Three things

[Guest]

No, but I'm sure he's examined himself in a vigorous way...

[_William Schryver]

That makes no sense whatsoever.

If you knew exactly what to expect, you wouldn't've bothered asking.

Just admit it, Will: You thought that Gee's arguments were unassailable, so you felt safe asking for examples of where he's been disproven. You had no idea that he'd been disproven twice over so far.

Second time: What's your opinion of Gee now?

Wrong again, moderator delete by harmony. Refrain from using the real names of people who don't..

I am well aware of the Gee arguments that some people believe to have been "demolished."

My whole point was that they haven't been.

You haven't been drinking with Dissonance, have you? Because I could swear some of her is rubbing off on you. And we wouldn't want that, would we?

Incidentally, my opinion of John Gee is that he is a brilliant, if somewhat eccentric, man. I think he has patience and a long term plan that he doesn't permit to be disturbed by uninformed people blathering on message boards of things they know little about.

And I don't think anything he has said has, as of this point, been demonstrated as false -- neither the argument about multiple inks nor the argument about the length of the scroll of Horos. Metcalfe has made some counter-arguments about the ink issues on internet message boards. They will soon be rebutted, and the original argument expanded, in a published academic work. I would suspect Brent will have to elevate his side of the debate to that level in order to dispute the matter further.

Chris Smith has apparently prepared what he believes to be a rebuttal of Gee's measurements and calculations concerning the scroll of Horos. How he presumes to speak to the issue authoritatively without having yet obtained access to the originals is a mystery to me. But he's going to go out on a limb. And, in a way, I admire that. However, the fact remains that the only way Gee's calculations can be wrong is if he either: 1-is lying, or 2-is inept. I've seen no indication, at this point, of either being the case. In fact, if Gee's measurements and calculations don't pan out in terms of this scroll length stuff, he has much more to lose than he ever could have hoped to gain. I think his professional credibility would come into serious question. But, as of now, it's not, the mindless rantings of Dissonance and others notwithstanding.

[_cinepro]

THREE THINGS IN LIFE THAT, ONCE GONE, NEVER COME BACK
1. Time spent on a message board
2. The waistline you had at 18
3. The dog in "Funny Farm"

THREE THINGS IN LIFE THAT CAN DESTROY A PERSON
1. Pictures of naked women on the internet
2. Absinthe
3. Getting torn apart, and burned. (It worked for the vampires in "Twilight"; it should also work for a person.)

THREE THINGS IN LIFE THAT YOU SHOULD NEVER LOSE
1. Sense of humor.
2. MD password
3. Marbles

THREE THINGS IN LIFE THAT ARE MOST VALUABLE
1. A time machine
2. Your health
3. Rhodium

THREE THINGS IN LIFE THAT ARE NEVER CERTAIN
1. A quartz watch
2. The quality of the next Ridley Scott movie
3. Your posting status at MA&D

THREE THINGS THAT MAKE A PERSON
1. Sperm
2. Egg
3. You'll have to figure out the rest.

[_JohnStuartMill]

If Thomas S. Monson himself delivered a nationwide address saying that the Church is all a bunch of 19th century superstitious hokum, William Schryver would still be trying to sell us the crap his mammy and pappy told him when he was little.

"Who ya gonna believe? Me or your lyin' eyes?"

[_William Schryver]

THREE THINGS IN LIFE THAT, ONCE GONE, NEVER COME BACK
1. Time spent on a message board
2. The waistline you had at 18
3. The dog in "Funny Farm"

THREE THINGS IN LIFE THAT CAN DESTROY A PERSON
1. Pictures of naked women on the internet
2. Absinthe
3. Getting torn apart, and burned. (It worked for the vampires in "Twilight"; it should also work for a person.)

