Staky, this thread is for you--Law of multiple arguments

[_MCB]

So, basically, the person who is skeptical about the proposition "The Book of Mormon is a product of the early nineteenth century." may NEED to have multiple proofs of that statement. That is not a matter of logic, but a matter of psychology (or faith).

I would wager, that there is an innumerable number of methods to structure an argument (given that the number of logics is only limited by humans) to prove a proposition or it’s negation.

So, those people who argue that "The Book of Mormon is ancient scripture." and then claim that you can't prove a negative are right. The argument, however, can be restructured to prove another proposition which is incompatible with theirs. It is a simple matter of taking the offensive position, rather than constantly being on the defensive.

"Law of multiple arguments" is something I thought up as an adolescent. :)) I guess I was struggling with the issue even then.

Yes, I prefer to post in celestial, I am not the wild and wooly debater that you are. I usually keep it on "view active topics" so I can watch everything.

Thank you.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Hi MCB,

When it comes to historical claims, you really can only speak in terms of probability. When you assert to the Mormon that the Book of Mormon was a 19th century production, I’m sure you marshal quite a few separate arguments for that, the reliance on the KJV, the dubious translation process, etc, etc. The net effect you are shooting for is that, taken as a whole, all these arguments make it very probable that the Book of Mormon originated in the 19th century.

The Apologist’s game is to reduce that probability by either attacking some of your arguments, and/or presenting his own positive case for ancient authorship by presenting Consig’s list of bullseyes. The ball is typically in the Apologist’s court as to where they are willing to settle in terms of probability (in rough terms). I’m sure any Apologist would be happy with a 50/50 split for either/or, some of the more aggressive types at MAD might gun for a 40/60 or 30/70 split in their favor, but I think the more modest and serious Apologists wouldn’t mind a 60/40 or 70/30 in the critic’s favor, as long as there is a possibility that it could be an ancient work that can be presented to the believers, since in most critics minds, the split is 99.99/.01.

Now all this probability relies on inductive arguments, and since History is part of the Humanities and far removed from the Natural Sciences, there is fertile ground for the skeptic to wreck havoc. All those probability estimates I gave above, even if they are rigorously calculated, is still derived from a very incomplete set of data (so incomplete, we don’t even know how much we are missing) and skeptics can come up with any plausible excuse he or she needs with ‘just so’ stories. It’s here that bad thinking really begins to take over, for example:

You asked for a CFR about my claim that the Apostles lost nothing. Unfortunately a negative can't be proven.

Hughes said that to our beloved TAO over at MAD, but no one over there called him on this demonstrably false statement and he gets away with it.

Let me state with the utmost clarity…

You can prove a negative. The Law of Noncontradiction itself is a negative and can be proven in all sorts of different logics. At the same time you can disprove a negative as well.

[_TAO]

Hughes said that to our beloved TAO over at MAD, but no one over there called him on this demonstrably false statement and he gets away with it.

Let me state with the utmost clarity…

You can prove a negative. The Law of Noncontradiction itself is a negative and can be proven in all sorts of different logics. At the same time you can disprove a negative as well.

I probably should have called him out on the irony of it - but either way I told him that he was going to be expected to prove his negatives to me, because I didn't accept that proposition.

Oh well, I have a feeling that the conversation there will probably be going nowhere any time soon =/.

[_MCB]

You can prove a negative. The Law of Noncontradiction itself is a negative and can be proven in all sorts of different logics. At the same time you can disprove a negative as well.

Am I right in assuming that this is more difficult? Thank you for clarifying it for me. At this point, in my mind, the number of proofs makes the chances very minimal. Even if one of my arguments can be shot down, that is not much of a problem, unless to those who believe that one flaw in an argument invalidates the whole thing. But this is a MULTIPLICITY of arguments, to the point that it is becoming only an intellectual exercise to me. The only loophole I can see is that a small part of the text might-- just might-- be based on an authentic account of events from and on Greenland and/or Labrador. Given the nature of the Vikings, that transforms the meaning of the text.

As much as I like Consig, his bullseyes are a few straws, in comparison to what I see, which is a whole haymow.

Mexican parallels can be explained by Clavigero. They are there. And it was a very popular text.

Absence of evidence, given what we do not know, can provide them with a bit of hope. However, the meaning of the text, the abuse of religion, which is what I see as Spalding's original intent, still stands. The parody of logical loopholes in the Bible cannot be denied.

[_MCB]

Here is my better articulation of the immature idea of the "LoMA"

The Jockers et. al. study generally lines up with Broadhurst’s findings, and χ2, using word-count, reveals that this could not be a coincidence. Meta-analysis, especially in the “soft sciences” is very useful, since one proof may be in error, while multiple independent proofs leading to the same conclusion bring such conclusions closer to fact. This is one problem I have with past isolated counter-Mormon arguments.