In 1985, I Personally Witnessed Golden Plates

[Ryan Dahle]

8 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

2 hours ago, smac97 said:

Yep

So you quote yourself and then agree with yourself?

When you are as authoritative as @smac97, that is allowed. Haha. 

[Analytics]

19 hours ago, smac97 said:

"Extraordinary evidence is not a separate category or type of evidence--it is an extraordinarily large number of observations. Claims that are merely novel or those which violate human consensus are not properly characterized as extraordinary."

This is why your invocation of ECREE breaks down.  

In the context of the Book of Mormon, you'd like to have the Plates.  But if you don't, witnesses would suffice.

Again: "Claims that are merely novel or those which violate human consensus are not properly characterized as extraordinary."

ECREE isn't about whether or not somebody subjectively thinks a claim is "extraordinary" or not. It is an informal way of describing Bayesian abduction. Quoting Sean Carroll:

Whenever we are confronted with questions about belief, we can employ the technique called abduction, or “inference to the best explanation.” Abduction is a type of reasoning that can be contrasted with deduction and induction. With deduction, we start with some axioms whose truth we do not question, and derive rigorously necessary conclusions from them. With induction, we start with some examples we know about, and generalize to a wider context—rigorously, if we have some reason for believing that such a generalization is always correct, but often we don’t quite have that guarantee. With abduction, by contrast, we take all of our background knowledge about how the world works, and perhaps some preference for simple explanations over complex ones (Occam’s razor), and decide what possible explanation provides the best account of all the facts we have. In chapters 9 and 10 we will explore this method of inference more fully under the topic of Bayesian reasoning.

Carroll, Sean M. . The Big Picture (pp. 40-41). Penguin Publishing Group. 

@Ryan Dahle's so-called "standard historiographical methods" are the application to history of Fisher's frequentist approach to statistics, which is what everybody studied as mainstream statistics until at least the early 2000's. According to Nate Silver:

Right now, for instance, we may be undergoing a paradigm shift in the statistical methods that scientists are using. The critique I have made here about the flaws of Fisher’s statistical approach is neither novel nor radical: prominent scholars in fields ranging from clinical psychology to political science66 to ecology have made similar arguments for years. But so far there has been little fundamental change.

Recently, however, some well-respected statisticians have begun to argue that frequentist statistics should no longer be taught to undergraduates. And some professions have considered banning Fisher’s hypothesis test from their journals. In fact, if you read what’s been written in the past ten years, it’s hard to find anything that doesn’t advocate a Bayesian approach.

Silver, Nate. The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail-but Some Don't (pp. 260-261).

Tying it back to ECREE, in Rationality Pinker explains:

Now, believing in something before you look at the evidence may seem like the epitome of irrationality. Isn’t that what we disdain as prejudice, bias, dogma, orthodoxy, preconceived notions? But prior credence is simply the fallible knowledge accumulated from all our experience in the past. Indeed, the posterior probability from one round of looking at evidence can supply the prior probability for the next round, a cycle called Bayesian updating. It’s simply the mindset of someone who wasn’t born yesterday...

This is why it is reasonable to be skeptical of claims for miracles, astrology, homeopathy, telepathy, and other paranormal phenomena, even when some eyewitness or laboratory study claims to show it. Why isn’t that dogmatic and pigheaded? The reasons were laid out by that hero of reason, David Hume. Hume and Bayes were contemporaries, and though neither read the other, word of the other’s ideas may have passed between them through a mutual colleague, and Hume’s famous argument against miracles is thoroughly Bayesian:

Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of nature. It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen.

But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country.

In other words, miracles such as resurrection must be given a low prior probability. Here is the zinger:

No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.

A pithier version of the Bayesian argument against paranormal claims was stated by the astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan (1934–1996) in the slogan that serves as this chapter’s epigraph: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” An extraordinary claim has a low Bayesian prior. For its posterior credence to be higher than the posterior credence in its opposite, the likelihood of the data given that the hypothesis is true must be far higher than the likelihood of the data given that the hypothesis is false. The evidence, in other words, must be extraordinary.

Pinker, Steven. Rationality (pp. 157-159).

