In 1985, I Personally Witnessed Golden Plates

[Analytics]

17 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

I don't exactly understand, whatever you think Whitmer meant, whatever way 4 people simultaneously see the plates by the angel Moroni....

This illustrates my point. In your mind, "4 people simultaneously see the plates by the angel Moroni." However, that isn't what they actually claimed. All they actually claimed is that they saw the plates.

According to Joseph Smith, they did not simultaneously see the plates. What actually happened is that all four of them tried to see the plates through "much faith" and "fervent and humble prayer", but the vision never came. Martin Harris thought the problem was he was spiritually inadequate and left the group. The remaining three continued to pray, and then they had a vision. Then Joseph Smith tracked down Martin Harris, and the two of them prayed. In Joseph Smith's own words, "the same vision was opened to our view; at least it was again to me." That indicates that Joseph Smith claimed that he personally had the vision, and had some doubts about whether Martin really saw it or not. But Martin told Joseph Smith "Tis enough, ’tis enough; mine eyes have beheld, mine eyes have beheld." 

You can read that account in Joseph Smith's own handwriting here:

https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/history-1838-1856-volume-a-1-23-december-1805-30-august-1834/30

My point is that with the additional details Joseph Smith provided, we know that your presumption that 4 people simultaneously saw a vision is false. So what other presumptions do we make that are false?

17 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

You can't say the same for the 16 others that interacted with the plates who reported no type of spiritual experience. They said no such thing as spiritual eyes. I don't think when Josiah Stowell testified under oath that he saw the plates the day Joseph first brought them home, in court, that he could be taken to mean they were somehow aethereal.

I personally witnessed some golden plates in seminary, and I testified truthfully about what I saw. And the people in the class misinterpreted my testimony. Just as the other students in my seminary class misinterpreted my testimony about the golden plates I saw, and just as you extrapolated inaccurate details about what the 3 witnesses saw, we might be misunderstanding what these other witnesses saw and the implications of that.

For example. Does it seem weird to you that Joseph Smith had some physical, tangible plates in his possession, yet the only plates the three witnesses saw were in a vision with their spiritual eyes? I've said that Moroni, a resurrected being with a body of flesh and bones, went to the Whitmer house were the plates were hidden, retrieved the plates, then took them out to the woods and showed them to the three witnesses, and then went back to the Whitmer house, and then put the plates back where he found them, so that a few days later Joseph Smith could retrieve those plates and show them to the eight witnesses. But that isn't what happened--the three witnesses saw some plates with their spiritual eyes, not the tangible plates Joseph Smith had in his possession. 

If you compare the official statements of the eight witnesses and the three witnesses, it is not clear they are describing the same thing. The three witnesses saw with their spiritual eyes "the plates which contain this record, which is a record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and also of the people of Jared, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken."

In contrast, the eight witnesses saw with their natural eyes and hefted with their natural hands "the plates of which hath been spoken, which have the appearance of gold; and as many of the leaves as the said Smith has translated we did handle with our hands; and we also saw the engravings thereon, all of which has the appearance of ancient work, and of curious workmanship."

This raises the question: were the plates that the three witnesses saw in a vision, which were the ones that were the source of the translation," the exact same instance of the same artifact that the eight witnesses saw with their natural eyes and hefted with their natural hands? We assume they were talking about the same plates. I'm speculating here of course, but is it possible that Joseph Smith had a mundane physical object that he fashioned himself while translating the mystical plates that he saw in a vision? Perhaps he created the physical plates to help him stay focused on the need to translate the record he had in his vision?

That is all speculation. Of course. But the actual story is so intrinsically problematic and vague, I can't help but think there is way more to the story than what we all presume.

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, OGHoosier said:

Sure. In your response to @Stormin' Mormon, you state that "some explanations are likelier than others." This whole discussion about weighing testimony and evidence is inseparable from the backdrop of a mindset of hypothesis-weighing based on the perceived likelihood of various hypotheses. However, I think the conceptual possibility of assessing "likelihood" is dependent on the existence of common rules of reference. Rules which cannot be said to bind God, and which may even originate from Him. 

I should state that my original comment was not in response to your anecdote about seeing golden plates, but was more of an expansion on @Stormin' Mormon's thoughts about using probability to assess so-called "special action" on God's part. If @Stormin' Mormon's comment was not related to your point, then my point wouldn't particularly be related to it either. 

Thanks. From my perspective, we all go through the process of weighing the evidence as we see it. 

[Analytics]

16 hours ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

I think the ability to understand just how little stuff there was available in frontier America, is pretty much only held by folks who have spent some time in the 3rd world.  We're swiftly losing the memory of life before online shopping, but yes, happy rich first world American hobbyists lived in, made Analytics' 1985-6 experience totally believable, and the witnesses to the event had hardly experienced a miracle.  While 1830's Fayette New York, as the Industrial Revolution was just beginning it's century-long transformation of the world, such claims were something else entirely.

In short, this is worse than an apples and oranges comparison.  This is more like a 1986 Buick Regal Grand National with a 235-horsepower 3.8-liter turbocharged V6 comparison to, well, a horse.

 vs 

 

Yawn.  

 

In terms of spending time in the third world, I did a two-year mission in the slums of Argentina Buenos Aires South, and since then have spent time in both Bolivia and Mali Africa, which made me realize that Argentina wasn't nearly as poor and backwards as I thought it was at the time.

In any case, the reason this thread exists is because @smac97 insinuated that I was guilty of "intellectual dishonesty, even moral cowardice" for not explaining why I didn't take the statements of the witnesses at face value. So because of his urging, I'm explaining where I'm coming from.

Like pretty-much everybody else in the 1820's, the witnesses lived in a demon-haunted world with absolutely no understanding of things like cognitive neuroscience and the tricks our brains play on us to cause us to see things that aren't real. But this thread is about my perspective, such as it is.

[LoudmouthMormon]

39 minutes ago, Analytics said:

In terms of spending time in the third world, I did a two-year mission in the slums of Argentina Buenos Aires South, and since then have spent time in both Bolivia and Mali Africa, which made me realize that Argentina wasn't nearly as poor and backwards as I thought it was at the time.

In any case, the reason this thread exists is because @smac97 insinuated that I was guilty of "intellectual dishonesty, even moral cowardice" for not explaining why I didn't take the statements of the witnesses at face value. So because of his urging, I'm explaining where I'm coming from.

Like pretty-much everybody else in the 1820's, the witnesses lived in a demon-haunted world with absolutely no understanding of things like cognitive neuroscience and the tricks our brains play on us to cause us to see things that aren't real. But this thread is about my perspective, such as it is.

Fair enough, and I understand that.  And I get your point about the incredibly wide and diverse impact the eleven witnesses' story has on people.  But you're equating the 1830's witnesses' experiences with your personal 1980's witnesses' experiences in ways I believe to be flawed.

Bolding mine: 

Quote

If a skilled attorney would have deposed the witnesses of the golden plates we saw under the lectern, he would have learned a few things the students in the class did not. He’d learn that yes, we saw what we described, but he also would have learned that the plates we saw were ridiculously underwhelming. Once you bought a few thin pieces of balsa wood, some gold colored spray paint, and some nikel-plated loose leaf binder rings, all you’d need was a black sharpie, a table saw, a drill, some glue, and about 2 hours to make your own set of “golden plates.” No serious woodworking or artistry skills required. You’d notice that “sealing” plates with glue was easier than writing on them with a sharpie. The plates we saw were so unimpressive it was comical. Yet because we as witnesses instinctively followed the lead of the seminary instructor when describing what we saw, and because the students didn’t know how to ask the right probing questions, they were left thinking that we saw something that was miraculously impressive.

