marg wrote:Pahoran wrote:You may erupt with indignation that Dan does not accept, on the Church's behalf, the burden of proof you'd like to saddle him with, but that hardly constitutes a "word game." Your accusation -- borrowed from DrWertlos -- has failed.
Pahoron do apologists argue for claims or do they encourage belief based on faith only? Do apologists argue for church claims such as that Nephites truly lived, that the Book of Mormon is historically true?
If you agree that apologists don't limit their role to only encouraging belief based on faith but rather present arguments to warrant belief that Nephites existed as per the Book of Mormon and that the Book of Mormon is true history...then I say those arguments that I've seen have failed to meet a burden of proof to warrant those claims. I'm pleased that you support DCP's cheerful admittance of this.
And this is the point you are resolutely ignoring. They don't "fail" to meet the burden you arbitrarily attempt to impose, because they never tried.
Furthermore, Mormon apologists are not the Church. Whatever you think Mormon apologists are trying to do, they are not acting as servants or agents of the Church.
Mormon apologetics is mostly a defensive, rather than an affirmative, undertaking. A Latter-day Saint "apologist" is mostly engaged in defending his or her
own religious beliefs against attack.
On the (relatively rare) occasions when LDS apologists put forward an affirmative argument of some kind, I for one have
never heard them say anything to the effect that chiasmus, or Asherah references, or if-and constructions, or First Temple theology, or ancient Mesoamerican lineage history in the Book of Mormon
compel belief, or "conclusively prove" anything. Rather, however privately excited they may be about such discoveries, their arguments tend to hold no more than that this or that feature is
consistent with the Book's claimed origins, and perhaps more so than with alternative theories of those origins.
That is it, and that is all of it.
So, not only are you collapsing the distinction between "evidence" and "proof," you are also collapsing the distinction between the Church and individual members acting without Church direction.
I realise, of course, that in the bigoted little minds of scum, I mean some, the Church is some kind of gigantic conspiracy, and no Church member ever does anything at all unless someone from Salt Lake City orders him to do so. In the real world, however, Latter-day Saints are dedicated believers who care very much about their religion, and who prefer not to see it attacked, or allow such attacks to go unanswered.
But despite all that, the Church has exactly zero responsibility to "prove" its claims. It has never
tried to prove them. It is not
supposed to prove them. Therefore it is simply untrue -- and rather obviously dishonest -- to assert that it has "failed" to do so.
As Hugh W. Nibley once pointed out, using the DrWertlos approach, we could say that God has "failed" to provide the earth with two moons or give humans gold teeth. Does any rational person not see a problem with the word "failed" in that sentence?
Regards,
Pahoran