If one takes a frequentist (i.e. "standard historiographical") approach rather than a Bayesian approach to these questions, they will be looking at the evidence in silos rather than looking at all of the evidence in aggregate. Perhaps 95% of the time that won't be a problem, but 5% of the time it will be a huge problem, leading us to simultaneously believe all sorts of mutually contradictory things, depending upon which compartment of our brain we are in at the moment. That's why if we're serious about understanding the truth, we have to look at all of the evidence for how plausible these claims really are.

Edited February 28, 2024 by Analytics

[SeekingUnderstanding]

30 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

If I had analogous evidence for Jackson's water-walking feat as I do from the witnesses to the Book of Mormon, then I would think that was pretty impressive evidence. I might not believe it. I probably wouldn't (unless I had other outside supporting reasons or rational explanations that could render it as more plausible). But the eye-witness testimonies (if truly analogous) would be surprising and difficult to account for in my current worldview. 
 

Does your world view not account for placing steps just below the surface of the water? Or any number of other potential tricks he could have played? I’ve watched a lot of Derren Brown. He claims never to use stooges.  As a mentalist, he produced a profound spiritual experience in an atheist. One she described as potentially life changing. He has a Netflix show where he performs miraculous healing and curses (like an evangelical revival) on members of the audience. I watched these occur live (they were recorded live) before me. I have no idea how it was done. But I don’t believe he had magic powers. Uri Geller claimed physic powers and demonstrated these powers in front of many many witnesses. I don’t believe them. I watched David Copperfield in Las Vegas produce a life sized UFO out of thin air. I disbelieve my own lying eyes. Our minds lie to us all the time. To those that are willing and know how, they are easily trickable and foolable. Eye witness testimony has been shown over and over to be flawed and problematic. 
 

30 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

 

To be quite frank, I don't think the witnesses of the Book of Mormon would be enough to persuade me to believe in Joseph Smith's claims, if that is all there was to the story. This is just one piece in a much larger landscape of competing types of evidence. But that doesn't mean these witness testimonies are worthless either. I think the case for the Book of Mormon is a lot stronger with them than without them. They certainly don't compel belief, but they play a fairly significant role in how I assess what is plausible or probable, all things accounted for. 

I agree with you that the witnesses are evidence for Joseph’s claims. In my opinion they are the single (taken collectively) best piece of evidence. 

[Ryan Dahle]

15 minutes ago, Analytics said:

If one takes a frequentist (i.e. "standard historiographical") approach rather than a Bayesian approach to these questions, they will be looking at the evidence in silos rather than looking at all of the evidence in aggregate. Perhaps 95% of the time that won't be a problem, but 5% of the time it will be a huge problem, leading us to simultaneously believe all sorts of mutually contradictory things, depending upon which compartment of our brain we are in at the moment. That's why if we're serious about understanding the truth, we have to look at all of the evidence for how plausible these claims really are.

I don't advocate for a strict silo approach. But I do think it is very valuable to evaluate evidence in isolation (on its own terms, if you will) before trying to assign it a weight in the larger framework of competing evidences. A good way to do this is to try to understand the evidence in its current context, retain as far as possible its inherent qualities, and then apply it in a new setting and towards a new conclusion that is directly contrary to your current biases. Another good test is to see how this particular type of evidence generally holds up in settings that have nothing to do with your biases. 

Then, you can come back and are in a somewhat better position to evaluate the merit and value of this particular piece of evidence in light of your broader paradigm.  

[OGHoosier]

I'm reminded of an article by a philosopher who I rather like, Travis Dumsday. Evidentially Compelling Religious Experiences and the Moral Status of Naturalism. After describing a set of religious experiences where clear delusion or lying were rendered very unlikely, Dumsday says the following:

Quote

Hume, for instance, famously argues that it is always more likely that a person is lying than that a miracle took place (or at the very least that the two probabilities cancel each other out), such that we can always dismiss any testimony to a miracle. Indeed, there is a certain sort of naturalist for whom such a reply is perfectly acceptable, namely the sort for whom deception literally is the only rational explanation left. That is, there are some naturalists who are not merely settled in their naturalism, but who think that any sort of non-naturalism is absurd — who think that belief in the God of classical theism (for instance) really is equivalent to believing in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or that belief in an immortal human soul is equivalent to belief in leprechauns. Correspondingly, from their perspective, to make an accusation of deception in response to a claimed ECRE is no more unjust, uncharitable, slanderous or whatnot than to make it in the case of an alleged leprechaun sighting. In both cases, the accusation is justified, morally and rationally, by the absurdity of what is being claimed.

