal beings like our Father, out of such lowly examples as us.

11 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

LDS theology tends to deal with this in different ways. The Book of Mormon seems to argue that agency is limited - but the limited agency is sufficient to move man towards his eternal end, and that God only judges us to the extent that we are able to exercise our agency.

Well, of course. And my surmise is that God places each of us in exactly the right place where we can exercise that limited agency to enable God to judge us as to our fitness for exaltation. By placing us here at all, He must have pre-judged us as capable of it. Stewart Brand was amazingly insightful when he wrote (in the first Whole Earth Catalog): "We are as gods and might as well get used to it." 

This life is our final examination.

For a time, and I am still not entirely off the fence in this regard, I thought that God must put us through multiple mortal lives. And I felt/feel this because only one mortal probation presents us with a very limited set of choices we can make. I question(ed) whether this was sufficient. I mean, look at your opportunities. What if, instead, God had put you into Stephen Hawking's body? With Stephen Hawking's intelligence and connections? Or, what if, instead, God had put you into the body of a Chinese peasant during the Zhou dynasty? How much different would your opportunities for decision been in those cases? Would Hitler have done as much evil in George Washington's body and circumstances?

11 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Other Mormons believe that we have a more absolute agency and that our actions in mortality are fully determinate in the eternities. 

I'll admit that I am unclear what this means. Does this mean that what we do here echoes in eternity and we can never be shut of it? If so, perhaps it is so, to a certain extent (since, for example, having rejected Christ we put ourselves unalterably into the Telestial Kingdom).

11 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Even other LDS theologies deal with the idea of eternal progression (even between kingdoms) in the afterlife.

I've considered this form of eternal progression and rejected it. My assessment is that while there may be progression within the kingdoms (if there are disparate levels within the Celestial, there may be such in the other two as well), there is no progression between them. It's not really germane to the instant conversation as to why I feel this way, so I won't pontificate upon it here.

11 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

The way that Liebniz gets around this relative to the problem of the existence of evil is to argue that there is a necessity to creation being exactly the way that it is - that it couldn't be better than it is (or God would have created it that way). This led to the often mocked statement that this is the best of all possible worlds (and that mockery is largely the subject of Candide's Voltaire).

Leibniz (and will you please spell his name correctly?) deserves to be mocked (if gently) in this regard. The problem with evil is that there is no problem with evil. Evil must be, for it is only by permitting evil to exist that God is able to evince which of us can be trusted to do what He does. If God had not permitted evil, or, in other words, not given Man his agency to go the distance, then there would have been no point at all in having a mortal life in the first place. In short, it is a requirement that there be evil.

And that absolutely necessary evil is what necessitated a Savior. For the simple reason that even if we had passed the test to Father's satisfaction and were worthy of exaltation, our sin would forever sully us and make Father incapable of raising us. And Moses 1:39 would have failed. 

Do you see why I said that Leibniz's argument about evil was like a kindergartner's conception of the universe?

11 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

I am somewhat partial to the idea that our universe is the event horizon of a 4th dimensional star exploding (that's the simple explanation). Of course, such a theory explains the Big Bang as a mirage. So the idea that in the Big Bang we have something without a cause isn't necessarily the only option open to us. It is just a way that we have of explaining the phenomenon we recognize in the expanding universe. The idea that our universe is merely a 3-Brane object existing in a 4th dimensional space would also (as far as we can tell) explain the observations of expansion that we see.

Interesting observations! I'm not entirely sure what a 4th dimensional star is, but you raise intriguing thoughts here. If the 4th dimension is time, then all the stars in our universe are 4th dimensional, i.e. existing in both space and time.

Edited by Stargazer
spelling
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18 hours ago, smac97 said:

 

On 9/23/2022 at 11:03 AM, Saint Bonaventure said:

People are on-screen describing the plates, claiming they've seen them, trying to steal them, mortgaging a farm for them, telling translation stories, and laying claim to what they must be.

But the plates themselves?

I am not sure what it is you are looking for.  Are you saying that the only acceptable evidence for the existence of the Plates would be the Plates themselves?

