Question for bomgeography about the flood

[_ClarkGoble]

I am not sure how this is an argument for Joseph being a true believer in all he was doing. I suspect you overplay the costly thing as well, but not unexpected from those who in the church a long time being feed this narrative.

Well I'd like to think I'm analyzing the data as objectively as I can (recognizing I can never fully escape my biases - but I can try). Certainly it's not due to "a fed narrative."

Note that I didn't say this was an argument for Joseph being a true believer but rather it was an argument against his being a fraud. Now one might use that conclusion as a premise in a further argument but I've thus far made no such argument.

[_ClarkGoble]

Except that of course some make the argument that because people's interpretations of religious experiences are wrong that religion is wrong without noting the exact same logical structure as saying because people's experiences of physics are wrong that physics is wrong.

There is no problem here. The wrongly interpreted "religious experience" leads to erroneous religions. The wrongly intepreted experiences of physics leads to erroneous physics. The one can be corrected with objective investigation while the other cannot.

Not sure what you mean by objective investigation but if we simply mean investigation where we try to deal with our biases and inquire carefully then I'd disagree one can't correct religious conclusions.

Yes but my point is that the fact some are wrong (even most are wrong) doesn't imply a particular interpretation is wrong. We have to bring further analysis to bear to make that judgment.

Which would be what exactly?

Rather depends upon the nature of the experience, doesn't it? If I saw an angel (I haven't) that'd certainly be investigated differently from other experiences. My point thus far is simply that you can't treat it all the same and dismiss it. The particulars of the experience matter in terms of inferences one makes from it. Which ought be a trivial point I'd think.

The other problem is appealing to disagreement within a category as evidence no one in that category knows. (This is often presented as the argument of religious disagreement but as I noted in my prior post the argument could easily be applied to other areas)

You mean like to science? You're wrong. Have you heard of "special pleading" because that is all you are doing unless you'd care to present a way to validate subjective religious experience as a means of knowing anything at all.

Why do I have to do that for all experience? A better way to think of it is to just ask to what degree private experience is admittable to ones conclusions. Rather can get bogged down in the baggage of religious experience consider a simpler hypothesis of encountering a spaceship. I'd argue that's a case of private experience interpreted normally grounding a belief that is at odds with what most people believe. (For the record I don't believe in spaceships from other planets reaching the earth)

[_Themis]

I am not sure how this is an argument for Joseph being a true believer in all he was doing. I suspect you overplay the costly thing as well, but not unexpected from those who in the church a long time being feed this narrative.

Well I'd like to think I'm analyzing the data as objectively as I can (recognizing I can never fully escape my biases - but I can try). Certainly it's not due to "a fed narrative."

If you are a long time member then I don't think we can eliminate that.

Note that I didn't say this was an argument for Joseph being a true believer but rather it was an argument against his being a fraud. Now one might use that conclusion as a premise in a further argument but I've thus far made no such argument.

We should be careful with the use of fraud. A lot of people are fine with Joseph being a pious fraud, or being someone who had certain religious beliefs. He was successful in many ways and at different times. He had many failures, many of them his own mistakes. Don't ignore all the other religious frauds out there who don't give up after many failures and hardships. If they exist, then you have no argument against Joseph possibly being one as well. He was certainly, even from the start, more successful them most. He certainly sought after wealth, but was much like his father in not being great at it. If he could have survived to get to Utah, he would have had the things BY got to have there.

I would add what was it BY got? He got wealth, Power, and lots of sex with many different women.

[_ClarkGoble]

Well I'd like to think I'm analyzing the data as objectively as I can (recognizing I can never fully escape my biases - but I can try). Certainly it's not due to "a fed narrative."

If you are a long time member then I don't think we can eliminate that.

My point is that bias can't be eliminated only reduced or corrected for by continued inquiry. Both of us are biased. However just because we have biases that doesn't mean we can't know things.

[_spotlight]

Subjective experience is all we have.

Then one wonders what the word objective along with its definition is doing in the English language. It may be true that individually all we have is subjective but it is no longer true when we compare notes.

IE; You can't prove you like a panting by any known science.

Are you sure about that? If it can be shown that certain measurable brain states are the result of contemplating things one likes and that that brain state results when viewing a painting then I'd say you are wrong.

[_Themis]

My point is that bias can't be eliminated only reduced or corrected for by continued inquiry. Both of us are biased. However just because we have biases that doesn't mean we can't know things.

