Interpreter tries to fix one of their sharpshooter fallacies

[Physics Guy]

It would be nice if someone who follows Interpreter more could pick out five articles for Flemming. "I won't spoon-feed you!" is the refrain of the crackpot and we don't want to come across like that.

Texas sharpshooting is making out in hindsight that observed facts are exactly what your theory would have predicted, when in fact your theory was too vague to make any such predictions until you filled it in to make it predict what you knew. I agree that it's a basic tactic of apologists. The whole trope of "How could Joseph have known?" relies on highlighting ambiguous minor details in the Book of Mormon and interpreting them as emphatic and unambiguous statements of things later found to be true, while letting many more equally minor and ambiguous details remain as noncommittal narrative texture, just because there's nothing that can be made to look like confirmation for them. You only make out that the text was aiming right there, by talking so clearly about those particular things, after you know that that's where the bullet hit.

In practice there's often some overlap with the straw man fallacy and the false dichotomy, and with cherry-picking. The closeness of the "hit" is made to seem impressive by considering how unlikely the observed fact would have been under some hypothesis that isn't actually a major non-Mormon contender, and making out that hypothesis as the only alternative to the Mormon position. Hypotheses beyond these convenient two, that make whatever Smith wrote a very likely thing for a fraud in his time to write, are ignored. There's also often an element of cherry-picking in selecting the particular issues upon which the facts and the theory are said to align. Making out the theory to be about just those convenient issues is still sharpshooting: they weren't important issues for the theory until we discovered that they could seem to make the theory fit the facts.

A concrete example that springs to my mind for these apologetic tactics is the whole body of work by Carmack on Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon. The sharpshooting is deciding that the frequently stilted English grammar of the Book of Mormon must be exactly what you'd expect for a text composed in the natural English dialect of some era, finding the early modern era that best matches some aspects of that Book of Mormon grammar, and declaring this to be a remarkable hit which proves that no-one in Smith's time could have written the Book. That by no means exhausts all the fallacies in Carmack's thesis, but it's the part of them that is most purely sharpshooting.

[I Have Questions]

Abstract: For decades, several Latter-day Saint scholars have maintained that there is a convergence between the location of Nahom in the Book of Mormon and the Nihm region of Yemen. To establish whether there really is such a convergence, I set out to reexamine where the narrative details of 1 Nephi 16:33–17:1 best fit within the Arabian Peninsula, independent of where the Nihm region or tribe is located. I then review the historical geography of the Nihm tribe, identifying its earliest known borders and academic interpretations of their location in antiquity.

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.o ... more-71517

On one hand, it’s refreshing to see Interpreter trying to acknowledge and attempt to fix one of myriad examples of the sharpshooter fallacy: Starting with the thing you want to prove and working backwards, ignoring any data that doesn’t fit.

On the other hand, it’s Interpreter and their mission to “fight enemies of the church” would never allow them to examine anything in an unbiased and truly independent way. It literally goes against their core mission statement.

To try and avoid the attempted derail, I’m quoting the OP.

[Chap]

A concrete example that springs to my mind for these apologetic tactics is the whole body of work by Carmack on Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon. The sharpshooting is deciding that the frequently stilted English grammar of the Book of Mormon must be exactly what you'd expect for a text composed in the natural English dialect of some era, finding the early modern era that best matches some aspects of that Book of Mormon grammar, and declaring this to be a remarkable hit which proves that no-one in Smith's time could have written the Book. That by no means exhausts all the fallacies in Carmack's thesis, but it's the part of them that is most purely sharpshooting.

Indeed yes. For certain reasons connected to my origins and habits (but no doubt found in quite a few others of similar age and background), I am extremely familiar with the style(s) of written English in the King James version of the Old and New Testaments. Some of those styles were no doubt the normal way that formal English writing (though not necessarily speaking) was done at the time that the KJV texts were compiled, whereas some of them were most probably attempts to render the structure of the underlying originals as closely as possible.

When I started to read the Book of Mormon, I had not gone very far before I found myself saying "This is simply an imperfect attempt to write in "Bible English" by someone whose level of education and understanding were not sufficient for him do the job very well, despite the fact that he has read the Bible a good deal". Given that people meeting those conditions must have been very common in early 19th century upstate New York, that explanation of the Book of Mormon's prose is vastly more probable that any other.