It's as if he is arguing that the plates are like Bitcoins. Talked about, exchanged for goods and services, but never actually in evidence.

Reminds me of the story of the customs agent who wanted the traveler to produce the Bitcoins he was carrying into the country.

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16 hours ago, Saint Bonaventure said:

What I'm trying to illuminate with the comparison to Raiders, but without the Ark appearing to the audience, is the objective power of God's intervention in history.

I think I get what you're saying here, but it seems a bit ahistorical, since in the film the Ark does appear to the audience, even if it does spend some time in the film being inside a box. This is not to jump into your interesting conversation with @smac97, but just to correct the record. 

Here's Belloq about to have his head explode:

YqUqZ9bdCtY1OmmKHdsew34TNmeTEcabC9LAGioc

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59 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

It's as if he is arguing that the plates are like Bitcoins. Talked about, exchanged for goods and services, but never actually in evidence.

Reminds me of the story of the customs agent who wanted the traveler to produce the Bitcoins he was carrying into the country.

This is pretty much what I'm getting at, with the addition that the "lo here" and "lo there" of both critics and apologists "melts" when God enters history. 

By his words, Joseph Smith Jr. prayed in the forest because of the "lo here" and "lo there" of the Protestant preachers of his day, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has sprung forth from belief in his account of God entering history.

It seems to me that the way to overcome the never ending and always subjective "lo here" and "lo there" of apologists and critics is through what Joseph Smith says he prayed for--the undeniable, sophistry-melting intervention of God. St. Paul encouraged the Colossians to "be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding" and taught them to  "See to it that no one makes a prey of you by philosophy and empty deceit." (1:9; 2:8)

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1 hour ago, Stargazer said:

I think I get what you're saying here, but it seems a bit ahistorical, since in the film the Ark does appear to the audience, even if it does spend some time in the film being inside a box. This is not to jump into your interesting conversation with @smac97, but just to correct the record. 

Here's Belloq about to have his head explode:

YqUqZ9bdCtY1OmmKHdsew34TNmeTEcabC9LAGioc

Yes, you seem to understand what I'm saying. If Raiders never showed the Ark, and we only had a film of people talking about the Ark, gesturing the the Ark off-screen, the story being fitted around the audience never seeing the Ark--yes.

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50 minutes ago, Saint Bonaventure said:

Please tell me all about my thoughts.

Just going by how you express them in writing. Your criticisms of the plates seem odd coming from a Catholic.

Edited by Bernard Gui
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20 hours ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

And while there would likely be only minimal interest in authenticating the metal (to the extent that it could be), the text on it (the codex part, right?) would generate a lot of attention. And the beautiful thing about such a large text is that attempts to translate it could be predictive. You come up with a theory using part of the text and then test it on another part. This was, of course, part of the reason why I mentioned the Vorhee plates. Since I can translate them, and explain what it means to the point that I can identify errors that its engraver made, that creates a pretty strong evidence for understanding when the plates were made...

I don't have any issues with this. But I think that it's funny that you want to insist somehow that having the evidence would be bad. (Like having ancient manuscripts of biblical texts right?). See, I just don't get this bizarre thinking that you are displaying here.

If we were to have the plates now, would they need to be subjected to the kind of scrutiny given other sacred objects such as the Shroud of Turin? How would that comport with D&C 17?
 

Quote

1 Behold, I say unto you, that you must rely upon my word, which if you do with full purpose of heart, you shall have a view of the plates, and also of the breastplate, the sword of Laban, the Urim and Thummim, which were given to the brother of Jared upon the mount, when he talked with the Lord face to face, and the miraculous directors which were given to Lehi while in the wilderness, on the borders of the Red Sea.
2 And it is by your faith that you shall obtain a view of them, even by that faith which was had by the prophets of old.
3 And after that you have obtained faith, and have seen them with your eyes, you shall testify of them, by the power of God;
4 And this you shall do that my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., may not be destroyed, that I may bring about my righteous purposes unto the children of men in this work.

 

Edited by Bernard Gui
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