Why is it that you’re here, MG?

[huckelberry]

Gadianton, faith works is far from what first comes to mind comparing Mormon to more traditional views. The Trinity is more obvious a difference. From the starting idea of God as exalted human the trinity is illogical and contradictory as Mormons are quick to see. If God is infinite eternal omnipresent the Trinity is mysterious in ways but not contradictory.

I agree that Trinity is technically more important in terms of creeds since, well, it pretty much is the creed, but first of all, I don't think many Christians have any clue about the "trinity" such that it that shapes their relation to God in a way that's meaningfully different from a Mormon. I'd love to hear my right-wing friend or any of his fellow Christians I interact with on my walks explain the trinity to me. I imagine I'd be awarding a few F-s.

Mainly, I'd say consider Morley's insights the other day when he explained the many sources of our construction as people. From school to TV and movies, I have a hard time believing a Mormon kid and a Christian kid of the same socio-economic class really view God that differently. I'll bet the typical Christian imagines the face of a man when thinking about the Father when they pray. Even Chick tracts represent the Father as a guy on a throne although without a face. You can't really imagine the cosmos as that would be pantheism. So what ya' going to think about?

On the other hand, even though Mormons believe the Holy Ghost is technically just another person, I never imagined "him" this way, I always imagined a "wind" like phenomena as the scriptures describe.

Gadianton, I enjoy your observations you have more access to the thinking of right wingers than I do . You describe a foreign land. I do not imagine images when I pray and avoid Chic comics like blood born pathogens.

[Gadianton]

Gadianton, I enjoy your observations you have more access to the thinking of right wingers than I do . You describe a foreign land. I do not imagine images when I pray and avoid Chic comics like blood born pathogens.

You've got me curious now, what do you visualize when you think of God the Father? Jesus is easy. The Holy Spirit isn't that bad either, as "ruach" is pretty tractable, a strong wind is a great visual for an invisible force. But God the Father? That's next level. What do you visualize when thinking of God the Father?

[Gadianton]

This allows you to do all sorts of nasty things, with only a few exceptions, and not have to depend on forgiveness in the next life: it's guaranteed!

Thanks for the reminder, you are correct that Mormons have their own ideas about eternal security. Calling and election made sure absolutely absolves one of any future sins, save blasphemy against the Spirit. Of course, we both know that practically speaking, disagreeing with Old Man Oaks on anything would immediately count as denying the Holy Ghost.

Contrary to Dan, Mormonism is the ultimate in "scientism". The whole idea seems to hinge on the consequences of absolute knowledge. Calling and election entails the personal visitation of the Savior, which makes one's knowledge "perfect". Once you've achieved perfect empirical knowledge, you're in God mode, indestructible save that tiny gap in the armor. That gap is somewhat logical, it's saying you have the knowledge, but you have the freewill to deny it and if you do, remember that even God can "cease to be God".

[malkie]

This allows you to do all sorts of nasty things, with only a few exceptions, and not have to depend on forgiveness in the next life: it's guaranteed!

Thanks for the reminder, you are correct that Mormons have their own ideas about eternal security. Calling and election made sure absolutely absolves one of any future sins, save blasphemy against the Spirit. Of course, we both know that practically speaking, disagreeing with Old Man Oaks on anything would immediately count as denying the Holy Ghost.

Contrary to Dan, Mormonism is the ultimate in "scientism". The whole idea seems to hinge on the consequences of absolute knowledge. Calling and election entails the personal visitation of the Savior, which makes one's knowledge "perfect". Once you've achieved perfect empirical knowledge, you're in God mode, indestructible save that tiny gap in the armor. That gap is somewhat logical, it's saying you have the knowledge, but you have the freewill to deny it and if you do, remember that even God can "cease to be God".

And to circle back around to the War in Heaven, I can't help wondering whether a human whose calling & election is made sure knows anything any better, or in more detail, than Satan and his one third of the heavenly host did in the pre-existence. Perhaps human arrogance could be the undoing of someone who has had the second anointing.

[huckelberry]

Gadianton, I enjoy your observations you have more access to the thinking of right wingers than I do . You describe a foreign land. I do not imagine images when I pray and avoid Chic comics like blood born pathogens.