I don't see anybody here accusing the Witnesses of lying, but I think even if Martin Harris and David Whitmer had never said Word One about seeing with spiritual eyes, there would still be a route to declare them deluded or otherwise unreliable. The evidential probity of the Witnesses is dependent on one's prior probability regarding theism or, at the very least, the inexplicable. Personally I am far from a settled naturalist and so I find their experiences considerably more compelling. Probably my right brain (the smarter one) talking.

31 minutes ago, Analytics said:

This is why it is reasonable to be skeptical of claims for miracles, astrology, homeopathy, telepathy, and other paranormal phenomena, even when some eyewitness or laboratory study claims to show it. Why isn’t that dogmatic and pigheaded? The reasons were laid out by that hero of reason, David Hume. Hume and Bayes were contemporaries, and though neither read the other, word of the other’s ideas may have passed between them through a mutual colleague, and Hume’s famous argument against miracles is thoroughly Bayesian:

Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of nature. It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen.

But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country.

In other words, miracles such as resurrection must be given a low prior probability. Here is the zinger:

No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.

A pithier version of the Bayesian argument against paranormal claims was stated by the astronomer and science popularizer Carl Sagan (1934–1996) in the slogan that serves as this chapter’s epigraph: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” An extraordinary claim has a low Bayesian prior. For its posterior credence to be higher than the posterior credence in its opposite, the likelihood of the data given that the hypothesis is true must be far higher than the likelihood of the data given that the hypothesis is false. The evidence, in other words, must be extraordinary.

Out of curiosity, does Steven Pinker ever mention John Earman or Rodney Holder in the text or notes surrounding this?

Edited February 28, 2024 by OGHoosier

[Analytics]

6 minutes ago, OGHoosier said:

Out of curiosity, does Steven Pinker ever mention John Earman or Rodney Holder in the text or notes surrounding this?

I'm impressed. The answer is yes, as a matter of fact. Right before the Hume quote is footnote 11, which references:

Earman, J. 2002. Bayes, Hume, Price, and miracles. Proceedings of the British Academy, 113, 91–109.

 

[Analytics]

10 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

I don't advocate for a strict silo approach. But I do think it is very valuable to evaluate evidence in isolation (on its own terms, if you will) before trying to assign it a weight in the larger framework of competing evidences. A good way to do this is to try to understand the evidence in its current context, retain as far as possible its inherent qualities, and then apply it in a new setting and towards a new conclusion that is directly contrary to your current biases. Another good test is to see how this particular type of evidence generally holds up in settings that have nothing to do with your biases. 

Then, you can come back and are in a somewhat better position to evaluate the merit and value of this particular piece of evidence in light of your broader paradigm.  

That seems a little backwards to me, but I can’t object to exploring the evidence from every angle and every paradigm.

[Bill “Papa” Lee]

Here is the proof I have of it’s Divine origin. I was on a live fire exercise in West Germany, in January 1979. Our commanding officer, asked me to drive the three hours back to Base. I was so very happy, as I had already been away from my family for two weeks. I arrived early in the morning, and was able to be at home overnight. However, I had orders to pick up our commanding officer by 16:00 hours, 4 PM. I had finished packing, for a cold journey. A woman, a friend of my wife, Peggy Spencer showed up 20 minutes before I had to leave. She said, “I have been talking to your wife, and she tells you love to read religious books”. I told her I did, by this time my duffel bag was packed to the max. So, she hands me the older type of the Book of Mormon, with the picture of the Angel Moroni on the cover. The very moment this book touched my fingers, I turned all but breathless. So much so, I could ask her in a whisper,  “what is this”? She started to explain, but  I realized I had to go, so I placed in the top of my duffel bag. Our return trip to this live fire location, turned from a three hour drive, into a five hour drive, due to a blizzard. However despite the cold, and poor visibility, yetI could think about anything more than this book. As the Scriptures say, “blessed are those that see and believe, but more blessed are them who do not see and believe”. I hope I quoted the Scripture properly, as well as all else.

in short, your Brother Bill Lee is a believer, for 45 years and counting. 

