There can be no evidence that Mormonism is false

[Meadowchik]

Couldn't one say that about any number of mutually exclusive ideologies, if they use similar arguments?

So what does Dr Peterson win with multiple undisprovable universes?

I think he gets to the need to prove the merits of the ideology. It can't be disproven? Okay. So is it good, necessary, worth it?

That seems like a hefty ask. Now he has to do one of two things:

Accept that decisions to choose other mutually exclusive ideologies can be legitimate OR

Prove that his ideology is the best.

Good luck with that, dude. As a woman, I'm already repelled by a system that treats me as less than.

[Doctor Steuss]

Catholics don’t say they “know” the church is true.

Sorry for taking this little one out to quibble.

While not a rote declaration like that within Mormonism, the profession of faith within the confirmation ritual is "“I believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God."

I'd say that on this particular one, Catholics kind of one-up Mormons as far as truthiness proclamations go.

[huckelberry]

I would not doubt that Mr Peterson realizes that people in all sorts of differing religious belief systems might have the same thought as he is expressing. We all deal with incomplete knowledge and understanding.

Catholics don’t say they “know” the church is true.

Catholics don’t have a problem saying they believe in spite of X problem which they agree with critics exists.

Catholics don’t have to say “all evidence criticizing Catholicism is false.”

All DP did was demonstrate that fundamentalist orthodoxy is alive and well within Mormonism. Which is understandable when it is only 200 years old and not thousands of years old like more mature religions.

drumdude, Catholics say they believe it is true which is the same as what Mr Peterson says of his faith.

Saying they believe in spite of problem x is exactly the same as what Mr Peterson said about his belief.

Peterson stated that there are valid criticism of the institution he is a part of which would be the same sort of observation believing Catholics make. A Catholic would not accept as a valid criticism the claim that Jesus did not actually live but is just a story Mark made up. A believing Catholic would say that is a false criticism.

[huckelberry]

Couldn't one say that about any number of mutually exclusive ideologies, if they use similar arguments?

So what does Dr Peterson win with multiple undisprovable universes?

I think he gets to the need to prove the merits of the ideology. It can't be disproven? Okay. So is it good, necessary, worth it?

That seems like a hefty ask. Now he has to do one of two things:

Accept that decisions to choose other mutually exclusive ideologies can be legitimate OR

Prove that his ideology is the best.

Good luck with that, dude. As a woman, I'm already repelled by a system that treats me as less than.

Meadowchick, I am not sure who or to which statement you are referring to here. It might be my comment that Mr Peterson would be aware that his observation about his belief could be made by people of different beliefs and in fact is made by them. I did not think that this observation makes all the different beliefs equally true or inhabitants of their own separate reality. There are mistakes in peoples beliefs. I do not share Mr Peterson's beliefs and am not recommending them to others. I think his statement explains a bit about how he approaches uncertainty. He has a shelf.

[drumdude]

My experience as a Catholic is very different from Peterson's experience as a Mormon. Unlike Peterson, I have been a member of multiple religions. They are not in any way equivalent.

Dan's entire blog post is about turning criticisms on their head so that they disappear. Not acknowledging them and believing in spite of them.

A Catholic is perfectly able to believe that every criticism of their church is real. Dan is completely unable to.

For example, a Catholic doesn't need to prove to science that the Eucharist turns into human flesh after being blessed. No Catholic believes that science will someday discover that the Eucharist is materially what it claims to be. Yet every LDS TBM believes that secular archeology will eventually vindicate Hebrews building a civilization somewhere in the Americas before Christ.

They're simply not the same thing, at all.

[DrStakhanovite]

Sounds great to me.

Cool.

I don’t have the chops in Philosophy to fully understand his argument, so I can’t distinguish between a substantive response to it and a superficial one. It would help me understand better, I think, to hear from someone who treats it as a serious argument even though they may not be persuaded by it. So, I’m interested in why you consider it a serious argument and an example of a substantive response compared to a superficial one.

Gotcha.

What I’ll do then is explain how Craig frames theistic arguments as a kind of rhetorical bait and why he does so (or atleast, why I think he does so), then use the Kalam as a working example. The guy works on two different levels and I think when you start peeling back the Kalam and look at what he is doing in the professional literature, one gains an appreciation for the amount of labor and creativity he has invested into his philosophical projects.

Today I went and gave the video a bit more of an intended direct listen. I don't think Paulogia is misrepresenting what Craig said, or is taking it out of context.