You've got me curious now, what do you visualize when you think of God the Father? Jesus is easy. The Holy Spirit isn't that bad either, as "ruach" is pretty tractable, a strong wind is a great visual for an invisible force. But God the Father? That's next level. What do you visualize when thinking of God the Father?

Sort of curious question. I do not know how much variation there is on this. During prayer I do not think I have ever tried to visualize anything. I believe God is present. Outside of prayer I do not recall any visualization of God.

[Physics Guy]

Some data sets are rationally amenable to fuzzy analysis and model construction. Spam detection in email for example is something everyone can grasp. Before retirement I was involved in using Bayesian analysis in modeling lithium ion battery management for electric vehicles.

However, when it comes to things like authentication of files, documents, currency, paintings, wine, etc., statistical analysis techniques are insufficient for fraud detection when a binary outcome is imperative. It only takes falsification of a single element to make any other data under consideration irrelevant. For example, when examining currency, the bill can be perfect in all ways, but if the signature says "Mickey Mouse" none of the perfect elements matter.

A great example to illustrate an important point. In principle, Bayesian inference can include decisive evidence like the Mickey signature perfectly well. One just judges the chance of a genuine bill being signed by the Mouse to be 1 in a million zillion, while the chance of a fake bill bearing that signature is also low, since few people will make a careful forgery just as a joke, but not nearly that low—say, 1 in a million. If the prior probability of the bill being fake is anything much higher than one in a zillion, then Bayes's theorem will correctly tell you that the Mickey Mouse bill has overwhelming odds of being fake.

Bayes's theorem can never really be wrong or inapplicable, because it's just simple logic and simple arithmetic. Precisely because of that, though, it is only the precise use of the theorem that is guaranteed to be correct. One cannot just apply part of the theorem and expect that part to work reliably because it comes from a theorem, any more than one can expect 2+2 to equal 3 because that's most of the answer. Cases of decisive evidence, like the Mickey signature, are cases that involve very low probabilities; so Bayes's theorem only works in such cases if one is accurate about very low probabilities. Humans are not good at judging very low probabilities; we tend to bottom out somewhere around 1 in a thousand, and think of everything less likely than that as having about the same "unlikely but possible" status.

This weakness can be worsened by analysis fatigue from carefully weighing lots of odds, like paper and ink and character style being fake. If we have spent a lot of time looking at odds around 1 in a million, we can easily fail to notice that the chance of a Mickey signature being on a real bill is smaller than all the other small chances we've been weighing, by an enormous factor. If we get used to assigning all "very low" chances the same token 1-in-a-million odds, or something like that, then we can easily let a bunch of details outweigh something that should be decisive.

These aren't flaws in Bayes's theorem as a theorem, any more than my miscalculating 2+2 as 3 is a flaw in math itself. For the practical application of Bayesian inference by fallible humans, though, these are serious problems. I think that a really good Bayesian, who applies Bayesian-style thinking to the game theory of how to weigh evidence, would advise against diving straight into Bayesian inference, and suggest a first pass of looking for overwhelmingly decisive evidence. Is there anything like a Mickey Mouse signature? If there is, then proper Bayesian analysis will only give us the same answer that we get from common sense, anyway. Only if there is no smoking gun of that kind is it really worth weighing up a lot of less extreme factors to find a Bayesian estimate.

The master forger and murderer Mark Hoffman duped many document examiners, and (humorously - to me - the LDS Brethen™ with their alleged Powers of Discernment™), and many others with his very excellent forged documents. It wasn't until FBI examiner George Throckmorton using a microscope noticed subtle cracks in the ink due to the gum arabic that Hoffman used in his ink formula. The jig was up. Fake documents.

The Book of Mormon is in the same category. It doesn't matter how many interesting and "true" things one may think it contains, it only takes a single falsifying element to answer the question: "is it what Joe claimed?" Same for the Book of Abraham. Regardless of subjective feelings about the text, and other "interesting" elements the texts may hold for some people, the answer is objectively "no" for both.

I agree, and I think that a lot of Mormon apologetics is about focusing on a lot of side issues to the point where people, including the apologists themselves, get enough analysis fatigue to think of the evidence against their position as being only about as strong as the points they've piled up in its favour. It's a kind of buffer overflow attack on the human mind.

