If you want to get nitpicky, that wasn’t one of the specific arguments that Callister presented in chapter 2 of his book.
I think most people that have really put some time and effort into looking at the background mileu surrounding the Book of Mormon won’t argue that the book is a product of the 19th century. How could it not be? It was transmitted/processed through a brain inside of a person that lived during that time period.
Is everyone here familiar with the Cottingley Fairies photos? It was a series of 5 photos taken in 1917 in England.
This is the most famous one:
It has influenced depictions of fairies even to this day.
Quaint as it might seem now, there was a great deal of controversy over them with many people, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, taking them as evidence of spiritual beings. There were experts in photography who declared them as legitimate.
Interestingly, I once saw a show on the Cottingley Fairies filmed in the 1970's that covered this as a controversy over the existence of spirit beings. Skeptics were brought on to offer a variety of theories for how the photographs were produced. All of them involved some relatively sophisticated photographic techniques for girls in 1917 to be using or remarkable coincidences. The show, being fundamentally interested in portraying this as a supernatural controversy, rightly cast doubt on accepting any of those theories as correct. No one explanation seemed in particular likely.
Then something marvelous happened. In the 1980's, the girls who produced the photos admitted it was a hoax. They also described how they did it. It turns out they cut out pictures of fairies from a book, stuck them to hatpins, and took pictures of them. That's it. That's what they did. So much for acid etched engravings and complicated exposures.
This story has long stuck with me for two reasons. First, whenever I see complicated and remote explanations for unusual phenomena and potential hoaxes, I'm always reminded that the reality can be devastatingly more simple. Second, while everyone was right to reject those complicated theories for how the photographs were produced, it's always fascinated me that people lost sight of the fact that even though those theories were unlikely, the explanation that entailed the photos were of actual fairies was vastly, vastly more unlikely than that. You can't prove extraordinary supernatural claims simply by attacking somewhat unlikely natural explanations.
This story does inform what I see in Book of Mormon debates. I personally am skeptical of theories of authorship that do not involve Smith. Elaborate plagiarism hypotheses have always struck me as strained. And while I find myself on the same side as believers when seeing this, I also see them as having a huge blind-spot for not appreciating just how much more implausible the supernatural tall-tale version of events is than the authorship theories they are finding without sufficient basis.
The process of analogical inference involves noting the shared properties of two or more things, and from this basis inferring that they also share some further property. The structure or form may be generalized like so:
P and Q are similar in respect to properties a, b, and c.
P has been observed to have further property x.
Therefore, Q probably has property x also.
The argument does not assert that the two things are identical, only that they are similar. The argument may provide us with good evidence for the conclusion, but the conclusion does not follow as a matter of logical necessity. Determining the strength of the argument requires that we take into consideration more than just the form: the content must also come under scrutiny.
The evidence is overwhelmingly against the Book of Mormon being a record of any of the peoples of the Americas between 600 BCE and 500 CE. It is also heavily in support of the Book of Mormon being a fabrication from the early 1800's. Discussions that do not address those bedrock issues are party games played by children who wish to believe in fairies.
Back to Brant Gardner. Is he playing childish games?
If you were to approach him may I suggest that he would not subscribe to a belief in fairies. On the other hand, he would testify of God.
But I think you can see the difference between fairies and God. Unless you want to oversimplify an analogical inference again.
The process of analogical inference involves noting the shared properties of two or more things, and from this basis inferring that they also share some further property. The structure or form may be generalized like so:
P and Q are similar in respect to properties a, b, and c.
P has been observed to have further property x.
Therefore, Q probably has property x also.
The argument does not assert that the two things are identical, only that they are similar. The argument may provide us with good evidence for the conclusion, but the conclusion does not follow as a matter of logical necessity. Determining the strength of the argument requires that we take into consideration more than just the form: the content must also come under scrutiny.
Exactly. Content like the evidence against the Book of Mormon being a record of an ancient people. The evidence external to the Book of Mormon is overwhelmingly in favor of it being a fabrication from the 19th c. So your arguments that no particular theory for it's origin seems definitive is not cause for saying that must mean angels. What you need is evidence FOR your beliefs, MG. By way of contrast, there is plenty of evidence FOR the Americas looking decidedly different that the Book of Mormon claims.
Last edited by Guest on Mon Jul 27, 2020 9:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
The evidence is overwhelmingly against the Book of Mormon being a record of any of the peoples of the Americas between 600 BCE and 500 CE. It is also heavily in support of the Book of Mormon being a fabrication from the early 1800's. Discussions that do not address those bedrock issues are party games played by children who wish to believe in fairies.
