Is Mormonism so bad?

[dastardly stem]

I'm thinking that if good examples of religious practice exist, then the LDS Church might have something to strive for. I know Francis of Assisi was not into wealth accumulation, so that would put him at odds with the current leadership of the Church. Recently the LDS Church tried to tie a Temple in Tooele to a lucrative real estate development. Francis was much too pastoral to tear up any pastures for a grand cathedral. He would look to the flock rather than to Mammon.

He lived near a thousand years ago and wasn't subjected to the assault of modernity, causing our most wholesome to get caught up in the "ways of the world". But you raise a good point in that my assault on religion generally and my hope that we lighten our focus on Mormonism as the great beast flashing the 666 gang sign, acknowledging it's inevitably forced on account of it claiming religion to repeat the patterns already laid out is likely going to flop and fall on deaf ears. So we might as well lay off and encourage any positives we might eek out of its pile of fruits. But then we are left to cower, biting our tongue at religion's failures, hoping our benighted encouragement will take it to a new and bountiful sphere never before seen nor broached by any religion before it. I don't know...can't I be critical and hope for improvement at the same time? I'd still wonder if we shed ourselves of religion's garb we'd have a better chance to reach that bountiful sphere. Modernity's assault may carry with it something seemingly negative, but perhaps its great benefit has yet to be seen, hidden behind the walls or superstition? I'm still feeling it'd be nice to tear down the walls and see what's waiting on the other side. Am I overly optimistic? Maybe. But it's just a maybe.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

You are, in fact, overly optimistic. You're talking about a conglomerate with hundreds of billions in assets controlled by a handful of men. The only fealty they have is to their corporation and to ensure its survival - they view anything other than growing its assets as an existential threat and it'll be ignored.

- Doc

[Kishkumen]

This argument is a reminder of how much was lost with the old board. There were a number of good discussions on Carrier.

I thought it worth the effort to track at least one down.

http://mormondiscussions.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=48033

It seemed like we had a discussion on the topic regularly over there so I'm sure there are a half-dozen threads minimum.

Ah, the good old days. Thanks for linking that thread. I enjoyed rereading portions of it.

[Philo Sofee]

I read Celestial Kingdom Chesterson's book on him and I believe it's still sitting on my shelf. Your mention makes me want to go pick it up and pick through it. I really liked him.

I'm thinking that if good examples of religious practice exist, then the LDS Church might have something to strive for. I know Francis of Assisi was not into wealth accumulation, so that would put him at odds with the current leadership of the Church. Recently the LDS Church tried to tie a Temple in Tooele to a lucrative real estate development. Francis was much too pastoral to tear up any pastures for a grand cathedral. He would look to the flock rather than to Mammon.

He can always repent and read the Book of Mormon in heaven to further rid himself of such heinous spiritual sins as ignoring real estate for something spiritual. How silly is that?

[honorentheos]

This argument is a reminder of how much was lost with the old board. There were a number of good discussions on Carrier.

I thought it worth the effort to track at least one down.

http://mormondiscussions.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=48033

It seemed like we had a discussion on the topic regularly over there so I'm sure there are a half-dozen threads minimum.

Ah, the good old days. Thanks for linking that thread. I enjoyed rereading portions of it.

The internet became slippery and much treasure has slid into the depths of the earth, lost to search engines, forever relegated to fickle memory.

[dastardly stem]

This argument is a reminder of how much was lost with the old board. There were a number of good discussions on Carrier.

I thought it worth the effort to track at least one down.

http://mormondiscussions.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=48033

It seemed like we had a discussion on the topic regularly over there so I'm sure there are a half-dozen threads minimum.

I appreciate the link, I read through it today. The discussion was pretty good as the pages carried on. A couple of contentions I'd have is that people were prone to group some of the scholars mentioned together--like Bob Price and Carrier along with Atwill, and on such a basis dismiss them. Also, for me, Carrier's position hardly matters...the details he lays out and the arguments he proposes are very interesting. Even he acknowledges Jesus could have lived, but considering the evidence, leaves him with somewhere in the 33% range. Its more likely he did not live. But again the good is found in the scholarship, as I see it, that goes into the effort to consider whether Jesus was real. And it hardly ends there. Reading that thread gave me the impression that many think he's living and dying on a mythicist position. As I've read him he lays out his findings, which obviously includes many previous findings and levels his evaluation. That's a good practice and should leave us in a more, "I see your point even if I find your use of Bayes theorem and weight of the evidence problematic". For some reason I don't care at all about Bayes theorem nor the conclusion necessarily. The points raised, the details of what was likely happening, how ideas likely came about, and what might be contributors can be really fascinating.

