Since this entire analysis is about the change in the skeptic's belief when presented with all the evidence, shouldn't this analysis be performed for all religions?
Lets find the result for Catholicism, for Calvinism, for Islam, for Judaism. Then lets compare where our skeptic ends up at the end of each analysis.
Presumably Mormonism should beat out every other religion, right? If this analysis is a method of discovering truth?
This actually is discussed and somewhat done in John W. Loftus, "The Outsider Test of Faith." The Mormon side of using this Outsider test for Mormonism was done by none other than Thomas Riskas, "Deconstructing Mormonism"!
No wonder they have such a problem with Riskas!
To avoid bias, you would want each religion's apologists to do this process on each of the *other* religions - not their own.
At least that would be start towards removing bias and not having this be one giant subjective mess.
Dr. Moore
So there it is: more points of critical feedback equals success. Keep in mind, critics of Mopologetics are almost all folks who at one point wanted Mormonism to be true and good more than anything else in the world. It’s all so backwards when you think about it. Like a movie studio that so long ago gave up shooting for critical acclaim that it now celebrates bad rotten tomatoes scores because upsetting the critics equals buzz and buzz equals relevance and relevance equals importance and who doesn’t want to be important?
Since the entire objective is to convert people, the number of baptisms these kinds of articles produce I would think would be far more impressive... except for one minor glitch... so far, as per Mormons themselves there have been no conversions...
But hey, if the noise of the critics is now a gauge for truth then hot damn for Mopologetics! They be on a roll!
Gadianton
The absolute best explanation of Bayes that exists on the Internet is when there's smoke, there's fire on mathisfun.com.
Notice in the example, P(B) is the probability of seeing smoke on its own. That's the crucial component that accounts for your misses. In the example, dangerous fires are rare, they nearly always produce smoke, but because smoke is relatively common, at 10% on its own (bbq, fireworks), the probability of a dangerous fire when you see smoke is only 9%. If the probability of smoke on its own were 90%, then seeing smoke would tell us nothing we didn't already know.
Crucial to our understanding of P(B) is that it covers all possibilities of smoke. If we select only certain circumstances by which we might view the existence of smoke, we will underrepresent the commonality of smoke. In general this is what I think apologists do; what Kyler is doing. And I think I understand his justification for it.
P(A) = probability that prayer healed me. P(B) = probability I healed under all circumstances. P (B|A) = probability I healed if prayed for
P (A|B) = P(A) * P(B|A) / P(B)
The probability prayer healed me given that I healed is inversely proportional to the probability I healed under all circumstances. Even if the probability I healed when prayed for isn't very good, say, 25%, if the probability I healed under all circumstances is very tiny, then prayer wins.
This is the kind of Bayesian analysis I was kind of hoping to see Kyler tackle. Lets see the actual reasoning and math of it all. I really hope he begins doing this. You make good points Gad, and thanks for that link. I'm studying it now...
Gadianton
The absolute best explanation of Bayes that exists on the Internet is when there's smoke, there's fire on mathisfun.com.
Notice in the example, P(B) is the probability of seeing smoke on its own. That's the crucial component that accounts for your misses. In the example, dangerous fires are rare, they nearly always produce smoke, but because smoke is relatively common, at 10% on its own (bbq, fireworks), the probability of a dangerous fire when you see smoke is only 9%. If the probability of smoke on its own were 90%, then seeing smoke would tell us nothing we didn't already know.
Crucial to our understanding of P(B) is that it covers all possibilities of smoke. If we select only certain circumstances by which we might view the existence of smoke, we will underrepresent the commonality of smoke. In general this is what I think apologists do; what Kyler is doing. And I think I understand his justification for it.
P(A) = probability that prayer healed me. P(B) = probability I healed under all circumstances. P (B|A) = probability I healed if prayed for
P (A|B) = P(A) * P(B|A) / P(B)
The probability prayer healed me given that I healed is inversely proportional to the probability I healed under all circumstances. Even if the probability I healed when prayed for isn't very good, say, 25%, if the probability I healed under all circumstances is very tiny, then prayer wins.
This is the kind of Bayesian analysis I was kind of hoping to see Kyler tackle. Lets see the actual reasoning and math of it all. I really hope he begins doing this. You make good points Gad, and thanks for that link. I'm studying it now...