[SeekingUnderstanding]

6 minutes ago, OGHoosier said:

 or that belief in an immortal human soul is equivalent to belief in leprechauns.

Why the hate on leprechauns? Are you saying that belief in leprechauns is completely unreasonable?

[Ryan Dahle]

15 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Does your world view not account for placing steps just below the surface of the water? Or any number of other potential tricks he could have played? I’ve watched a lot of Derren Brown. He claims never to use stooges.  As a mentalist, he produced a profound spiritual experience in an atheist. One she described as potentially life changing. He has a Netflix show where he performs miraculous healing and curses (like an evangelical revival) on members of the audience. I watched these occur live (they were recorded live) before me. I have no idea how it was done. But I don’t believe he had magic powers. Uri Geller claimed physic powers and demonstrated these powers in front of many many witnesses. I don’t believe them. I watched David Copperfield in Las Vegas produce a life sized UFO out of thin air. I disbelieve my own lying eyes. Our minds lie to us all the time. To those that are willing and know how, they are easily trickable and foolable. Eye witness testimony has been shown over and over to be flawed and problematic. 

Sure. Optical illusion is always a possibility. But all of us have inductive assessments about when and where and from whom we can expect certain optical illusions in our lives, as well as what types of illusions are typically possible. Magic tricks tend to fall into certain categories. We also have inductive assessments about what types of delusions, memory problems, and other mental aberrations are possible or plausible in certain contexts.

This is probably more in the realm of the expertise of @smac97, but there is reason why it isn't typically sufficient in a court room to explain away the consistent testimony of multiple eye-witnesses by simply proposing that they all might be delusional or that they all might have been deceived by an elaborate magic trick. 

[OGHoosier]

3 minutes ago, Analytics said:

I'm impressed. The answer is yes, as a matter of fact. Right before the Hume quote is footnote 11, which references:

Earman, J. 2002. Bayes, Hume, Price, and miracles. Proceedings of the British Academy, 113, 91–109.

That's curious to me. What text does the footnote connect to?

Earman is the most famous critic of Hume's argument against miracles, and to my knowledge Hume's argument has not been rehabilitated since Earman's Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles. Pinker is clearly aware of Earman but seems to accept Hume's argument uncritically, which I find very surprising as Earman's critique was devastating.

Rodney Holder also argued against Hume here. Timothy McGrew has been bouncing the rubble for decades. William Vanderburgh has been trying to resuscitate Hume's argument for a decade or two (see here) but, notably, he has to abandon Bayesianism to do it, which I doubt Pinker would like. 

[OGHoosier]

20 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Why the hate on leprechauns? Are you saying that belief in leprechauns is completely unreasonable?

I'm open to leprechauns, particularly if they come laden with magically delicious marshmallows, but I think Dr. Dumsday disagrees. He is from Canada so he may believe that leprechauns impinge on the sovereignty of maple syrup. 

Edited February 28, 2024 by OGHoosier

[SeekingUnderstanding]

38 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Sure. Optical illusion is always a possibility.

Beyond optical illusion, there’s downright deception as well. 

38 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

 

 

This is probably more in the realm of the expertise of @smac97, but there is reason why it isn't typically sufficient in a court room to explain away the consistent testimony of multiple eye-witnesses by simply proposing that they all might be delusional or that they all might have been deceived by an elaborate magic trick. 

That’s kind of the point of this thread though, right? There is no court deposition of the witnesses. I’m unaware of a detailed firsthand contemporaneous account of the experience. Let alone a cross examination.

[CV75]

17 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Beyond optical illusion, there’s downright deception as well. 

That’s kind of the point of this thread though, right? There is no court deposition of the witnesses. I’m unaware of a detailed firsthand contemporaneous account of the experience. Let alone a cross examination.

There are all sorts of reasons to question and second guess the witness statements, yet all sorts of reasons to proceed and read the Book of Mormon in good faith. 

