If plates then God

[Everybody Wang Chung]

MG 2.0, pictured here making an epic comeback:

[MG 2.0]

Apparently, to these stupid Mormon yokels, just saying stuff is evidence because courts allow that kind of thing, or something.

- Doc

Answer me this. Why is it a one way street? Believers are yokels and you’re not? Is there such a thing as an atheist yokel? A secular yokel? An ex Mormon yokel?

Would you be able to detect one if there was?

Would you be able to detect that within yourself?

Regards,
MG

*bump

Serious questions. Honestly, in my opinion I feel like I’m communicating with a yokel. YOU, sir, just say stuff without any real thought as to what you’re saying and contributing very little substance.

That’s yokelly in my book. Are you able to detect that within yourself on one of your more introspective days…few and far between as they might be?

Regards,
MG

[Morley]

It’s not that there is no evidence that’s incontrovertible. It’s that there is no evidence.

There are areas in which there is less evidence than others. Believers would disagree with you in regards to the validity of evidence found along the spectrum of available evidence. We might determine that some things have a greater degree of evidentiary value than what you might concurrently view as being lessor or even non existent degree of value.

That’s the way things are.

MG2.0

Supposedly, a few extended families of bilingual Jews migrated to the Americas in 600 BCE, where they prospered and grew and created an empire that was as successful and sophisticated as any on earth. It would have rivaled contemporary empires in China, India, Persia, and Rome. They built roads and temples, smelted iron and worked steel, they grew vast cities and developed a complicated society. They fought wars that involved millions of people on each side. Even though they were here for 1000 years, they disappeared without a trace. They left no literature, pottery, place names, horse bones, mythology, chariot wheels, rusted swords, theology, or DNA. There is no archeological, scientific, social, literary, artistic, or historical evidence of their existence.

Another group, a few hundred years later, sailed to North America from Norway. They settled on the tip of Newfoundland in a place now known as L'Anse aux Meadows. The settlement there only lasted for a few years. In spite of this, archeologists have found jewelry, needles, lamps, evidence of smelting, textiles, and buildings--all consistent with the Viking culture of the time.

On one hand, we have a vast and wealthy empire, a major civilization that supposedly dominated an entire hemisphere for a thousand years--which leaves no discernible trace. On the other, we have a ragged group of Norsemen who put up a few shacks and occupy a remote outpost for a few years in an inhospitable spot in Newfoundland--and there are artifacts all over the place.

Were you not a Mormon, MG, what conclusions would you draw, my firend?

[Chap]

Supposedly, a few extended families of bilingual Jews migrated to the Americas in 600 BCE, where they prospered and grew and created an empire that was as successful and sophisticated as any on earth. It would have rivaled contemporary empires in China, India, Persia, and Rome. They built roads and temples, smelted iron and worked steel, they grew vast cities and developed a complicated society. They fought wars that involved millions of people on each side. Even though they were here for 1000 years, they disappeared without a trace. They left no literature, pottery, place names, horse bones, mythology, chariot wheels, rusted swords, theology, or DNA. There is no archeological, scientific, social, literary, artistic, or historical evidence of their existence.

Another group, a few hundred years later, sailed to North America from Norway. They settled on the tip of Newfoundland in a place now known as L'Anse aux Meadows. The settlement there only lasted for a few years. In spite of this, archeologists have found jewelry, needles, lamps, evidence of smelting, textiles, and buildings--all consistent with the Viking culture of the time.

On one hand, we have a vast and wealthy empire, a major civilization that supposedly dominated an entire hemisphere for a thousand years--which leaves no discernible trace. On the other, we have a ragged group of Norsemen who put up a few shacks and occupy a remote outpost for a few years in an inhospitable spot in Newfoundland--and there are artifacts all over the place.

Were you not a Mormon, MG, what conclusions would you draw, my firend?

Religious belief absorbed from one's parents during childhood (whether Mormon, Jewish, Catholic, Muslim or ... pretty well anything else) has an amazing capacity to resist evidence.

But I hope that that MG will give a straightforward answer to your question, which is not (be it noted) "Hi MG, what do you, as a Mormon, make of that?" but, in effect "Would it be reasonable for a person brought up outside Mormonism, and considering the facts adduced in the above post, to conclude that the main narrative of the Book of Mormon is unlikely to be true?"