I don’t think he took Craig out of context in the sense that, if he played more of the audio then Craig’s comments would be put into a better light. Rather, he seems totally unaware of what Craig believes and thus makes comments that are wholly irrelevant to the man.

Case in point:

It seems to me, Craig isn't being very philosophical here, nor is he offering us anything more than the type of reasons DCP gave for belief.

“We should proportion our beliefs to the evidence” is a mantra of “Evidentialism”, a position in Epistemology (study of knowledge) that claims for a proposition to count as knowledge it needs to meet a certain level of evidentiary justification. Now it sounds great, yet evidence is an idea that is very conceptually weak and there are a lot of serious and practical problems inherent in the view.

More to the point, Craig explicitly rejects Evidentialism in favor of some variation of something called “Reformed Epistemology”. Now there are lots of objections and concerns related to Reformed Epistemology, but pointing out that Craig doesn’t sound or act like an Evidentialist is like complaining that I’m not acting like a proper Mormon when I don’t take a burning bosom as a sign that the Book of Mormon is what the Church says it is.

As for DCP, he isn’t even capable of having a conversation about either Evidentialism or Reformed Epistemology. He and Paulogia operate on the same level.

[huckelberry]

Admitting/understanding that there is a chance that Mormonism is not true is a slippery slope. That is how my faith journey started. I clearly remember the moment I truly internalized the possibility of it not being true. I just don't think there is any incentive for Dr. P to go down that path. He has a good life and it appears to have worked for him rather well. It is very apparent he enjoys his position as the "foil" to this little corner of the internet.

Master dc, I think you have picked out a good point here. I can faintly remember the time when I thought there was no chance that the LDS Church was not what it claimed to be. It took some rattling for the possiblity that it was not to sneak into my mind. Once there there were just too many difficulties for me to maintain belief. I felt if a shelf analogy was to be used all the boxes simply would not fit.

I believe in both discussion and taking criticisms seriously. I do not share Mr Peterson's kind of belief. For me I recognize there is a side of uncertainty which goes with what I hold in faith. I think we are better off recognizing the possiblity that what ever faith we have it may have errors and one should be open to uncertainty.

[Dr Moore]

Up through around 2015, I couldn't imagine that the Church might not be true. Then I found the essays, and could not ignore what I found in terms of the obvious deceptions being presented to me. It was just too much, so I gave myself permission to question that 40+ year presupposition of truth. By the way, that's easy to say now, but giving myself the permission to question if the Church might not be true, was the hardest thing I have ever done, hands down. After that, my experience in studying and reading, including the most intense scripture study of my life, was that the evidence of "not true" fell into place with such overwhelming elegance and simplicity, there was no way to go back. Not without lying to myself.

[Meadowchik]

Meadowchick, I am not sure who or to which statement you are referring to here. It might be my comment that Mr Peterson would be aware that his observation about his belief could be made by people of different beliefs and in fact is made by them. I did not think that this observation makes all the different beliefs equally true or inhabitants of their own separate reality. There are mistakes in peoples beliefs. I do not share Mr Peterson's beliefs and am not recommending them to others. I think his statement explains a bit about how he approaches uncertainty. He has a shelf.

I was responding to the OP topic, not to any specific reply...to be blunt I hadn't read much comments and definitely hadn't read yours--I have much less time now than I used to have for discussion. But it is cool I think that each of us made similar observation although didn't take them to the same directions.

I wouldn't say all ideologies are equal, just that at the very least there can be loads of mutually exclusive ones which are equal by some measure or other and nondisprovable according to reasoning like his.

[Philo Sofee]

Dr. Moore
Up through around 2015, I couldn't imagine that the Church might not be true. Then I found the essays, and could not ignore what I found in terms of the obvious deceptions being presented to me. It was just too much, so I gave myself permission to question that 40+ year presupposition of truth. By the way, that's easy to say now, but giving myself the permission to question if the Church might not be true, was the hardest thing I have ever done, hands down. After that, my experience in studying and reading, including the most intense scripture study of my life, was that the evidence of "not true" fell into place with such overwhelming elegance and simplicity, there was no way to go back. Not without lying to myself.

I have similar experience and feelings concerning the Book of Abraham. When I discovered where on the papyri the hieroglyphs actually came from and what they really translate into, there was just no going back for me. And I knew defending it and the apologists was just lying to myself. That was the kicker. There is no animosity or hate about it, there is just the idea that I personally cannot go there anymore, it's just not real as a valid translation.