Joseph Smith, of course, had no access to any of that stuff.  And what would he have access to, that could be used to create something which would inspire 11 grown adults to put their reputations on the line by claiming they had seen, sometimes handled, the plates?  Was there a local gold-appearing-heavy-paper-with-the-appearance-of-gold shop in 1929's Palmyra NY?  Anywhere in Palmyra that sold gold paint or rings?  

But let's assume that in-between his long days on the farm, he assembled a 1829 version of the cheap shiny balsa wood creation, using materials from the general goods store in Palmyra, or his own appearance-of-gold hobby shop he made on his farm that nobody ever knew about.  Is there any historical record surviving from the copious, endless negative reaction from neighbors, friends, family, or townsfolk, where someone says "oh, he obviously went to Fred's mercantile and bought stuff and made it himself.  Fred had that stuff in stock that July."?  After the Whitmer witnesses followed him to Far West and then got mad and excommunicated, did they say anything about the cheap or shoddy or easily-locally-made-ness to explain their experience?  Did Oliver or Harris?

 

Quote

So what did Joseph Smith’s witnesses see in 1829? I don’t know. I find the joint statements that Joseph Smith wrote and they signed to be intrinsically problematic and in desperate need of a serious cross examination. I don’t know what, exactly, if anything, they saw. I just don’t know. But just because I don’t know what to make of their statements doesn’t mean I don’t know anything at all. One of the things I do know is that if you study the totality of all the evidence, the theory that they saw an authentic Mayan codex that was buried in New York and then dug up by Joseph Smith is the least likely explanation imaginable.  

If your better explanation includes something like "Joseph just made it himself in a couple of hours out of 1829 balsa wood and 1829 gold spray paint and 1829 cheap nickle-plated loose leaf binder rings and his 1829 sharpie and some 1829 glue, using his 1829 table saw and drill"  Your examination of the totality of the evidence seems lacking. 

I mean, I share your grief over the witnesses never being professionally cross-examined.  I remember as a young teenager (nonbelieving and skeptical), a teacher asked me if I could go back in time, who would I want to meet?  I said either Joseph, Brigham, or the witnesses - because I'd want to grill them with questions.  

But no really - "Joseph made the cheap plate-looking thing himself, and just relied on groupthink to get people to leave their homes and follow him to Far West, and they never bothered to examine their own experience at any point in their lives, even after getting excommunicated or otherwise leaving the church."?  That's it?  That's your explanation that's more likely than what you think of as the least likely explanation?

 

Edited February 26, 2024 by LoudmouthMormon

[Kevin Christensen]

Back in 1998 or so, when I lived in Lawrence, KS, FARMS arranged to have a traveling Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit at the Topeka Stake House.  My wife and I were ushers.  For a time, I stood next to a life-sized replica of the Golden Plates.  One thing that struck me powerfully on that occasion is that the replica was singularly unimpressive at a glance.  The characters on the top few plates seemed all wrong, not looking like ancient engravings or gold for a moment, but rather looking like a prop, not the creation of a dedicated artisan, but of a workman.  A stand in for something real that it did not bother to fully embody.  Just to give the idea, to fill a space, but not to be real. The characters on the next few pages were clearly not even trying to resemble ancient writings, and most of the leaves were blank.  The weight and texture of the materials was wrong, especially compared to the eye-witness descriptions from Joseph and Emma and various other witnesses.  I've also read Richard L. Anderson's Investigating the Three Witnesses, and various attempts to simply brush aside the various testimonies, notably the hyper-focus on "spiritual eyes" compared to first hand responses by David Whitmer and Harris and Oliver Cowdery.  And the eight, and the other informal witnesses.   One very strong impression I got from reading Anderson's research is that the plates were very real to Joseph and his associates and his neighbors.  Even those who never saw them knew he had something real.  They searched the house to find them. Emma moving the plates around, rustling the pages with her thumb, does not fall under the knowing, cynical dismissal of the product of "spiritual eyes."  Whitmer, of course, insisted that spiritual eyes was enhanced perception of something real.  An angel and plates.  But the eight and Emma did not describe their experience as spiritual eyes. Rather physical encounters.   If Joseph Smith had the resources to produce the prop plates as mediocre as the ones I saw, I cannot imagine them having the required effects on anyone, let alone securing Harris's financial backing, or the lifelong assertions from the witnesses, even after they left the church.  They were simply not good enough.   The Kinderhook plates caused a bit of a stir, but nothing comparable to the Golden Plates.  Who tried to buy them?  Nor a potentially ruinous farm mortgage?  Not even like the Nauvoo community effort to raise a few thousand, as happened with the Egyptian Papyrus?   What life changing text did they induce?  How about angels and witnesses?  No.  Just a parasitic exploitation of a circumstance much larger and much more profound than they were or could ever be.  And eventually exposed as a fraud, a joke, while the Story of Joseph Smith's plates goes around the world.

One thing about the plates I find very interesting is that they caused an impressive stir and produced effects, not just the witnesses, and scorn from some neighbors. But we have a large and impressive book that Joseph says he translated from the plates.  Now Stirling McMurrin famously told Blake Ostler that "I learned when I was younger than I can remember that you don't get books from angels and translate them by revelation.  It's just that simple."  I find two things very significant in that.  It wasn't McMurrin's extensive education and life experience and careful investigation that led him to that conclusion, but rather, a child's insight that he never subsequently outgrew or questioned.  "Younger than I can remember."  And McMurrin never bothered to read the Book of Mormon.   He wrote an essay when Signature published the Roberts Study, and that was that.  Deferring to Roberts as "Authority" when Roberts in 1923 did not have the resources for testing the Book in context that we have now.  Would Roberts have discarded Nibley and Sorenson and Gardner and Welch and FARMS as not worth reading?  I think not.  Or would he have welcomed and embraced them? I think so.

Joseph Smith not only produced plates that secured lifelong testimonies from the three, and the eight, and his wife, and Mary Whitmer, and a neighbor who claimed to have seen plates through a window, but a life that was extraordinary.   And even more extraordinary than the story of the plates and the witnesses, their subsequent lives, and Joseph Smith's life, is the published translation, The Book of Mormon.  One of the oldest revelations we have, one of the earliest writings in church history is D&C 3, from July 1828, produced after Joseph Smith had lost the 116 pages, lost the plates and the Urim and Thummim, and has at that point absolutely nothing going for him except spectacular failure, and that short revelation.  "Nevertheless, my work shall go forth..."

And it has gone forth through all the world.  Is that an effect without a cause?  If not real plates and inspiration, and angels, what caused the extraordinary outcome?  And "somehow" does not measure up if we require puzzle definition and testability, accuracy of key predictions, comprehensiveness and coherence, fruitfulness, simplicity and aesthetics, and future promise as criteria for evaluating the worth of the paradigm.

Not just a book, but a book that has been scrutinized from a wide range specific questions by thousands of trained specialists drawing on resources that no one in the world had access to in Joseph Smith's day.  Here is a book that describes cultures and regions and a wide range of human experience on an epic scale, ranging from Asia, and Jerusalem 600 BCE, and a detailed journey across the Arabian Desert, and to the New World.   