Philo. I did the same thing. I went to that same sight to understand the if then probabilities. The problem resides in the initial claim of probability. With the smoke analogy it gets to the heart of the matter because people know about smoke and people know about fire. The statistics of those things are modern and easily digested. But when you enter a realm of the far past and stack assumptions that first number you put it the denominator for the probability of the given skews it. How in the world would anyone be able to establish the same smoke, fire comparison is beyond me.
In the comments to his 3rd part, Billy Shears gets him thinking a little on another angle, one which he won't go for. However, the 6 years of preparation and the idea of not getting caught are answered by his own mother Lucy Mack who testified that many times Joseph would entertain the family with stories about the people in the land, their manner of dressing, their wars, etc. THAT was when he was practicing and ironing out all the difficulties of the story for 6 entire years. He had no fear of getting caught, he was already rehearsing the story and getting the details accurate. Perhaps in dictating the Book of Mormon he changed names instead or something like that. He practiced enough that he could probably actually calculate the time it would take him to do a huge book which would be seriously impressive! The public could not claim HE did it, and they would have to believe the supernatural element he claimed occurred.
The translucent hat and him reading the manuscript was fascinating Billy. I had not thought of that angle before...
"Summary. So, all told, we can now calculate our consequent probability. What’s the probability that we would both have no evidence of working from notes or from a Bible and evidence that Joseph didn’t require prompting at the start of dictation sessions? We’ll use the probability that he would have been able to spend 356 hours writing and memorizing the material without getting caught (p = .0297) and the probability of performing a startling feat of memory (p = .000283), which we’ll assume are independent. Multiplying them together gives us a probability of p = .0000084. For those who like visual aids, here’s one that summarizes how we got to this point."
......
this looks like pretty much the whole 9 and four fifths of the argument. The clunk clunk clunk of calculations is pretty much decoration.
What about Joseph Smith making it up as he went along. The book reads like a free form exercise with a lot of "it came to pass" and a lot of areas where he would act like he was trying to find the right words or would catch himself by saying "in other words ....." or something similar. He wasn't dictating 12 hours a day and could have used the down time to gather his thoughts. Also, don't forget about how Benjamin came back from the dead in the original edition, a clear sign that he forgot, at least at that point, what he had previously dictated, showing that making it up on the fly might have been part of the process or a great part of it.
But, the emotional experience and group pressure by the believing crowd, perhaps have too much influence on our gracious friend. The conclusion was reached a long time ago in the pioneer tradition or something similar. My money is on prior number rigging to reach the forthcoming believing conclusion. Also, a retreat to bias will be used when critics make a point. That is pretty much a guaranty.
Myth is misused by the powerful to subjugate the masses all too often.
What about Joseph Smith making it up as he went along. The book reads like a free form exercise with a lot of "it came to pass" and a lot of areas where he would act like he was trying to find the right words or would catch himself by saying "in other words ....." or something similar. He wasn't dictating 12 hours a day and could have used the down time to gather his thoughts. Also, don't forget about how Benjamin came back from the dead in the original edition, a clear sign that he forgot, at least at that point, what he had previously dictated, showing that making it up on the fly might have been part of the process or a great part of it.
But, the emotional experience and group pressure by the believing crowd, perhaps have too much influence on our gracious friend. The conclusion was reached a long time ago in the pioneer tradition or something similar. My money is on prior number rigging to reach the forthcoming believing conclusion. Also, a retreat to bias will be used when critics make a point. That is pretty much a guaranty.
Yep. He wasn’t going for literary quality and it was self published. Joseph had trained for this his whole life. From days at a time leading treasure digs - with all of the lore and story telling involved. To being a Methodist exhorter. To firelight family story time. And how much of the book was either repetitive connective phraseology or Biblical sermonizing? To reduce the whole affair to “edits per word count” in order to obtain a probability function of “truth” is, in a word, “stupid.”
The book reads like a free form exercise with a lot of "it came to pass" and a lot of areas where he would act like he was trying to find the right words or would catch himself by saying "in other words ....." or something similar.
Also, don't forget about how Benjamin came back from the dead in the original edition, a clear sign that he forgot, at least at that point, what he had previously dictated, showing that making it up on the fly might have been part of the process or a great part of it.
