The Book of Mormon is a 1500/1600 AD transcript - Peterson

[_Bret Ripley]

See what I mean by resorting to ridicule?

How is it ridicule when I agree with you?

You're doing it wrong. I think you have to agree using your consciousness but not your brain. But that's probably just my brain talking.

[_Gadianton]

Where does Mormonism teach that the brain and consciousness are separate? Don't our spirits also have brains?

We must have spirit brains and since spirit is matter according to Joseph Smith, and so life after death says nothing interesting about consciousness. Try explaining that to DCP sometime though.

If I recall correctly, where it almost gets interesting is in the doctrine of an intelligence. I think Widstoe taught this ambitious idea that intelligence is just another kind of building block like matter, and so your consciousness didn't actually come into existence until your spirit was "organized" from the "intelligence" laying around. And If I recall correctly again, Bruce R. rejected this and held to the Russian Doll Theory. The intelligence goes into the spirit, which then goes into a body. The intelligence is basic consciousness.

You have to admire widstoe a tiny bit for trying to make sense out of such gap-toothed thinking. You can just see old know-nothing Joseph Smith declaring a spirit is matter since he needs a little less of it for God while his Book of Mormon heroes floating around after death could stand to be a little more tactile. But then he runs into the basic problem, if a spirit is matter, then do I have an immortal soul?... Why yes I do! I made it up just now, it's called an intelligence! It has all the mystical properties that a spirit did that we gave up when we turned it into matter.

But you can't give Widstoe too much credit, because he didn't figure out he'd been had, and his theories are banal, telling us nothing more than we already know. Mormon theology has contributed a big goose-egg to our knowledge. At least Catholic and protestant theologins came up with some stuff that is important for logic or discussions like morality and free will. Mormonism offers nothing. Not an original thought.

[_tld]

please, tld -- no credibility? if reductive physicalism is wrong, it's not so obviously wrong that it fully lacks credibility.

I do not believe a materialist who states that the brain is the source of consciousness without providing evidence. For me that statement is not credible.

what evidence is that? NDEs? lol. if so, let me point out NDEs still don't explain consciousness and they don't refute materialism.

I am not trying to explain consciousness. I am suggesting that consciousness can exist separate from brain function. There is certainly more evidence for this than there is evidence that the brain is the source of consciousness.

The existence of a material world is an assumption each of us makes based upon our conscious experience. As far as I know, that assumption cannot be tested directly. It is always an assumption based upon a subjective experience (one that I am having right now). But there are many conscious experiences that people claim to have had of a non-material reality, as real to them as a physical reality.

If conscious experience of both physical and non-physical realities are possible (and who's to say they are not), then, for me, this leaves open the possibility that the Book of Mormon can have a non-physical source or a physical source depending upon how one interprets the evidence that is part of his or her conscious experience.

[_Fence Sitter]

please, tld -- no credibility? if reductive physicalism is wrong, it's not so obviously wrong that it fully lacks credibility.

I do not believe a materialist who states that the brain is the source of consciousness without providing evidence. For me that statement is not credible.

what evidence is that? NDEs? lol. if so, let me point out NDEs still don't explain consciousness and they don't refute materialism.

I am not trying to explain consciousness. I am suggesting that consciousness can exist separate from brain function. There is certainly more evidence for this than there is evidence that the brain is the source of consciousness.

The existence of a material world is an assumption each of us makes based upon our conscious experience. As far as I know, that assumption cannot be tested directly. It is always an assumption based upon a subjective experience (one that I am having right now). But there are many conscious experiences that people claim to have had of a non-material reality, as real to them as a physical reality.

If conscious experience of both physical and non-physical realities are possible (and who's to say they are not), then, for me, this leaves open the possibility that the Book of Mormon can have a non-physical source or a physical source depending upon how one interprets the evidence that is part of his or her conscious experience.

Where does Mormonism teach a non physical reality?

[_Philo Sofee]

tld

Basic to this discussion, as well as other similar discussions, is the question of whether or not consciousness can exist outside of brain function. The evidence we have available suggests that it does. Materialists who claim that the brain is the source of consciousness have no credibility, thus they must resort to ridicule to try to minimize the evidence that consciousness
does not require a brain.