I've read a wide range of counter-explanations, but one thing they all have in common is that none of them bother to fully define the problem that the content of the Book presents.  Ann Taves, for instance, reduces the problem of the Book of Mormon to its bulk and perhaps some matters of style.   The witnesses?  "Somehow...."   An explanation that does not fully define the problem the book represents therefore does not fully explain the book. 

The witnesses do not prove the Book of Mormon, but they are part of the problem that the Book of Mormon defines.  They contribute to what Alma describes as "cause to believe," that falls short of perfect knowledge.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA 

Edited April 11, 2024 by Kevin Christensen
typos

[Analytics]

1 hour ago, Kevin Christensen said:

I've also read Richard L. Anderson's Investigating the Three Witnesses, and various attempts to simply brush aside the various testimonies, notably the hyper-focus on "spiritual eyes" compared to first hand responses by David Whitmer and Harris and Oliver Cowdery.

What do you think of Joseph Smith saying "the same vision was opened to our view; at least it was again to me," implying that he wasn't sure if Martin Harris really had the vision or not? That's an important first-hand account on the nature of Martin Hariss's experience.

1 hour ago, Kevin Christensen said:

And the eight, and the other informal witnesses.   One very strong impression I got from reading Anderson's research is that the plates were very real to Joseph and his associates and his neighbors.  Even those who never saw them knew he had something real.  They searched the house to find them. Emma moving the plates around, rustling the pages with her thumb, does not fall under the knowing, cynical dismissal of the product of "spiritual eyes."

That's true. But by the same token, there is zero evidence that any ancient culture anywhere wrote history books on metal plates that you could rustle with your thumb. Zero. Just as making such an artifact that seems authentic is difficult now, making such a thing then was even more difficult, which explains why in the real world nobody made such things. When you compare that fact to how prevalent history books made of metal plates are in the Book of Mormon Universe (e.g. the Brass plates, large plates, small plates, 24 plates, etc.), and you consider how preposterous it would be to have Moroni carry the plates from Mesoamerica to New York for Joseph Smith's convenience when he didn't need them for the translation process (or even need them to show the three witnesses) and the extreme lengths Joseph Smith went to in order to prevent them from being examined by anybody who wasn't already a believer in his religious claims, it becomes clear that whatever it was that he had, it wasn't an authentic ancient mesoamerican artifact.

1 hour ago, Kevin Christensen said:

 Whitmer, of course, insisted that spiritual eyes was enhanced perception of something real.  An angel and plates.  But the eight and Emma did not describe their experience as spiritual eyes. Rather physical encounters.   If Joseph Smith had the resources to produce the prop plates as mediocre as the ones I saw, I cannot imagine them having the required effects on anyone....

In your opinion, is the "required effect" the product of seeing the physical object themselves, or is it the spirit, e.g. the spiritual eyes enhancing the way you perceive whatever real physical object was there? And if there was something that was real and authentically impressive, what's the advantage of "enhanced perception" with spiritual eyes? 

1 hour ago, Kevin Christensen said:

let alone securing Harris's financial backing...

With regards to Harris, Joseph Smith said, ""the same vision was opened to our view; at least it was again to me," and indicated he thought Harris probably saw the vision too, because he said, "Tis enough, ’tis enough; mine eyes have beheld, mine eyes have beheld." But Smith had to take Harris's word for whether or not he saw the plates.

Do you think Joseph and Harris saw visions with their spiritual eyes, or do you think Moroni, a resurrected being of flesh and bones, went to the Whitmer resident, acquired the plates, took them to the woods where Smith and the witnesses were praying, showed them, and then returned the plates to their hiding place at the Whitmers? Is that what you think happened? If there were physical plates there that didn't need to be enhanced with spiritual eyes, why did Joseph Smith say, "at least it was again to me." Why did he have to rely on Harris saying "tis enough; mine eyes have beheld" in order to know whether Harris saw anything or not?

1 hour ago, Kevin Christensen said:

One thing about the plates I find very interesting is that they caused an impressive stir and produced effects, not just the witnesses, and scorn from some neighbors. But we have a large and impressive book that Joseph says he translated from the plates.  Now Stirling McMurrin famously told Blake Ostler that "I learned when I was younger than I can remember that you don't get books from angels and translate them by revelation.  It's just that simple."  I find two things very significant in that.  It wasn't McMurrin's extensive education and life experience and careful investigation that led him to that conclusion, but rather, a child's insight that he never subsequently outgrew or questioned.  "Younger than I can remember."  And McMurrin never bothered to read the Book of Mormon.

Ironically, we now have extraordinarily strong positive proof from physics that Stirling McMurrin was right on this specific point--we don't get books from angels and translate them by revelation. Please read The Big Picture by Sean Carroll to understand how physics has proven that such things couldn't happen. 

1 hour ago, Kevin Christensen said:

He wrote an essay when Signature published the Roberts Study, and that was that.  Deferring to Roberts as "Authority" when Roberts in 1923 did not have the resources for testing the Book in context that we have now.  Would Roberts have discarded Nibley and Sorenson and Gardner and Welch and FARMS as not worth reading?  I think not.  Or would he have welcomed and embraced them? I think so.

Do you think Roberts would have been interested in what David P. Wright has written about it?

1 hour ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Joseph Smith not only produced plates that secured lifelong testimonies from the three, and the eight, and his wife, and Mary Whitmer, and a neighbor who claimed to have seen plates through a window, but a life that was extraordinary.   And even more extraordinary than the story of the plates and the witnesses, their subsequent lives, and Joseph Smith's life, is the published translation, The Book of Mormon.  One of the oldest revelations we have, on the of the earliest writings in church history is D&C 3, from July 1828, produced after Joseph Smith had lost the 116 pages, lost the plates and the Urim and Thummim, and has at that point absolutely nothing going for him except spectacular failure, and that short revelation.  "Nevertheless, my work shall go forth..."

And it has gone forth through all the world. 

Since I've been thinking back on seminary, I'll continue my story. I read the New Testament a few times as a sophomore, and then read the D&C a few times as a junior. This was all before I read the Book of Mormon. On a Sunday around May of 1986, plus or minus a month, I finished reading the D&C for the second time, and decided it was time to tackle the Book of Mormon. Later that exact same day, there was a stake youth fireside at the Cottonwood Creek Stake that I belonged to. In that meeting we were challenged as a group to read the Book of Mormon and told that everyone who finished reading it over the next 4 months or so would be invited to a special event. I took them up on it and started reading in earnest.

A couple months later they did a survey of how many people were reading it so they could see how many people were likely to make it to the event. There were very few of us. Shortly later, they announced what the event would be: those of us who read the Book of Mormon from cover to cover would be invited to go downtown and personally meet the Prophet Ezra Taft Benson in his office, and then have dinner in the Lion House. Enthusiasm for the project exploded, and we went from about 50 teenagers in the stake reading the Book of Mormon to over 200.

About six weeks later, we were disappointed. Because of President Benson's declining health and the unexpected number of people who claimed they read the Book of Mormon, Benson was forced to cancel. We still had the dinner, and President Benson gave us all tickets to see the play Charlie and the Chocolate Factory after dinner, and Thomas S. Monson shook everybody's hand as we walked into the theatre. Before that we had dinner at the Lion House, and one of the guys at my table asked how many there really read the Book of Mormon. I was the only one. None of these other guys read it. Everybody else lied about it because they wanted to meet the prophet but just couldn't motivate themselves to read this thing.

So how inspiring is the book, really?

About 200 million copies of the Book of Mormon have been printed. How many people have actually read the whole thing cover to cover? 4 million, maybe? Compared to how many copies are published, it's incredibly unread.