[MG 2.0]

It’s not that there is no evidence that’s incontrovertible. It’s that there is no evidence.

There are areas in which there is less evidence than others. Believers would disagree with you in regards to the validity of evidence found along the spectrum of available evidence. We might determine that some things have a greater degree of evidentiary value than what you might concurrently view as being lessor or even non existent degree of value.

That’s the way things are.

MG2.0

Supposedly, a few extended families of bilingual Jews migrated to the Americas in 600 BCE, where they prospered and grew and created an empire that was as successful and sophisticated as any on earth. It would have rivaled contemporary empires in China, India, Persia, and Rome. They built roads and temples, smelted iron and worked steel, they grew vast cities and developed a complicated society. They fought wars that involved millions of people on each side. Even though they were here for 1000 years, they disappeared without a trace. They left no literature, pottery, place names, horse bones, mythology, chariot wheels, rusted swords, theology, or DNA. There is no archeological, scientific, social, literary, artistic, or historical evidence of their existence.

Another group, a few hundred years later, sailed to North America from Norway. They settled on the tip of Newfoundland in a place now known as L'Anse aux Meadows. The settlement there only lasted for a few years. In spite of this, archeologists have found jewelry, needles, lamps, evidence of smelting, textiles, and buildings--all consistent with the Viking culture of the time.

On one hand, we have a vast and wealthy empire, a major civilization that supposedly dominated an entire hemisphere for a thousand years--which leaves no discernible trace. On the other, we have a ragged group of Norsemen who put up a few shacks and occupy a remote outpost for a few years in an inhospitable spot in Newfoundland--and there are artifacts all over the place.

Were you not a Mormon, MG, what conclusions would you draw, my firend?

I hope that I would want to learn more rather than jumping to a conclusion that could impact my life in such a powerful way. If I was serious about God and learning whether or not He speaks to prophets and if Jesus is the Christ, I would read the Book of Mormon, study it, and ask God if it was true. I might find myself asking some of the questions that have been raised in this very thread having to do with Book of Mormon provenance.

Could Joseph have written this book or is it the work of God?

Of course if I wasn’t serious about gaining further knowledge and/or understanding of God and His ways I might find myself jumping to a more secular/humanistic conclusion.

As many have.

Would you place yourself into that general category? And as a result, what is the state of being in regards to your own faith in a creator God? In Jesus Christ as Son of God? As a nonbeliever in the Book of Mormon’s status as scripture (in its pure sense) are you still able to maintain a belief in God that motivates you to action?

Not to say that many folks do respond to this call to action as believers in Jesus Christ.

Are you one of them? Or has your non belief in the restoration and the Book of Mormon taken/led you away from faith? If so, are you the ‘better man’ for it?

As it is, I think I am. Although it appears that at least one person here would just as well look at believers as being “yokels”.

Regards,
MG

[Gadianton]

It’s not that there is no evidence that’s incontrovertible. It’s that there is no evidence.

Good one.

This may require a thread of its own one day when it strikes me how to frame it properly. MG is doing what every apologist with no game does.

You can be a scientist and you can be an epistemologist, but not both at the same time. Galileo seems to have understood this. He made his case straightforward. He didn't appeal to a by-gone version of himself and insist that the rules of evidence would change one day and he'd be proven right.

When you say, "there is evidence that smoking causes cancer", it's assumed the community you're speaking to has stable enough shared assumptions about reality that the claim can be realistically discussed. You can't claim to have evidence, and then five minutes later, question the objectivity of evidence. If you do so, what you're really saying is that you didn't have evidence.

[huckelberry]

MG2.0

Supposedly, a few extended families of bilingual Jews migrated to the Americas in 600 BCE, where they prospered and grew and created an empire that was as successful and sophisticated as any on earth. It would have rivaled contemporary empires in China, India, Persia, and Rome. They built roads and temples, smelted iron and worked steel, they grew vast cities and developed a complicated society. They fought wars that involved millions of people on each side. Even though they were here for 1000 years, they disappeared without a trace. They left no literature, pottery, place names, horse bones, mythology, chariot wheels, rusted swords, theology, or DNA. There is no archeological, scientific, social, literary, artistic, or historical evidence of their existence.