[drumdude]

It would be nice if someone who follows Interpreter more could pick out five articles for Flemming. "I won't spoon-feed you!" is the refrain of the crackpot and we don't want to come across like that.

Texas sharpshooting is making out in hindsight that observed facts are exactly what your theory would have predicted, when in fact your theory was too vague to make any such predictions until you filled it in to make it predict what you knew. I agree that it's a basic tactic of apologists. The whole trope of "How could Joseph have known?" relies on highlighting ambiguous minor details in the Book of Mormon and interpreting them as emphatic and unambiguous statements of things later found to be true, while letting many more equally minor and ambiguous details remain as noncommittal narrative texture, just because there's nothing that can be made to look like confirmation for them. You only make out that the text was aiming right there, by talking so clearly about those particular things, after you know that that's where the bullet hit.

In practice there's often some overlap with the straw man fallacy and the false dichotomy, and with cherry-picking. The closeness of the "hit" is made to seem impressive by considering how unlikely the observed fact would have been under some hypothesis that isn't actually a major non-Mormon contender, and making out that hypothesis as the only alternative to the Mormon position. Hypotheses beyond these convenient two, that make whatever Smith wrote a very likely thing for a fraud in his time to write, are ignored. There's also often an element of cherry-picking in selecting the particular issues upon which the facts and the theory are said to align. Making out the theory to be about just those convenient issues is still sharpshooting: they weren't important issues for the theory until we discovered that they could seem to make the theory fit the facts.

A concrete example that springs to my mind for these apologetic tactics is the whole body of work by Carmack on Early Modern English in the Book of Mormon. The sharpshooting is deciding that the frequently stilted English grammar of the Book of Mormon must be exactly what you'd expect for a text composed in the natural English dialect of some era, finding the early modern era that best matches some aspects of that Book of Mormon grammar, and declaring this to be a remarkable hit which proves that no-one in Smith's time could have written the Book. That by no means exhausts all the fallacies in Carmack's thesis, but it's the part of them that is most purely sharpshooting.

The problem is it requires following Interpreter more.

Their entire apologetic approach is to create a gish gallop:

“The Gish gallop (/ˈɡɪʃ ˈɡæləp/) is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm their opponent by providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments.“

[Marcus]

It would be nice if someone who follows Interpreter more could pick out five articles for Flemming. "I won't spoon-feed you!" is the refrain of the crackpot and we don't want to come across like that.

On the other hand, no one seems bothered by using the crackpot's refrain to respond to the crackpot. Especially not to start what would surely devolve into a pointless string of endless exchanges (no it isn't-yes it is-no it isn't-- etc.,.... ) You can't argue with crazy.

But, back to the nonderailment:

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.o ... more-71517

On one hand, it’s refreshing to see Interpreter trying to acknowledge and attempt to fix one of myriad examples of the sharpshooter fallacy: Starting with the thing you want to prove and working backwards, ignoring any data that doesn’t fit.

On the other hand, it’s Interpreter and their mission to “fight enemies of the church” would never allow them to examine anything in an unbiased and truly independent way. It literally goes against their core mission statement.

To try and avoid the attempted derail, I’m quoting the OP.

[honorentheos]

The Greatest Guesser was the final anime form of this fallacy.

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.o ... t-guesser/

[Flemming]

The Greatest Guesser was the final anime form of this fallacy.

https://journal.interpreterfoundation.o ... t-guesser/

I said “no one help him!”

I wanted to see if percussion man could follow up with anything substantial.

He couldn’t.

[Gadianton]

Pick ‘em, let’s analyze them.

You said no-one help him.

Here's your response when H stepped in.

I said “no one help him!”

That's why I won't pick them.

[Flemming]

I was hoping drumdude would be able to “pick ‘em.”

[Gadianton]

we don't want to come across like that

You gave a nice explanation but didn't provide 5 articles, you only provided one. Sledge is the type of guy who mainly cares about technicalities, as it's his most likely way to feel right about something. But then if you go through the effort to get the 5, he'll ignore all of them saying, "I said don't help".