For my part, I read it 5 times before my mission, and after that it lost its inspiration for me. It was too boring. The good parts were too predictable. The bad parts were too groan inducing. Your milage my vary, but that is my experience.  

1 hour ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Is that an effect without a cause? If not real plates and inspiration, and angels, what caused the extraordinary outcome? 

There could be real inspiration without real plates and angels. Sociological forces best explain the growth and spread of all religious movements, including yours.

1 hour ago, Kevin Christensen said:

And "somehow" does not measure up if we require puzzle definition and testability, accuracy of key predictions, comprehensiveness and coherence, fruitfulness, simplicity and aesthetics, and future promise as criteria for evaluating the worth of the paradigm.

Accuracy of key predictions? Like how the Book of Mormon predicts that it will one day be translated by Joseph, son of Joseph? Like how it predicts that 118 pages would be lost? It's interesting how it doesn't predict anything with specificity that happened after it was published.

1 hour ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Not just a book, but a book that has been scrutinized from a wide range specific questions by thousands of trained specialists drawing on resources that no one in the world had access to in Joseph Smith's day.  Here is a book that describes cultures and regions and a wide range of human experience on an epic scale, ranging from Asia, and Jerusalem 600 BCE, and a detailed journey across the Arabian Desert, and to the New World.

Describing something and describing it accurately are two different things. 

1 hour ago, Kevin Christensen said:

I've read a wide range of counter-explanations, but one thing they all have in common is that none of them bother to fully define the problem that the content of the Book presents.  Ann Taves, for instance, reduces the problem of the Book of Mormon to its bulk and perhaps some matters of style.   The witnesses?  "Somehow...."   An explanation that does not fully define the problem the book represents therefore does not fully explain the book. 

The witnesses do not prove the Book of Mormon, but they are part of the problem that the Book of Mormon defines.  They contribute so what Alma describes as "cause to believe," that falls short of perfect knowledge.

Looking at the big picture, Mormonism as a religion has some good things going for it. It provides some satisfying answers to some big questions. It gives certain way of seeing the world and your place in it that is inspiring. It gives a clean and wholesome code to live by. A sense of purpose to life. A great community to belong to. And if you are conditioned to think about the Book of Mormon and the witnesses in a certain way, that can give you "cause to believe." But if you aren't conditioned to look at those questions in those ways, and if you don't belong to the community, and if your primary objective is to embrace the truth rather than "find cause to believe" in the religion of your community, the Book of Mormon is a huge net negative, and the witness statements are weak and problematic.

Edited February 26, 2024 by Analytics

[Analytics]

2 hours ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

But no really - "Joseph made the cheap plate-looking thing himself, and just relied on groupthink to get people to leave their homes and follow him to Far West, and they never bothered to examine their own experience at any point in their lives, even after getting excommunicated or otherwise leaving the church."?  That's it?  That's your explanation that's more likely than what you think of as the least likely explanation?

I agree with most of what you say. Joseph Smith didn't make his artifact with a table saw, power drill, and Rust-olum.  And wherever they came from, it had to have been a lot more time and energy and resources than what my seminary teacher put into it (I understand your point about economics now).

My point isn't to provide answers to any specific questions. Rather, the point is to illustrate that in addition to being problematic, the statements we have are more vague than they seem at first glance, and the truth of what they are claiming might be different than what we are imagining now.

I have in front of me The Poems of John Keats. The introduction by Aileen Ward says:

The name John Keats stands for the greatest miracle in English poetry. The miracles of genius breed doubt as well as faith: Shakespeare's achievement has seemed so extraordinary to some of his readers that they have felt compelled to deny he could have written the works that bear his name. But what Keats accomplished in his brief lifetime would tax a skeptic's faith still more. Sprung from the same kind of undistinguished parentage, given the same kind of middling education, trained for a career far less auspicious for poetry, Keats was dead at the age at which Shakespeare had only begun to try his hand at playwriting. It was within the space of a single year, his twenty-third, that he wrote almost all the work that has earned him his place in English poetry today. Fortunately, biographical records were kept with greater care in the nineteenth than in the sixteenth century. As a result, not only can there be no doubt that Keats wrote what he did--eight or ten of the most perfect poems in our language and the greatest poetic fragment; it is also possible to trace through his poetry and letters a unique unfolding of poetic genius.

It would be interesting to see how many people who have read both the Book of Mormon and the poetry of John Keats think the Book of Mormon is the bigger miracle. 

[mfbukowski]

5 hours ago, Analytics said:

I think it depends. If "believing in the BOM" means accepting that the BOM "works for you" in a @mfbukowski kind of way, then yes, if somebody "believes in the BOM" they are making a religious claim about a book that's an important source of religious inspiration in their life, and not believing is saying that it doesn't work for you. Those are religious beliefs that have little to do with science.

However, if you take the literalistic approach, believing "the Book of Mormon is true" is encroaching deeply into the magisterium of science. Depending upon how the Book-of-Mormon-is-true hypothesis is construed, it is making claims that have implications on metaphysics, history, anthropology, neuroscience, biology, earth sciences, and quantum field theory.

If you take the approach laid out by Steven Pinker in Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters, then science is far from silent on whether the Book of Mormon's truth claims are actually true.

No, science has little to do with religion.  Same argument against historicity.

THIS is the major issue on this entire board.  

Automatically, saying that religion can be disproven in some way is a category error.

It's like marrying someone based on a blood test.   THAT is an "analogy".  I do not mean it literally but please don't come back with the objection that in some states marriage licenses require blood tests for "social diseases"

I think instead of religion we should speak in terms of LOVE- because that is what LOVE is.

One commits one's entire life based on emotion all the time.

Causes.      Same thing.   Politics,  same thing.  What university to attend.  Same thing.  Buying a car because it's "cool".  Same thing.   Buying THIS house as opposed to THAT one.   Same thing.

It works for you or it doesn't.   You "know" it's right for you until maybe it changes.   Then what do you do?   You find another house.

THAT, for me is religion.   Works for me, until it doesn't.

All true critics need to get on with life.   Whatever you have for you, you think is  better- so get on with life.

 

 

Edited February 26, 2024 by mfbukowski

[Kevin Christensen]

Analytics wrote:

Quote

What do you think of Joseph Smith saying "the same vision was opened to our view; at least it was again to me," implying that he wasn't sure if Martin Harris really had the vision or not? That's an important first-hand account on the nature of Martin Hariss's experience.

That is Joseph Smith being careful and precise about what Joseph personally saw.   What that implies to you (not to me) about Martin Harris's first-hand experience (not Joseph's and not yours) is far less important to me than what Harris did and said in relation to that witness for the rest of his life.  And what the witnesses collectively demonstrate.  And, on top of that, my own wide ranging explorations of the Book of Mormon demonstrate in comparison to a succession of competing explanations I have tested.

Regarding what is and what is not proven, I keep quoting this from Hofstadter. "The important thing to keep in mind is that proofs are demonstrations within fixed systems of propositions" and that "Godel showed that provability is a weaker notion than truth, no matter what axiomatic system is involved."  (Godel, Escher and Bach, 18-19.)