[Kishkumen]

I appreciate the link, I read through it today. The discussion was pretty good as the pages carried on. A couple of contentions I'd have is that people were prone to group some of the scholars mentioned together--like Bob Price and Carrier along with Atwill, and on such a basis dismiss them. Also, for me, Carrier's position hardly matters...the details he lays out and the arguments he proposes are very interesting. Even he acknowledges Jesus could have lived, but considering the evidence, leaves him with somewhere in the 33% range. Its more likely he did not live. But again the good is found in the scholarship, as I see it, that goes into the effort to consider whether Jesus was real. And it hardly ends there. Reading that thread gave me the impression that many think he's living and dying on a mythicist position. As I've read him he lays out his findings, which obviously includes many previous findings and levels his evaluation. That's a good practice and should leave us in a more, "I see your point even if I find your use of Bayes theorem and weight of the evidence problematic". For some reason I don't care at all about Bayes theorem nor the conclusion necessarily. The points raised, the details of what was likely happening, how ideas likely came about, and what might be contributors can be really fascinating.

I would say that it is very likely Jesus did live, but that the Gospels present him in a very contrived way. Let's look at some other kooky ancient stories that are also very unbelievable. You tell me whether the people they are about were real or not. Don't use Google.

When A had come in the middle of the night to the solemn service of [the god], she had her litter set down in the temple and fell asleep, while the rest of the matrons also slept. On a sudden a serpent glided up to her and shortly went away. When she awoke, she purified herself, as if after the embraces of her husband, and at once there appeared on her body a mark in colors like a serpent, and she could never get rid of it; so that presently she ceased ever to go to the public baths. In the tenth month after that X was born and was therefore regarded as the son of [the god].

As soon as he began to talk, it chanced that the frogs were making a great noise at his grandfather's country place; he bade them be silent, and they say that since then no frog has ever croaked there.

When X was still an infant, as is recorded by the hand of Y, he was placed by his nurse at evening in his cradle on the ground floor and the next morning had disappeared; but after long search he was at last found on a lofty tower with his face towards the rising sun.

Again, when he was dining, an ox that was ploughing shook off its yoke, burst into the dining-room, and after scattering the servants, fell at the very feet of X as he reclined at table, and bowed its neck as if suddenly tired out.

A man of the people who was blind, and another who was lame, came to him together as he sat on the tribunal, begging for the help for their disorders which [the god] had promised in a dream; for the god declared that X would restore the eyes, if he would spit upon them, and give strength to the leg, if he would deign to touch it with his heel. 3 Though he had hardly any faith that this could possibly succeed, and therefore shrank even from making the attempt, he was at last prevailed upon by his friends and tried both things in public before a large crowd; and with success.

A, they said, who belonged to one of the noblest families in the island, had entered one day into a fuller's shop, when he suddenly dropped down dead. Hereupon the fuller shut up his shop, and went to tell A's kindred what had happened. The report of the death had just spread through the town, when a certain man, lately arrived from [the city A.], contradicted the rumor, affirming that he had met A on his road to C, and had spoken with him. This man, therefore, strenuously denied the rumor; the relations, however, proceeded to the fuller's shop with all things necessary for the funeral, intending to carry the body away. But on the shop being opened, no A was found, either dead or alive. Seven years afterwards he reappeared, they told me, in P, and wrote the poem . . . .

One day he was sent into the country by his father to look for a stray sheep, and at noon he turned aside out of the way, and went to sleep in a cave, where he slept for fifty-seven years. After this he got up and went in search of the sheep, thinking he had been asleep only a short time. And when he could not find it, he came to the farm, and found everything changed and another owner in possession. Then he went back to the town in utter perplexity; and there, on entering his own house, he fell in with people who wanted to know who he was. At length he found his younger brother, now an old man, and learnt the truth from him. So he became famous throughout Greece, and was believed to be a special favorite of heaven.

And as he was drinking water which had been drawn up from a well he predicted that on the third day there would be an earthquake; which came to pass.

He did not wish the place where he was buried to be known, and to that end contrived the following device. He ordered two young men to go out at night by a certain road which he pointed out to them; they were to kill the man they met and bury him. He afterwards ordered four more to go in pursuit of the two, kill them and bury them; again, he dispatched a larger number in pursuit of the four. Having taken these measures, he himself encountered the first pair and was slain.

There is a story that once, when he was disrobed, his thigh was seen to be of gold; and when he crossed the river N., quite a number of people said they heard it welcome him.

E. became famous because he had sent away the dead woman alive, goes on to say that he was offering a sacrifice close to the field of P. Some of his friends had been invited to the sacrifice, including [the man P.]. Then, after the feast, the remainder of the company dispersed and retired to rest, some under the trees in the adjoining field, others wherever they chose, while E. himself remained on the spot where he had reclined at table. At daybreak all got up, and he was the only one missing. A search was made, and they questioned the servants, who said they did not know where he was. Thereupon someone said that in the middle of the night he heard an exceedingly loud voice calling E. Then he got up and beheld a light in the heavens and a glitter of lamps, but nothing else. His hearers were amazed at what had occurred, and P. came down and sent people to search for him. But later he bade them take no further trouble, for things beyond expectation had happened to him, and it was their duty to sacrifice to him since he was now a god.

Please let me know which of these stories concerns a person or people who never lived.

[Physics Guy]

I know that Pythagoras was supposed to have had a thigh of gold, though I’ve never been clear whether that meant he had a heavy metal leg or just impressive tanning skill.

I presume the other stories are also about well-attested historical figures who have simply acquired some implausible legends. It’s a good point. Mythical personages acquire wild miracle stories but so can real people. In an age when nature is less well pinned down and standards of evidence can’t help but be low, miraculous tales get told about any character with an established brand identity.

