Gadianton wrote: ↑Sat Jul 24, 2021 3:12 pm
Kyler,
I don't want to overwhelm you as there are so many directions to come at this from and several folks interested in what you're doing, and so I'm going to restrict myself to one question for you today.
You've fundamentally followed the path of the Dales, of multiplying a string of improbabilities in order to get to numbers so big (or small) they are rarely talked about in the real world. That alone should be a red flag that you're doing something wrong. But if that's not a red flag, consider the following thought experiment:
Kyler Rasmussen is born a few decades prior to his actual birth, and discovering critics and apologists in the seventies. He learns about Bayes and goes down the same path of assessing the evidence of the Book of Mormon. He decides before the fact that 10 ^ -42 is the number to beat. However, because it's the seventies, Chiasmus haven't been discovered yet (I don't think) nor has Uto-Aztecan origins by renowned philologist, Brian Stubbs, and neither has the 15th century text been discovered and so the Kyler Rasmussen of this timeline only has 20 pieces of evidence. Suppose today's Kyler Rasmussen beats the 10 ^ -42 odds but not by enough to impress absolute certainty upon the critic. That implies that our alt Kyler Rasmussen would miss by quadrillions to one or worse. Would alt Kyler Rasmussen admit defeat --- would alt Kyler Rasmussen admit the Book of Mormon most likely is not ancient, and critics have very good reason to disbelieve it, or would he look for 3 more pieces of evidence?
I will give you a day to think about this (even if it won't take you that long to think about it) and follow up with a second, similar thought experiment.
This is a great question. Alt Kyler would probably end it the same way this one's ending. Here's a quote from the closing paragraphs:
"This episode was supposed to be about conclusions, but the point of this has always been that there aren’t any—that there’s always room for further investigation, that conclusions are necessarily tentative, and that answers will never be final. The question we should ask ourselves now isn’t, “is the Book of Mormon authentic?” We could instead ask two other questions: “is there enough evidence for me to hope”, and “do I have enough hope to exercise faith”. I can’t answer either of those questions for you, and, as you’ll see, I can’t answer them for my skeptic either...Questions of authenticity will continue to ebb and flow, as will the evidence that supports or refutes them."
Alt Kyler's conclusion at that point would probably be that the skeptical position is a reasonable one to hold (and real Kyler still believes that), and that taking on a faithful one would probably require adopting a less-strenuous prior (obtained, perhaps, on the basis of personal spiritual experience).
Interestingly enough, the trajectory of evidence over time is a useful piece of evidence in itself, and I'll be discussing it in Episode 15.