And this from Ian Barbour on the same situation, on the notion that some branch of science has definitively falsified my LDS faith:

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Discordant data do not always falsify a theory. One can never test an individual hypothesis conclusively in a ‘crucial experiment’; for if a deduction is not confirmed experimentally, one cannot be sure which one, from among the many assumptions on which the deduction was based, was in error. A network of theories and observations is always tested together. Any particular hypothesis can be maintained by rejecting or adjusting other auxiliary hypotheses. As Quine puts it, theories form a field which is only loosely tied to the data at its boundaries:

The total field is so under-determined by its boundary condition, experience, that there is much latitude of choice as to what statements to reevaluate in the light of a single contrary experience. No particular experiences are lined up with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole... Any statement can be held true, come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system.10

In practice the scientist works within the framework of accepted assumptions, and throws all the doubt on one new hypothesis at a time; but it might be just the accepted assumptions which should be questioned.

https://www.religion-online.org/book-chapter/chapter-6-paradigms-in-science/

From Barbour's wonderful book, Myths, Models and Paradigms: A Comparative Study of Science and Religion.  One of my all time favorite books.

What a person chooses to measure, and what measurements they choose to generalize and how far they apply those generalizations tends to be very telling.  But such generalizations always fall short of demonstrating final omniscience.  A few weeks ago, my wife ran across this exploration of Death, which begins where you think, with medical definitions. But does not end there.

From Analytics:

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Please read The Big Picture by Sean Carroll to understand how physics has proven that such things couldn't happen. 

Does he now?  I just peeked at what Wikipedia has to say:  "Naturalism – he doesn’t favour the word atheism – defines the world entirely in terms of physical forces, fields and entities, and these forces and fields are unforgiving: they do not permit telekinesis, psychic powers, miracles, life after death or an immortal soul."[2] Robert P. Crease in his review for Nature praised The Big Picture for its ambition and directness while finding Carroll's treatment of philosophical topics unsatisfyingly shallow..."   Nibley's essays on the Sophic and Mantic are relevant.  As is Ian Barbour.

From Analytics:

Quote

Accuracy of key predictions? Like how the Book of Mormon predicts that it will one day be translated by Joseph, son of Joseph? Like how it predicts that 118 pages would be lost? It's interesting how it doesn't predict anything with specificity that happened after it was published.

It's of interest to me to have come across the ancient Jewish traditions of Messiah Ben Joseph, who would initiate the gathering of Israel to prepare for the coming of Messiah Ben Judah.  John Tvedtnes was teaching in Jerusalem, thinking he'd describe the life of Joseph Smith, and then introduce the Messiah Ben Joseph Traditions.  It turned out he didn't have to.  The Rabbis in his class started whispering about Messiah Ben Joseph before he  finished with Joseph Smith.  (There is a good essay on the topic by Joseph McConkie in the Religious Studies volume on Isaiah and the Prophets., online now)

But regarding the claim that the Book of Mormon lacks specificity on what happens after it was published, well D&C 3 is pretty confident on what will happen, and what has in fact happened.  But as to specificity in the Book of Mormon, there is 1 Nephi 13:20-41 on the transmission of the Hebrew Bible, the loss of plain and precious things, the eventual appearance of the Book of Mormon, and then the subsequent discovery of other books via the Gentiles that will also restore the lost plain and precious things, including many "covenants of the Lord," 1 Nephi 13:26, and notice that the "Early Christians in Disarray" volume has a detailed chapter on the "Loss of Covenant in Christian History" and beyond that Robert Murray's important book The Cosmic Covenant aka the Eternal Covenant, or Covenant of Peace, or the Covenant between God and Every Living Creature, the knowledge of which has thereby been restored as a plain and precious thing,) and specifically the notion that "these last records which thou hast seen shall establish the truth of the first...and shall make known the plain and precious things which have been taken away from them; and shall make known to all kindreds, tongues and people, that the Lamb of God is the Son of the Eternal Father, and the Savior of the world..."  

I've been making the case that Margaret Barker has drawn on recently discovered texts outside the Bible that have been discovered and published via the gentles to demonstrate knowledge of the Eternal Covenant and to argue that the Lamb of God (i.e. the Servant in Isaiah... Lamb and Servant have the same consonants in Aramaic) was Yahweh, the Son of El Elyon God Most High and is the Savior of the World.  That is very specific and detailed and not something anticipated or expected outside of Nephi's prophesy.  It happens that Barker's "Text and Context" essay and 1 Nephi 13 tell the same story about the loss and restoration of plain and precious things.

And there are details in the Book of Mormon like this, in Alma 2, as Larry Poulson points out:

Quote

36 And they fled before the Nephites towards the wilderness which was west and north, away beyond the borders of the land; and the Nephites did pursue them with their might, and did slay them.    37 Yea, they were met on every hand, and slain and driven, until they were scattered on the west, and on the north, until they had reached the wilderness, which was called Hermounts; and it was that part of the wilderness which was infested by wild and ravenous beasts.    38 And it came to pass that many died in the wilderness of their wounds, and were devoured by those beasts and also the vultures of the air; and their bones have been found, and have been heaped up on the earth. 

He shows how the details given in the Book of Mormon match the geography to the extent that:

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The battle ends as the Amlicites and Nephites enter the wilderness of Hermounts. A number of years ago, I had chosen these Barrancas as the location for Hermounts because of their fit to the description of this wilderness found in the text of the Book of Mormon.  About a year ago, on the Aztlan discussion list, someone raised the topic of whether or not there were man-eating beasts in Mesoamerica. One of the list members, an expert of the Nahuatl language, responded by explaining that Tehuantepec is a Nahuatl word meaning “hills” or “mountains of the man-eating beast.” 

chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/2008-Larry-Poulsen.pdf 

If that was the only correspondence, it would be pretty cool, but there is far, far more to it than that.  And on the Journey from Jerusalem to Bountiful.  For me to be persuaded from my faith, I would require a theory that actually predicts and accounts for these kinds of details, and much much more that I have learned in 50 years of serious study.

Regarding ancient writing on metal, there are many examples relevant to the Book of Mormon.  But the Brass Plates, the 24 Jaredite plates, and Nephi's small and large plates amount to one example from Jerusalem, one from the Jaredites and two related sets from the Nephite records.  I would not over-generalize about what kind of evidence to expect from the ancient world based on those notable, exceptional texts.  Most of the records were on perishable materials.  Yet I am fascinated that the oldest surviving Biblical text dates to Jersusalem and 600 BCE and includes the priestly blessing from Numbers 6 about May the Lord's face Shine upon you, which is relevant to the opening of the Book of Mormon and the controversies of the Deuteronomists, and the plates of Laban and its Books of Moses and to the climax of the Book of Mormon where the Lord's face shines on the surviving Nephites gathered at the temple in direct fulfillment of that specific blessing, recorded on metal in Jerusalem.

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Edited February 26, 2024 by Kevin Christensen
typos and added Poulson link

[Vanguard]

34 minutes ago, mfbukowski said:

No, science has little to do with religion.  Same argument against historicity.

THIS is the major issue on this entire board.  

Automatically, saying that religion can be disproven in some way is a category error.

It's like marrying someone based on a blood test.   THAT is an "analogy".  I do not mean it literally but please don't come back with the objection that in some states marriage licenses require blood tests for "social diseases"

I think instead of religion we should speak in terms of LOVE- because that is what LOVE is.

One commits one's entire life based on emotion all the time.

Causes.      Same thing.   Politics,  same thing.  What university to attend.  Same thing.  Buying a car because it's "cool".  Same thing.   Buying THIS house as opposed to THAT one.   Same thing.

It works for you or it doesn't.   You "know" it's right for you until maybe it changes.   Then what do you do?   You find another house.

