The "Official" Witnesses Trailer Drops

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

Well. Dr. Scratch, as always, you make a few good points virtually every time you post. How about we split the difference, and they grab, say, a 45 lb. kettle bell? If one of Mr. Peterson’s fit kin (or fit anyone, for that matter), can run around the track taking only two five minute breaks I’ll never say a bad word about him or Mopologists again. In other words, the fit individual will have to be in non-stop motion, minus two five minute breaks, and complete an entire two miles without additional rests - but they can walk a bit when they’re not jogging.

Remember. This is what Mr. Peterson posted about evidence:

DanielPeterson gemli
7 hours ago edited
gemli: "How does one determine that a faith-based position is based on justified true belief?"

Among other ways, by gathering and analyzing evidence. Which you refuse to do.

Will Mr. Peterson gather and analyze this evidence?

- Doc

[Physics Guy]

The witnesses accounts are "some evidence" for the plates existing. If the accounts were accounts of some mundane object existing, in circumstances where there was no particular reason to think it wouldn't exist, the witness accounts would probably be accepted as making it enough more likely than not, that whatever it was existed, that we shouldn't bother thinking much about the non-existence alternative.

So just stonewalling and saying "no plates, no evidence" loses credibility. The point to make is that the witness evidence is nowhere near strong enough to establish the existence of these plates. These plates are not just a typical historical object and the witness accounts for the Book of Mormon plates are not typical historical accounts.

First of all these accounts are directly attached to overtly supernatural claims that most sensible people would regard as extraordinary. In the same breath for which these witnesses say they saw plates, these witnesses say they saw an angel. For such an extraordinary claim, the bar for evidence has to be set a lot higher. Even those who believe that angels do visit humans put the incidence of angelic visitation at a few parts per billion of humans. An awful lot of wildly flukey scenarios that one would normally rule out as implausible are more likely than that to occur. That means that an awful lot of wild events have to be ruled out pretty thoroughly by the evidence, before the evidence can be said to make angelic visitation the most likely case. That's a high bar.

Secondly, in the same way that a lot of wild flukes are more common than angels, clever religious-themed con artists are much more common than prophets, even according to people who believe in real prophets. So in this deal with the Book of Mormon plates the possibility that Smith was a clever con artist—and might also have had confederates the way con artists frequently do—has to be taken seriously. The possibility of ingenious and systematic fraud is not usually relevant to the weighing of historical evidence because usually there is no reason for anyone to commit fraud. When there is such a reason, historians are as skeptical as anyone about historical claims. As soon as one considers fraud as a serious possibility it is obvious that fraud is a more likely explanation for all the claims about the Book of Mormon plates than real golden plates delivered by an angel could be. That's true even if pulling the fraud off seems hard in this case, because even if it's pretty hard, it's not one-in-a-billion-tries hard, and that's how hard it would have to be to make fraud less likely than real gold plates from an angel.

The witness statements do have some weight as evidence. Trying to say that they don't is fighting the wrong battle. They do have some weight.

They have about the evidential weight of the paper on which they are printed, against the weight of the plates to which they attest. That's the point.

[Lem]

It seems to come down to the definition of evidence.

noun: evidence

the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.

Your point about opening the door for people to argue that lack of actual evidence ignores the non-evidence is well taken, however.

This movie came out in 1994, yet you still see GIFs and memes of Jim Carrey and his ridiculous bowl cut pop up on social media from the moment he famously said to Mary, "So you're tellin' me there's a chance" regarding them developing an intimate relationship, after she essentially told him there wasn't a chance.

Well, 1 in a million is still a chance, technically.

https://screenrant.com/hilarious-quotes ... mb-dumber/

Arguing that a nonzero chance means a zero chance is impossible is the Mopologtic stock in trade, carried to its logical, well, illogical, end by the Dales, who argue, with the very, VERY bad use of Bayesian (in other words, non-bayesian) techniques, that there is something like a quadrillion to one likelihood that the Book of Mormon is 'true'.

When we are dealing with arguments like that, then yes, acknowledging that bad evidence, fake evidence, and NO evidence are all still descriptors of the word "evidence" does seem to be necessary.