Another group, a few hundred years later, sailed to North America from Norway. They settled on the tip of Newfoundland in a place now known as L'Anse aux Meadows. The settlement there only lasted for a few years. In spite of this, archeologists have found jewelry, needles, lamps, evidence of smelting, textiles, and buildings--all consistent with the Viking culture of the time.

On one hand, we have a vast and wealthy empire, a major civilization that supposedly dominated an entire hemisphere for a thousand years--which leaves no discernible trace. On the other, we have a ragged group of Norsemen who put up a few shacks and occupy a remote outpost for a few years in an inhospitable spot in Newfoundland--and there are artifacts all over the place.

Were you not a Mormon, MG, what conclusions would you draw, my firend?

I hope that I would want to learn more rather than jumping to a conclusion that could impact my life in such a powerful way. If I was serious about God and learning whether or not He speaks to prophets and if Jesus is the Christ, I would read the Book of Mormon, study it, and ask God if it was true. I might find myself asking some of the questions that have been raised in this very thread having to do with Book of Mormon provenance.

Could Joseph have written this book or is it the work of God?

Of course if I wasn’t serious about gaining further knowledge and/or understanding of God and His ways I might find myself jumping to a more secular/humanistic conclusion.

As many have.

Would you place yourself into that general category? And as a result, what is the state of being in regards to your own faith in a creator God? In Jesus Christ as Son of God? As a nonbeliever in the Book of Mormon’s status as scripture (in its pure sense) are you still able to maintain a belief in God that motivates you to action?

Not to say that many folks do respond to this call to action as believers in Jesus Christ.

Are you one of them? Or has your non belief in the restoration and the Book of Mormon taken/led you away from faith? If so, are you the ‘better man’ for it?

As it is, I think I am. Although it appears that at least one person here would just as well look at believers as being “yokels”.

Regards,
MG

MG, I think Morley's post was a well stated summary of observations about the real world. It does not depend upon being religious or non religious. The question of whether or not there is a God or the role ofJesus is not involved in nor would change the observations made.

Do you trust God enough to honestly consider the possibility that the Book of Mormon is a religious fiction inspired by Protestant Christianity in America?

[MG 2.0]

You can be a scientist and you can be an epistemologist, but not both at the same time.

Peter Unger (an epistemological compadre of yours?) argues that nobody knows anything and even that nobody is reasonable or justified in believing anything.

Are you in agreement with this?

If so, is it reasonable to believe that this ‘belief’ that he has (and you?) is also not justified along with other beliefs?

When it comes to the things that have been discussed in this thread: plates, angels, free will, and Book of Mormon provenance, are you stuck at ground zero with no hope of entertaining other possibilities besides ‘believing nothing’?

How close are you to the center point of nihilism?

I suppose my recent post to Morley (just before yours) seems rather like the words of a backwoods yokel to someone who may think that belief in anything is a rather useless enterprise except for what one makes of it.

If you are interested I would be interested in your answers to the same questions I asked of him. Although I would understand if you choose not to.

You epistemology may not allow you to in good faith.

Regards,
MG

[huckelberry]

You can be a scientist and you can be an epistemologist, but not both at the same time.

Peter Unger (an epistemological compadre of yours?) argues that nobody knows anything and even that nobody is reasonable or justified in believing anything.

Are you in agreement with this?

If so, is it reasonable to believe that this ‘belief’ that he has (and you?) is also not justified along with other beliefs?

How close are you to the center point of nihilism?

All by itself the proposal sounds like a 12 year old playing at being philosophical. I have not read Mr Unger but if it is actual philosophy I would suspect the statement would be part of a project to clarify the meaning of knowing and clarifying its limitations. It is likely not simply a piece of simplistic nihilism.(well unless he is just a comic book character)

I think what Gadianton meant(what I heard) was that to find what is real you follow the evidence instead of making up excuses for not doing so.

[MG 2.0]

I think Gadianton meant was to find what is real you follow the evidence instead of making up excuses for not doing so.

That’s the thing. He and I…and you…each believe we have and are continuing to do so. The difference being that you and he have come to definitive conclusions apparently?

I haven’t.

Granted, that puts me in a position of living with a certain degree of faith/ambiguity and lack of absolute knowledge in certain respects. But enough to move forward with integrity, eyes wide open, and with hope and faith based upon enough evidence, in my mind, to do so.

Faith doesn’t give absolute knowledge. So Peter Unger, Gadianton, and other epistemologists make hay of that fact.

Regards,
MG