Sometimes fancy technicalities really can outweigh plain common sense. People who don't know much about modern physics, for example, will sometimes dismiss everything after about 1800 with simple-minded appeals to common sense. Things that don't seem obvious, or that even seem obviously impossible, can be true and important. If you bang these rocks together, you can make fire.

Bayesian inference and the Sorites paradox are not like that, however. Correctly applied, they do not provide counter-intuitive results that rebut common sense. And they don't even just happen to produce the same final answer as common sense after a much longer story that is the real reason for the answer, contradicting the naïve reasoning of common sense while supporting its conclusion. No, if the fancy analysis is properly done, then all it does in these Mormon apologetic cases is to repeat the common-sense reasoning exactly, changing only the names. We can pedantically write out all the zeroes in the zillions, but all it means is the normal reaction of, "Yikes, Mickey Mouse! It's a fake."

[msnobody]

Thanks for the reminder, you are correct that Mormons have their own ideas about eternal security. Calling and election made sure absolutely absolves one of any future sins, save blasphemy against the Spirit. Of course, we both know that practically speaking, disagreeing with Old Man Oaks on anything would immediately count as denying the Holy Ghost.

Contrary to Dan, Mormonism is the ultimate in "scientism". The whole idea seems to hinge on the consequences of absolute knowledge. Calling and election entails the personal visitation of the Savior, which makes one's knowledge "perfect". Once you've achieved perfect empirical knowledge, you're in God mode, indestructible save that tiny gap in the armor. That gap is somewhat logical, it's saying you have the knowledge, but you have the freewill to deny it and if you do, remember that even God can "cease to be God".

And to circle back around to the War in Heaven, I can't help wondering whether a human whose calling & election is made sure knows anything any better, or in more detail, than Satan and his one third of the heavenly host did in the pre-existence. Perhaps human arrogance could be the undoing of someone who has had the second anointing.

I’m not familiar with the war in heaven from an LDS perspective, but from my perspective as a non-LDS Christian, my calling and election are made sure through the gift of faith in Christ. The point of me posting this is to say that Satan probably knows things about God that I don’t yet know. Just a speculation. There may be things I know, revealed by God to me, that Satan does not know, solely based on being in a right relationship with God. I think the elohim probably have vast knowledge about God, as they have been with him since their creation. Then, there are those chained in Tartarus for the time being, who would likely know and more fully realize certain aspects about God than I would. A deep subject. I suppose we can only know what He reveals to us.

[Gadianton]

And to circle back around to the War in Heaven, I can't help wondering whether a human whose calling & election is made sure knows anything any better, or in more detail, than Satan and his one third of the heavenly host did in the pre-existence. Perhaps human arrogance could be the undoing of someone who has had the second anointing.

Right, more holes than swiss cheese. We already had absolute knowledge. And why do we need to be tested when we already were tested? It sounds like heaven had the most important kinds of opposition readily available, and the risks of failure were much worse than the risks here. There was no point to come to earth.

[Limnor]

Why not just make a covenant as a premortal eternal intelligence?

[malkie]

And to circle back around to the War in Heaven, I can't help wondering whether a human whose calling & election is made sure knows anything any better, or in more detail, than Satan and his one third of the heavenly host did in the pre-existence. Perhaps human arrogance could be the undoing of someone who has had the second anointing.

I’m not familiar with the war in heaven from an LDS perspective, but from my perspective as a non-LDS Christian, my calling and election are made sure through the gift of faith in Christ. The point of me posting this is to say that Satan probably knows things about God that I don’t yet know. Just a speculation. There may be things I know, revealed by God to me, that Satan does not know, solely based on being in a right relationship with God. I think the elohim probably have vast knowledge about God, as they have been with him since their creation. Then, there are those chained in Tartarus for the time being, who would likely know and more fully realize certain aspects about God than I would. A deep subject. I suppose we can only know what He reveals to us.

Thanks, msnobody - your perspective on this is, as on other topics, illuminating.

As a non-Christian ex-Mormon I have little idea about your view of the war in heaven. Part of the Mormon "story" about how we came to earth is that we are born with all knowledge of our pre-earthly-existence blocked out, so although I had never thought about it, I can see that your comments on the differences in the level of knowledge of humans, Satan, and the "angels" (your "elohim") make sense to me. My reference earlier to Elohim is to the name of the Mormon god, with the "-im" suffix not indicating a Hebrew plural.