I don’t think that means that ancient people couldn’t tell the difference between truth and fiction. These little snippets of legend are just scraps that have survived; I doubt they all originally appeared on the ancient analog of page one of the New York Times. Maybe a lot of them were just repeated as thigh-slapping stories. They got written and copied but were they ever believed?

With Jesus I do see some differences. The gospels are certainly more like stage plays than like biographical documentary but as that, they include a lot of dialogue. A lot of “sayings” are attributed to Jesus, not just miracle stories. He originated some ideas and phrases. You could plagiarize Jesus—and if you did, you’d get caught. He has enough of a recognizable oeuvre for that.

It’s the theory of reference again. To whom do we really intend to refer when we say the name “Jesus”? The guy who walked on the water? That guy probably didn’t exist. The person who made the original draft of the sermon on the mount? That person certainly existed, whatever his or her friends may have called him or her and whenever he or she lived.

It’s perfectly plausible to me that some sayings were later misattributed to Jesus. Famous figures are quote magnets even today; Winston Churchill said all kinds of things that he never did say. The idea that there was no one person who originated the core of that body of sayings, that it was all assembled by an unconscious committee of anonymous editors later, just seems bizarre. Why would anyone ever have gotten the idea to attribute things to Jesus unless there was a critical mass of cool sayings of Jesus that were already there?

Even the Kardashians had reality TV to launch them. It’s not so easy to become famous for nothing but being famous when you don’t have TV. The idea that a bunch of ancient nobodies all conspired to create a body of religious literature under Jesus’s name as a figurehead is anachronistic at best. That kind of thing has happened—I’m thinking of Bourbaki, the collective French mathematician deliberately named after a random shmoe —but it happened on purpose in a well-connected modern community.

Whereas the alternative, that the original core of Jesus’s sayings was composed by one historically important religious leader, is perfectly plausible. It’s unlikely that your next-door-neighbor is going to be such a person, of course, but there have been quite a few in world history. Messiahs happen. What’s hard to believe?

[Kishkumen]

That's right, PG. Each one of these stories concerns a person who was believed to be a real, historical figure. Some are better attested than others. A couple of them concern Augustus, Rome's first emperor, perhaps one of the best attested historical figures in antiquity. The point is that it would be perfectly possible to string together a bunch of stories about a real person in order to make them fit some miraculous or ideal model. These days, people call doing so Facebooking. You know, taking selfies on the top of a mountain, curating their lives to portray an image of perfection or superhuman happiness.

Yes, some of the big differences in antiquity were that there was a relatively low literacy rate, many stories circulated orally, and there was no daily printed news. Many people did believe in the miraculous and not a few felt they had experienced it. Furthermore, there was no groundswell of scientific rationalism or positivism for people to hold as a schematized worldview or ideology. This does not mean that educated sophisticates like Pliny the Elder did not ridicule the rubes for believing that Empedocles performed miracles, but even he told the story of King Lars Porsenna fighting a monster.

The story of Jesus was told for theological purposes and to show that Jesus had embodied the fulfillment of prophecy. Of course his tale is filled with impossible nonsense. But so too was the Medieval Alexander Romance. Alexander the Great was a real person, but he was not taken to the land of the dwarves by the dwarf king, as a Medieval Jewish version of his story would have us believe. I swear sometimes that so-called smart people like Richard Carrier either don't read enough ancient literature--something that boggles my mind as he is a trained ancient historian--or they don't really understand what they are reading.

[Physics Guy]

I haven’t read Carrier and I probably won’t, but one possible explanation for his odd take on the existence of Jesus is that he got seduced by the Bayesian illusion in much the same way that certain Mormon apologists have been.

There’s nothing wrong with Bayesian inference—it’s a two-line theorem that only relies on arithmetic so there hardly could be anything wrong with it. But some insufficiently numerate people seem to get the idea that it’s a magic wand that can reliably deliver surprising results which must be accepted—because they have numbers!—even in defiance of plain common sense.

To some that’s the whole point of Bayes, that it forces you to see past your preconceptions and recognize surprising truths (about likelihoods, anyway). Seeing past preconceptions is good, of course, but there’s just a limit to how much magic can come from a two-line theorem. Used without understanding, all that Bayes does is put impressively rigorous-looking numbers onto vague assumptions: garbage in, garbage out. Bayes won’t spin straw into gold.

If you have solid and unambiguous evidence then you hardly need Bayes to make your case. If what you have instead is a bunch of iffy arguments then the magic of multiplication can let you kid yourself that it all somehow adds up—or rather multiplies out—to a strong case. Unfortunately, though, it isn’t that easy. The more factors you try to multiply together, the more sensitive your conclusions become to even slight tendencies on your part to over- or underestimate probabilities, or to overlook possible alternatives.

If you think you’ve somehow wielded the magic of Bayes to extract strong conclusions from lousy data, then what has almost certainly actually happened is that you’ve done it wrong. Carrier wouldn’t be the first or last not to realize this and think instead that he has found in Bayes a magical mathematical substitute for careful thinking.