Decent Post on Proof and Evidence at Sic et Non

[_stemelbow]

The claimed evidence is evidence for something. It's evidence that Joseph Smith showed some of his close friends and relatives an object and told them a story about it. It isn't evidence that the story he told about the object is true. That it isn't evidence that the story he told about the object is true is strengthened by the further principles that DJ explained, like that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and Occam's Razor.

I feel like you are saying the same thing as I did, in a different way. The testimony of the 8 witnesses is evidence of an LDS truth claim--there were metal plates with engravings on them in Joseph Smith' possession, as he claimed. It's one piece.

[_Chap]

The claimed evidence is evidence for something. It's evidence that Joseph Smith showed some of his close friends and relatives an object and told them a story about it. It isn't evidence that the story he told about the object is true. That it isn't evidence that the story he told about the object is true is strengthened by the further principles that DJ explained, like that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and Occam's Razor.

I feel like you are saying the same thing as I did, in a different way. The testimony of the 8 witnesses is evidence of an LDS truth claim--there were metal plates with engravings on them in Joseph Smith' possession, as he claimed. It's one piece.

Yes - that is one step towards proving that the Book of Mormon is true. Joseph Smith may have shown people a pile of stuff, which looked like metal plates with incomprehensible marks on.

Places plastic lego brick on ground.

"See - you said I couldn't build a tower as high as Mount Everest, but here is a part of that promise fulfilled. Now what do you say, Mr Wise Guy sceptic?"

But such cynicism would be out of place, because the only way Joseph Smith could possibly have come into the possession of a pile of stuff that looked like metal plates with incomprehensible marks on would be if they were delivered to him by an angel, and if they contained a history of ancient America in Reformed Egyptian which Smith was then miraculously empowered to translate into imitation King James English.

[_Buffalo]

Oh, but wait! To paraphrase something Gadianton said one time (and I can't find now), the Mopologist strategy is to assert that the evidence for and evidence against the Church is at a stalemate, and then the Holy Ghost can be the Trump card that resolves everything in the Church's favor. Moroni's Promise is a whole subject unto itself, but the short answer is this: there's no way to assess the validity of Moroni's Promise. You don't have a way to independently verify that your subjective emotional experience means what the LDS Church tells you it's supposed to mean. I read the Book of Mormon. I pray about it. I feel good. The missionaries tell me this means that the Holy Ghost is telling me that the Book of Mormon is true. In the LDS context, "true" doesn't just mean good principles or that there's a God or something else abstract and/or metaphysical. "True" in this instance means that the Book of Mormon is real history. So how do I know that I'm not being subjected to wishful thinking, to operant conditioning, that I'm delusional, or that I'm misinterpreting an otherwise legitimate spiritual experience? Well, the way to do that is by seeing how what the missionaries told me was an "answer" from the Holy Ghost comports with objective reality. And now we're right back to square one of the evidence problem that Moroni's Promise was supposed to solve.

Evidence never has been and never will be a building block that a Mopologist uses to construct something. Evidence is merely the pet name Mopologists give to the unicorn they are sending you off to hunt.

Excellent post, Darth J! Really fantastic. I've saved it in my library. More on why Moroni's promise also doesn't rise to the level of evidence:

http://goodreasonblog.blogspot.com/2010 ... dence.html

It should be obvious that this is not a real scientific experiment, and not just because it falls back on supernatural explanations.

* Scientific experiments use evidence that is empirical -- involving sense data that could be observed by anyone

* Experiments try and control for bias

* Experiments are replicable -- anyone can repeat the experiment, and they should get about the same result. Ideas are verified by multiple points of view.

But so-called personal revelation doesn't follow these controls.

* Your feelings can't be directly observed by other people. That makes it impossible to evaluate someone else's religious claims, and that means that religious people have to 'agree to disagree' when they get conflicting revelations.

* There's no way to tell whether the feeling you're getting is a real live revelation from a god, something from your own mind, or (worse) a temptation from an evil spirit, if you go for that. Or Zeus, Krishna, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It's easy to distinguish between two competing natural claims, but it's impossible to distinguish between two competing supernatural claims.

* A scientific experiment attempts to control for bias, but here, the missionaries are subtlely biasing their subjects by telling them what they should expect to feel. It's sort of like when you're playing records backwards for Satanic messages -- it's hard to tell what the message is until someone gives you the words.