[Ryan Dahle]

10 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

That’s kind of the point of this thread though, right? There is no court deposition of the witnesses. I’m unaware of a detailed firsthand contemporaneous account of the experience. Let alone a cross examination.

I used a legal context to make the point, but it could work just as well for more generic historical claims. Imagine that someone claimed that Abraham Lincoln really wasn't assassinated. It was all just a big magic trick to make it look like he was assassinated. After all, look at what David Copperfield can do ...

If someone just couldn't accept that God would let someone like Lincoln be assassinated (or had some other bias against that conclusion), an elaborate magic trick just might just be a live option for them, despite how unlikely it is.

[SeekingUnderstanding]

1 minute ago, Ryan Dahle said:

despite how unlikely it is

Exactly. All evidence must be evaluated against the back drop of how likely it is. That’s the source of the “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”

[Ryan Dahle]

24 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Beyond optical illusion, there’s downright deception as well.

Yes. But the same basic factors apply. We all make intuitive assessments of when and how deception is typically carried out. Elaborate deception is often technically possible, but that doesn't mean it is always probable or plausible. Sometimes it is wildly implausible. There is a reason that Vogel and others haven't subscribed to this theory. The witnesses' collective behavior doesn't make any sense under it.

[SeekingUnderstanding]

23 minutes ago, Ryan Dahle said:

Yes. But the same basic factors apply. We all make intuitive assessments of when and how deception is typically carried out. Elaborate deception is often technically possible, but that doesn't mean it is always probable or plausible. Sometimes it is wildly implausible. There is a reason that Vogel and others haven't subscribed to this theory. The witnesses' collective behavior doesn't make any sense under it.

Sorry by deception I meant on the part of Joseph not the 11. 

[Analytics]

13 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

That's curious to me. What text does the footnote connect to?

Earman is the most famous critic of Hume's argument against miracles, and to my knowledge Hume's argument has not been rehabilitated since Earman's Hume's Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles. Pinker is clearly aware of Earman but seems to accept Hume's argument uncritically, which I find very surprising as Earman's critique was devastating.

Rodney Holder also argued against Hume here. Timothy McGrew has been bouncing the rubble for decades. William Vanderburgh has been trying to resuscitate Hume's argument for a decade or two (see here) but, notably, he has to abandon Bayesianism to do it, which I doubt Pinker would like. 

I found the Earman essay that Pinker referred to in his footnote on the web. You can read it here:

https://sites.pitt.edu/~jearman/Earman2002a.pdf

A few points.

1. As far as I can tell, John Earman is in complete agreement with Sean Carroll, Steven Pinker, and Nate Silver about the advantages of Bayesian reasoning and the inherent flaws in frequentist reasoning.
2. Pinker didn’t misuse or ignore the Earman reference he cited, and he certainly doesn’t accept Hume’s argument uncritically (Pinker is an award-winning member of the National Academy of Sciences--he doesn’t accept anything uncritically)
3. Earman’s target, at least in this essay, are the precise words that David Hume wrote in one essay. Overall, he comes across as a fan of David Hume the thinker and recognizes that he made important contributions and was taking great strides in the right direction, even if he overshot the mark. Earman says:
   
   In the second edition of Four Dissertations Hume is lauded by Price as 'a writer whose genius and abilities are so distinguished as to be above any of my commendations' (1768, p. 382). And Hume in turn praised PIice for the 'civility which you have treated me' (Klibansky andMossner, 1954,233--4). More intriguingly, Hume goes on to say that 'I own to you, that the Light in which you have put this Controversy [about miracles] is new and plausible and ingenious, and perhaps solid'. Unfortunately, Hume left the matter hanging by adding that 'I must have some more time to weigh it, before I can pronounce this Judgment with satisfaction to myself'

If we sat down with Pinker and Earman, I’m confident they’d be on the same page with regards to the virtues of modern Bayesian reasoning and with their respective points about Hume. I’d summarize their respective points thusly:

Pinker: Hume had some important and valid insights--the less likely a truth claim is, the more skeptical we should be and the more evidence we should require before accepting it.

Earman: But Hume’s specific argument in that essay goes a little too far and isn't literally true. The truth is extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Hume went beyond that and said that extraordinary claims are impossible and shouldn’t be believed, regardless of how much evidence we have.