THAT, for me is religion.   Works for me, until it doesn't.

All true critics need to get on with life.   Whatever you have for you, you think is  better- so get on with life.

 

 

Boy you sure seem to 'nail it' sometimes, though you still leave me scratching my head on others... ; )

[bluebell]

6 hours ago, Analytics said:

However, if you take the literalistic approach, believing "the Book of Mormon is true" is encroaching deeply into the magisterium of science. Depending upon how the Book-of-Mormon-is-true hypothesis is construed, it is making claims that have implications on metaphysics, history, anthropology, neuroscience, biology, earth sciences, and quantum field theory.

If you take the approach laid out by Steven Pinker in Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters, then science is far from silent on whether the Book of Mormon's truth claims are actually true.

Sure, if the scientist is an atheist.  But there are scientists who aren't the conclusion changes.  Because bias.

[OGHoosier]

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

Please read The Big Picture by Sean Carroll to understand how physics has proven that such things couldn't happen. 

We've discussed this before. I think this blog post (The Argument from Core Theory) sums up the argument as well as I understand it, but of course you have the last word on that. 

I am not persuaded by this argument. There seems, to me, to be three lines of response. 

1. Ian T. Durham, writing at Quantum Moxie, argues that the Core Model does not fit reality so tightly as to back up Carroll's exclusive claims. Basically, scientific theories are not straight-line right or wrong but rather have ranges of applicability - see the variable validity of Newtonian physics between the classical and quantum worlds. But we don't know where the classical and quantum line is, and the Standard Model as presently constituted leaves enough phenomena unexplained (even on the macro level) that the the list can be found on Wikipedia.

This is not confined to merely small-energy interactions that do not impact matter on the macro level. Emphasis in original:

Quote

Consider a stable, macroscopic chunk of a white dwarf star.  Now draw a free-body diagram of that chunk.  In the radial direction there is, of course, a force due to gravity acting in the negative r direction and so I can draw an arrow and label it.  Now there ought to be an equal magnitude arrow pointing in the opposite direction since the chunk is stable.  But there isn’t because there is no force preventing collapse.  It is PEP that prevents collapse and acts against gravity here and PEP, in the Standard Model, is not a force.

That example was simply illustrative.  A similar argument can be made about all matter.  Indeed, as Tom Moore said to me once, PEP does present a problem for the interaction picture that is painted by the Standard Model.  Within the realm of the Standard Model itself, there is no problem.  But this is precisely where Sean falls into his own trap by over-extrapolating the realm of applicability of a theory: the interaction picture of the Standard Model matches up well with standard Newtonian physics except for this one case.  And we do not yet know why.  That alone should be enough to refute Sean’s claim. The claim is dubious at best and at worst is misleading enough to beguile even the best science journalists especially when it comes from someone as well-known as Sean Carroll.

A cynic might say that the purpose of such a claim is merely to sell books.  But I think Sean really believes his claim.  Either way it’s another case of the particle physics and cosmology community making grandiose claims that are eaten up by the public, giving the impression that this sub-field of physics has a monopoly on truth, particularly when it comes to fundamental questions.  And not only is that wrong but it is potentially harmful to science.

Oh, and by the way, just because we have an equation that works doesn’t mean we understand it.  If you don’t believe me then google “interpreting the quantum mechanical wave function.”

This is from 2013, so recent findings may have changed things in the intervening decade, but I was unable to find such findings. Good luck.

2. Stephen Tweedale argues that the substance dualist can simply hold that, since mind is in the world in which the Standard Model has been investigated, mind is already contained within the Core Model. No additional force or particle is needed at all. He then, in a following blog post, argues that physicalists who embrace emergentism about consciousness run into a similar dilemma. For a more formalized approach, see David Chalmers' "Consciousness and Its Place in Nature". Relevant section below:

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The question then arises: how do these novel fundamental properties relate to the already acknowledged fundamental properties of the world, namely those invoked in microphysics? In general, where there are fundamental properties, there are fundamental laws. So we can expect that there will be some sort of fundamental principles — psychophysical laws — connecting physical and phenomenal properties. Like the fundamental laws of relativity or quantum mechanics, these psychophysical laws will not be deducible from more basic principles, but instead will be taken as primitive.

But what is the character of these laws? An immediate worry is that the microphysical aspects of the world is often held to be causally closed, in that every microphysical state has a microphysical sufficient cause. How are fundamental phenomenal properties to be integrated with this causally closed network?

There seem to be three main options for the nonreductionist here. First, one could deny the causal closure of the microphysical, holding that there are causal gaps in microphysical dynamics that are filled by a causal role for distinct phenomenal properties: this is type-D dualism. Second, one could accept the causal closure of the microphysical and hold that phenomenal properties play no causal role with respect to the physical network: this is type-E dualism. Third, one could accept that the microphysical network is causally closed, but hold that phenomenal properties are nevertheless integrated with it and play a causal role, by virtue of constituting the intrinsic nature of the physical: this is type-F monism.

In what follows, I will discuss each of these views. The discussion is necessarily speculative in certain respects, and I do not claim to establish that any one of the views is true or completely unproblematic. But I do aim to suggest that none of them has obvious fatal flaws, and that each deserves further investigation.

Notably, Philip Goff has argued that phenomenal properties are foundational to all matter - this is panpsychism. Christof Koch's Integrated Information Theory, lately controversial and popular, has also leaned in this direction despite the objections of Carroll, Hossenfelder, and the ever-irenic Jerry Coyne to the whole panpsychist project. It seems the academy, at large, has not gotten Carroll's memo. 

3. This is my own original argument: I see no reason why a divine force would need to operate as a field or particle. I am a mathematical realist - I think numbers actually exist and the descriptive and predictive qualities of mathematics are not merely an artifact of human description. From this alone I derive the idea that there exist causal entities beyond the forces described by physics - semantic entities, if you will. No additional forces or particles needed. This would correspond to the Type-E dualism suggested by Chalmers, I think. 

[Kevin Christensen]

On 2/26/2024 at 2:28 PM, Analytics said:

I agree with most of what you say. Joseph Smith didn't make his artifact with a table saw, power drill, and Rust-olum.  And wherever they came from, it had to have been a lot more time and energy and resources than what my seminary teacher put into it (I understand your point about economics now).

My point isn't to provide answers to any specific questions. Rather, the point is to illustrate that in addition to being problematic, the statements we have are more vague than they seem at first glance, and the truth of what they are claiming might be different than what we are imagining now.

I have in front of me The Poems of John Keats. The introduction by Aileen Ward says:

The name John Keats stands for the greatest miracle in English poetry. The miracles of genius breed doubt as well as faith: Shakespeare's achievement has seemed so extraordinary to some of his readers that they have felt compelled to deny he could have written the works that bear his name. But what Keats accomplished in his brief lifetime would tax a skeptic's faith still more. Sprung from the same kind of undistinguished parentage, given the same kind of middling education, trained for a career far less auspicious for poetry, Keats was dead at the age at which Shakespeare had only begun to try his hand at playwriting. It was within the space of a single year, his twenty-third, that he wrote almost all the work that has earned him his place in English poetry today. Fortunately, biographical records were kept with greater care in the nineteenth than in the sixteenth century. As a result, not only can there be no doubt that Keats wrote what he did--eight or ten of the most perfect poems in our language and the greatest poetic fragment; it is also possible to trace through his poetry and letters a unique unfolding of poetic genius.

It would be interesting to see how many people who have read both the Book of Mormon and the poetry of John Keats think the Book of Mormon is the bigger miracle. 