* The goalposts for this test are defined very vaguely and can be shifted. A confirmation can be ginned up out of the most meager of subjective data -- or no data at all. Many are the members who ask for a revelation, get none, and continue in the church anyway, figuring that if they have real faith, they don't need a spiritual confirmation. It's a hit if you have good feelings, and hit if you don't.

* In a real experiment, we would try to account for both positive and negative results. But here, no attempt is made to add negative results to the sample. People who report a positive result show up in church, but people who get no result don't, and are effectively deleted from the sample. In fact, if someone doesn't get a revelation, it's assumed that they are to blame for not being 'sincere' or trying hard enough. They are encouraged to repeat the test until they get a result that the experimenter will like.

* Worse still, once someone is convinced that they've received a message from a god, Latter-day Saints then make a series of logical leaps to show that the whole church is true, from the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith to Thomas Monson and beyond. All from good feelings and not from anything solid.


Not everyone is convinced by this test, but the church doesn't need everyone to buy it -- just enough people to keep the system going. And I can tell you from personal experience that when you think you've been touched by the divine, it can be very difficult to balance that against real evidence. No good evidence is going to come out of this kind of test. This is not a valid experiment. It is a recipe for self-deception. It is just asking to be fooled.

[_brade]

The claimed evidence is evidence for something. It's evidence that Joseph Smith showed some of his close friends and relatives an object and told them a story about it. It isn't evidence that the story he told about the object is true. That it isn't evidence that the story he told about the object is true is strengthened by the further principles that DJ explained, like that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and Occam's Razor.

I feel like you are saying the same thing as I did, in a different way. The testimony of the 8 witnesses is evidence of an LDS truth claim--there were metal plates with engravings on them in Joseph Smith' possession, as he claimed. It's one piece.

I was responding to this claim of yours:

You are attempting to suggest that claimed evidence can't be considered evidence because it doesn't support the ultimate claim

I understood 'ultimate claim' here to mean more than that Joseph Smith merely had an object with scribblings on it. And, again, the point isn't that the claimed evidence can't be considered evidence because it doesn't support the ultimate claim that the story Joseph Smith told about the object is true. Rather, it's that the claimed evidence can't be considered evidence for the ultimate claim, though it can be considered evidence for something else.

[_Kishkumen]

Rather, it's that the claimed evidence can't be considered evidence for the ultimate claim, though it can be considered evidence for something else.

Precisely. As I have said for some time now, the witnesses did not have any expertise to evaluate the authenticity of the plates as ancient artifacts. Joseph could have placed in front of the witnesses just about anything that roughly matched the description he offerred and all they could do, effectively, was take his word for it.

The plates are thus not evidence in favor of the validity of the claim that the plates were ancient and the product of an ancient Hebraic civilization in the Americas.

[_Sophocles]

There is certainly evidence for the claims of Mormonism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX5jNnDMfxA

[_Darth J]

The claimed evidence is evidence for something. It's evidence that Joseph Smith showed some of his close friends and relatives an object and told them a story about it. It isn't evidence that the story he told about the object is true. That it isn't evidence that the story he told about the object is true is strengthened by the further principles that DJ explained, like that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and Occam's Razor.

I feel like you are saying the same thing as I did, in a different way. The testimony of the 8 witnesses is evidence of an LDS truth claim--there were metal plates with engravings on them in Joseph Smith' possession, as he claimed. It's one piece.

No. You are exemplifying the problem with evidentiary foundation and relevance I talked about.

Joseph Smith merely having metal plates with engravings on them is not an LDS truth claim. Not very many people dispute that Joseph Smith at least had a prop that he showed a very small number of people. A truth claim is that Joseph Smith had metal plates with engravings on them that were made by ancient Nephite prophets. What you're really claiming is that the testimony of the Eight Witnesses is circumstantial evidence of the latter. For that to be the case, the Eight Witnesses would have to have some knowledge independent of Joseph Smith to talk about what the plates actually were. They did not and could not possibly have had any such independent knowledge. The "witness" about the plates is still Joseph Smith, not 8 other individuals. You still have to take Joseph Smith's word for it that the plates actually were an ancient Nephite record.