[Analytics]

15 hours ago, OGHoosier said:

I don't see anybody here accusing the Witnesses of lying, but I think even if Martin Harris and David Whitmer had never said Word One about seeing with spiritual eyes, there would still be a route to declare them deluded or otherwise unreliable.

I don’t think seeing something with your "spiritual eyes” necessarily makes you deluded or otherwise unreliable. 

For my part, I’m just trying to understand the specifics of what the witness statements actually claim. The eight witnesses claim they saw some plates that Joseph Smith kept hidden. The three witnesses claim that after exercising much faith and fervent prayer, they saw a vision of some plates that an angel brought down from heaven. I repeatedly ask whether the plates the three witnesses saw an angel bring down form heaven are the same plates that the eight witnesses saw Joseph Smith retrieve from a hiding place at the Whitmer’s farm. Whether they saw the same plates or different plates matters when interpreting these events.

 

[randy]

In my mind all of this eventually goes back to the First Vision. To quote Pres. Hinckley..."Our whole strength rests on the validity of that First Vision. It either occurred or it did not occur.  If it did not, then this work is a fraud. It it did, then it is the most important and wonderful work under the heavens."

Pres. Hinckley also stated "Each of us have to face the matter....either the Church is true, or it's a fraud. There is no middle ground.  It is the Church and Kingdom of God, or it is nothing."

So for me....its a pretty simple choice.   I choose to believe.  Simple.

[Analytics]

34 minutes ago, randy said:

In my mind all of this eventually goes back to the First Vision. To quote Pres. Hinckley..."Our whole strength rests on the validity of that First Vision. It either occurred or it did not occur.  If it did not, then this work is a fraud. It it did, then it is the most important and wonderful work under the heavens."

Pres. Hinckley also stated "Each of us have to face the matter....either the Church is true, or it's a fraud. There is no middle ground.  It is the Church and Kingdom of God, or it is nothing."

The author of the Book of Mormon said very near the end of the book the following:

"that which is of God inviteth and enticeth to do good continually; wherefore, every thing which inviteth and enticeth to do good, and to love God, and to serve him, is inspired of God." (Moroni 7:13)

It would seem the author of that passage wanted to be judged on whether the book was "of God" or not. And how do you tell if it is "of God"? By evaluating whether it "inviteth and enticeth to do good continually" and "to love God, and to serve him." It doesn't want to be judged on whether it is literally an accurate translation of authentic ancient gold plates. It wants to be judged as being "from God" based on whether it is inspiring.

It's a pretty charitable approach, and from my experience Mormons are quite willing to evaluate others on those terms. For example, they won't say that Catholic beliefs are either all true or all a fraud, there is no middle ground. They will say Catholics have a lot of the truth and are invited to learn more. But if not, no big deal--you guys can still be fellow Christians and disciples of Christ in a general way.

It's interesting that Mormons apparently don't want to be judged in the same charitable way they judge others. They won't accept somebody saying, "the Book of Mormon inspires me to love God and serve him, and in that sense I find that it is of God." That's not enough. They want the orthodox interpretation of the founding myths to be literally true. If somebody says it's inspiring but not literally true they'll respond no! You aren't allowed to think that! You have to think that we are God's one and only true Church, or that we are dupes who have fallen for a transparent fraud! It has to be one or the other! There is no middle ground!

 

 

Edited February 28, 2024 by Analytics

[Ryan Dahle]

1 hour ago, Analytics said:

I repeatedly ask whether the plates the three witnesses saw an angel bring down form heaven are the same plates that the eight witnesses saw Joseph Smith retrieve from a hiding place at the Whitmer’s farm. Whether they saw the same plates or different plates matters when interpreting these events.

Is there some reason you think that they were different? Is this about perceived discrepancies in the descriptions of the plates? Or is it that you assume the plates were supposed to be at some other physical location when the Three Witnesses viewed them (which I assume is the case, based on your past comments)?

If the latter, then that hardly seems relevant, since visions (if they exist) can apparently transcend reality or represent it in ways that are outside of our normal space-time conceptions. For example, Nephi saw a vision of Christ's life and ministry about 600 years before it happened. Obviously, he wasn't seeing something directly unfold in his own space-time setting. But that doesn't mean that what he saw wasn't an accurate representation of real events (as they would eventually unfold). 