Well, I am an English major, and we studied Keats.  Ode to a Grecian Urn.  Interesting guy, some lovely work.  I prefer, and am far more impressed by William Blake. who died in 1827, just too soon to have read the Book of Mormon, alas.   I have long had an ambition to compare Blake and Joseph Smith at length, but time and resources and other life demands divert me.  But before I settled on my English Major and finished it at San Jose State, I attended the University of Utah 18th Branch, where a recent convert explained that his path to the LDS faith went through the Romantic poets.  He saw something new and impressive coming into the world through the Romantics a kind of inspiration, and breaking of mental shackles, and wanted to see what it was all pointing towards.  What was all this world shaking inspiration a precursor for and what was it pointing to.  So he found, and read the Book of Mormon.

Ode to a Grecian Urn is a lovely poem, but I see the context of Lehi's Journey from Jerusalem in 600 BCE to Bountiful as something far more than a dying poet's creative mediation on the tension between the static chase, static life, unheard music, potential sacrifice, depicted on an urn, Keats, dying, contemplating the tension between the stasis of the art, the fleeting, dynamic life, it depicted, and his own immanent mortality.  Lehi too, was a poet, as was Nephi, of a different sort, using different forms.  But the same opposing tensions that mark the distance between the art of the urn and the life it points towards, also appear in Lehi's and Nephi's poetry.  Opposition in all things.  Creative tension that testifies and illuminates the creator.  Something quite different than a longing for absolutes.

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Edited March 11, 2024 by Kevin Christensen
missing word

[juliann]

Quote

Just as making such an artifact that seems authentic is difficult now, making such a thing then was even more difficult, which explains why in the real world nobody made such things.

Do you mean like the pyramids?  

[Analytics]

2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

No, science has little to do with religion.

It depends on whether religion makes truth claims that are within the domain of science. If the story of Noah's ark is just a fun story that isn't meant to be taken literally, then of course science has nothing to do with it. But when believers insist that it really, literally, happened, then they are making a truth claim that are squarely within the magisterium of science, and it is fair for science to weigh in on whether it is true.

2 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

All true critics need to get on with life.   Whatever you have for you, you think is  better- so get on with life.

Perhaps. But remember why I thought this thread; I have no problem whatsoever with people believing what they want to believe. Because of that, I say very little on religious topics, and generally only weigh in on topics involving atheism, naturalism, finance, law, and the like. I should have restrained myself when @smac97 said "the physicality of the plates needs to be accounted for", but I pointed out that there is no physicality of the plates--if there were they wouldn't have disappeared. If anybody needs to account for the physicality of the plates, it is believers. But when he accused me of being "aggressively apathetic and indifferent to scrutinizing Church-related topics" and said I was guilty of " intellectual dishonesty, even moral cowardice" for getting on with my life rather than explaining what I believe and why. Since the issue is so important to him, I'm laying out what I think.

 

[Analytics]

2 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Regarding ancient writing on metal, there are many examples relevant to the Book of Mormon.  But the Brass Plates, the 24 Jaredite plates, and Nephi's small and large plates amount to one example from Jerusalem, one from the Jaredites and two related sets from the Nephite records.  I would not over-generalize about what kind of evidence to expect from the ancient world based on those notable, exceptional texts.  Most of the records were on perishable materials.  Yet I am fascinated that the oldest surviving Biblical text dates to Jersusalem and 600 BCE and includes the priestly blessing from Numbers 6 about May the Lord's face Shine upon you, which is relevant to the opening of the Book of Mormon and the controversies of the Deuteronomists, and the plates of Laban and its Books of Moses and to the climax of the Book of Mormon where the Lord's face shines on the surviving Nephites gathered at the temple in direct fulfillment of that specific blessing, recorded on metal in Jerusalem.

FWIW,

This kinda indicates to me makes you are desperate to find anything to corroborate the Book of Mormon. According to the Book of Mormon, Nephi needed the brass plates because they contained the historical record of the Jews and his genealogy. In the Book of Mormon, writing on metal plates is always for those reasons--recording history. The plates are large, extensive, and everywhere. The Jaradites had them. The 24 plates. The sealed plates. The Jews in Jerusalem had them. And the Nephites had them continuously for a thousand years. From the very beginning, Nephi and Lehi were both making redundant records on metal plates as they traveled through the wilderness. When they got to America, one of the first things God commanded them was to "Make other plates; and thou shalt engraven many things upon them." (2 Nephi 5:30). Then at that point, Nephi was simultaneously making two historical records on two sets of plates. Plate-making technology existed from the time Nephi made plates to the time Mormon made plates with his own hands (3 Nephi 5:11). According to the Book of Mormon, "there are many books and many records of every kind." (Helaman 3:15). This is totally consistent with the story that Joseph Smith told Brigham Young about "many wagon loads of plates" in a cave in the Hill Cumorah. 

In contrast, the Ketef Hinnom scrolls are two tiny silver scrolls that contain a couple dozen words from a prayer. The larger of the two scrolls has a total surface area of about one inch by 3.8 inches, and the second one was 0.4 inches by 1.5 inches. Combined, the two scrolls are about the size of 4 or 5 postage stamps. That is not comparable to what's depicted in the Book of Mormon. At all.

[Teancum]

On 2/25/2024 at 1:48 PM, bluebell said:

Isn't not believing in the BOM the same though? Not that not believing is a religious belief, but rather that it's a theological belief and not a scientific one.

This seems especially true to me since science is as silent on disproof of it as it is on proof, and since the strength of the evidence in support or against is measured against a bias (that bias being the belief or disbelief in God).

Do you elevate every other religious text from other faiths to this level and criteria as well?

[Analytics]

3 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

We've discussed this before. I think this blog post (The Argument from Core Theory) sums up the argument as well as I understand it, but of course you have the last word on that. 

Yes, we have. I briefly searched for that conversation to review, but gave up before I found anything.

The blog post you provide is a decent summary, but there are some nuances it misses. 

3 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

I am not persuaded by this argument. There seems, to me, to be three lines of response. 

1. Ian T. Durham, writing at Quantum Moxie, argues that the Core Model does not fit reality so tightly as to back up Carroll's exclusive claims. Basically, scientific theories are not straight-line right or wrong but rather have ranges of applicability - see the variable validity of Newtonian physics between the classical and quantum worlds. But we don't know where the classical and quantum line is, and the Standard Model as presently constituted leaves enough phenomena unexplained (even on the macro level) that the the list can be found on Wikipedia.

This is not confined to merely small-energy interactions that do not impact matter on the macro level. Emphasis in original:

This is from 2013, so recent findings may have changed things in the intervening decade, but I was unable to find such findings. Good luck.

Note that this is a response to a couple of blog posts Carroll made, and was written before Big Picture was published. Big Picture does a lot to qualify its claims, and these responses don't seem to capture those nuances. 

Carroll readily concedes we don't know everything, but he charts out that we do know some things within certain established parameters of time, distance and force. Those some things we know are enough to preclude other things. The examples in that article all fall outside of the things "we know" and the parameters the model itself establishes.

In any event, these are the types of things I was referring to when talking about the totality of the evidence that ought to be considered.

 

 

[mfbukowski]

32 minutes ago, Analytics said:

It depends on whether religion makes truth claims that are within the domain of science. If the story of Noah's ark is just a fun story that isn't meant to be taken literally, then of course science has nothing to do with it. But when believers insist that it really, literally, happened, then they are making a truth claim that are squarely within the magisterium of science, and it is fair for science to weigh in on whether it is true.