Apparently desiring to remove any possible hope that you understand the issues, you also said this:

You are attempting to suggest that claimed evidence can't be considered evidence because it doesn't support the ultimate claim, it seems.

No kidding. That's exactly what I'm saying. That's what "relevance" means. If a piece of evidence does not support the ultimate claim, it is not relevant. If a purported piece of evidence is not in fact what it claims to be, then it has no foundation and is not evidence at all. Because you have no foundation for the Testimony of the Eight Witnesses, you cannot reasonably use it as a piece of circumstantial evidence to prove that the object they were shown was an ancient Nephite record that Joseph Smith translated by the power of God. In other words, because it has no foundation, it is not relevant.

The Testimony of the Eight Witnesses has no foundation because the Eight Witnesses were not qualified to say what the plates they saw actually were. The Testimony of the Eight Witnesses is not relevant because "Joseph Smith had metal plates with engravings on them, but nobody knows what they really were" is not a claim the LDS Church relies upon to show that it is the True Church. The Testimony of the Eight Witnesses is nothing more than an invitation to jump to conclusions that are not warranted by the facts that would have been known by those witnesses.

[Guest]

I understood 'ultimate claim' here to mean more than that Joseph Smith merely had an object with scribblings on it. And, again, the point isn't that the claimed evidence can't be considered evidence because it doesn't support the ultimate claim that the story Joseph Smith told about the object is true. Rather, it's that the claimed evidence can't be considered evidence for the ultimate claim, though it can be considered evidence for something else.

Alright. I agree with you in that the testimony is evidence of something.

[_stemelbow]

No. You are exemplifying the problem with evidentiary foundation and relevance I talked about.

Joseph Smith merely having metal plates with engravings on them is not an LDS truth claim. Not very many people dispute that Joseph Smith at least had a prop that he showed a very small number of people. A truth claim is that Joseph Smith had metal plates with engravings on them that were made by ancient Nephite prophets.

People have disputed it. Its clearly a claim. I do not claim that the 8 witnesses testimony supports an ancient Nephite origin to the plates. Just that there are plates. There are plenty of different claims each ought to be taken separately.

What you're really claiming is that the testimony of the Eight Witnesses is circumstantial evidence of the latter. For that to be the case, the Eight Witnesses would have to have some knowledge independent of Joseph Smith to talk about what the plates actually were. They did not and could not possibly have had any such independent knowledge. The "witness" about the plates is still Joseph Smith, not 8 other individuals. You still have to take Joseph Smith's word for it that the plates actually were an ancient Nephite record.

If the 8 witness testimony is all we have then all it is is evidence that Joseph had plates with engravings.

Apparently desiring to remove any possible hope that you understand the issues, you also said this:

No kidding. That's exactly what I'm saying. That's what "relevance" means. If a piece of evidence does not support the ultimate claim, it is not relevant. If a purported piece of evidence is not in fact what it claims to be, then it has no foundation and is not evidence at all. Because you have no foundation for the Testimony of the Eight Witnesses, you cannot reasonably use it as a piece of circumstantial evidence to prove that the object they were shown was an ancient Nephite record that Joseph Smith translated by the power of God. In other words, because it has no foundation, it is not relevant.

oh brother. Go and battle with Brade on that then. You agree with me, he's trying to contest the point.

The Testimony of the Eight Witnesses has no foundation because the Eight Witnesses were not qualified to say what the plates they saw actually were. The Testimony of the Eight Witnesses is not relevant because "Joseph Smith had metal plates with engravings on them, but nobody knows what they really were" is not a claim the LDS Church relies upon to show that it is the True Church. The Testimony of the Eight Witnesses is nothing more than an invitation to jump to conclusions that are not warranted by the facts that would have been known by those witnesses.

The claim of the 8 witnesses is that they saw the plates with engravings. Their claim is not to support the notion that the Church is true, all by themselves. As I said, it appears you have some quibbling with Brade rather than with me.

[_Kishkumen]

The claim of the 8 witnesses is that they saw the plates with engravings. Their claim is not to support the notion that the Church is true, all by themselves. As I said, it appears you have some quibbling with Brade rather than with me.

Again, game over.



Look up there at stem with his limbs missing: "OK, we'll call it a draw."

ROFLMAO!!!