Once you take seriously the statements made by the Three Witnesses, mortal assumptions about the laws of nature become pretty irrelevant. The fact that they were actually seeing an angelic being arrayed in light and hearing a voice from heaven makes the presentation of the artifacts (whether they were physically present or only present in vision) a moot point. Imagine if you were one of the witnesses and had the experience as they described it. The logical inference would be that if the angel was showing you these items, and if they are the same items that you were promised and predicted to behold through Joseph Smith's revelation (D&C 17), and if they correlate to the text of the Book of Mormon, and if they validate Joseph Smith's claims about his physical retrieval of some of these items, and if you hear a voice confirming the truth of the translation from heaven, then it hardly matters at that point whether the items are physically there before you or whether you are seeing a visionary (but accurate) representation of them. 

The important thing to me is that the witnesses seem to be absolutely confident that what they beheld wasn't some delusion or mistake. It wasn't some vague impression. It was a direct, immediate, sustained, and unequivocal empirical interaction involving multiple senses. They all affirmed essentially the same things. And we have dozens of accounts from first, second, and third hand sources to look at. When we apply standard historical evaluation of these sources, they overwhelmingly support Joseph Smith's claims. The efforts to make the Witnesses look like superstitious dupes, or to spiritualize the experience in a way that removes or downplays the perceptual qualities they described, come from comparatively weaker sources and can easily be accommodated or explained by LDS doctrinal beliefs about visionary experiences. 

[MiserereNobis]

1 hour ago, randy said:

In my mind all of this eventually goes back to the First Vision. To quote Pres. Hinckley..."Our whole strength rests on the validity of that First Vision. It either occurred or it did not occur.  If it did not, then this work is a fraud. It it did, then it is the most important and wonderful work under the heavens."

Pres. Hinckley also stated "Each of us have to face the matter....either the Church is true, or it's a fraud. There is no middle ground.  It is the Church and Kingdom of God, or it is nothing."

So for me....its a pretty simple choice.   I choose to believe.  Simple.

I take the middle ground. There actually is a middle ground (apologies to President Hinckley). I don't believe the founding stories, obviously -- if I did I would be a member of your church. But I see so much good in the LDS faith. I don't view it as "nothing." I don't view the entire faith as a fraud. The founding stories can be false and there can still be much good.

An example from Catholicism: I don't have to literally believe in the hagiographies of the saints to find goodness in the stories and goodness in their lives. I don't have to believe the relics are literally the relics they claim to be (like pieces of wood from Christ's cross) in order to find some goodness in them.

If I thought you were all frauds and dupes I wouldn't be here talking with you  

[OGHoosier]

2 hours ago, Analytics said:

Earman’s target, at least in this essay, are the precise words that David Hume wrote in one essay. Overall, he comes across as a fan of David Hume the thinker and recognizes that he made important contributions and was taking great strides in the right direction, even if he overshot the mark. Earman says:

In the second edition of Four Dissertations Hume is lauded by Price as 'a writer whose genius and abilities are so distinguished as to be above any of my commendations' (1768, p. 382). And Hume in turn praised PIice for the 'civility which you have treated me' (Klibansky andMossner, 1954,233--4). More intriguingly, Hume goes on to say that 'I own to you, that the Light in which you have put this Controversy [about miracles] is new and plausible and ingenious, and perhaps solid'. Unfortunately, Hume left the matter hanging by adding that 'I must have some more time to weigh it, before I can pronounce this Judgment with satisfaction to myself'

If we sat down with Pinker and Earman, I’m confident they’d be on the same page with regards to the virtues of modern Bayesian reasoning and with their respective points about Hume. I’d summarize their respective points thusly:

Pinker: Hume had some important and valid insights--the less likely a truth claim is, the more skeptical we should be and the more evidence we should require before accepting it.

Earman: But Hume’s specific argument in that essay goes a little too far and isn't literally true. The truth is extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Hume went beyond that and said that extraordinary claims are impossible and shouldn’t be believed, regardless of how much evidence we have.