[Lem]

As soon as one considers fraud as a serious possibility it is obvious that fraud is a more likely explanation for all the claims about the Book of Mormon plates than real golden plates delivered by an angel could be. That's true even if pulling the fraud off seems hard in this case, because even if it's pretty hard, it's not one-in-a-billion-tries hard, and that's how hard it would have to be to make fraud less likely than real gold plates from an angel.

Mopologists rule out fraud by 'lack of evidence.' ironic, no?

[dastardly stem]

I take Physics Guy's point to heart. As a comparison we can take the resurrection of Jesus. Whenever someone takes the position that the resurrection happened and attempts to verify the alleged event they compare contemporary or near contemporary historical events. On that comparison it's near silly to expect those who were actual witness of Jesus to be found in the historical record. No, what amounts to hearsay is good enough because in reality we have very little record from the era at all and on that basis we couldn't historically tell much story of what happened at all if we were truly going to treat all sources with skepticism. So, we do, historically, what we can. I think this demonstrates, though, the weakness of history as a discipline in order to verify these supernatural claims. Was Jesus resurrected, died and then rose from the dead in 3 days? No, historians realize, that's not a verifiable claim through history at all. History can say people believed it happened, perhaps, but it can't possibly conclude it really happened...that'd stretch reason to something inane.

Evidence of contemporary people saying the plates really were and that they really contained a record of ancient people, is not much more than plates having existed and people believed they contained an ancient story. That simply doesn't get anyone very far towards the point of some supernatural translation of ancient records. Additionally since some witnesses of the events that were said to be the translation of the plates, suggest the plates were not used, it renders the existence of the plates basically moot anyway.

And additionally again, I do believe that is why in the last little cut out Dr Peterson linked to, Bushman said something like "....these witnesses are the closest thing we have to evidence of the Mormon story...." Meaning, while there is evidence there were plates, these plates likely don't quite qualify as evidence that the Book of Mormon story is ancient, nor that the religion was inspired by the supernatural. Or something. It seems this is where we run into many misunderstandings.

[Physics Guy]

Whenever someone takes the position that the resurrection happened and attempts to verify the alleged event they compare contemporary or near contemporary historical events. On that comparison it's near silly to expect those who were actual witness of Jesus to be found in the historical record. No, what amounts to hearsay is good enough because in reality we have very little record from the era at all and on that basis we couldn't historically tell much story of what happened at all if we were truly going to treat all sources with skepticism. So, we do, historically, what we can. I think this demonstrates, though, the weakness of history as a discipline in order to verify these supernatural claims. Was Jesus resurrected, died and then rose from the dead in 3 days? No, historians realize, that's not a verifiable claim through history at all. History can say people believed it happened, perhaps, but it can't possibly conclude it really happened...that'd stretch reason to something inane.

I agree with this. One can look at the extant accounts and conclude (or not) that they are about what we might expect to have if there had been a real resurrection, but even if this seems to be so, it hardly weighs decisively in favour of the resurrection. All kinds of other things besides an actual resurrection could have happened instead and yet left us with the same accounts we have now, through any of various combinations of confusion, deception, or fiction.

It's all very well to say, for instance, that if Jesus had not truly been raised then some early anti-Christians could have stopped the whole movement by producing his body, and yet they didn't, so he must have been raised. We don't have video, though. We have accounts from many years later; they purport to be eyewitness accounts but all we really have are traditional claims to that effect. The gospels aren't notarised.

Maybe the authorities did produce Jesus's body, and at that point the Christians all gave up and went home, but then twenty years later it all started up again as pure fake news that could no longer be disproved because by that time the body was gone. Through confusion or fraud that less exciting sequence of events could still have left us with the same accounts, and the same traditions that they came from eyewitnesses. And even if that scenario seems implausible it can hardly seem more implausible than a resurrection.

[Lem]

I recall several discussions on our previous site about whether plates, real or fake, actually existed. I always found them fascinating, mostly because when I grew up, they absolutely integral to a Mormon youth's testimony of the 'truthfulness' of 'the Gospel,' but now, it turns out they weren't even used! What a bizarre flip!

Anyway, I always felt that grindael's various discussions on the subject lent the most credence to the idea that the 'item' always under cloth, and conveniently never quite there to see with actual eyes, was sand, or at best, a brick or an odd piece of house décor.