In that case, drugs would never work. You cannot be put out for an operation you would fully remain conscious. People who have brain damage would not be affected because consciousness is outside the brain, and it would continue making people function perfectly normal. Your premise is simply flawed and medicinal applications of drugs are the evidence against your claim.

[_Fence Sitter]

Where does Mormonism teach that the brain and consciousness are separate? Don't our spirits also have brains?

We must have spirit brains and since spirit is matter according to Joseph Smith, and so life after death says nothing interesting about consciousness. Try explaining that to DCP sometime though.

If I recall correctly, where it almost gets interesting is in the doctrine of an intelligence. I think Widstoe taught this ambitious idea that intelligence is just another kind of building block like matter, and so your consciousness didn't actually come into existence until your spirit was "organized" from the "intelligence" laying around. And If I recall correctly again, Bruce R. rejected this and held to the Russian Doll Theory. The intelligence goes into the spirit, which then goes into a body. The intelligence is basic consciousness.

You have to admire widstoe a tiny bit for trying to make sense out of such gap-toothed thinking. You can just see old know-nothing Joseph Smith declaring a spirit is matter since he needs a little less of it for God while his Book of Mormon heroes floating around after death could stand to be a little more tactile. But then he runs into the basic problem, if a spirit is matter, then do I have an immortal soul?... Why yes I do! I made it up just now, it's called an intelligence! It has all the mystical properties that a spirit did that we gave up when we turned it into matter.

But you can't give Widstoe too much credit, because he didn't figure out he'd been had, and his theories are banal, telling us nothing more than we already know. Mormon theology has contributed a big goose-egg to our knowledge. At least Catholic and protestant theologins came up with some stuff that is important for logic or discussions like morality and free will. Mormonism offers nothing. Not an original thought.

Did any of them speculate on the make up of intelligences? Many times in Mormon theology the word spirit and intelligence are used interchangeably, and even if we speculate they are two different entities, there is no evidence inside Mormon theology that intelligences are not also made up of some sort of re-refined ( ) matter.

[_Philo Sofee]

None of this is actually helping me understand how the Book of Mormon as a 16th/17th century transcript is a GOOD thing for apologetics.

It isn't, but the strategy is, and always has been and will be, to deflect the conversation into something more manageable, and then when we all are least expecting it, throw in very subtly the good ole testimony of truth anyway.....

[_tld]

... where it almost gets interesting is in the doctrine of an intelligence.

One way of looking at intelligence is to make it more or less synonymous with consciousness: each is primary and thus uncreated. Each of us is conscious and we might assume therefore that we are related in some way to this primary consciousness, even that it is possibly our source. As conscious entities, we are currently having the experience of a physical world. This is, for us, our reality. This does not necessarily mean that, as conscious entities, we have not in the past experienced other realities, that we cannot do so in the future, or that some individuals while experiencing this physical reality cannot temporarily experience a different reality.

[_DarkHelmet]

None of this is actually helping me understand how the Book of Mormon as a 16th/17th century transcript is a GOOD thing for apologetics.

I don't really get it either, but from what I understand there was a different group of translators hundreds of years ago who created the transcript used by Joseph Smith. Then you can blame the loose translation and anachronism issues on those guys. It's the same strategy they use whenever they can't find evidence in the things we already have, they create yet undiscovered evidence that will prove the church is true. A second Hill Comorah, missing scrolls, and now a second set of translators.

[_tld]

tld

In that case, drugs would never work. You cannot be put out for an operation you would fully remain conscious. People who have brain damage would not be affected because consciousness is outside the brain, and it would continue making people function perfectly normal. Your premise is simply flawed and medicinal applications of drugs are the evidence against your claim.

Just remember that at the level of conscious experience everything is subjective. While there is subjective consensus about how the physical world works, and therefore general conformity when it comes to experience, there can be deviation from expected outcome, such as with the placebo effect. Furthermore, there are reports of individuals with severe dementia who just prior to death became conscious and temporarily carried on an intelligible conversation.