Back to Brant Gardner. Is he playing childish games?
If you were to approach him may I suggest that he would not subscribe to a belief in fairies. On the other hand, he would testify of God.
But I think you can see the difference between fairies and God. Unless you want to oversimplify an analogical inference again.
Regards,
MG
I've had conversations with Brant, most recently in relation to the Greatest Guesser fiasco. Your appeal to authority (and a non-archeologist, in case you were paying attention earlier) is noted but in the end, yeah. Brant wants to believe in fairies so he works hard at reconciling that belief with the evidence. The evidence against that isn't accommodated by the party game, such as the absence of a Nephite-shaped hole in the record that should be there if the other claims were true, is treated with a shrug.
Nephites exist only in your imagination. Are you trying to say Nephites = God?
ETA: A poster here named beastie had an extensive website related to the Mayan evidence. She and Brant had a number of exchanges on the old MAD board that left two things clear. The first was most people trying to defend the Book of Mormon were horrible people. Seriously. The things said to beastie would probably be actionable in the post-Me Too world. And second, Brant was a hobbiest just like beastie and when it came down to it, beastie was drawing from the experts on Mayans culture while Brant was cherry-picking from them. I think he personally was a reasonably good person in the debates but it was clear he came to the investigation looking for the Book of Mormon in a context where no Nephites existed.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
Which one, and only one, theory do you subscribe to? We could look to see what Callister has to say on that particular theory. If you subscribe to more than one, it seems that you don’t take any one of them seriously more than the other.
No, that’s not an answer to my question. Also, repeating the subtitles of a book is not at all where one’s assessment of a book starts. One starts with reading it. But, you have given yet another example of how you have no idea what you are pushing, but will push because your church tells you you should.
copying subtitles to a chapter and representing them as your “opinion” is dishonest, and is not an answer to the question.
The first was most people trying to defend the Book of Mormon were horrible people. Seriously. The things said to beastie would probably be actionable in the post-Me Too world.
The first was most people trying to defend the Book of Mormon were horrible people. Seriously. The things said to beastie would probably be actionable in the post-Me Too world.
why does that not surprise me. :rolleyes:
It was Pahoran-esque behavior from multiple posters, many of whom surprised me with their vitriol. Genuinely personal, vile comments were aimed at her that went ignored by the mods. Pointing it out resulted in threats of banning. It was bizarre. It also showed that she had hit a deep nerve, too. I think many people who spend time defending the Book of Mormon online in forums like these viewed Brants work as unassailable. But also, I think it has a certain last line of defense quality to it, too. So when it was assaulted and shown to be quite vulnerable, the response wasn't measured and calm.
The world is always full of the sound of waves..but who knows the heart of the sea, a hundred feet down? Who knows it's depth? ~ Eiji Yoshikawa
If one is already biased towards a disbelief in God and in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, isn’t it rather obvious that the Book of Mormon is dead in the water at the get go, at least as far as that person is concerned? Isn’t it a given that those that would be open to gaining a testimony of the Book of Mormon would be those that are also open to believing in God and in Christ?
Are most poster here once believing members of the LDS church? If yes then would they not already have a bias towards believing in God and the Book of Mormon? Most of what is in those books are apologetic material that has been available for decades now, so why are they not stopping believing members of the LDS church from leaving who have read those arguments?
For what it's worth, when I was posting on MAD some time ago, I had some conversations with Brant and he said that he would look for the Book of Mormon in the archeological evidence. That was how he worked, completely opposite of how a real scientist is supposed to work. At least he admitted it, though. Even so, the practice clearly leads to finding what one wants, regardless of the evidence, by making unreasonable comparisons or parallelomania. He even said he really tried to avoid parallelomania (haha). But his work doesn't work unless a chorus of cheerleaders is there to sell the dubious comparisons to the masses. But, that is what apologists do. If your desire to believe is intense enough, if there are enough cheerleaders around cheering you on to religious blindness, you will believe anything, even Mormonism.
"Religion is about providing human community in the guise of solving problems that don’t exist or failing to solve problems that do and seeking to reconcile these contradictions and conceal the failures in bogus explanations otherwise known as theology." - Kishkumen
MG
Type in “chugging ale” (with the quote marks) into your search bar. It seems as though chugging ale is not out of fashion or so unusual. Maybe you need to get out more and not drink alone?
Yesssssssss...... in order to know how to "properly" drink fluids, of any kinds, I always Google how it is to be done and follow protocol. :rolleyes:
Dr CamNC4Me
"Dr. Peterson and his Callithumpian cabal of BYU idiots have been marginalized by their own inevitable irrelevancy defending a fraud."