THREE THINGS IN LIFE THAT YOU SHOULD NEVER LOSE
1. Sense of humor.
2. MD password
3. Marbles

THREE THINGS IN LIFE THAT ARE MOST VALUABLE
1. A time machine
2. Your health
3. Rhodium

THREE THINGS IN LIFE THAT ARE NEVER CERTAIN
1. A quartz watch
2. The quality of the next Ridley Scott movie
3. Your posting status at MA&D

THREE THINGS THAT MAKE A PERSON
1. Sperm
2. Egg
3. You'll have to figure out the rest.

cynicpro,

I know you're a damned evil apostate, but sometimes you still make me laugh.
.
.
.
JSM:

If Thomas S. Monson himself delivered a nationwide address saying that the Church is all a bunch of 19th century superstitious hokum, William Schryver would still be trying to sell us the crap his mammy and pappy told him when he was little.

"Who ya gonna believe? Me or your lyin' eyes?"

1- My "mammy and pappy" never told me squat when I was little. I had to learn everything on my own.

2- You're right that nothing Thomas S. Monson could say would affect my faith and knowledge. I know what I know of myself. I don't use any human intermediary in my interactions with God.

3- In the immortal words of Ulysses Everett McGill, you're "dumber'n a bag of hammers."

[_JohnStuartMill]

The simplest explanation for the Book of Abraham mistranslation is, BY FAR, that Joseph Smith didn't know what the hell he was doing, couldn't translate Egyptian papyrus, and was not a prophet of God. Only a damn fool would persist in thinking otherwise, and only a damn fool would waste his life coming up with lame-assed alternative theories.

[_Runtu]

The simplest explanation for the Book of Abraham mistranslation is, BY FAR, that Joseph Smith didn't know what the hell he was doing, couldn't translate Egyptian papyrus, and was not a prophet of God. Only a damn fool would persist in thinking otherwise, and only a damn fool would waste his life coming up with lame-assed alternative theories.

I've been around long enough to see that, with apologetics, the simplest answer is never the right explanation. We're being superficial, or simplistic, or ignorant if we take things at their simplest.

Hence, Joseph claimed that he could translate Egyptian hieroglyphics written (by Abraham, no less) on a parchment scroll.

First, we have to define "translate." Clearly, we're not talking about translating in any normally understood definition of the word.

Second, Joseph may have thought he was translating the characters, but he wasn't. But maybe he was translating other characters from a missing portion of the scroll. Never mind that we have the facsimiles that tell us that he was indeed trying to translate as we understand it, hence the numbered definitions of each illustration.

And Joseph may have thought it was written by Abraham, but it may have been a copy and transformation that was many generations old.

And so it goes. Droopy's right that I'm pretty sure the Book of Abraham translation is bogus. But I'm waiting for Will to enlighten my understanding.

[_William Schryver]

JW:

I've been around long enough to see that, with apologetics, the simplest answer is never the right explanation. We're being superficial, or simplistic, or ignorant if we take things at their simplest.

I've been around long enough to see that, when it comes to the varied questions of life, the simplest answer is sometimes the right one, and sometimes it's not. Sometimes the answer is extremely complex, and entails a large number of elements that are not really what, on the surface, they appear to be.

Therefore I've learned to keep Occam's Razor in my tool bag, but not to insist on using it when a fine laser scalpel would work better.

[_Runtu]

I've been around long enough to see that, when it comes to the varied questions of life, the simplest answer is sometimes the right one, and sometimes it's not. Sometimes the answer is extremely complex, and entails a large number of elements that are not really what, on the surface, they appear to be.

Therefore I've learned to keep Occam's Razor in my tool bag, but not to insist on using it when a fine laser scalpel would work better.

Hence my waiting for you to enlighten me, William.

[_William Schryver]

I've been around long enough to see that, when it comes to the varied questions of life, the simplest answer is sometimes the right one, and sometimes it's not. Sometimes the answer is extremely complex, and entails a large number of elements that are not really what, on the surface, they appear to be.

Therefore I've learned to keep Occam's Razor in my tool bag, but not to insist on using it when a fine laser scalpel would work better.

Hence my waiting for you to enlighten me, William.

But I don't know all the answers yet.

However, I know enough to know that the "simplest" answer is not going to be applicable in this particular case, and that many of the allegedly "simple" answers given so far have been flatly wrong.

In any case, I'm quite certain that disbelief will almost always prove to be a more defensible proposition than belief. It's just the nature of the thing.