That's your problem right there in the chain of logic.

Someone writes an inspired symbolic story, or perhaps which he believed to be literal, or just comes down through the ages.

"But when believers insist that it really, literally, happened,..."

Error 1 as I see it

They accept it from hearsay. 

...then they are making a truth claim that are squarely within the magisterium of science,...

Error 2

Where pray tell is this truth claim?

Error 3

Where pray tell is there assumption that they are now IN THE MAGISTERIUM OF SCIENCE?  They are just folks taking it literally.

ERROR 4:

...and it is fair for science to weigh in on whether it is true...

What "scientist", whatever that means, in context,  would bother with that?  What would happen to his career if he wrote a paper on the subject that every scientist is programmed that it is mere legend 

I think that chain of logic doesn't work.

[mfbukowski]

2 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

Well, I am an English major, and we studied Keats.  Ode to a Grecian Urn.  Interesting guy, some lovely work.  I prefer, and am far more impressed by William Blake. who died in 1827, just too soon to have read the Book of Mormon, alas.   I have long had an ambition to compare Blake and Joseph Smith at length, but time and resources and other life demands divert me.  But before I settled on my English Major and finished it at San Jose State, I attended the University of Utah 18th Branch, where a recent convert explained that his path to the LDS faith went through the Romantic poets.  He saw something new and impressive coming into the world through the Romantics a kind of inspiration, and breaking of mental shackles, and wanted to see what it was all pointing towards.  What was all this world shaking inspiration a precursor for and what was it pointing to.  So he found, and read the Book of Mormon.

Ode to a Grecian Urn is a lovely poem, but I see the context of Lehi's Journey from Jerusalem in 600 BCE to Bountiful as something far more than a dying poet's creative mediation on the tension between the static chase, static life, unheard music, potential sacrifice, depicted an urn, Keats, dying, contemplating the tension between the stasis of the art, the fleeting, dynamic life, it depicted, and his own immanent mortality.  Lehi too, was a poet, as was Nephi, of a different sort, using different forms.  But the same opposing tensions that mark the distance between the art of the urn and the life it points towards, also appear in Lehi's and Nephi's poetry.  Opposition in all things.  Creative tension that testifies and illuminates the creator.  Something quite different than a longing for absolutes.

FWIW,

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

I know for a fact that the origin of my name, the word "buk" originated from ancient words for the birch or beech trees, from which the ancients would make thin boards and carve messages into them, and after binding these "boards" together, they also became "buks" or as we pronounce it, " books".

"

"The word book comes from Old English bōc, which in turn comes from the Germanic root *bōk-, cognate to 'beech'.^[9] In Slavic languages like Russian, Bulgarian, Macedonian буква bukva—'letter' is cognate with 'beech'. In Russian, Serbian and Macedonian, the word букварь (bukvar') or буквар (bukvar) refers to a primary school textbook that helps young children master the techniques of reading and writing. It is thus conjectured that the earliest Indo-European writings may have been carved on beech wood.^[10] The Latin word codex, meaning a book in the modern sense (bound and with separate leaves), originally meant 'block of wood'.^[11]

^{https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book#:~:text=12 External links-,Etymology,%2C cognate to 'beech'.}

Edited February 27, 2024 by mfbukowski

[Stargazer]

@Analytics I am curious why you think statistical likelihood is a reliable way to assess the likelihood of God doing any particular thing? 

On 2/25/2024 at 4:12 PM, Stormin' Mormon said:

One of the things I do know is that if you study the totality of all the evidence, the theory that they saw an authentic Mayan codex that was buried in New York and then dug up by Joseph Smith is the least likely explanation imaginable.  

My wife took a short holiday in Austria last year, taking one of our church friends who had recently lost her husband, in order to help her deal with things. I didn't go with them. But I seriously considered flying out there myself just to surprise them. It would have been a complete surprise, and the inherent statistical likelihood of my showing up would have been about 0% to them. 

Why do you think God only does things that are predictable?

[Ryan Dahle]

8 hours ago, Analytics said:

In Joseph Smith's own words, "the same vision was opened to our view; at least it was again to me." That indicates that Joseph Smith claimed that he personally had the vision, and had some doubts about whether Martin really saw it or not. But Martin told Joseph Smith "Tis enough, ’tis enough; mine eyes have beheld, mine eyes have beheld."

I don't think Joseph had any "doubt" about whether Martin saw the vision. He clearly was convinced Martin had the vision. It seems Joseph was just trying to be careful about not speaking for Martin. Joseph couldn't definitively say what Martin saw, especially in this sort of quasi-legal context. He could only certainly declare what he himself experienced in that moment.

Fortunately, Martin repeatedly testified throughout his life about the experience. For a recent treatment of Martin's testimony, see Neal Rappleye, "Material Plates, Spiritual Vision: Martin Harris, Divine Materiality, and Seeing with 'Spiritual Eyes'," in Steadfast in Defense of Faith, ed. Shirley S. Ricks, Stephen D. Ricks, and Louis C. Midgley (Orem and Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2023), 271-298. 

Edited February 27, 2024 by Ryan Dahle

[Calm]

19 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I don't think Joseph had any "doubt" about whether Martin saw the vision. He clearly was convinced Martin had the vision. It seems Joseph was just trying to be careful about not speaking for Martin. Joseph couldn't definitively say what Martin saw, especially in this sort of quasi-legal context. He could only certainly declare what he himself experienced in that moment.

Fortunately, Martin repeatedly testified throughout his life about the experience. For a recent treatment of Martin's testimony, see Neal Rappleye, "Material Plates, Spiritual Vision: Martin Harris, Divine Materiality, and Seeing with 'Spiritual Eyes'," in Steadfast in Defense of Faith, ed. Shirley S. Ricks, Stephen D. Ricks, and Louis C. Midgley (Orem and Salt Lake City, UT: The Interpreter Foundation and Eborn Books, 2023), 271-298. 

I am assuming this has the highlights of the book…for those of us not in book buying mode….
 

 

Edited February 27, 2024 by Calm

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, Teancum said:

Do you elevate every other religious text from other faiths to this level and criteria as well?

Do I believe that every other religious text from other faiths are issues of theology and not science?  Yes, I do.

[CV75]

Many people read the Book of Mormon without having read or relied on the 3 and 8 witness statements, and yet receive a personal spiritual witness of its contents and message, and permanently change their lives.

The same result could occur when these witness statements, or the witnesses themselves, are seen as irrelevant to or undermining the book's claims and gospel message. Why would anyone read it further when these statements could be so easily critiqued and challenged? When I first read them, I set these considerations aside, with zero discomfort (having other ancillary experiences to spur my interest) and soon discovered something far greater in the book itself.

It was the same when rubbing shoulders with some of the odder members I met at Church: they had no more an impact on my spiritual experience (for example, Moroni's Promise) than the members whose personalities were more respectable or palatable to me. Yet both kinds of people bore witness of the same things I did, and lived their faith with enough commitment and similarity, despite their differences, to create a "Zion" I could happily be a part of.

I think it very possible to refute the witness statements as the products of [fill in your descriptive noun] and still obtain a testimony of the book. This testimony will no doubt be as soundly critiqued and challenged as these witness statements.

I think the analysis warrants a degree of prioritization between witness statements and personal experience independent of the influence of these statements, whether that influence is to discourage or encourage someone (or neither) to read the book and apply Moroni's Promise.