In looking for grindael's post about sand(!), I found this excellent discussion by Kishkumen of the place the story of the plates has in our history, which I hope he doesn't mind if I re-post. It's too good to lose to the vagaries of internet forum upkeep:

Mormonism is a very Western belief system. Indeed, every aspect of it you examine is easily interpreted as a manifestation of one or many currents of Western culture and history. It combines them in a unique way, but to say that Mormonism is simply phony is to ignore all of the ways it expresses those larger and older currents. Let's take, for example, the gold plates. Here is the single most obvious lie Joseph Smith ever told. It is also one of the most damning. Nothing about it is credible.

But the story of the discovery of the gold plates is rooted in narratives that go back to very ancient history indeed. This is what I was getting at in my last Sunstone talk that Taves neither liked nor, frankly, understood very well, as she pushed her own agenda about what "Religious Studies" is. Taves preferred to understand the gold plates through the lens of the Catholic doctrine of Transubstantiation, when Joseph would have been much more familiar with folk magic and Freemasonry than Catholicism. She might still land on Catholicism if she were to understand Freemasonry and magic better, but that is a topic for another day.

So, yes, the gold plates were made up. But they were tailor made for a culture of sacred and magical books that was not only informed by the Bible (and this is the dominant influence, to be sure), but also by the Sixth and Seventh Books of Moses, Letters from Heaven, the gold plate of Enoch, the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, and the Books of Numa. Folk and esoteric religion was already open to the kind of claim Joseph was making, even if it did not actually happen in the way he said it did. For centuries people have been writing sacred or magical texts, putting the name of a famous person on them, and sending them out into the world to become someone else's scripture.

Is the Book of Mormon to be specially rejected while the fabrications and the forgeries of the Bible, circulated under names such as Daniel and Paul, are fine? Are scriptures to be rejected as important expressions of our history and culture because they were written by unknown priests, forgers, and men such as Joseph Smith? Do beliefs become bereft of value when their origins are as dubiously accurate as their contents are unhistorical?

[posted 12/2018]
Inserted from <http://mormondiscussions.com/viewtopic. ... l&start=21>

and

...It seems to me that you are forgetting that he was an established trickster who was engaging in treasure-digging schemes. His skills and his subject matter come directly from that milieu. The Book of Mormon starts off as a treasure that he and other treasure seers were looking for. The translation springs out of that, and it cannot be divorced from it. He had first to convince others that he recovered the plates. Then he eventually commits to translating them himself. Knowing that this all originated in a ruse, we should instead think it would have been strange for him to do other than he did.

http://mormondiscussions.com/viewtopic. ... 7#p1223977

[Gadianton]

re: witnesses for mundane things.

Scratch's example works. Mundane claims when there's an obvious conflict of interest are certainly covered by my intent, but I meant even more mundane than that. Specifically, I am thinking about the problem with three people, or a group of people, who all know each other, share the same ideology, and interact heavily during their witness event, as being credible witnesses.

The Mormon scriptures are adamant about Godly things being done by two or three witnesses. Sometimes it's called the "law of witnesses". But it's really a doctrine of groupthink.

LDS baptisms are very serious about the entire person being emerged, and so there's always two witnesses looking on to make sure everything goes under. If they spot a toe come up, it needs to be done again. So here you have two witnesses, possibly teenagers getting experience with low-level officiating in ordinances, and the person goes down and comes up, and they're both standing together, and then look to each other, ready to say whatever the other guy thinks. Now if each witness were isolated and the two prevented from communicating, then the two together might be more effective than one. But that's never how it's done.

An insular group witnessing something and then gabbing about it will negotiate what happened, and could very well end up as less reliable than a single witness. And if there's any room for ideology to influence interpretation, then the whole thing goes out the window.

[IHAQ]

I started a separate thread about this blog entry from Peterson, but I think it’s relevant here.