Sure we all have bias's, but I was just bringing up an obvious one supplied to all of us who grew up LDS. It explains why you are sticking to a poor line of thought that all frauds, pious not not, would give up and move onto something else if they had some major problems.

[_spotlight]

Not sure what you mean by objective investigation but if we simply mean investigation where we try to deal with our biases and inquire carefully then I'd disagree one can't correct religious conclusions.

When experiments are performed in science they are constituted in such a manner to falsify a position or viewpoint so that it may be eliminated. Also a theory makes predictions that as yet remain unobserved which can be subjected to further tests. Please present an example that is similar to how this occurs in science with religion. Simply eliminating a way of interpreting something while holding onto non testable alternatives is not evidence of the veracity of religious truth claims.

Rather depends upon the nature of the experience, doesn't it? If I saw an angel (I haven't) that'd certainly be investigated differently from other experiences. My point thus far is simply that you can't treat it all the same and dismiss it. The particulars of the experience matter in terms of inferences one makes from it. Which ought be a trivial point I'd think.

Present your evidence and discuss it if you have any.

A better way to think of it is to just ask to what degree private experience is admittable to ones conclusions.

This depends on whether or not the (vague) experience you reference is to be considered as evidence of some great claim or whether it is merely mundane such as seeing the sun rise in the morning. All personal experience is subjective experience until we compare notes with others of our species.

From your link:

We’ll thus not concentrate on the argument that anything not accepted by science is illegitimate as objects of knowledge. It’s scientism of the worst sort.

Then anything along the lines of what you are proposing is "knowledge" of a baser sort. Scientific knowledge is superior to individual knowledge. It can be used to constrain possible world views.

Let us say you are walking in the forest one day and bump into a cloaked spaceship.[4] You know something is there because you can feel it with your hand. You walk around it not knowing anything about the technology enabling it. You know you are in good health with no mental problems. Do you know it’s a spaceship? Well I’d say what you might be nearly justified in your leap, it’s probably going a tad too far. Maybe it’s some high tech device from Los Alamos that partially broke down. You just know there’s something there beyond our technology. You may believe it’s a spaceship but thinking through it you’re probably getting ahead of yourself in your interpretation.

You decide to come back with some friends. It’s gone. Neither you nor they see it or feel it. Are you still justified in thinking there was the hidden object? Again I’d say yes.

I'd say no. You need to establish that others have the same experience. You could fire a gun at it to verify that it stops bullets, etc. Again this is more important with this experience because you are making a substantial claim that is out of the ordinary.

Now as a physicist who believes in General Relativity I’ll admit I don’t think it’s possible for aliens to visit let alone go faster than the speed of light. Further I don’t believe anyone who claims to have seen an alien. But even so I’d say that for a person who had this experience that they were justified in believing in aliens, spaceships and possibly even faster than light travel.

I have to disagree with you here. If this happened to me I'd be checking with a doctor to see if schizophrenia is the culprit. I certainly wouldn't feel justified to trust my experience as real unless it was verified by others as well and was testable in some manner independent from myself and others.

Hopefully you see the parallel to religion.

Yep, but its worse because there usually are some ulterior motives behind the "evidence" with religions. For example Joseph's obsession with multiple wives and having revelations that direct the members to build him residences etc. These are conflicts of interest that get recast as tests of faith by the willingly duped.

[_ClarkGoble]

When experiments are performed in science they are constituted in such a manner to falsify a position or viewpoint so that it may be eliminated.

That's Popper's view of science. I don't think that's terribly accurate. First Popper got the positivists surprisingly wrong. (He thought falsification was a way to avoid their problems whereas it was actually key to Carnap's views) But more importantly there's not a good distinction between verification and falsification loosely conceived. Further there's a holistic element to science, following Quine. This is what led Kuhn to make the claims he did, although his views had problems (especially the rather equivocal notion of paradigm)

Now it's true that at the level of working scientist you're testing theories against a relatively firm background of established theories. But even there things are often in practice a bit messier since there's so much going on. Move up from there and things get really messy - thus the controversy over String theory and so forth.

So it's not that I think you're completely wrong just that I think it's more complicated than you suggest. Especially once you move out of hard science like physics into say psychology or even aspects of biology.

