Coggins7 wrote:1. No modern LDS scholar, and not for many years, would ever make the claim that their is any "validation" to be had in Mesoamerican Archeology. Plausiblity yes, but not validation. You're going back quite a ways in history to find people in the church who thought such might be possible, but they did not represent the church in any official way and the church has no doctrine or official policy stating that any kind of proof has or ever will be, at least in the forseeable future, available to Mormons or the world at large.
There are many people who still see such things as "possible," including DCP, Bill Hamblin, David Stewart, and many others. As to whether this represents the Church in "any official [sic] way", that is debatable. Do you know anything about the so-called "2nd Michael Watson Letter"?
2. Your knowledge of liogic is as woefully inadaquate as your knowledge of LDS doctrine.
Hey, you're right: I don't know much about "liogic." However, I do have at least a passing grasp of logic.
The argumentum ad ignorantiam, or argument from ignorance, tries to claim that a premise is true because it has not been proven false. That is not what I claimed above. Here is what I said:There is no overwhelming scientific evidence against the historical claims of the Book of Mormon, indeed, quite the opposite is true, depending on where you look and what presuppositions you bring to the table (and Archeolotgy is not a science, but a humanities discipline.
There is no premise here claimed to be true because no evidence exists to substantiate any claim that it is not.
So, are you saying that you do not believe the Book of Mormon to be a true historical record? Your statemant really only becomes a non-example of the logical fallacy if you don't believe the Book of Mormon. So which is it, Loran?
All I stated was a universal negative propostion that there is no overwhelming evidence against the claims of the Book of Mormon and that their is indeed evidence to support it depending upon preassumptions and in what areas or disciplines you are looking. I am not claiming that historical evidence for the Book of Mormon has been proven because none disproving it exists. There is plenty of historical material in Mesoamerican Archeology that cannot be integrated into the Mormon freamwork, and plenty of stuff that seems to have no relation (and probably doesn't). But there is a substantial quantity of other evidence that is quite suggestive. What I said (not making a forml logical fallacy) was that the original claim that thier was no evidence of Book of Mormon history is false.
Now take a look at the original post of yours to which I was responding. You said that the burden of evidence did not lie on the Church at all, and that it lay with each individual. If that is so, then what is the point of an "substantial quantity of other evidence" at all? According to your own paradigm, actual evidence of Book of Mormon historicity should be irrelevant. So why do you ever care? Why should anyone, including Steward, Hamblin, Jakeman, etc., etc.? What are you arguing for, Loran?
There is, depending upon what biases and assumptions one brings to that evidence. I made no formal logical claim that since no alternative explanations exist, what I take to be evidence of Book of Mormon history must therefore be true by default. I made no claim to "validation" or "proof" only plausibility.
Ah, so then you think it might not be true?
You clearly don't understand the difference between 'evidence of" and "proof" or "validation", which no modern LDS scholar believes is the purpose or substance of LDS scholarship that looks for evidence that lends plausibility to the claims of the Book of Mormon or Book of Abraham.
Huh. Well, I guess I don't. Do you?
This is no different than looking for the Ark of The Covenant or Noah's Ark. They were there, yes, but the faith that is a required part of our mortal probation precludes such things from any usefulness in a spiritual sense.
What????
We have evidence that lends plausibility to varioius things, and which can support, in various ways, any number of things Mormon, but we aren't looking for or expecting "validation" of religous truth claims.
This is baloney. If people weren't looking for these things, they wouldn't be going to Latin America, or looking at DNA data, etc.
Again Scratch, you are so far out of the loop regarding the Mormon world, its people, and its beliefs, that it staggars the imagination to try to understand just why you think you are even competant to be a committed critic of the church.
Loran
Based on your above quotes, it seems you are "so far out of the loop" of reality to be a legit apologist!