It seems that there was, once upon a time, a man who was firmly and absolutely convinced that he was dead. At first, his wife thought that this was just a very weird but passing phase. However, he persisted in his belief. She tried everything that she could think of, attempting to persuade him that he was . . . well, very much alive. But nothing worked. All her efforts were in vain.
So she decided to take her husband to a doctor, who would surely be able to demonstrate, by taking his pulse and showing him various instrument readings and simply talking some sense into him, that he wasn’t dead. That he was genuinely alive.
But the physician failed, too. For all his training and experience, nothing he could say would convince the man that he was alive. Suddenly, though, the doctor had an idea:
“Do dead men bleed?” he asked his patient.
“No, they don’t,” the man answered.
So the doctor took a pin and, with the man’s permission, poked him with it. And, of course, the man began to bleed. Not much, but enough to make the point.
The patient looked at the blood, confused. The doctor smiled with satisfaction. The man finally seemed to be convinced!
But the man had been certain that he was dead. Was it really possible that he had been so very wrong? It just couldn’t be.
He pondered and pondered what had happened.
And then he showed up at the doctor’s office, triumphant.
“It’s amazing, Doctor!” he exclaimed. “It turns out that dead men do bleed, after all!”

I’m trying to illustrate the simple point that, if people are really, really committed to a particular point of view, even if it’s quite incorrect, convincing them that they’re wrong can sometimes be extremely difficult. They’ll often hold on well beyond the limits of reason.

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeters ... lieve.html

Where does Peterson’s conclusion, about people unwilling to change from an incorrect point of view due to their commitment or attachment to it, leave the idea that the fact that the witnesses maintained their testimony is seemingly a key point in favour of their credibility?

[Physics Guy]

Kishkumen seems to be saying that Scripture can still be Scripture even if Joseph Smith just made it up. I think, sure, in principle. Mohammed never claimed that he translated the Quran from any ancient plates. He and Muslims after him of course believe that he got his revelations from God but nobody ever pretended that they had any earthly source besides Mohammed himself. The Quran nonetheless has a much bigger user base as Scripture than the Book of Mormon, so translating authentic ancient records is clearly an unnecessary qualification for a Scripture candidate. A nice-to-have, maybe, at best.

The mainstream Christian Scriptures are by now genuinely ancient but in their day they were awfully informal. Many of the canonised books were never even supposed to be anything but letters dictated by some guy to some folks. If the belief that that guy was Paul or Peter was originally an important ground for canonising the texts, still few people have argued for decanonization just because that attribution turned out to be doubtful.

I don't know so much about other Scriptures—there are a lot of holy books in the world—but if I think about all the ones I know somewhat, I can't think of any non-Mormon Scriptures that hold their holy status by virtue of their miraculous provenance. Instead it seems to me to be a pretty general rule that Scriptures stand on their own. They count as Scripture because of what they say, not because of how they were composed. They are not counted as holy because their authors were inspired: their authors are counted as inspired because the Scriptures are holy.

The Book of Mormon seems to be quite an anomaly that way. It doesn't stand on its own, read it and weep. It stands on this high pedestal of angels and plates and magic lenses and what-not. Why is that?

I can think of two possible reasons. One is that the Book of Mormon needs a good frame more than other Scriptures do, because in itself it's just not good enough to pass as Scripture. I mean, okay, I'm sure much of the Book of Mormon clears the low bar set by all the fussy little laws in Levitcus, but the Bible's highlights are pretty darn good. What are the Book of Mormon's best shots? The ones that spring to my mind are all ridiculous, actually—not just incredible because they describe miracles but goofy, hokey stuff that Steven Spielberg would probably cut from the script. Wooden submarines and headless bodies and slippery treasures and Jesus Christ committing casual offstage genocide. Spielberg did nuke the fridge; no-one's perfect. But the Book of Mormon needs bling.

The second reason I can see why the origin story for the Book of Mormon needs to be big is that the Book of Mormon itself was never really the point. It's only there to establish Joseph Smith as a prophet, so that he and his successors can get to lead their movement. The plates and the angel aren't there to buff the Book of Mormon: they're there to buff Joseph Smith.

This to me is the bigger problem about the historical authenticity of the Book of Mormon. Other prophets and Scriptures manage to stand on their own without support from a backstory but can Smith and his Book meet that test? If the plates and angel were real, well then somehow they happened and Mormons just have to deal with them, but if the props were all fake then we have to ask: why were they there? Can it really be that the Restoration doesn't need the plates and Moroni, if Smith himself thought it did?