Please present an example that is similar to how this occurs in science with religion. Simply eliminating a way of interpreting something while holding onto non testable alternatives is not evidence of the veracity of religious truth claims.

I think you have to start at a very simple level and build it up. That means a lot of the religious scaffolding might very well be very tentative models but some things you can establish more firm. I can't speak for anyone else but I try and keep clear in my mind what I have evidence for versus what I have weaker inferences for.

Rather depends upon the nature of the experience, doesn't it? If I saw an angel (I haven't) that'd certainly be investigated differently from other experiences. My point thus far is simply that you can't treat it all the same and dismiss it. The particulars of the experience matter in terms of inferences one makes from it. Which ought be a trivial point I'd think.

Present your evidence and discuss it if you have any.

I'd say two things. First, the nature of spiritual experiences is such that one typically won't discuss them. This doesn't really affect anything since to a third person observer of course you can't know if I actually had the experience I said I had. So to give a hypothetical (I'm not claiming this happened to me in the least) if I encountered an angel, conducted simple tests to ensure they really were what they claimed (as best I could test), had it in a repeatable way, to what degree could I trust what they said?

This depends on whether or not the (vague) experience you reference is to be considered as evidence of some great claim or whether it is merely mundane such as seeing the sun rise in the morning. All personal experience is subjective experience until we compare notes with others of our species.

Well there's a lot of work being done by the word "subjective" there. Of course most of my "subjective" experiences are experiences I've shared with others in terms of classes of phenomena. Yet I can have new experiences which we don't question simply because I've come to trust my interpretive abilities in a social manner as you suggest. To give an example if I encounter a person while walking to work I don't say it's subjective until I consult notes with other people.

Then anything along the lines of what you are proposing is "knowledge" of a baser sort. Scientific knowledge is superior to individual knowledge. It can be used to constrain possible world views.

I'm not sure what you mean by "baser sort." That's an odd descriptor for knowledge. All I'm trying to ask is whether a belief is justified. I don't think that somehow I know the law of gravity more than I know I'm typing on a keyboard right now. Indeed that just seems a very odd claim to make. I suspect most people would say they know the keyboard better than the law of gravity.

Now if you want to talk about social or community knowledge I'll certainly grant you that science is great stuff. But I'm here talking about what an individual can know.

I have to disagree with you here. If this happened to me I'd be checking with a doctor to see if schizophrenia is the culprit. I certainly wouldn't feel justified to trust my experience as real unless it was verified by others as well and was testable in some manner independent from myself and others.

Schizophrenia has other symptoms of course. The way it's portrayed in movies typically bears almost no resemblance to the actual illness.

Yep, but its worse because there usually are some ulterior motives behind the "evidence" with religions. For example Joseph's obsession with multiple wives and having revelations that direct the members to build him residences etc. These are conflicts of interest that get recast as tests of faith by the willingly duped.

Well I confess a test of faith as I understand it comes when you have knowledge of God and he asks something you know he asks but seem at odds with other understanding. In other words it presupposes a fair degree of knowledge.

[_ClarkGoble]

It explains why you are sticking to a poor line of thought that all frauds, pious not not, would give up and move onto something else if they had some major problems.

I don't think all would, which is why the fraud theory can't be fully eliminated. I just think it a problem as it seems quite improbable. To the degree that I think a better explanation is in order that I just haven't seen made. That is, why Joseph would persist through all this is something that needs explanation. The explanation of "well some people were lousy frauds and suffered" isn't terribly persuasive. I suspect most here accept it simply because they don't think they need to explain Joseph Smith, much like believers who already think they know the Book of Mormon is true don't need to explain horses.

[_spotlight]

I think you have to start at a very simple level and build it up. That means a lot of the religious scaffolding might very well be very tentative models but some things you can establish more firm. I can't speak for anyone else but I try and keep clear in my mind what I have evidence for versus what I have weaker inferences for.

Well since you are not sharing anything specific why are you bothering to participate in this discussion board?

First, the nature of spiritual experiences is such that one typically won't discuss them.

See previous.

To give an example if I encounter a person while walking to work I don't say it's subjective until I consult notes with other people.

That's because you did that already at some point in your very early life.

But I'm here talking about what an individual can know.

But you haven't given any foundation upon which to establish such knowledge. You critique scientific knowledge and engage in special pleading for private knowledge. Is string theory to be established upon communication from angelic visitors?