Erm, I don't think Earman has a particularly high opinion of Hume. If this is how Professor Earman writes about people he likes, then I'd hate to be his enemy:

Quote

Set in this context, Hume's essay on miracles seems both tame and derivative. It is also something of a muddle. What appears on first reading to be a powerful and seamless argument turns on closer examination to be series of considerations that don't comfortably mesh. And worse, Hume's thesis remains obscure-the possibilities range from the banal to the absurd:

(TI) One should be cautious in accepting testimony to marvelous and miraculous events, and doubly so when religious themes arise. 

(T2) The testimonies of the Disciples do not establish the credibility of the resurrection of Jesus

(T3) In no recorded case does the testimony of eyewitnesses establish the credibility of a miracle deemed to have religious significance.

(T4) Eyewitness testimony is incapable of establishing the credibility of a miracle deemed to have religious significance.

(T5) Eyewitness testimony is incapable of establishing the credibility of any miraculous event

Hume deserves no credit-save for pompous solemnity-for uttering various forms of the banality (Tl), since even the pro-miracle proponents in the eighteenth-century debate were at pains to acknowledge the pitfalls of eyewitness testimony and the need to carefully sift the evidence, especially in the case of religious miracles. Hume believed (T2), but refused to join Annet, Sherlock. Woolston et al. in arguing the specifics. He surely also believed something in the neighbourhood of (T3), but his cursory recitation and rejection in Part II of his essay of a number of sacred and profane miracles hardly counts as much of an argument for this sweeping thesis. What Hume manages beautifully is the creation of an illusion that he was in possession of principles for evaluating evidence that allowed him to remain above the nastiness of the fray. This would have been the case if he had been in possession of principles that entailed (T4) or (T5). But there are no such principles since (T4) and (T5) are absurd. A skilful oscillation among these various theses is what helps to create the illusion of a worthy argument against miracles.

But that's an aside. I confess I think Pinker's handling of Hume and Earman is not good.  Earman's point about Hume's "zinger" is that it boils down to "does the testimony make the miracle more likely than not." 

Quote

Suppose that we are in a situation where witnesses have offered testimony t(M) to the occurrence of the miraculous event M. Let E be the record of our past experience in favour of the lawlike generalization to which M is an exception. Then, as good Bayesians, our current degree of belief function should be the conditionalization on t(M)&E of the function P(·) we had before obtaining this evidence. Thus, the relevant probability of the event which the testimony endeavours to establish is P(M|t(M)&E), while the relevant probability of the falsehood of the testimony is P( M|t(M)&E). To say that the falsehood of the testimony is more miraculous than the event which it endeavours to establish is just to say that the latter probability is smaller than the former...Hume's maxim is the correct but unhelpful principle that no testimony is sufficient to establish the credibility of a miracle unless the testimony makes the miracle more likely than not.

The apparent power of the "zinger" lies in its rhetorical flourish, not any statement about reasoning. The meat of the argument, such as it is, is in the assertion that miracles should get a very low prior probability. This has to be established but Pinker just says it. Earman himself disbelieves in miracles but the reasoning he offers for it is as follows:

Quote

Thus far I have marched shoulder to shoulder with the pro-miracle forces. But now I drop out of the parade, and this for two reasons. First, my degree of belief function - which I immodestly assume to satisfy the Bayesian strictures-disagrees with, for example, Professor Swinburne's (1970, 1979) function - which I have no doubt satisfies the strictures. Second, and more important, I think that these differences are matters of taste in that there is no objective basis to prefer one over the other. One way to find objectivity in the framework of subjective Bayesianism is through an evidence-driven merger of opinion (aka 'washing out of priors'). Such a consensus, however, is hollow unless it is in principle possible that R the accumulating evidence produces the merger of opinion by driving the posterior probability to 1 on the true hypotheses and 0 on the false hypotheses. But for theological hypotheses, whose truth values do not supervene on the totality of empirical evidence-no matter how liberally that evidence is construed-the desired convergence to certainty is impossible.

In layman's terms - since God's revelations always allow for uncertainty, the possibility of "washing out priors" is impossible. Therefore, the assessment of probability is subjective, and Earman disbelieves in miracles as a matter of taste. In other words, we're right back where we started. "Extraordinary" is in the eye of the beholder.